Mail fraud.
Really.
No, not really. He was in the coast guard and he got in a fight while drinking. Unfortunately the guy he fought had a heart condition.
Are you saying …
Yeah, he tackled the guy and that was that. So, he’s in jail until I’m twenty-five. He’ll be thirty-two. Maybe he’ll get out on good behavior. He’s a nice guy. Everyone was real surprised.
We got to Ree’s brother’s place pretty quick (does he kill people too? No, Lucia. He doesn’t. Only my brother kills people, and he only kills people with heart conditions), which was an auto shop. There was a Ferrari logo on the outside.
He’s never fucking seen a Ferrari, was Lana’s comment on that.
Ree came out, tossed her bag in the back, and got in. She leaned in between us.
Hello, girls.
Hello, Ree.
Here you go. She handed us each two pills.
What is this?
That’s the fun, said Lana. Ree never tells you what it is until after.
What Did We Do?
WHAT DID WE DO
The next day, I woke up and my face hurt. When I got to school, I passed by Lana in the hall and she had a black eye just like me.
Have you ever had a black eye before?
No. You?
No. Does it look cool?
It doesn’t not look cool. I think it is—it could go either way.
We tried to put two and two together, but it was all real patchy. Lana called Ree at lunch, and Ree said we had done almost nothing. Lana put the phone on speaker:
Let’s see. We got milkshakes at some diner. We drove past a carnival and went in and snuck into the bouncy castle, and when we were jumping around, the two of you knocked heads. You both fell on your asses, and bounced around. I have it on my phone, she said. I’ll show you later. It is the funniest thing I have ever seen. You both thought it was your own fault and kept apologizing. Then we went to the bridge and listened to the radio and danced around for a while in the headlights of the car. It was the best birthday I have ever had. Lucia, you kept talking about how you can’t get rid of your chlamydia.
I told her I knew that part wasn’t true. To be honest, I can’t even remember the difference between chlamydia and gonorrhea. Is one of them worse?
THAT EVENING
He (Jan) said we’d need to stop by his house first, so we drove there. I was going to wait in the car, but he said I might as well come inside. It was a pretty crappy house, far back on a run-down property. I think they used to call this type a bungalow, but if it used to be a bungalow, I don’t think anyone would call it that now.
I asked him,
Do you own this?
It was my grandfather’s. Now, it’s no one’s.
The door was unlocked. We went in. There were empty beer cans here and there—it looked like a college house.
My room’s back here.
I shrugged, like, why are you telling me where your room is.
Come on back, he said, and kept walking, so I followed.
His room was at the back of the house on the second floor. I guess it had been some kind of den. There was a bar at one end. Maybe his grandfather had liked entertaining guests. The room was actually pretty neatly kept. It didn’t look like Jan owned very much.
He was changing his shirt, and I saw that he had scars. I mean, Jan has a lot of scars.
That is a lot of scars, I said. He told me about them—where they came from. It wasn’t any one thing—and it wasn’t abuse, if that’s what you were thinking. They were just scars, just lots of scars.
What are we going to do? I asked after a while.
We’re going to shoot a dog.
I won’t do that, I said.
I’m joking. We are going to steal some potassium nitrate from a farm supplier.
Can’t you just buy it?
You can, but then your name might be on a list. Can’t be too careful.
We got back in his car. I realized I left my hoodie in his room, so I ran inside to get it. I saw a photograph of a girl on a ledge next to the bed.
When I got back to the car I asked him about her.
Forget about her, is what he said.
What if I don’t?
She’s my sister. She killed herself when I was eight.
Why?
It was an accident. She was holding her breath at the bottom of a pool.
I didn’t say, I’m sorry, or anything like that—because I know it just pisses people off. I kept my mouth shut, he kept his mouth shut, and we drove for about another forty minutes. Once we stopped at a gas station for about two minutes. He went in, got a bottle of water, came out, and gave it to me.
In thirty seconds, we’re going to pass by Revo’s Supplies. I’m going to pull into the lot just past. That’s an aquarium supply shop. You will get out. I will get out. You will go across the lot and into Revo’s Supplies. There should be only one guy on duty. I want you to chat him up. I want you to ask him dumb questions about hammers and ratcheting tools versus nonratcheting tools and which you should get. Tell him some story about how your dad was a carpenter but died and you are going to get rid of his tools because you don’t know what to do with them or how valuable they are. Make up some stories and run them. About a mile south on this road there’s a taco shack. Meet me there in an hour.
We passed by a box building—red metal with a flat overhanging roof.
it said R E V O S P L Y.
Then we pulled into the next lot.
Get out.
I started getting out.
Hold on. Leave the sweatshirt.
No.
Then at least take it off. You need his attention, got it?
Yeah, I got it.
Revo’s Supplies was a big store. The aisles were big, the counters were big, the ceiling was high. There was actually a tractor inside it, which was okay to look at. I went to the back, where there was a big counter. At the middle of the counter was a little hammer and a bell. RING ME, it said.
I rang it.
After about ten seconds, I rang it again. Then again and again.
A guy came out of the back wearing coveralls.
Hey, hey, stop that.
If you don’t want people to ring the bell, don’t have such a nice bell.
What do you need?
I need some screws for my air conditioner. The screws fell out. Now it doesn’t fit in the window properly.
Do you know which screws those are? The screws are over here.
We went down one aisle a ways.