“Oooo,” Weensie and another kid go. “Oooo.”
Weensie turns the flashlight on and shines it in my eyes. He turns it off and on again. He shakes his hand to make it like a strobe.
“Give him the flashlight,” Flake goes. He’s finally let go of his head.
They make more scared noises. Flake wanders off and circles around on the slope up to the road. When he comes back he’s got a flat rock the size of a paperback.
“What’re you, gonna hit us with that?” Dickhead goes. “You tryin’ to fucking scare me with a rock?”
Flake takes the flat side and brings it to his head, and then lowers it and brings it back up again, like he’s demonstrating how to do something.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Dickhead goes. He sounds like he really wants to know, all of a sudden.
No one says anything. One of the kids coughs and clears his throat and spits. “Aw, give it to him,” another kid says.
“Why should I?” Weensie asks him. But then he rolls the flashlight over to me.
“Give him the sketch pads,” Flake goes.
“Put the rock down,” Dickhead goes.
“Give him the sketch pads,” Flake goes.
“You put the rock down,” Dickhead goes.
Flake puts the rock at his feet.
“These drawings suck, by the way,” Dickhead goes. He tosses the two little pads out to me.
“Blow me,” Flake goes.
“I’ll fucking kick your ass,” Dickhead goes.
“Kick my ass,” Flake goes.
You can see Dickhead deciding.
“Kick my ass,” Flake goes.
Dickhead starts to get up.
“Let ’em go,” Weensie says.
“Who wants to screw around with these dildoes?” another kid says.
“This is our place,” Dickhead says to Flake. “You find another place to blow each other. And take your rocks with you.”
“Oooo,” one of the kids goes. The rest of them laugh.
Flake turns and is halfway up the embankment before I realize he’s leaving. We don’t talk at all on the walk home. When he turns off for his house, he doesn’t say anything and neither do I.
“You still pissed?” I ask him the next day, which is a Saturday. His dad and mom are spending the afternoon getting shown around a condo they’re not going to buy so they can get a free TV. Flake’s pulled out the guns and ammo and we’re making sure we know how everything fits together.
“You still pissed?” he goes, in a pussy voice.
I tilt up the carbine’s barrel. “Put this in your mouth,” I go.
He’s got newspaper spread on his dad’s bed so we don’t get oil on the blanket. The Kalashnikov’s easy. You can see right where the clip goes. At first I don’t want to put it in because I’m worried we won’t be able to get it out.
“We’re gonna have to get it out at school,” he says.
“We are?” I go.
“What happens when you want to change clips?” he wants to know.
“Oh, yeah,” I go.
He shakes his head.
I turn over his dad’s nine-millimeter, which looks like something a secret agent would use. Its clip is heavier than a rock that size. Flake’s looking at it, too. We both just look at it for a few minutes. I’m still thinking about changing clips. “Think we’re really gonna do this?” I go.
Flake shrugs. He’s still looking at the pistol. We hear some kids ride by on bikes, but we can’t tell who they are. “Let’s do this later,” he says.
“Okay,” I go.
We put everything back in their cases. At first the snaps on the outside of the big one won’t close, but finally we get it. I push it into the closet while Flake puts the ammo away. When he gets back we fold up all the newspaper and look around to see if we missed anything.
“What do you want to do now?” Flake finally goes.
I’m as depressed as he is. “Who knows?” I go.
He takes the newspaper under his arm and leaves. I can hear him in the kitchen. When I get in there he’s sitting at the table crying.
“We are such pussies,” he goes.
I sit down across from him but there’s nothing to say.
He sniffs and rubs his face and then cleans his hand and nose on a napkin from the napkin holder.
“Wanna play mosh volleyball?” I go.
“No,” he goes.
“Wanna throw rocks?” I go. Sometimes we throw little rocks at cars from a sand-and-gravel lot where we can get a running start when we get chased.
“No,” he goes.
“So what do you want to do?” I go.
He puts his head on the table and leaves it there for a few minutes. “All right, let’s throw rocks,” he goes.
On Monday at breakfast my mom tells me that the meeting with the vice principal and Ms. Meier is going to be tomorrow, which is the same day as Gus’s birthday party.
“That should be festive,” she says.
“The kid didn’t do the scheduling,” my dad goes. He’s up early and looking at something on his laptop at the kitchen table.
“Can I try your coffee?” I ask him.
“Maybe you should try one bite of breakfast,” my mom says.
“I ate one bite,” I tell her.
“This graph is perfectly incoherent,” my dad goes. He turns the computer to show me, then taps around on the keyboard.
“I hate when that happens,” my mom says. She’s rooting in a little bowl for change for my lunch money.
I move his mug closer and take a sip. It’s so full I have to lean over it.
“Can I try?” Gus says.
“It’s not good for you,” my dad goes.
My mom reminds me I’m going to be late. She dumps the lunch money into an envelope and hands it over. I stuff it into my pack. “I hope you finished the rest of your homework,” she says.
My dad looks at me when I come around from the other side of the table. “We gotta get you some new pants,” he goes. “How often does he wear those pants?”
“Every day,” my mom tells him.
“Oh, was I supposed to have noticed sooner than this?” he asks her.
“Don’t you need a jacket?” she asks me.
“I’m all right,” I tell her, but when I open the back door it’s freezing.
“What about your homework?” she calls.
“I didn’t need to do it all,” I go.
“You going to say good-bye to your brother?” she asks.
“Bye, Edwin,” Gus calls.
I poke my head back in. “How old you gonna be, Gus?” I ask him. “How old you gonna be on your birthday?”
He holds up the right number of fingers.
At the bus stop the ninth-graders leave me alone. Outside before the bell rings I don’t see Flake. At the lockers I get mine open without much trouble.
In first-period English I get called on once and I know the answer. In second and third period I have a stomachache but it goes away. In math the teacher goes, “How many people didn’t get to finish the whole worksheet?” and I raise my hand along with a few other kids and he just leaves it at that.
At lunch I make a joke in line about the chocolate pudding and Tawanda and another kid laugh. “Hey, how’d that World of Color project come out?” the other kid, a cross-eyed girl, wants to know. “Don’t ask,” Tawanda tells her. A kid who’s holding everybody up looking for a cookie with chocolate chips instead of raisins has a booger hanging out of her nose and nobody tells her.
No Flake once I’m out of the line with my tray, so I sit by myself.
In fifth period two kids get into a fight before class as I’m coming through the door and I end up having to help break it up. They both get sent to the vice principal.
“Boys’re like dogs,” a girl by the window says, and everybody laughs.