My best friend Kyle is really into his sister. I am too. Her name’s Shannon. She’s 5’10” and tan and has hair the colour of rust. Beautiful rust. She doesn’t have much for boobs but everything else is there and it’s perfect.
We’re watching all this perfection from Kyle’s window. It’s a little after nine in the morning and Shannon’s in the backyard jumping around on this little rubber mat in a bright yellow Under Armour tank top and spandex shorts. She’s facing away from us. Toward the backhoes and Bobcats tearing up the ground for another house in their neighbourhood. I wonder how they operate the machinery with her dressed like that.
Shannon runs track all the way down at Texas A&M. Just finished her freshman year. She wants to be a vet. When she was away at college, Kyle and I went crazy. Des Moines never looked so grey and flat and seventh grade was the hardest year of our lives. We got into fights with each other and with others. We stopped eating right. We couldn’t focus. Google and Redtube and Youporn can only get a guy so far when he’s used to watching the real thing.
But she’s home again. And it’s finally here. Summer. Three months of Christmas.
She hops around on one leg, then the other. She jumps in the air with her hands on her hips. She touches her toes and springs up, arms overhead like she’s grabbing a rebound. Plyometrics, she calls it.
Shannon isn’t Kyle’s real sister, just like their parents aren’t their real parents. They’re both adopted. Their fake parents are two dudes. Bankers, I think. They’re really cool, but my parents don’t like them and don’t like me coming over here. But I’m thirteen and it’s the weekend and they want some alone time. So I’m over at Kyle’s videotaping the sun shining off the little blonde hairs on the small of his sister’s back.
We have a collection of Shannon DVDs that fill up the entire top shelf of Kyle’s closet. Jogging, mowing the lawn, brushing her teeth, watching TV, making macaroni. We have it all.
She’s really jumping now and I zoom in even closer.
Looks like we’ve got some crack sweat, I say.
My turn, Kyle says, ripping the camera from my hand. He’s smaller than me, but he’s quick.
Come on, I say.
My sister, my rules, he says.
Too bad you can never fuck her, I say.
Like you can, fat tits.
I’m a little heavy but my dad says it’s nothing I can’t grow out of. I let it go because I know Kyle’s mad enough. He sighs. His freckled hands adjust the eyepiece hard like he’s trying to smother it.
I might not have much of a chance with Shannon, but it’s better than his. He hates that.
Family complicates things.
On weekends, Kyle and I wait until the light from underneath Will and Jul’s door goes out, then we sneak from Kyle’s room with glass cups and a bottle of 409 and a roll of paper towels.
The light is always out in Shannon’s room, too, but that doesn’t mean she’s asleep. On weekends, she always has a guy in there. Will and Jul argue about it sometimes. Quick, low conversations coming from their bedroom. But they figure it’s okay, I guess. She’s old enough and the few boyfriends she’s had seem pretty nice. Her newest guy is this wrestler. We figure he’s a wrestler because he wears a Drake U letter jacket and is too short for basketball and too skinny for football.
We’ve thought about hiding a video camera in her room but we don’t have the battery power or the balls. We’ve tried looking under the door in the reflection of a butcher’s knife but it’s too dark. We want to see so bad. We want to watch her do the things the girls do on Xhamster and Xtube and Pornhub. But we can’t. So we do this. We’ve done it for three years now. Since Shannon was sixteen. Since we were ten.
We set the bottles of 409 and paper towels on the ground and hold the glass cups between our ears and the wall of her room. The wall works best. The door is thick and a bad place to get caught with a glass to your ear.
We don’t hear anything at first. Just music and maybe a little laughing. Then the sounds start. The moans. Whispery and long, like breeze. She’s getting fingered. No doubt about it.
Then the mattress starts creaking. Then the moans get deeper, and we hear her voice in them. That’s Kyle’s sister. The girl who eats Cheerios every morning. The plain kind, not the Honey Nut. Always with two bananas sliced into them. The girl who signals in her blue Ford Focus every time she pulls into the driveway. The girl who plays Balderdash with her dads every Monday night after The Voice.
Once the bed starts moving and we can hear her delicate moans through the wall as clear as if they’re coming out of Kyle’s iHome speakers, we can’t help ourselves. We know the drill. We turn around, facing opposite directions, and pull out our dicks. We keep our glasses pressed to the wall with one hand and go crazy with the other. We do it right there, in the hallway, in the dark.
Some nights, she talks dirty. Just small things. Barely audible. Some nights the guys talk too. The wrestler is into talking but we ignore him.
On nights when Shannon does talk dirty, we barely last a minute in the hallway.
We always finish at nearly the same time. Don’t ask me how because I don’t know. Afterwards we spray our own messes, wipe them, and head back into Kyle’s room to play Mass Effect 2 and eat Cheez-Its and stay up all night laughing.
At the start of June, on Sycamore Street, Shannon takes her shirt off right in front of us. It’s glorious. It’s just a sports bra, lime green, but we go places when it happens.
There’s a dolphin tattoo just above her left boob. A take-home, college secret. It’s not drawn with much skill and puffy looking and only the size of a quarter but for a second we can’t think or move or talk. We’re amazed. Like the secrets of the whole world are on that tiny swirl of ink.
This all happens because even though Kyle and I play on different teams, we have baseball practice at the same time. It’s one of those leagues with teams named after pro ball clubs. Kyle plays for the Orioles and I play for the Blue Jays. We’re already waiting for next year, when we’ll get put back into the draft pool and have the chance to be on cooler teams.
So Kyle and I are walking back from the diamonds, and we find this robin flopping around on the street a block away. Its wing is crooked and its beak is smashed.
We call Shannon on Kyle’s Blackberry and she sprints down the street. Her legs move like a machine. When she gets to where we are she isn’t even breathing heavy.
Shit, she says. Poor thing. She taps her foot on the ground. One of you give me your shirt.
Kyle and I look at each other. We don’t move.
Come on, she says.
No, says Kyle. You know I sunburn.
Me too, I say, even though I don’t.
You’d have it off for half a minute, she says.
We stand there and stare at the ground and kick small rocks.
So Shannon sighs and her shirt comes off and she wraps the bird in it and runs back to the house. Her back muscles ripple like TV static.
So fucking fast, I say.
Yeah, Kyle says.
She wants to break the Big Twelve 400-metre dash record. She wants to start her own animal rescue organization. As she speeds off in her car in a clean shirt toward the small animal hospital, we’re convinced she’ll do both.
When she gets home later she has smudges of mascara under her eyes and a bag of McDonalds in her hand.
This is for calling me about the bird, she says. Most boys your age don’t care about stuff like that.
Awesome, says Kyle. He grabs the bag.
Make sure you eat it before Will and Jul get home and then spray some air freshener, she says.
Is the bird okay? I say.
No, she says.
She thanks us again for saving the bird even though it died and we didn’t really do anything.
Then she hugs us.
I get the first one. She smells like fruity lotion and French fries and sweat. Her arms are strong. She kisses me on the top of the head. Quick and friendly.
She bends over and hugs Kyle next. It lasts longer than mine and she roughs his short brown hair.
Thank you so much, she says, smiling.
I wait for her to kiss him. I’m sure he’s waiting, too. He keeps holding onto her and when he finally realizes it’s not going to happen he lets go.
You’re welcome, sis, he says. His face is a plain white wall.
After that, Kyle is quiet for a while. I can tell he has something on his mind. He struggles at the plate because of it. One-for-fourteen in a three game series against the Red Sox. They did have a tall pitcher that could throw a curve, but still.
So the next day I head over to his house to ask him what his deal is. When I get there, Will, the taller of the two dads, answers the door. Sweat drips off his beard and onto the floor. Probably from ping-pong. He and Julian take it seriously. Sometimes they get in fights.
Yo, Ronaldo, he says. That’s their nickname for me. He tilts his chin up and moves aside. More sweat falls.
I head upstairs and Will heads downstairs. When I get to the top step the ping-pong game’s already starts back up. Tip, tap, tip, tap. A paddle hitting the table. Cussing. Laughing.
Shannon’s room is empty. Even the thought of it used to excite me, but Kyle and I have sniffed dirty panties and rummaged through drawers and rolled in used sheets so many times that it doesn’t do much anymore.
Kyle’s on his computer with his chin on his hands, watching a video of Shannon sweeping the kitchen floor with the Swiffer. She’s wearing baggy grey sweat pants and a baggy shirt and listening to her iPod. She was a senior in high school then. I remember that day.
Are you on the rag or something? I say.
Why? says Kyle. He doesn’t turn around.
You’re moping.
No I’m not.
Why are you sucking dick from the plate?
How do you know?
Your games are right before mine.
I think we need to get a gun, he says.
I stare at him for a while. He still isn’t looking at me. He’s watching the video. Shannon’s back is slouched over. She bobs her head to the music.
I just don’t know why we didn’t think of it before, he says.
What kind of gun? I say.
He swivels his chair towards me. His eyes are bloodshot.
A small one, he says. B.B. Pellet.
I don’t get it.
Shannon likes hurt animals, right?
She likes animals, I say. She doesn’t like it when they’re hurt.
Okay. She likes to help hurt animals.
Right.
So what if we hurt a few?
Jesus Christ, I say.
Think about it, he says. One stupid little robin got us a hug. You got a fucking kiss. What kind of heroes would we be if we started bringing in bigger stuff? Cats. Dogs.
I don’t think it’s going to get us pussy, Kyle.
He closes the video on his computer and pulls up Firefox and drags down his history tab. Porn and weapons. He clicks and we’re at Wal-Mart’s website looking at all sorts of long-nosed guns with scopes.
Those don’t look like B.B. guns, I say.
They are. They just look badass.
I don’t think a B.B. gun would even do anything to a dog, I say. Just piss it off.
What about a small one? he says.
Even a small one.
So what’s there to worry about?
I’m not shooting a fucking dog.
We won’t kill it, he says. Just hurt it a little.
A few days later, after our separate baseball practices, we get a Mexican construction worker to buy the gun for us. There were a ton of people working on the house behind Kyle’s but none of the white guys wanted to do it. We even offered double what it cost. For the legwork. Finally, someone translated for this group of Mexicans and we had all sorts of offers. We went with this short, pudgy guy. He was maybe in his fifties and had silver hair and a face like the side of a tree. We didn’t ask his name and he didn’t ask us ours. Not that either of us knew how to.
So he comes strolling out of Wal-Mart with an Icie and the wrong gun. We wanted one with a scope but he bought a handgun. You could tell it didn’t have much firepower.
No, Kyle says. Wrong one. Wrong one.
The Mexican looks at us and takes a drink. His lips are blue. Then he says something we don’t understand and walks off.
Hey, you fuck, Kyle says. But people start to look our way and I have a gun in a plastic package in my hand so we let him go.
This one looks okay, I say. Looks like a real pistol.
Bullshit, Kyle says. He takes the package reads the back. I knew it, he says. Half the FPS of the other gun. That dirty fucking spic.
We could shoot him, I say.
Good one, he says.
We wait until we both have a six o’clock game. Afterwards we tell our parents we want to stay behind and practice and they tell us that we sound like champions in the making.
Kyle has the gun and the cylinder of B.B.s in his baseball bag and we meet up at Field 14 and try to shoot the birds picking over the popcorn and bread bits by the bleachers.
We stand on the dugout bench, peeking through the opening between the roof and the wall. Kyle has the gun. He fires ten times and hits nothing. Not even the bleachers. The sparrows hop around and enjoy themselves. The whole time Kyle cusses about the Mexican that screwed us over. He fires a few more times and hits the bleachers once.
Let me try, I say.
He tosses the gun on the ground and sits down on the bench. He rubs his face hard and smears eyeblack all over his cheeks
I pick it up and dust off the dirt and sunflower seeds. It’s heavy and the metal is cold. I stand back up on the bench and take three shots. Nothing.
We need to get closer, Kyle says.
We creep around the corner and the birds take off. They fly onto the backstop, perch on the top bar.
We sit on the bleachers and lean back. Kyle points the gun toward them and takes some shots. The B.B.s are so fast it looks like nothing is even coming out of the gun. Still, they hit nothing. We stare at the purple sky. Kyle reloads. He fires some more. He hits fence twice. No birds.
Oh well, I say.
Oh well? This thing cost us a hundred fucking bucks.
Fifty and fifty, I say.
That’s what I said.
It’s still a pretty sweet gun, I say.
You can fucking have it, he says. He throws it at the birds. It flies over the fence and next to home plate and they fly onto the concession stand roof.
I walk through the opening in the fence and get the gun. I’m glad to have it. This way I can keep Kyle from shooting other animals. I brush it off again and I hear something pounding metal. It’s Kyle. He’s turned sideways, punching the bleachers.
I walk toward him fast and realize I’m pointing the gun at him. I lower it and tell him to stop. By the time I get to him, his fist is a little bloody hamburger.
Shit, Kyle, I say.
It feels hot, he says. He holds his hand up to his eyeblack-smeared face and little drops of blood patter onto the bleachers.
I put the gun in my bag and take my jersey off and wrap it around his fist.
We better call Will and Jul, I say.
Okay, he says.
Kyle gets a bright green cast and his season is over. It’s almost July and things were sort of wrapping up anyway. He ends the season with a .091 batting average and one RBI. He drove in the run when the pitcher hit him on the bill of the helmet with the bases loaded.
All he does is sit in his room all day and play PS3 and surf porn and watch Shannon videos. He gets pale and he loses his freckles. His toenails grow long and yellow. His breath stinks. His cast stinks worse.
About three weeks in, he tells me about his old life with his old parents. I don’t even ask. We aren’t even talking. He’s on the computer and I’m playing Motorsport 4. Right after I cross the finish line he starts in.
This isn’t my first break, you know, he says.
Oh yeah? I say. I don’t turn around. I pick the ’05 Mustang and start another race.
I broke both my legs once.
How?
When my mom was seventeen and I was one, she unlatched me from the front of her bike going down this hill and tried to make it look like an accident. But someone saw her.
I pause it and turn around. Holy shit, I say. How do you know that?
Kyle is still staring at the screen. He’s playing Lifesaver Mini Golf. He knows all the sweet spots and gets holes in one almost every time, but with the cast he’s not as good.
Are you saying I’m making it up? he says.
Sorry, I say.
Everything is quiet for a while and I finally turn around and start playing. Kyle starts up again.
You know what my foster parents used to do? he says.
What? I pause and turn around. He stares at the screen.
They used to make me and this one girl, Haley, get naked and touch each other and shit in front of a camera. They had this big professional one. Tripod and everything.
What? I say.
Sometimes they’d make us watch after. We weren’t that old so it wasn’t that cool, but I so fucking wish someone would make some girl do that with me now. Can you imagine?
You know what they did is really fucking illegal, right?
Yeah, I know, he says.
He misses an easy shot and slams his cast against his desk. Coins clash in one of the drawers. I turn around and unpause but quit halfway through because I wreck around this sharp corner and fall all the way to last place.
Baseball keeps me busy and I don’t see Kyle for a while. I struggle from the plate. Balls in the dirt bounce under my legs and to the backstop. I forget coach’s signals and take when I’m supposed to bunt.
Then something crazy happens. I dig inside my bag to look for some tape and find the gun. I hadn’t forgotten about it but I hadn’t really thought about it much. I hold it in my hand underneath the bench for a second. Then I tape my wrists and walk on deck.
I hit a double. Next at bat, a two RBI single.
I don’t strike out for the next three games. Before each at bat, I grab the gun. It helps me focus.
But the fourth game, I do strike out. It’s not because the pitcher owned me or I was late or I turned my head or anything. It’s because I see Kyle in the stands before I walk up to bat. He waves with his bright green cast. The cloth around the opening is dirty and I swear I can smell it from the batter’s box. I go down on three straight pitches. The next two at bats, a pop up and another K.
After the game Kyle waits for me outside the dugout. He’s smiling and his skin is almost as white as his teeth.
Good game, he says.
You missed my last three, I say. I was on fire.
You losing weight? he says.
I don’t know.
Hey, you should come over. I need to show you something.
I don’t think I can, I say. I look around for my parents but they’re already gone.
You have to, he says. This is big shit.
I keep asking Kyle what I needed to see so bad and he keeps saying I have to be patient. We play Age of Empires and NBA 2K12 and Fight Night. He razes everyone’s town centres in the Feudal Age and scores 71 points with Nowitzki on five-minute quarters and knocks me out in three straight matches with Butterbean.
I’ve been practicing, he says.
What else have you been doing? I say.
Exactly, he says.
Around nine, he gets up and walks to the window and waves me over. The sun is falling below the houses and the automatic houselights and sprinklers are turning on.
See anything different? he says.
I tell him I don’t and he tells me I’m retarded.
Look, he says. They finally finished that fucking house.
It’s true. There are no more trucks and the siding is finished, off-white like all the other houses. Tiny heads of grass poke their way up from the dirt yard.
So what, I say.
Watch, he says.
We stand there for less than a minute before two lights on ten-foot poles snap on.
I don’t get it, I say.
Notice how bright those fuckers are? Look at this room.
And?
Shannon’s room is one over from mine. She’s got sheer curtains, man. Sheer. Those lights flood our house. Look.
He walks into the hallway and into Shannon’s room. I follow. She’s not home and her bed is neat. And Kyle’s right. Those lights are really bright. The carpet and walls and ceiling are all a deep yellow.
So, he says, we wait until tonight and then get the butcher’s knife from the kitchen. He licks his lips. And boom, we have our first live Shannon show.
How do you know she’ll be home and fucking?
She’s hanging out with the wrestler tonight. And check this out.
He walks into the bathroom down the hall and opens the cabinets under the sink and pulls out the garbage.
See any tampon wrappers in there? he says.
No.
Then it’s on tonight, he says.
You’ve got it all figured out, I say.
I doze off. Shannon comes home around one a.m. and Kyle slaps me on the stomach.
Get ready, he says.
We wait until the door to her room shuts and stays shut. Then we get the butcher knife and the 409 and the glasses and the paper towels and kneel outside of the room, staring at the knife. I think I might see Shannon and I think I might see the wrestler but it’s hard to tell. The light isn’t as bright as we thought. And nothing is really happening, either.
What’s the deal? I whisper.
Just wait.
I’ve been waiting. Maybe they’re not going to do it.
They’re in college, he says. Of course they are.
We stand there in the dark for a long time. My knees get sore and I almost fall asleep.
Finally the sun comes up and we go into Kyle’s room.
God damn it, he says. He takes the knife and stabs the wall. It goes in like he’s cutting cake.
Those are cheap walls, I say, but really I’m scared.
He pulls the knife out and takes it back to the kitchen. He comes back with some toothpaste and squeezes it on his finger and covers up the slice in the wall.
We’ll have to be patient, he says.
He lays down right after and goes to sleep with the paste still on his fingers. I walk home.
A few nights later when they finally do fuck we realize for sure that the neighbour’s light isn’t bright enough. We can see silhouettes but that’s all.
Is that reverse cowgirl? I whisper.
I can’t fucking tell, says Kyle.
We use the bottom of a Shannon DVD to see things this time. It’s a lot like a mirror. The DVD is of her roller blading up and down the street and we’re not too worried about scratching it because she gets so far away from the house we can barely see her. Using the DVD was my idea and Kyle went for it. Because it reflects better, I told him.
So Kyle holds it angled toward the room and we both stare at the black blobs moving around on it for ten minutes. Then Kyle springs up and waves me over to his room. When we get there he walks to the window.
Perfect, he says.
What?
He turns to me and talks fast.
There’s a security light on that garage. Now those lights are bright as shit. I say one of us runs down there and waves around in front of it. That thing will be like a fucking lighthouse.
Count me out, I say.
Come on, you fucking pussy, he says.
What’s your stupid door code?
He tells me.
But the light will go out before I get back, I say.
Run, he says.
I do run. I have socks on and stay on the balls of my feet. I go down the stairs and type the security code in and head out the back door.
There are mosquitoes everywhere. I sprint across the wet grass and do my best to avoid the sprinkler spray and jump up at the neighbour’s garage light and wave my arms. It blinks on and leaves green spots in my eyes. June bugs swarm.
When I get back upstairs, Kyle is beating off. He looks up at me like a scared animal but keeps going. I kneel down next to him but keep mine in my pants. I’m breathing like crazy and I’m soaked.
Took you long enough, fatty, he says. His dick is growing limp in his hand.
Fuck off, I say.
The security light works great. The whole scene is playing out on the bottom of the DVD like a movie. We can see everything. Shannon’s on top and angled toward the door. It is reverse cowgirl. Her nipples are small and brown and her boobs jiggle more than I thought they would. Her face is in pain. A good pain. Her eyes are fluttery and beautiful.
I think I love her, I say. I don’t mean to say it out loud.
Then the security light snaps out.
Goddamn mother fucker, Kyle says. He puts his dick away and stands up.
Be quiet about it, I say.
He runs down the hall quieter than I did. I stare at the DVD but can’t see anything, not even silhouettes, because my eyes aren’t used to the dark yet. I pick up my glass and try to listen. I can hear them but it’s not the same now that I’ve had so much more.
Kyle makes it to the security light and the scene starts up again. The wrestler’s on top. His hairy ass jerks up and down. A gorilla having a seizure.
Sick, I say.
I get in a few strokes but when I hear Kyle going up the stairs I stop.
Miss anything? he says, kneeling. Water from the sprinklers drips off his legs and makes a puddle around us.
Missionary, I say. It fucking sucks.
Damn, he says.
We watch the wrestler’s ass for a solid minute. We use the glasses to get some audio. To get Shannon more involved. Then the light goes out again. I run down the hall.
This keeps up for a while.
After Kyle’s third trip down, before the light even comes on, a tiny fire flickers inside the room. It looks like a candle but I can’t tell. The security light snaps on and I can. The wrestler has a lighter in his hand. He’s stopped thrusting and he’s on his knees just holding it there. Then he lets up on the button and the flame goes out and he presses the metal tip onto Shannon. Toward her chest. The dolphin tattoo. Then he starts thrusting again.
Kyle gets back upstairs. He must see something different in my face because he asks me what’s wrong and if the show’s over.
No, I say. It’s still on.
My hand is a little shaky holding the DVD and the wrestler has the lighter out again. It takes Kyle awhile to understand what’s going on. He looks at me and I look at him. The wrestler turns the lighter off again and presses the metal to Shannon.
What the fuck? Kyle says. He says it loud and both of them stop moving and look toward the door. Then the security light goes off and everything is dark.
We stand up and rush back to Kyle’s room. I try as hard as I can to be quiet but it doesn’t work. We shut his door as slow as we can and then jump on his bed and throw the covers over our heads and don’t move. I’m wheezing. Kyle is too.
We don’t hear any footsteps. It gets hot under the blanket so we lift it off our heads. It’s dark except for the streetlights coming through the blinds. It makes it look like the room is striped.
So Shannon is fucked up in the head, Kyle says.
I don’t know, I say.
What was the wrestler doing?
Burning her, I think.
No shit, dumb ass, but why?
I don’t know, I say.
The next time I see Kyle he’s at another one of my games. Second to last of the season. He looks terrible. Even smaller and paler. He doesn’t wave when we make eye contact. I go 0–4.
After the game he waits for me by the dugout again. His cast is gone and his hand looks like a shrunken piece of plastic.
When did you get that off? I say.
A couple of days ago.
I can tell something isn’t right. He won’t look anywhere but my face. He doesn’t look happy.
So what’s your fucking deal? I say.
Did I tell you I finally got a bird?
What do you mean?
Remember? We were going to hurt some animals. For Shannon.
How? I say. I think of the gun in my bag.
I just cornered it and nailed it with a bat. Give me your bat and I’ll show you how.
I didn’t bring my bat, I say.
I see it poking out of your bag, he says.
Oh yeah, I say. I hand it to him.
I watch the kids filing into their parents’ vans. I watch the coach drive away. I watch the sky turn purple.
Kyle takes the bat and waves me over to the dugout.
It was in the garage, he says. I just chased it into a corner like this.
He pushes me into the corner of the dugout with his arms stretched wide. He laughs. I laugh even though it’s not funny.
Then I whacked it one, he says. Weird thing is, it wasn’t even really hurt. Just stunned I think. So I cut its legs off with some scissors.
He reaches into his pocket and tosses the legs to the ground. The look like tiny pieces of wire. My stomach turns cold.
What did Shannon think? I say.
I didn’t show Shannon.
Why’d you do it then?
What does it matter? he says. She doesn’t like me anymore.
Huh?
Shannon doesn’t like me anymore. You left the DVD on the floor outside her room.
My stomach turns even colder.
Shit, I say. Shit.
Will and Jul tipped my room upside down. Found all the DVDs. Found all the porn on my computer. They took everything away. TV. PS3. It’s gone.
We’re fucked, I say. I start to sweat and my stomach turns from cold to hot to cold again.
You’re fucked? he says. Will left a message on your parents’ machine about wanting to talk. They never called back. I’m the one who’s fucked.
Shit, I say. I’m sorry. I’m really fucking sorry. What’re you going to do?
He laughs. The bat’s on his shoulder and he twists it with his shrunken hand. There’s nothing I can do, he says. They’re going to get rid of me.
Did they say that?
No. But I know they’re going to. They talk to me different. They don’t look at me.
Maybe it’s okay. Will and Jul are cool.
They’re faggots, he says. They can’t handle the idea of a guy wanting some pussy.
Did you talk to them about it?
What’s there to say?
I don’t know, I say.
He starts walking toward me, bat in hand, and I feel the rough wood of the dugout at my back. Then I grab the gun out of my bag. It’s so heavy I can barely hold it straight.
Like you can hit anything with that, he says.
Stay back, Kyle.
I just want to hurt you a little, he says.
He grips the bat with both hands and twists to the side.
I shoot him in the face. Right under the eye. He screams and touches it. A little blood. He keeps coming. I shoot him again. In the neck. He runs toward me swinging with his eyes shut. I step to the side and smack him on the temple with the nose of the gun. He falls down. I grab the bat from him and he rolls over and tries to sit up.
I shoot him until I run out of B.B.s. In the arms and legs and neck and face. He tries to cover up. I try not to aim for the eyes.
When I’m out of ammo I stuff the gun in my bag and keep the bat in my hands. I start backing up.
Kyle laughs. He’s sitting on the floor, his torn skin leaking watery blood, closer to pink than red. He rubs it up and down his arms like he’s scrubbing with soap.
This is perfect, he says.
I stare at him from across the dugout.
Imagine the fucking sympathy, he says, still rubbing in the blood. Shannon’s going to love this.
