Hero–Type (27 page)

"You can't be serious." But already I can see the guys putting some of the bondage gear on the statue.

"This is going to be classic," Flip says. "This won't just piss off one group or another; this will piss off
everyone"

I watch it happen for another few seconds. "Flip, dude, don't do this. It isn't cool."

He blinks and pulls back from me. "What?"

"She never did anything to us. She's just some poor kid who got killed. Why are we doing this to her?"

"Poor, deluded Kross—we're not doing
anything
to her. We're doing it to her statue."

"No. Look. It's her memory. It's ... Think about her family. This isn't right."

"I can't be nailed down to such mundane concepts. We've transcended right and wrong and ascended to the realm of intellectual mischief. You understand that. Besides, this has a nice little side benefit: Once word about this gets out, people will stop talking about all of the crap with you and the ribbons and everything."

"This isn't Foolish, Flip. It's just mean. It's wrong."

"Wrong? Who are
you
to decide right and wrong?" For the first time since I've known him, I see a glimmer of anger in Flip's eyes. And I don't like it. "Daddy's boy. Big goddamn
hero"
he says, quirking his lips into a grin at the very last moment to take most of the sting out of it.

Daddy's boy.
Reminding me that he knows. Is he jealous of all the attention I've gotten?

No. Fam's right; Flip doesn't get jealous. It's impossible to be jealous when you assume you're better than everyone else around you.

"I'm tired of the patriotic stuff. It's old hat. It's been done before."

So he's bored with the flag game. He wants to move on. But here's the thing—I don't.

"This is tradition," he goes on. "The role of jester is an ancient and honorable one. Speaking truth to power has always been the province of the Fool."

"Yeah, I remember that from English class, too." And I've realized something—Flip isn't a genius after all. He just pukes up stuff from school with a swagger and a cigarette and everyone falls all over themselves. "But it has to
mean
something. You can't just be a jester for the sake of being a jester."

He looks at me with a blank expression and a little tilt to his head. "Says who?"

"Jesus, Flip! Come off it! Jesters didn't act in
secret.
They acted in
public.
Like I'm doing. Not from the shadows. You just keep spouting all this intellectual crap, but we're talking about real people and real—"

Just then, Flip's cell phone beeps. It's a special ringtone for Fam, the lookout.

"Cops!" Flip hisses, and everyone falls silent. The park isn't well lit; we're all in shadows.

The guys jump down from the pedestal and get behind the statue. The whole place goes quiet except for the crunch of gravel from the parking lot, where a police car minces along the ground. I can see its headlights from here.

I look over at the statue of Susan Ann Marchetti. Over her permanent nurse's outfit, she's now partly clad in a leather bra with spikes sticking out of it and some boots that are strategically slit to wrap around her legs all the way up to her thighs. Officer Sexpot is sort of hanging half off her, upside down.

I yell. Like I'm being gutted.

I don't even know I'm going to do it until I do it. Flip jerks back and looks at me in shock, and believe me—the look on my face must be just as shocked, because I can't believe I just heard that scream come out of my mouth. But there it is, there it goes, there it went—it's past tense now and there's the sound of a police car door opening and closing.

SAMMPark's frozen in a moment in time as we all look at one another through the dark.

And then, as if we've all heard the same silent, telepathic command, we break and run like hell.

I'm fast. Not join-the-track-team fast, but fast enough. I run away from the park entrance and the cop who's no doubt about to come through there. The rest of the Council has the same idea and now there's a pack of kids racing like the devil's on their tails toward the other end of the park.

"Wish..." Flip puffs next to me, "I could see ... the look ... on his face!"

And he starts laughing while he's running until the motion makes him cough.

I put on a burst of speed and outpace him, making it to the wall near the soccer field before anyone else. I've been climbing this wall forever—I know where the handholds are. I launch myself onto the wall and scramble up and over.

My car is waiting for me a hundred yards away in a gas station parking lot. I make for it and hop in. I resist the urge to gun the engine and floor the gas and roar off like a getaway man at a bank robbery; that would just make me look suspicious.

Instead, I force myself to wait until I've caught my breath before I crank the engine. Other Fools are spilling out of the park, running like hell, heading for Flip's car. Like I haven't got a care in the world, I drive home.

D
AD'S UP FOR WORK WHEN
I
GET HOME
. If he's pissed that I've been out after midnight on my provisional license, he doesn't show it.

"Who's this?" he asks.

He's pointing to Leah's picture. I left it out on the table. Oops.

"A girl."

"Isn't this the girl you saved?"

"Yeah." Of course, it's more complicated than that. I consider asking Dad for advice, but maybe not. He's not the best guy to ask about women, after all, having turned Mom off to penises for the rest of her life. "Hey, Dad?"

"Hmm?"

I almost say to him, "What would you think if I moved to California for the summer? Or forever?" I almost say it. But something stops me. I don't know what. I don't know why.

And now I have to say something, because he's looking at me expectantly and I can tell that "Never mind" just isn't going to cut it.

"Did you ever run away?" I don't even realize I'm going to say it until I actually say it.

"Run away? Like, from home?"

"No. No. I mean, in the war. Did you ever get scared? And run away?"

I feel like I've stepped over an invisible line. Accusing my dad.

"I was scared the whole time. All of us were. That's what war is like. You're afraid. You
have
to be afraid; otherwise you'll get killed." He shrugs like it's no big deal. "And we ran away, sure. In the army, it's called 'strategic withdrawal.'"

"Really?"

"Sure. The trick isn't not being afraid and not running away. The trick is dealing with your fear and running
back."

Fear. God, that's what it all comes down to. Somehow everyone believed I was a hero when they couldn't understand how terrified I was. Somehow people looked to me as some sort of fearless rabble-rouser when they couldn't see the scared, confused kid inside.

Are we ever truly brave? Or do we just adjust our fear for a little while and mistake it for courage? How can fear on the inside look like bravery from the outside?

"Dad, Mom wants me to come visit her this summer and maybe live there permanently."

Oh. Oh, God. There it is. It's out. It's
out.

I expect him to be angry. To punch the wall again. Or to go into his weird little trip-over-his-tongue phase.

Instead, he just looks at me. Nothing changes in his face at all. He doesn't move his lips or his jaw. He doesn't wrinkle his nose or widen his eyes or arch his brow. I don't even know if he's
breathing—
that's how still he is.

But his eyes change. Completely. Totally.

He's sad.

"Well, Kevin," he says at long last. "Well, I guess that makes a lot of sense."

And now I wish it
didn't
make sense. I wish it was the dumbest idea in the world so that I could say,
No, Dad—you're wrong. It's a bad idea. It's a bad idea, and I'm not gonna do it.

I've seen my father angry. I've seen him outraged and confused and stern and in shock.

But I've never seen him so sad.

I hate that I'm the reason.

"Dad, I don't have to go—"

"Your mom's made a good life for herself out there," he says with a little sigh. "She's doing really well. She's happy. And I'm happy
for
her. You would be with your brother. You'd ... You'd be in a better
place."

We both look around the apartment.

"Your mom misses you."

"But if I left..." I can't finish my thought. The words just won't come out.

Dad takes a step toward me. He hesitates, and then he hugs me. It's like before, only better because this time it was
his
idea.

"I would miss you so much," he whispers. "But you have to do what you think is best, Kevin. What you think is
right.
That's what I've always taught you, right?"

And it is. It
is
what he's always taught me. Stopping Flip from defiling Susan Ann Marchetti's memory ... That was my
dad.

"I don't know what to do, Dad."

He tightens his grip on me. "Welcome to my world."

I
MANAGE TO GET A FEW HOURS' SLEEP
after Dad leaves. I toss and turn a lot. No one answer seems better than any other one.

The phone rings just as I wake up for school. I jerk into a frozen sitting position.

OK. It could be...

1. The cops
   
2. Flip, pissed at me
   
3. The cops, really
   

I consider not answering at all. But by the fourth ring, I grab it up. Better to know, I guess.

And the answer is ... none of the above. It's Jesse.

"Hey," he says, and I can almost hear the wind and surf and the grains of hot sand in his voice.

"Hey," I say back. We have deep conversations, my brother and I.

Silence on the line.

"So, what's up?" he asks after a while.

"You called me," I remind him.

"Yeah, I know. I woke up extra early to catch you before you went to school. What's up?"

It's weird. It's like we've switched places and I'm the younger brother all of a sudden.

Used to be that me and Jesse talked all the time, about everything. We were like our own little secret society in the house while Mom and Dad yelled and screamed at each other. Then he was gone and there was this long silence of miles between us.

"What's going on, man?" I ask him. "Is this whole deal legit?"

"What whole deal?" Ever since he moved to California and became Total West Coast Guy, my little brother sounds like everything in the world is both too boring for him to deal with and too annoying for him to care. I don't know how he pulls it off. It's like yawning and glaring at the same time.

"Me coming to live with you guys."

"Sure. Why wouldn't it be?"

Because Mom disappeared and barely contacted me. Because she's a different person now.
You're
a different person now. I don't fit in, so why would she want me there?

Or because if it's
not
legit, then I don't have to make the decision. No matter what I decide, I'm a hero to someone ... and a villain to someone else.

But I don't say any of that to him. Because he's my little brother, yeah, but he's also a stranger. He's not the kid who used to worship me, used to follow me around all the time, annoying me but also, I have to admit, sort of flattering me, too.

And now, well, things have changed. He's younger than I am, but he's more confident. He would never understand how I could be afraid that Mom doesn't
really
want me.

Then again, he's the one she took.

"I guess I just don't get it," I tell him, which is more honest than I'd intended on being. "Why now?"

"I don't know."

"And does she really want me to live out there?"

"She was talking to Rita and they were going on about stuff."

"What kind of stuff?"

"Like fixing your skin. You really need to do something about that, bro." He says it like he's an indulgent parent gently scolding a child.

"Yeah, I know." It just doesn't seem all that important. There's always something else, and besides, even without the zits, I'm still no prize. So why go through all the effort of polishing crap? It's still crap at the end of the day.

"Hey, Jesse?"

"Yeah?"

"You remember that time when we were little and we wanted Reese's peanut butter cups at the store, but Mom wouldn't buy them, so when we got home we went into the kitchen and we squirted half a bottle of chocolate syrup into the peanut butter and ate it with spoons?"

There's a pause and I wonder if we're still connected, and then he says, "Mom says peanut butter is loaded with fat. And Rita's allergic to peanuts anyway."