You (2 page)

“Wanna call her now? You can text her from my phone. She won't ignore a message from
me
.” He makes like he's digging in his coat pocket and before you can say anything Max comes running up behind you, bumping into both of you. He's out of breath like he's just run a mile, but you don't think that's ever happened. He's just a few pounds heavier than you, but he's the laziest person you know.

“Can't go to Ryan's,” he gets out between pants. “His mom's going out. Won't let us over. Meet him at the park. He just called me.”

You rattle off the expected swearwords, Derrick adds a few extra with Max rearranging the combinations. When did swearing become so easy? You still would never swear in front of your parents or most adults, but when you're with your friends it's like
every fifth word. Why couldn't learning Spanish be that easy?

“It's gonna be cold tonight,” Derrick says. He's got the same thing on as you do: jeans, a T-shirt, a sweatshirt, and a hoodie. It's what Max has on and what you know Ryan will be wearing. At least you'll all be suffering equally.

“We can go to the woods, start a fire.”

“What, and smell like smoke for a week? No thanks.” You pull the zipper on your hoodie up an inch.

It takes ten minutes to walk to the park. Ryan is sitting on top of one of the picnic tables. You can see the red glow of his cigarette twenty yards away. He's the only one you hang with who smokes and it's like he has to pick up the slack for the rest of you, burning through a pack a night, one cigarette right after the other. His mom smokes, so she can't smell it on him, but your parents don't and you try not to get too close to him so they don't start asking
questions. As you walk over he reaches into a plastic bag by his side.

“Trick or treat,” he says, and tosses you a can of Odenbach beer.

Derrick catches his beer with one hand. “Excellent. Where'd you get these?”

“Guy down the street. Helped him cover his pool. I noticed he had an outdoor bar. I found a whole six-pack in there and a bottle of tonic water.”

Max opens his beer and takes a swallow. “Four of us, six beers. Big frickin' deal.”

“Be thankful you get any,” you say, hoping Ryan will give you one of the extra beers. You've never had more than three in one night and you're not all that crazy about the taste, but if you drink them fast enough you can catch a buzz.

Ryan flicks his cigarette butt toward the baseball diamond, the red dot arcing through the brisk night air, falling short of its target. “Let's get out of the wind.” And with that you all follow him toward
the back wall of Neil Armstrong Middle School.

It's a long and low building that your parents said was new when they went there. When you started sixth grade, construction crews were finishing up a major renovation and all the teachers could talk about that year was how
multipurpose
the building was and how lucky you all were to have such an
inspiring new learning environment
. But you had never been in the building before, so it didn't mean anything to you. Maybe that's when it started, when they told you how the new school would change everything you thought about school, it would be an
exciting adventure
and learning would be
fun
. And then it turned out to be just like any other school. So, yeah, maybe that's when it started.

You kept up your grades that year—made honor roll every quarter—but you started to wonder, is this it, just more worksheets and quizzes and ridiculous group projects that wouldn't have challenged your kid sister?

That was the year you had to read the book about a kid in the Civil War, the book the teacher never stopped raving about, the one she called
truly inspiring
. But you couldn't get past the second chapter. That had never happened before. You used to love to read and always had a book in your hand. Then they assigned you the
truly inspiring
book and you found out how much reading could suck. So you read the back cover and you went online and then you wrote the book report. It was total BS and you knew it and you were actually nervous all weekend knowing that on Monday the teacher would “want to see you after class” or call your parents and let them know that you “were slipping a bit.” And on Monday you got the book report back and there was a big old A plus on the cover.

If that wasn't the moment it was probably close to it.

Neil Armstrong Middle School. One small misstep for you, one giant waste of time for everybody.

Back against the wall, Ryan lights up another cigarette.

“I really hate American beer.”

You all nod but none of you, not even Ryan, knows the difference. Then you start talking about other things that you don't know anything about, like which girls in your class are easy and what bands are coming to town and which teachers hate you the most and who's sleeping with who and which jocks are the biggest assholes, and then it happens. Max tugs on the back door, the one that leads to the maintenance room and the cafeteria, and it opens.

He looks over at you and his eyes are bugging out of his head and his mouth is hanging open and for a second none of you do anything. Then Max lets go and the door starts to swing shut.

If you had let it go, let the door close with a clear double click, would things have turned out differently?

Probably not, but you'll never know, will you?

You hold out your half-empty beer can, catching the door before it shuts.

“What are you doing?” Max says, his voice up an octave. “There's an alarm. The cops'll be here. We'll get busted. Take it out.” He reaches for the beer can and you knock his hand out of the way.

“I don't hear any alarm.”

They all tilt their heads and listen. No one is breathing.

“Maybe it's a
silent
alarm,” Derrick says, “at the police station or something.”

Ryan takes a long draw on his cigarette. “Let's find out.” He looks at you. “Leave it there.”

You nod and without another word the four of you dart across the grassy field, jump over the low chain-link fence and duck into the bushes that separate the school from the dark professional building where your dentist has an office. Your black clothes blend into the night and you can feel this hot rush of adrenaline just under your skin. For the first ten
minutes every nerve is dancing and you take it all in—the bird that's sitting up in the tree by the bus loop, the slight breeze that rattles the hooks on the flagpole lines. You can smell Ryan's cigarette and the beer Max spilled as he fell over the fence. You're waiting for sirens or flashing lights or the cutting beam of a car-mounted searchlight, but nothing happens. If the cops do come they'll be too busy with the door and you'll be long gone before they even think to look for you. Then you remember the beer can and for a few panicked moments you think about fingerprints, but the more you think about it the less you worry—the cop would just pull the can out and shut the door. It's not like somebody died.

That's still weeks away.

You're sitting there in the cold and it goes from intense to boring real fast. After fifteen minutes you find yourself wishing the cops did show up, just so you'd have something to do.

Ryan is the first to stand. “All right, let's go.”

You jump over the fence, Ryan and Derrick following after you, Max hangs back.

“The cops could still be coming.” It's Max and he's right, and you all know it, but you keep walking to the sliver of light. There's a pause and then you can hear him stumbling back over the fence to join you.

You start off with big, quick strides, but you slow up as you get closer, easing your way into the light that fans out of the crack. Derrick goes around and grabs hold of the door handle and you catch the now-empty beer can before it falls to the concrete step. One hand on the door, Ryan leans in and looks around. “Hello,” he says, repeating it, louder this time, and you all listen, expecting a reply, expecting a shouted hey-you-kids-what-the-hell-are-you-doing. But there's nothing, so you step inside.

 

L
ater that night, when you're lying in bed, looking up at a ceiling you can't see, you think about that door.

It was locked, just not pulled all the way shut, and that's why Max could open it. Not that it made a difference—there was nothing in the room anyway. Some empty plastic garbage cans, a couple wet mops, broken-down cardboard boxes. It smelled like stale milk in there. The double doors that led to the cafeteria were still locked and not even Ryan wanted to bust them open. Two minutes after you went in, you were back out, the lock clicking this time. A small distraction on an otherwise dull Saturday night.

But going through the door changed things.

Hanging out in the cemetery or over at that construction site where they were putting up the new track homes? Or that time you all lifted Derrick up on your shoulders and he pulled down that fire-escape ladder and you all ran around on the roof of Sears until you saw the cop car way over at the
other entrance? That was trespassing. If the cops had caught you then they could have taken you to the police substation, the one next to the library and the town hall, and your parents would have had to come and pick you up and you would have been grounded and all that crap.

They
could
have done that
if
they had caught you.

Now
would
they have taken you in?

Probably not.

And would they have even caught you?

Hardly.

But this was different. It was trespassing, sure, but it was more than that. And while
technically
you didn't have to break in when you entered, you've seen enough cop shows to know that's the way it would have read on the police report, Breaking & Entering.

You're lying there safe in your own house, in the bed you've had since you were twelve, and it dawns
on you what would have happened if you'd been caught. And all of a sudden your stomach flips over and you're cold and you start shaking and you feel guilty and ashamed and scared all at the same time and you think you're going to puke.

But you don't. The feeling passes, and what two hours ago was the most criminal thing you had ever done seems suddenly insignificant.

Another line crossed. And you didn't even notice.

Ten minutes later you're asleep.

 

M
r. Nagle asked you to stick around a moment after the bell.

“I'll admit, you have been working harder in class, and when you've done the lab work it's always been very good, and I haven't had to speak to you about not paying attention in quite a while. But…”

There's always a
but
.

It's a magical word. You can say anything you want, go on for as long as you want, and then all you have to do is add the magic word and instantly everything you said is erased, turned meaningless, just like that.

You're a really nice guy….

Your mother thinks you need a new computer….

You've been working harder in class….

But.

You keep looking at Mr. Nagle as he explains how a few zero homework grades really knock down your average. You nod, and you're thinking that everything he is saying is true.

You
are
smarter than this.

You
could
be getting all As.

You
could
be on the High Honor Roll.

And that if you don't straighten up soon, you
won't
get into college.

You
won't
be able to find a decent job.

You
won't
amount to anything.

And you
know
it's all true.

But.

 

“
S
o I go, ‘I was gonna apply for that job,' and she's like, ‘Well, you should have,' and I go, ‘I'm the one that told you about it,' and she goes, ‘Oh well,' like it's not her problem, right?”

You nod your head. You've got no clue what she's going on about, but it's Ashley, and you'd listen to her read the phone book if you could sit this close to her. You're sitting on the curb, waiting for the late bus, Ashley because she was getting help in math, you because you had detention. There're some other kids over by the benches and a couple of guys kicking a Hacky Sack—which you didn't think anybody did anymore—and it's surprisingly warm out and sunny and you're sitting next to Ashley, listening to
her talk about nothing and you're pretty sure that this right here is the highlight of your year so far.

You met last year when you were both in the same science class, and almost every week you were lab partners. She liked working with you because you knew most of the stuff already anyway and you always got the labs done on time. Back in seventh grade you were in science club and you met after school to do experiments, sometimes even on the weekends. But you didn't tell her that. And she liked working with you because you weren't hitting on her all the time like the other guys in the class, mostly tenth graders who were repeating ninth-grade science. And she liked the cologne you wore, which was this after-shave your dad had given you last Christmas, as if you needed to start shaving.

And you liked working with Ashley because what guy wouldn't want to work with Ashley? Your friends called her cute but said she was kinda small in the boob department. You called your friends idiots and
said they were kinda small everywhere. No you didn't. You didn't say anything. The less you got them noticing how hot she was, the better chance you had.

It started with science class, then sometimes you'd sit with her at lunch, not just you two but as part of a group. She didn't really hang out with the hoodies or the jocks or the drama club, just kinda floated around from clique to clique. She got along with everybody, and at Midlands that was a hell of an accomplishment.