Like A Charm

'Nah.' I stepped on the matchbox, grinding it beneath the ball of my foot. 'Fuck them.'

I looked at Lamar's face. He was biting his lip and for once his smile had disappeared.

Over the course of my childhood Benjamin and I had broken, mangled or destroyed pretty much every toy this kid ever had. We took away his baseballs, snapped the arms off his GI Joes, slipped his Tonka Toys into our pockets and told him we didn't know where they went. I had never felt bad about it. Not once. But now, for some reason, after stepping on an empty matchbox… 'I'm sorry about that, Lamar.' I reached down and reconstructed it.

Lamar released his lower lip and smiled. 'So this family that worships us can be the beginning of an entirely new civilization.' He placed the now-smashed-but-pathetically-reconstructed matchbox on a flat part of the rock, then went to the trash glacier to find other items. 'The first thing they build,' he said, 'is a temple in our honour.' He found an empty orange juice carton and placed it next to the matchbox.

'Oh, man,' I said, suddenly excited. 'Check out this temple.' I selected an empty bottle of Sprite and placed it on the rock.

'OK,' Lamar said, smiling full out, 'OK. So maybe that temple can be in your honour, and this one' – he grabbed another soda bottle, placing it at the end of our imaginary civilization – 'can be for me.'

'And they become rivals,' I said, 'and one part of the world starts to worship me and the other half starts to worship you, and they start to have wars and crap.'

'An excellent idea, Mr Watson.'

We played silently for a while, going back and forth from the trash glacier to the large flat rock and placing imaginary houses, schools and temples in a grid pattern. The cities grew, side by side, and I couldn't help but notice that Lamar's civilization was somehow more clever than mine, that the way he placed his bits and pieces of trash actually resembled a metropolis as though seen from an aeroplane. We completely covered the rock, and then I felt it was time. I flicked a white plastic bottle cap towards Lamar's city. It struck and toppled a milk carton.

'What are you doing?'

'My people have been secretly amassing weapons,' I said, 'and now they're ready for battle.'

'All right.' I saw Lamar's smile, wide and white. He grabbed an old pen and flung it towards my biggest temple. I laughed and picked up a flattened Coke can, skimming it off Lamar's city. We went back and forth a few times this way until Lamar said, 'And now the gods themselves are called upon to fight.' We started walking over our cities, smashing everything with our feet, kicking down the schools and auditoriums, the city halls and restaurants. We shattered and scattered all our work until the entire civilization was reduced to rubble. 'And now,' he said, fully absorbed in the game, 'it is time for me to send my only son to live among the people.' Lamar knelt down on the rock and placed a red twisty-tie that he had fashioned into the shape of a cross in the middle of all the rubble.

For some reason I felt my face turn hot. I said, 'That is ridiculous bullcrap.'

'What do you mean?'

'You're just repeating some crap they told you in church.' I was repeating my father, actually, who hated everything about religion and went into a tirade whenever it came up.

'OK,' he said, 'forget it.'

'I've already forgotten,' I informed Lamar, walking away.

'We could play Star Trek.' Lamar got up and came after me. 'Or war. You could be Spock.'

I turned round. 'I don't feel like playing Star Trek.'

'Do you want to watch TV?' he said. 'You could come to my house.'

I punched him. He rubbed the patch of skin I had punched and kept walking beside me. 'We could build up the civilization and smash it down again.'

'I don't think so.'

'We could-'

'You never know when to shut up, Lamar,' I said, 'do you?'

We walked back across the pedestrian overpass, crossed the turnpike, me angry for no real reason and Lamar with his head down, and continued that way until we came to our houses.

Then, right before I walked into my yard, I punched him in the arm so hard he fell on the ground.

I was in the driveway, listening to music on an old transistor radio I had found in my dad's closet, when two police cars drove up next door, one black and white, the other a plain sedan. The policemen got out, went to Lamar's house, and knocked. Lamar's mom answered. She wore a beige pant suit. I turned the radio off and went to stand by the fence to hear what was happening. I remember her saying, 'What?' I remember Lamar's sister, Estelle, coming to the door. She'd had her hair done. I turned round from the fence and saw my mother standing at the door of our house. She had a package of Kraft macaroni and cheese in her hands. I heard one of the policemen ask for Lamar. Then the two policemen in suits went inside and the other two waited for a while on the front lawn.

One of them turned his face towards the sun.

A couple of minutes later I saw Lamar come out. His mother was right behind him. They went to the police car and one of the officers opened the door to the back seat. They got in, and the plainclothes policemen got in the front. They started the car up again and drove away, leaving me standing in the yard holding the transistor radio, Estelle in the door of Lamar's house, and my mother behind me. When I turned to look at my mother's face I saw something in it, some delicate movement along the jaw.

'I want you to tell me what happened.' She sat me down at the kitchen table.

'What happened to what?'

'What did Lamar do?'

'Lamar didn't do anything.'

'Why did the police come for him?'

I remember this: I was crying. I didn't know why. I felt like an idiot. Thirteen years old, and I was crying.

'If you know something,' my mother said. 'If you know anything, you have to tell me…' Her voice was shaking. She was thin and tall, with short curly hair. It occurred to me for the first time just then that she was a person.

A local girl – it was Tiffany Engleton, I found out later – had discovered the body of a boy in the vacant lot behind the Safeway supermarket on the turnpike. The police suspected that a fight between two neighbourhood boys had gone too far, and for the time being they were calling it an accident.

It was Benjamin, I realized. Benjamin was dead.

Lamar had actually killed Benjamin, just like he said he would. I went to my room and sat on the edge of the bed with my hands in front of me. I wondered what I should do. What are you supposed to do when someone kills someone? I felt like I should pray or visit his grave or do something solemn.

Then, right around seven thirty there was a knock at the door. 'Mom,' I heard Jean say, 'it's the police.'

My mother went into the living room, and I walked in behind her.

They were the same two plainclothes detectives I had seen earlier.

'Good evening, ma'am,' the older one said. 'I'm Detective Alta, and this is Assistant Detective Claridge. We were wondering if we could have a few words with your son.'

The older detective had short grey hair and a polyester blue blazer. The younger one, I'll never forget, had hair that was completely white.

'Of course,' she said. 'Please. Come in.'

My father reclined in his vinyl easy chair in front of the television. He turned the volume down with the remote control.

The police detectives nodded to him and sat down on the couch.

'Can I get you some coffee?' my mother asked in her idiotic June Cleever voice. 'A soda perhaps?'

'Thank you for offering,' the older detective said. 'But we're just fine.'