Altar (2 page)

Gary split up from his mother and sister, detouring into the boy’s locker room
—
a wet, steamy, germ-fused abyss where he would have to pass through a gauntlet of naked and half-naked men and boys, through the communal shower room, past the bathrooms and finally out into the bright, golden nirvana of the pool deck. He always went through the locker room with his eyes lowered and pointed straight-ahead, not wanting to see more than he was forced to, and always traveled to the pool in his suit so he would only have to spend a few dashing moments traversing the locker room area.

When he was younger he would come with his dad, who always changed in the locker room and always made Gary wait with him while he did. It was a torturous, horrifying passage of time, especially when his father would see someone he knew and, always a chatterbox, stop in mid-dress to talk about things Gary neither understood or cared about, all the while keeping him from his time at the pool. But now his father didn’t take him swimming anymore, because now his father lived in a different town that had no pool, and despite the sadness caused by his parent’s break-up, this was one of a few small blessings for which Gary was grateful.

Finally making it through the hellish, flesh-writhing, overly-heated swamp of the shower room and the adjoining, foul-smelling toilets, Gary stepped out onto the white concrete pool deck, the fresh chlorine-scented air and sounds of laughing children washing away the grim experience of his passage.

He turned to his left and saw his mother and Abby stepping out as well, apparently in some sort of heated discussion. Abby looked at Gary and rolled her eyes, and Gary waited until he felt the worst of the interaction had passed before approaching them.

“Martha,” he asked, “can we camp by a wall?”

Gary greatly preferred to set up their “towel camp,” as his mother called it, against one of the high brick walls, so that while the afternoon wore on they had a better chance of being overtaken by the elongating slice of shade the wall would provide, assuming they picked the proper position.

“Sure,” she said curtly, already scanning the perimeter for a clear patch of concrete.

Gary looked out over the pool, gauging his eventual position in the water, weighing his options for entry, figuring the best course of travel once submerged. The pool was a large blue rectangle with a buoy-filled rope separating the deep end where the diving boards were stationed, the moderately-deep section and, beyond that, the shallow end. If you scanned all the way to the left, you could see a circular set of stairs traipsing down from a curved corner that designated the entry for the
very
shallow end, no more than two feet deep, for children who might not be able to swim. Gary remembered the day he first ventured out of that safety zone. He and his friend Jerry had, under mutual agreement, ventured deeper, letting the rough pool bottom separate from their heels, then their tip-toes, and then, in a rush of adrenaline-fueled buoyancy, they were
floating.
Jerry had swum a few strokes out, but the heavy splashing of some teenagers had sent him back to where he could stand on his toes while, at the least, he could lift his mouth just above the surface of the water. He had turned to Gary, who had not swum out with him, and smiled, water slipping past his lips and into his mouth with each passing ripple as he spoke. “I think this is deep enough,” he said, sputtering the words through quick breaths. Gary nodded and they had both stood in that spot, bouncing on their toes, smiling like fools, their heads tilted upwards to avoid swallowing water, the sun bright and warm on their faces as kids pranced around them like malicious mermen.

“Gary,” his mother said sharply, catching him “dazing” as she called it. Startled, Gary saw his mother was already moving through prone bodies toward a clearing.

Abby, waiting for him, rolled her eyes
—
playfully this time
—
and ruffled his short black hair. “You are such an airhead,” she said, and put her arm around his shoulders.

Gary knew a lot of kids would be embarrassed by this, and he also knew most siblings hated each other. He’d heard enough war stories from his own friends to realize this was the norm. But even though Gary was only twelve and Abby three solid years and two grades older, he loved her very much, and he was always careful never to be an annoying little brother. When Martha was out and Abby snuck a boy over, Gary was always diligent about staying out of the way, finding a book and huddling in his room while giggles and thick silences permeated from the living room. He had even discovered (he wouldn’t use the word “caught,” because he wasn’t sneaking or anything) Abby and a boy named Jackson sipping from Martha’s bottle of Vodka once. But she had just shooed him away with her hand and he had gone quietly, never saying a word about it. Because in this world, if he didn’t have Abby as an ally, he didn’t have anyone. His parents were too worried about their divorce, and his friends had their own problems. So Gary stuck by Abby, and together they could float above the broken house, the disjointed parenting, the drunken mother. Together they could pull through.

Side-by-side the kids followed their mother, navigating to a clear patch on the far side of the pool, near the deep end.

Tyler lifted his face from the water and waded, his legs cycling beneath him, his arms splayed outward. He looked around to get his bearings. He was closer to the deep end divider than he’d realized. He twisted his body, turning to look for his mother, who he was certain would be nervously scanning the pool for his whereabouts.

He couldn’t see her. There were too many heads between him and where they had lain down their towels and one of the lifeguard towers was blocking his view. He wondered how deep he was and felt a snake-like cold squirming in his guts he didn’t recognize
—
being just a little kid
—
as the first signs of true panic.

Something brushed his leg. He looked down and kicked, a small cry escaping his mouth. Water leapt inside and he coughed, spat. A slithering dark-skinned creature had swum by, a creature he recognized, after a beat, as a boy swimming the width of the pool underwater. Tyler smiled, thinking he was being
—
what was it
—
ridiculous
. He looked again for his mother and was heartened to see a flash of the familiar red swimsuit.

He began kicking his legs in that direction but stopped short when a large kid jumped in the pool just a few inches away. The splash covered his face and the wave from the impact tossed him off-balance.

Thank god for the wings
, he thought.

He turned his head in time to see the big kid emerge. He was thick, pimply and ugly. He had long black hair, beady dark eyes and a thick eyebrow that ran from above one eye to the other with only the slightest thinning at the bridge of his nose. Tyler was staring at him, without realizing it.

“The fuck you looking at?” the big kid said, his mouth carved into a scowl.

“Nothing,” Tyler replied lamely. He looked around. None of the other kids were paying any attention.

Before he could look back, something wet and flat and hard smacked him in the side of the face. Stunned, Tyler looked back at the big kid, who was smiling now, and touched his cheek gently with his own wet fingertips. Tyler realized, with no small amount of shock, that the big kid had
slapped
him. Tyler had never been hit before
—
not ever
—
and his mind could barely process what had happened. After a moment of staring at the kid’s snarling, poisonous face, he felt something
shift.
Deep down inside him, something had...
dislodged,
had slid out of place, passing through his stomach, his legs, and then... out of his body, into the water. Gone.

What it was no longer mattered. Where it had lived, deep inside of him, was empty.

The pain in his cheek flowered, distracting him from his shock. Tyler felt the heat of his face and knew it must be reddening. Tears burned at the back of his eyes and his bottom lip began to tremor, but Tyler held the wave of emotion back, knowing that crying now would be something he would regret for a very long time.

The big kid looked even more amused.

“Gonna cry, baby? Gonna cry?” He squealed and grunted like a pig, then tried imitating Tyler’s shocked face before finally transforming his ugly visage into that of a weeping child, rubbing at his eyes with fat-fingered fists.

Tyler turned away, praying the kid would be done with him, that one of the many other kids and adults around them would notice, would scare him off. He dipped his face into the pool and kicked with his legs, pushing this time with his arms as well to create distance between himself and the bully. After a few moments, he stopped, lifted his head, looked back. The kid was gone. Tyler jerked his head left and right, waiting to be flanked, to be attacked once more, but saw no danger. Just more kids
—
so many kids
—
swimming around him. Laughing. Yelling. Oblivious.

Tyler felt himself relax, the threat of tears now well put away. He looked toward the shallow end, saw his mother sitting on her towel, her face in a book. He looked up to the lifeguard sitting at the top of the tower and noticed he was staring right down at Tyler. Unflinchingly so, Tyler thought.

Feeling safer, watched, Tyler sighed, knowing it was going to be okay.

Not wanting to feel like he was running back to his mother after the bully had scared him, he just floated a while, kicking slowly. He tilted his face up toward the sun and closed his eyes.

Beneath him, less than a foot from his dangling feet, a thin, crooked black crack drew itself along the pool’s bottom, stretching, within seconds, from one end to the other, length-wise, passing effortlessly through the tiled demarcations that lined the surface every five yards. Tiny fragments of old plaster along the length of the crack rose into the water and danced.

Because Tyler was a practical boy, if he had seen the crack develop, he might have wondered if it was something the people responsible for such things should be concerned about, or whether he, himself, should be worried.

As Martha, Abby and Gary settled onto their towels, Gary made a point of scanning the pool area, identifying as many kids as he could. The concrete deck was packed with families and small, tight groups of kids, usually all-boys or all-girls. The girls, Gary noticed, tended to be placid, sunning themselves with little interest in their surroundings. The boys, especially the ones in packs, seemed very aware of everything around them. Like Gary himself, they were constantly studying faces, hoping to identify targets for potential companionship or just to satisfy their own curiosity as to who was about. Perhaps to compare themselves. Most likely to compare themselves.

Gary saw a few kids from his grade, but no real friends. He knew he would not see Jerry, who had been forced to go to summer camp, something Gary knew he hated. Last year had been Jerry’s first summer away. He had written Gary a few times, scribbled notes on the back of dingy postcards, the backs typically showing nature photographs, like a dense tree-line or a frigid-looking lake. One had shown a girl shooting a bow and arrow, a feather stuck into her headband as if part of the camp ritual was having the kids play Cowboys and Indians, killing each other ritualistically until only one group survived, the group that got to return home to their parents, to civility.

He noticed his friend Billy Marks on the far side sitting with his parents. A couple groups over from him was his best friend from first grade, Sam Beck. They weren’t so close anymore, but still saw each other around, and Gary wouldn’t mind saying hello, maybe seeing if he wanted to buddy up for the day. He kept scouting, but didn’t see any other kids he really knew. He recognized many, if not most of them, but they were either younger than Gary or much older, and those social circles didn’t overlap.

For now, Gary decided to play it solo. “Mom,” he said, “I’m gonna go in.”

His mother was in her suit and sitting on her towel, rubbing lotion on her legs. “Okay, hon. You have sunscreen on, yeah?”

“Yeah, we did it at home.” He turned to Abby, who seemed engaged in Gary’s previous activity of scanning the pool deck for accomplices. “You wanna go in, Abby?”

Abby didn’t look at Gary, but stood and began walking toward what he assumed was someone she had recognized. “I’ll catch you later, Gary,” she said over her shoulder, and was gone.

Gary didn’t like that they had camped by the deep end. He would now have to walk across the hot concrete the entire length of the pool to get to the shallower end where he liked to swim, at least to start. He sighed deeply, touched the goggles strapped to his forehead to make sure he hadn’t forgotten them, and began the long walk.

By the time he made it past the 4 1/2-foot marker the bottoms of his feet were feeling the heat. He pulled his goggles over his eyes in preparation for his entry, transforming the world into brilliant blue hues, and, with joyous relief, did a two-step leap over the pool edge and plunged down into the cool water.

Submerged, Gary let himself sink, deciding to stay under a few moments, relishing the feeling of his skin temperature dropping, the heat of his insides settling, cooling, relaxing his mind and muscles. After a few more moments, he pushed against the bottom and surged upwards, breaking the surface in a rush and sucking in a deep gulping breath of warm air. He wiped wet hair from his vision and surveyed the area. A multitude of heads and arms broke through the surface of the water as if detached from any particular body, wiggling and laughing or gliding atop the water like dancing zombie limbs pushed through the sod above their graves. Gary shook off the image and began to swim, exhilarated by the exertion of each fervent stroke.