“You want a real piano?” his mom asks.
“No,” Flake goes.
“We’ll get you a real piano if you want one,” his mom says.
“I don’t want one,” he goes.
“All right, then,” his dad says.
“God,” Flake goes, under his breath.
“Roddy’s grandmother was a wonderful musician,” his dad goes.
Flake’s looking off into the neighbor’s yard.
“Was she?” I finally go.
“She could’ve been a professional,” his dad goes.
“All she ever did was complain about her health,” Flake goes to me. “And she lived to be like a hundred and two.”
“What’d he say?” his dad goes.
“What do you care?” Flake goes.
“What’d you say to him?” his dad goes.
“He was telling me about her,” I go.
He looks skeptical but keeps eating. Flake’s mom is off in her own world, looking at her ginger ale.
“How did I end up with a kid with no ambition?” his dad finally goes. His mom shakes her head, like she doesn’t know.
“Don’t worry about the no ambition part,” Flake tells him.
“You got some?” his dad asks.
“I’m working on it,” Flake goes.
“You don’t look like you’re working on it,” his dad says.
“I’m working on it right now,” Flake goes.
I whack his leg to shut him up. He tears up more grass and won’t look at me.
His dad spreads out the quesadilla’s wrapping with the palm of his hand. “Glad to hear it,” he finally goes.
6
I come over to Flake’s the next day after school and he’s in his garage sitting on the floor doing something with his hand. He doesn’t answer when I say hey from the driveway.
I ask what he’s doing. Coming in out of the sunlight it’s hard to see at first. He’s holding a can of spray paint an inch from the back of his hand and spraying the same spot. The paint’s blue. It’s dripping onto the cement under his hand.
“What’re you doing?” I go.
He keeps spraying. The smell’s making his eyes water.
“What’re you doing?” I go.
He stops and looks at the spot he’s been spraying.
“Your dad’s gonna be pissed about the paint on the floor,” I tell him.
He looks at it. It’s not a very big puddle, but still.
“A few years ago I was trying to make a model,” he tells me. He’s got his eye right up to the part of his hand where the paint is. “When I was spray painting it, I found something out.”
“So?” I finally go. “What’d you find out?”
He puts the nozzle up against the part he’s already painted on his hand and sprays again. “You can fuck up your skin like this,” he goes. “If you do it long enough.”
I crouch next to him. Like that’ll help me figure out what he thinks he’s doing. Up close, the smell from the paint’s so intense that I feel like I’m squinting when I’m not.
“You are one weird kid,” I finally go.
“It’s like a burn, but a burn that doesn’t burn,” he goes.
“See?” he goes. “It’s making a blister.”
“What’d you do to your hand, Roddy?” my mom asks as soon as we come into the house.
“Burned it,” Flake goes.
“How’d you burn it?” my mom goes. She’s all alarmed. She gets in front of us.
“Wasn’t careful,” he goes.
“Were you playing with matches?” she asks. She looks at me.
“Oh, no,” he goes.
“Let me see,” she goes. She takes his hand with both of hers. He cleaned the paint off with thinner and that made the blistering worse. There are pink bubbles from his thumb to his pointer finger and down to his wrist.
“I got aloe,” she goes. “You want aloe?”
“My mom gave me some,” he goes.
“Well, I hope you weren’t doing something stupid,” she goes.
“Sometimes I need to be more careful,” he tells her. He means it.
“Were you guys doing anything stupid?” she asks me.
“He was already hurt when I got there,” I go. “I just brought him over here.”
We’re up in my room a minute and a half before the phone rings and my mom calls up the stairs that it’s for Flake.
“Were you painting in my garage?” his dad asks him. I can hear every word he says.
“We tried to clean it up,” Flake says.
“You didn’t try too hard,” his dad goes.
“I can hear like every word he’s saying,” I tell Flake.
He nods. “I’ll clean it some more,” he promises.
His dad swears a few times and then gets off the phone.
We sit and stare at his hand for a while. “Edwin,” my mom calls.
“Edwin,” Flake goes.
I go over to the door and open it. “What do you want?” I call down to her.
“There’s a boy here to see you,” she goes.
I look over at Flake, who thinks it’s funny.
“I don’t know any boys,” I go.
“I’m sending him up,” she says.
Hermie comes up the stairs two at a time.
“Who said you could come over?” I go.
“Your mom,” he goes.
“My mom said you could come up,” I tell him. “Who said you could come over?”
“I said,” he goes.
“You said?” Flake goes. “Midgets make the rules now?”
“Don’t make me kick your ass,” Hermie goes. He’s having the time of his tiny life. “Listen,” he goes. He’s looking around the room.
“Don’t get comfortable,” I tell him.
“I got a proposition for you guys,” he goes.
“A proposition?” Flake says.
“Yeah, a proposition,” Hermie goes. “You wanna hear it or not?”
Flake grabs him by the shorts and the collar of his shirt. I can hear Hermie grabbing at the banister as they go downstairs and complaining about something all the way out. The back door slams, then Flake comes walking back up and shuts the door behind him.
“Did that boy leave already?” my mom calls from the back of the house.
We can’t talk in my house and Flake doesn’t want to go back to his so we walk to the fort. When we get up to the underpass and duck under the concrete Flake hits his head. He’s still swearing when we see Dickhead and Weensie and two other kids sitting there with our candles and sketch pads. We had a box stuck up on a drainage pipe with some stuff in it, and the stuff is spread all over the dirt. There’s nothing on any of the sketch pads that anybody could figure out.
“This is ours,” Flake goes, holding his head.
“Yours?” Weensie goes. “You own the highway?” I don’t know where he got his name. He’s got freckles that look like they were drawn on and a space between his front teeth.
“Oh, this is theirs,” one of the other kids says. “Everything here is theirs.”
The other kids laugh.
“That’s ours too,” Flake says, about the sketch pads and candles.
“Why don’t you take ’em from us?” Dickhead says.
We stand there, half in and half out. “Fuck,” Flake finally says. He rubs his head some more.
“Hurt yourself?” Dickhead goes.
“You dumped all our shit out,” I go. “Who said you could dump all our shit out?” We had gum, pencils, a little flashlight and some napkins in the box. Flake liked to jerk off sometimes.
They don’t say anything. They just look at us. Dickhead has one droopy eye, and he’s always grinning up at you, like you’re just about to get the joke.
“Gimme the flashlight,” I go. “And gimme the sketch pads.”