All Fall Down (6 page)

"C'mon," I said after we finally quit
laughing. "I gotta show you the weirdest thing."

The dead hamster was inside what was left of
a wall in an upstairs bedroom. I found it the day before, just a
piece of stiff, dried-up fur with sunken holes where the eyes used
to be. The guys working on the house had punched out a hole in the
wall between two of the bedrooms, and the hamster was wedged in
tight next to a beam in the empty space between the two sides of
the wall. I figured maybe it got inside somehow and couldn’t get
back out again. Stupid thing probably starved to death.

I thought the hamster was cool. Bobby wanted
to give it a funeral.

"A real funeral, you know, like a Viking or
something. You wanted to burn something anyway. We could make a
funeral pyre."

All that Bobby knew about funeral pyres came
from reading comics. That heroic, send your dead warrior off in a
burning boat crap. I could have cared less about the funeral, but
the idea of a pyre was kinda cool, I had to admit. Barbecued
hamster. Better than burgers.

"Well, I’m not touching it," I told him.
"You want to set it on fire—"

"Give it a funeral."

"Whatever. You’re picking it up."

It took Bobby a good five minutes to get
that hamster out of the wall. The thing must have been jammed in
there real tight. Me, I wouldn't have had the patience, but Bobby
wiggled it back and forth real slow. Like he didn't want to leave
even the smallest piece of it behind.

Bobby carried the hamster back downstairs
like it was still alive, cradled it in his hands right up next to
his shirt.

"That thing probably has bugs in it," I
said. "Worms. They're gonna come crawling out all over you."

"Shut up."

"Slither right up your arm—"

"Shut up."

"—crawl in your nose—"

"Shut up!"

"—and eat out your brain."

"Shut up,
shut up
! You don't know
anything about it!"

Bobby never yelled at me. Never got so mad
at me that spit flew out of his mouth and his face got all blotchy
red.

I stopped on the stairs and just stared at
him. For the first time Bobby looked ugly to me. Just for a second
I saw some of Bobby's old man in his face, saw other kids with
black hair and permanent tans and mean eyes who hid guns and knives
in their baggy pants, and I knew that was what other people saw
when they looked at Bobby.

He turned away from me and started down the
stairs again. Me, he yelled at, but he talked baby talk to the dead
hamster, walking down the stairs real slow and deliberate like he
was at a real funeral.

"So, where are we going to do this?" I asked
him just for something to say.

Bobby didn't answer me, so I followed him
downstairs and through the house as he walked from room to room. He
was looking for a place to do it. I thought he'd pick the fireplace
just because that's where somebody like Bobby would start a fire.
No imagination. No great ideas. But he surprised me. He took that
thing to the kitchen and stopped in front of the sink.

"Here," Bobby said. "This is a good
place."

He looked at me like he expected me to
argue. I didn't. I was too jazzed. Finally, we were going to do
what we came here for. I'd make him pay for yelling at me
later.

The kitchen sink was full of gunked-up
paintbrushes and dirty rags, and a couple of old cans with some
kind of dirty, muddy-looking liquid in them. Something to clean the
brushes, I guessed. Not water, because it stank to high heaven. I
moved the junk out of the sink, piled all of it on the counter top
next to the stove.

"What are we going to use for the pyre?" I
asked.

"Wood," Bobby said, like I was the stupidest
person in the world. "Funeral pyres are always made out of
wood."

And there was plenty of wood, right outside
in that junk pile next to the fence. I knew better than to tell
Bobby to get it. He was still talking baby talk to the stupid
hamster, standing there sweating in the afternoon sunshine from the
window behind the sink. Fine. I'd get the wood. Better than
listening Bobby anyway.

Finding dead hamster funeral pyre size
pieces of wood turned out to be harder than it looked. I ended up
with scraps of 2x4s, building block size, plus a couple of bigger
pieces just because they looked cool. I used the front of my shirt
like a sling to haul the scraps back to the kitchen, and I dumped
the scraps in the sink. The scraps didn't make a very big pile of
wood. I wanted more of a fire than that.

Bobby smoothed down the top of the scrap
pile and put the hamster on it.

"Gimme the lighter," Bobby said.

No way. This fire was mine.

"I'll do it. It's my lighter."

Bobby actually tried to dig the lighter out
of my pocket. I pushed him off me. "Get away from me, pervert!" I
yelled at him.

"You won't do it right. You don't care."

"You didn't even want to do it.
Roberto."

"Yeah, well I do now. You'll mess it
up."

He kept grabbing at me, clawing at my jeans,
at my arms when I tried to push him away. His nails dug scratches
in my skin. I was shocked when he yelled at me before, but now I
was just mad. He was ruining the game.

"What the hell is your problem,
Roberto?!"

I still had one of the 2x4 pieces in my
hand. I hit him in the shoulder with it to shove him back. He
bounced against the counter, his arms flailing out to keep his
balance. His hand knocked one of cans of paint cleaner over, and
the muddy liquid splashed over the counter top and ran in dirty
rivers onto the floor.

"Gimme the lighter!" he screamed at me.
"This one's gonna be right, I'm gonna do it right, nobody's gonna
screw it up this time, not even you!"

Bobby charged me. He must have pushed
himself off the counter because he hit me like a football tackle,
shoulder hard into my stomach. I fell backwards on the kitchen
floor. My head bounced against the hardwood and Bobby fell on top
of me. My breath whooshed out in one great lungful. I never knew
Bobby was that heavy.

I tried to yell at him to get off me, tried
to hit him but my arms didn't want to work. I felt him dig in the
pocket of my jeans, heard him shout when he grabbed the
lighter.

My lighter.

Bobby stood up and flicked the lighter on,
right in front of me, making sure I could see him do it. I didn't
say anything, just glared at him, worked on getting my breath back.
My head hurt, my stomach hurt, and I was so mad, all I could think
about was getting the lighter back.

"You don't know how to do this," Bobby said.
"You don't know anything at all, just how to make trouble." His
voice was flat and terrible, and I knew this really was the Bobby
everyone else saw.

Bobby turned back toward the sink, turned
his back on me. I heard the click as he flicked the lighter on
again.

Not with my lighter, you don't.

I had my breath back by then. I reached my
hands out to push myself up off the floor and I felt the 2x4 I'd
dropped when Bobby hit me. I grabbed it, held it like a baseball
bat with both hands. I took two steps toward Bobby and swung
hard.

"The fire is mine!" I screamed at him.

The 2x4 hit Bobby in the back of his head.
He never even saw me coming. He pitched forward face first into the
sink, probably kissed that stupid piece of dead hamster, but he
held onto the lighter. Still lit, the lighter and his arm came down
on the counter top. Right in the middle of the muddy paint cleaner
and the dirty rags.

Suddenly the whole counter top was on fire.
Bobby screamed and reared back. Fire climbed up his arm toward his
face, like I told him the worms would. His shirt caught on fire,
and then his jeans, and I saw his hair start to smoke. Little lines
of fire ran down the counter to the wooden floor, reaching out
toward me. I backed away, terrified and awed at the same time. I
couldn't let the fire catch me. I couldn't let it turn on me, not
like Bobby had.

Bobby'd quit screaming. He took a studdery
step toward me. I backed away farther, into the dining room. The
curtains over the kitchen sink were burning, the wooden cabinets,
thick smoke choking my lungs. Bobby fell to his knees. Through the
flames I could still see the lighter clutched in his hand. The
smell... the smell was worse than anything I'd ever smelled, but
underneath it all was the smell of barbecue, and my stomach
heaved.

I turned and ran.

* * *

Bobby's memorial service is tomorrow. Mom
told me I have to go, and that I have to wear a dress. I hate
wearing dresses. Bobby'd make fun of me, just like I would if he
had to wear a suit.

I think Mom wonders why I haven't cried
about Bobby. I should, and I'll probably force myself to at the
service tomorrow. Tears work almost as well as my sweet, innocent
face. So I'll sit there with all of Bobby's relatives while they
talk in a language I can't understand, and I'll look all sad like I
should.

Maybe Bobby's piece of shit old man will be
there. Someday I'm going to play the game with him. He's the reason
Bobby went crazy about the dead hamster, whatever he did to Bobby's
dog. Bobby would still be here if it wasn't for his old man. I
should do something about that.

Bobby was my friend.

~ ~ ~

Jessie

Tommy met Jessie on the beach.

He'd been wandering along the shore line,
walking on the wet sand because it was easier, and playing keep
away with the waves so his shoes wouldn't get wet. The day was cold
and cloudy. He was looking for driftwood to make a fire, but he
wasn't looking all that hard. This part of the beach was sheltered
from the big part of the ocean by a sand bar, and for some reason
there was a lot of driftwood here. Everything from dry twigs and
bark to huge old tree trunks covered with big black splotches that
looked like they'd come from a burned out forest about a million
years ago. Tommy wanted to climb on top of the biggest ones and see
what he could see, but Leon always told him to stay off the logs,
it wasn't safe, just like Leon had told him to walk along the water
because the sick wouldn't go in the water and it was one way to get
away from them.

That hadn't turned out to be true, but Tommy
still walked along the water's edge like Leon told him to even
though Leon wasn't there anymore.

Tommy had just picked up a piece of wood
about the size of his forearm when he saw her sitting on top of a
huge log near the water's edge, watching him.

"You're not supposed to be up there," he
said.

She stuck her tongue out at him. "Says
who?"

"A wave could come in and knock you off and
drop the log on top of you, and no one would come to help you get
it off."

She shrugged. "So?"

Tommy didn't have an answer for that, so he
shrugged back.

"What's your name?" she asked.

Tommy told her, and she told him her name
was Jessie. Tommy didn't ask her how old she was, and she didn't
ask him. Nobody really cared about that stuff anymore. Grownups
were the only people who wanted to know, and Leon had been the last
grownup Tommy had been around who wasn't sick. The ones who were
sick didn't care about anything other than eating you.

"Do you know how to fish?" she asked.

Tommy shook his head. His grandpa had talked
about taking Tommy fishing someday, but he never had. Tommy's dad
didn't know how to fish. All he knew was how to crunch numbers,
whatever that meant. One day he'd gone to work and hadn't come
home. He was in the hospital, Tommy's mom had said, and she left
Tommy with their neighbor Leon. Neither of his parents had ever
come back home. Leon told him once it was better that way.

Tommy hadn't believed him until Leon had to
kill his own girlfriend because she'd gotten sick and tried to hurt
Tommy. After that, Tommy figured it was better to remember his
parents as his parents, not as creepy sick people who wouldn't even
know who he was anymore.

"I know how to fish," Jessie said. "Want me
to teach you?"

Tommy shrugged again. "Sure." He had nothing
better to do.

Jessie had a fishing pole she said she found
half-buried underneath one of the logs. She stuck something slimy
on the hook and showed him how to fling the hook with that slimy
stuff out into the water.

He stood next to her and watched until one
of the waves came up higher on the shore than the others. She
laughed at him when he backpedaled away from the water.

"Are you afraid of the ocean?" she
asked.

"No. I'm just not supposed to get my shoes
wet."

That had been one of Leon's rules. He'd seen
a movie once, he said, where shoes were the next most important
thing after food and water. A person had to take care of their
shoes if they wanted to survive. According to Leon, wet shoes wore
out faster. Tommy didn't know if that was true or not, but
everything else Leon said was.

Well, almost everything.

"Says who?" Jessie asked again.

Tommy shrugged, embarrassed to admit he
still followed Leon's rules even though Leon wasn't around
anymore.

"Look, you can't fish from so far away from
the water," Jessie said. "Take your shoes off."

"Isn't the water cold?"

She wriggled her bare toes in the wet sand.
"You get used to it, and then it's kinda fun."

Tommy supposed that was true, too. He'd
gotten used to a lot of things since the day his parents hadn't
come home.

He took off his shoes and balled up his
socks. He tucked the socks inside one shoe and left his shoes in a
hollow in the sand by the log where Jessie had been sitting.

The water was cold, but Tommy didn't mention
it. He let Jessie hold his hands on the fishing pole, and let her
help him when he flung the hook and the slimy bait out into the
water. She made him do it over and over again until she said he did
it right.