Sons of the 613 (15 page)

I should say something, but my voice is jammed sideways in my throat.

“Let's go,” says Josh, and pulls me away.

“What are you doing skipping?”

“Why did you tell him that?!”

“I asked you, what are you doing skipping?”

“You made me look like an asshole! You're the one who told me he was a drug dealer! Fifteen!”

“That was twelve.”

“It was fifteen! Sixteen, seventeen . . .”

The instant we walked out of the building: “Drop and give me fifty.” I didn't argue.

The concrete is cold under my hands. There's a blackened blotch of gum on the pavement, aligned with my right cheekbone, approaching and receding with each pushup, and I time my breathing so that I'm not breathing in at the bottom of each repetition. I make it to twenty and have to stop, resting on my hands and knees.

“Keep going. Eighteen.”

“Twenty.”

“Eighteen. Go.” He puts his foot on my tailbone and shoves me forward.

I start doing more. “You're such an asshole. You told me he was a drug dealer.”

“Why'd you believe me?”

It takes me several pushups to untangle the stupidity of what he said.

“Because you
told
me!”

“Maybe you shouldn't make assumptions about other people.”

This is worse. Making a fool of me was bad, but now pretending it's a life lesson is worse.

“You lied to me. That's what I learned from this, that you're a liar. Thirty.”

“That was twenty-seven. Stop resting. Go. Go! Twenty-eight. Twenty-nine—”

“Thirty-two!”

“Thirty. And who's the liar? I thought you were going to school. That's what you wrote on the mirror, right? Whose lipstick was that, yours?”

I'm silent, concentrating on my counting.

“Why'd you skip?”

“Forty-two.”

“That's thirty-nine.”

“It's forty-two! He could be a drug dealer. He looks like a drug dealer. He looks mean.”

“Mean? Durwin?”

“He does! His face!” I do an approximation of Durwin's expression.

“He's a black guy. They all do that. What, you have a crush on him?”

“Shut up!”

It comes out louder and angrier than I thought it would, practically a bark. It's the worst sort of anger, the kind where someone catches you doing something shameful and stupid. Because that's exactly what it is, a crush, and because I made a fool of myself in front of Durwin and I know it. I drop back down and finish the rest of the pushups, powered by my rage, adding five extra ones just to shut Josh up, then get up and walk to the car ahead of him.

 

It's half raining now as we drive away from the pool hall, the drops settling on the windshield as a thin mist. We don't seem to be heading in the right direction.

“It's after eleven,” I say. Josh doesn't answer.

“Are we going home?”

“Not yet. Part two of the evening.”

“Where are we going?”

“To see someone.”

“I'm tired, Josh.”

“So go to sleep.”

I slump down in the seat and turn away from him, looking out the window.

“Why'd you skip?” he says. “Isaac.”

“I don't know.”

“What do you mean, you don't know? What'd you do?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

That's one thing I've definitely been learning from Josh: how to be sullen and nonresponsive.

Why did I skip school? The same reason I skipped Danny's birthday party. Because I was in a bubble, a magic bubble, and inside the bubble was Lesley. Outside was everything else. I wanted to linger there just a little bit longer, cradled by that warm euphoria, fearful that if I moved, the membrane would rupture and reality would come flooding in and I wouldn't be immune to the laws of the universe any longer. Like the moment before opening the shower door on a frigid winter morning, dreading the blast of icy air and the bite of the tiles as you step onto the cold floor.

What did I do all day? Nothing. I rode my bike. I sat by the creek. I stopped by the library and Googled the 613 commandments. I went and peered into Nystrom's yard, at his four attack dogs and the statue, and thought,
No frigging way.

“Isaac,” says Josh, “I know we took a couple of days there. But you can't just skip school like that.”

“You did. You did all the time.”

He doesn't say anything for a moment, and then mutters, “Yeah, well, I'm a fuckup.”

The way he says it reminds me of what Lesley said about him, and for a moment I take a break from hating myself and hating Josh to wonder how much
Josh
hates Josh.

“I want to go home.”

“I told you, the Quest continues. We have someplace to go.”

“Where?”

“Go look at some tits.”

 

M
ERIT
B
ADGE
: T
ITS

I'm looking at tits.

I'm looking at tits while trying to look like I'm not looking at tits.

We're in the dressing room of a strip club, and it's even worse than the pool hall in terms of where not to look, because there are bare tits and bare ass cheeks and private parts covered with tiny triangles of fabric everywhere, swirling about me, and I feel dizzy from the sheer effort of the look/don't look thing and the totally surreal I-can't-believe-this-ness and from all the thoughts banging around against each other in my head.

I don't know where to start. We pulled up to a curb on a side street, and Josh issued fragmentary instructions over his shoulder as he tromped ahead of me on the sidewalk: Just be cool, everything will be fine, I just need to talk with someone, just be cool, figured you should come along, see what this is like, just be cool, just be cool. Then we reached a door that looked like nothing and Josh banged on it and a huge—HUGE—black guy leaned out, had a quick conversation with Josh, and let us in. A hallway, a turn, thumping music growing louder and fading, another turn, then holy shit that woman walking toward us is just wearing a thong and high heels, then Josh nodding to another HUGE guy standing next to a door, and then we're through the door and in the dressing room and Josh is greeting several of the strippers and kissing cheeks, and now he's standing against the opposite wall, talking earnestly with a woman (girl? woman?) who is putting on her dress as she speaks.

I am just inside the door, leaning against the wall, thinking
invisible, invisible, invisible.
The room has a floral carpet and big mirrors and long vanity tables that stretch along both sides. There's a doorway at the other end, and women go in and come out. Lockers?

The lights are fluorescent. The room smells something like cinnamon and sweat and flowery deodorant. The women look like the porn stars Danny and Steve and Paul and I watch on the Internet, too much makeup and those weird fake tans and boobs that look rubbery solid. Their makeup makes them seem older than they are. Some of them are very, very pretty.
Stop looking at her.

It's very busy and crowded and feels like a restaurant kitchen, a constant stream of strippers going in and out the door to my left, checking themselves out in the mirrors, bumping into each other, chatting, laughing, the room loud with their conversations and music playing through bad speakers, interrupted periodically by a soft
splutch
of static and then a man's voice announcing things like, “Crystal to the floor. Crystal and Dani to the floor.”

The music club felt wrong, the pool hall wronger, the guns and bikes wrongest, and this wrongest-est.

Invisible. Invisible.

Nipples, nipples, nipples.

I can't wait to tell Danny, Steve, and Paul about this, if they'll believe me.

The weirdest thing: When Lesley brushed against my arm I felt a charge that went right through me and jabbed me right down there. Here there are boobs and asses and naughty bits, and I don't feel anything like that. Everyone is so businesslike and distracted that there's nothing sexy about it at all. On the other hand the urge to look is overpowering, because, hey, tits.

Josh is still talking. Once again I have the impression that he's totally forgotten that he brought me along or that I even exist at all.

At first the invisibility spell seems to be working, because either no one notices me or they just don't care that a thirteen-year-old boy is standing in their dressing room. But then I start seeing the glances as they move past me, the quizzical expressions, the frowns. I catch at least one exchange of raised eyebrows. They know I'm looking. They
know.
I shouldn't have looked at all. I should have kept my eyes closed! I shrink down against the wall and start examining my fingernails like there's a vitally important secret message written on them.

“Excuse me.”

At first I don't realize the voice is directed at me.

“Ex
cuse
me,” repeats the voice, more stridently. I look up. One of the women is standing directly in front of me, arms folded across her boobs, her head tilted to the side, chin sticking out.

“Who the fuck are you?” she demands. She has very dark hair and sparkly purple eye shadow. I think she's about twenty.

“
Who
the
fuck
are
you?
” she says again, because instead of answering I'm standing there with my eyes wide, making dying fish movements with my mouth.

“What are you doing here?”

I look for Josh for rescue, but he's immersed in his conversation. Incoherent sounds coming out of me.
Aggle flaggle klabble,
like the little girl in
Knuffle Bunny.
Blaggle plabble.
It's full on now, total panicked brain lockup, the sweating, the pounding in my chest, the trembling. The frog has left the building.

“What is this fucking kid doing in here?”

She has a very penetrating voice, cutting through the chatter and music. More faces and nipples turning toward me, the nipples quickly eclipsed behind hands and forearms.

“Seriously, who is this kid?”

“He's with me, Terri,” says Josh from across the room. Terri twists and spots him.

“Josh? Who is he?”

“He's just my brother.”

“I don't give a shit. I don't want him staring at my boobs.”

Her words have shredded whatever remained of my invisibility cloak. All the eyes and nipples in the room are staring at me accusingly. Robes are being hastily put on and tied, the herd realizing there's a sneaky, underhanded hyena in their midst.

“Jesus, Josh,” Terri is saying, “it's bad enough that I've got to deal with some middle-aged asshole rubbing his hard-on against me. Now I've got some ten-year-old looking at me and jerking off
!”

I was not jerking off
! I don't even have a hard-on! But the words never make it out of my brain. I'm dying from shame and embarrassment, all these women thinking I was standing there and jerking off when I wasn't, although admittedly I might have been maybe storing up some images for a future session, and they all look like they know it.

“I'm getting Jake,” announces Terri.

“You don't have to get Jake,” says Josh.

“I'm getting Jake,” she says, poking a finger at Josh, and stalks off, I'm guessing to go get Jake.

I flee.

It's the panic thing, just like I did with my brother in the kitchen at the beginning of all this—sheer unthinking flight.
“Run away! Run away!”
like the knights in
Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
I think I hear Josh calling after me—
Isaac, wait!
—but I keep going, head empty, running down the hallway, following our path back out to the alleyway, except someone has swapped the hallways and there's no exit where I expect it. A turn, another turn, running fast, my fear growing even stronger. I have to get out of here—now. This way? No. Next. No, not this way. The hallway blurs in front of me, tears filling my eyes. The music louder, then an open doorway ahead of me, strippers going in and out. I get to the doorway and realize it's the entrance to the main floor.

It seems immense. I can see the stage, which hugs the wall and then juts out to a pole, and then hugs the wall and juts out to another pole again. Strippers are gyrating to loud music. Groups of men around small circular tables, watching, talking, drinking. Further on is a bar with topless women behind it. All the illumination in the room seems pooled around the tables and the stage, the walls disappearing into the shadows.

“There he is.” Terri's harsh voice, slicing through the pulsating beat. I look over my shoulder and see her, see her finger jabbing in my direction, pointing me out to a sweating, dough-faced man with a combover. Jake.

He's coming toward me, filling the hallway.

I look out across the floor. There, beyond the bar, is the exit. I dart out into the room, trying to squeeze around and between the dense tables, tripping over unseen legs. I think I hear Josh shouting again but don't turn to look. A server is coming toward me with a tray of drinks. I change directions toward the safety of the shadows along the walls, hoping to vanish into the cool darkness and slip away unnoticed. Then I get close and feel a surge of revulsion. The shadows are alive and writhing with movement, like a nest of snakes. There's a banquette along the wall, men filling every space on it, their legs spread, heads tilted back, while the strippers grind on top of them like they're humping. I stumble along, repulsed, the banquette an endless line of men, men who look like my teachers or my neighbors or my father, their eyes closed or riveted on an ass, mouths open, licking their lips, some scrunching their faces up like they're coming.