“Yup.”
“You okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Want some waffles?”
“Please.”
So I eat waffles smothered in butter and thick maple syrup, and watch Garfield and Bugs and later on the Ninja Turtles. And I feel better, normal.
Mom cleans the house around me and I mow the front lawn, around the oak and under the wisteria. I almost hit the paper but stop and overhand it onto the porch. When I’m done my shirt sticks to the sweat on my back, and I wipe my forehead across my sleeve.
Inside I hear soft crying in the kitchen. Mom’s got the paper out, flat on the table. “You okay?” I say.
“Oh Emmett, I’m so sorry.” She blinks puffy red eyes, motions to the paper, and I read the headline:
Body Discovered at Battle Creek
Alfie Johnson, 12, Presumed Suicide
“Who’s Alfie Johnson?”
My mother looks at me, and then cries more. Eventually the tears subside and she says, “Your friend. Blinky. That’s his real name.”
“No. No way.” My mind is too small and I can’t make this idea fit. “I just saw him yesterday.”
“I’m sorry, honey, but he’s gone. It looks like he loaded all his pockets down with rocks and then walked to the middle of the creek and laid down.” She starts crying again.
I could see Blinky in my mind’s eye, lying at the bottom of the creek. For some reason, his eyes were open in my imaginings. “I need to talk to my friends. Can I go out?”
“I don’t know.”
“Come on, Mom. Brady and Flynn and Max were his friends too.”
She takes a deep breath. “Okay. But be careful.”
The ten-speed can’t go fast enough, but I just keep pushing the pedals harder. I ditch the bike in Max’s driveway. The door opens after my rapid-fire frantic knocks. Max’s dad answers, and whatever’s on my face is enough. “She’s in her room,” he says softly.
Max is sobbing into her pillow, and it’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard. I knock on her doorframe and she sits up, her face puffy and red.
“Hey,” I say, to say something.
Then she’s up and her arms are around my neck. We sit on her bed and talk for a long time, about Blinky and the awfulness of the world and how he shouldn’t have left us. Max cries and I squeeze her — like if I do it right, I can make it better. I must have been doing it wrong, though, cause I ended up crying too.
Monday comes and there’s a school assembly. A guy in a tie shows up, tells us through a microphone that it’s okay to feel how we’re feeling, and that time will slowly make things normal again. He talks about tragedy and sense of loss, and strategies for dealing with them, but whatever empathy he’s trying to convey is lost in the electronic sound system.
Off in the corner, by the basketball banners, I see Mr. Glass leaning on the wall, arms crossed and nodding sincerely to the speaker’s words. My stomach does a somersault.
I find Flynn at his locker. “You bring it?”
“Yup.” He hands me the Rubik’s Cube and I tuck it in my bag. “Even got some B-nocs. You really think this is gonna work?”
“I think he’s gonna be sheet-white when he sees it.”
“What does that prove? You think Maxine’s dad can put him in jail on a reaction?”
“I just wanna prove it to myself.”
“Then what?”
“Then nothing. I just wanna know I’m right.”
Flynn looks at me for a long moment. “Uh-huh. Sure.”
Maxine plays distracter for us. “Just be charming,” I tell her.
“What does that mean?”
Flynn laughs. “Just be yourself. Trust me.”
We go to the teachers’ lounge, and from the hall Maxine asks two teachers a question with an upward inflection. She smiles as they both step out. She walks down the hall and they just follow. Flynn and I walk in right behind them. Flynn pulls the blinds up all the way and cuts the cord so they can’t be lowered. I find Glass’s locker, put the cube right on top.
We walk right past the two teachers and I hear Max. “Thank you so much. You guys are great, really. I gotta get my books, but thanks for the explanation.”
Smoker’s Hill sits across the parking lot and right in front of the teachers’ lounge window. Max catches up. “That was easy.”
“What’d you ask them?”
“Just how the class schedule worked. Which classes were for which periods. They were really nice about it.”
“It’s October,” Flynn says and we both laugh. We laugh even harder at Max’s frown.
We wait on the hill, Flynn with his binoculars and me with the scope off my dad’s Marlin. One of the high school smokers wanders over. “Girls’ locker room is on the other side, fellas,” he tells us, blowing smoke out the side of his mouth.
“Gross. Get out of here,” Max says, and chases him away with a glare.
There’s mass movement after the second-period bell sounds. We wait, eyes glued to the teachers’ lounge. They file in, drinking coffee and carrying folders. Glass opens the locker and backs away. He shuts the door quickly and turns, looking at everyone in the room.
And he is sheet-white.
“Holy shit,” Flynn says.
“What?” Max asks. “What’d he do?”
I think about what I’m going to do. I think about Max’s smile, and how I never want to be out of its brightness. “Nothing,” I say. “I thought he’d react to the cube, but he didn’t. I musta been wrong about him.” Then I drop the scope in my bag, ignore Flynn’s frown, and go to class.
I wake early, meet my dad in the kitchen. It’s still coal-dark outside and he’s only on his first cup of coffee. “Morning,” he says.
“You were something, right? Before you were a millwright?”
He frowns, folds the paper neatly, puts it aside. “I surely was.”
“I have questions.”
“I may have answers,” he says. And he does, answering them all in his calm manner. It’s strange, meeting him for the first time.
Armed with knowledge, I prep my stuff, and the following day we go to Blinky’s funeral. It’s the only time I’ve ever seen him in a suit. The boy in the box looks like a poor wax caricature of my friend. Max hugs me fiercely and Flynn tries to be tough. Brady cries more than Max.
People stand, say nice things, say all the right things, but none of it unties the knot in my stomach.
Glass even speaks, tears rolling down his cheeks. “Alfie was a beautiful boy. He had charms the world will never know, and it is a little darker here without him.”
I don’t cry, I just look at Glass and let the heat of my rage turn the tears to steam.
After, in the parking lot, Glass comes over. “I know he was your friend, but I feel like he was mine too.” He hugs us each and I want to crush his spine. I feel slimy and poisonous as I pull away. His eyes are shiny and wet and full of sorrow and I want to put them out with my thumbs.
That night I lie in bed, unable to sleep, staring at my ceiling, waiting. At midnight I grab my special bag, pull on sweats, and walk my ten-speed to the end of the drive before I get on. Then I ride, a river of adrenaline carrying me along. I lean into the pedals, stomp my feet. There’s the pressure of the bag on my back and the cool night air on my face and a sense of peace.
I’m sweating when I reach my destination. There is only stillness and starlight with me on the street. When I knock, I see the lights come on one by one as he moves through the house. Something moves behind the peephole. I grip the ax handle hard and the door opens for me.
“Emmett?” Glass says sleepily. “What...”
But I drive the ax handle into his stomach and he grunts in surprise, steps back, stoops to a knee. I bring the ax down on his back and side and shoulders and I go on until my arms are tired and Glass is a curled ball on the floor. I close the door, bind his hands and ankles with fishing line.