The Children and the Wolves (6 page)

He said, You’re a good kid, Wiggins.

I nodded even though I know it’s not true. I know I’m dirty thieving scum.

He said, You know that, right?

I nodded again.

He was like, There aren’t many good ones left.

I just kept nodding.

Then I said, In all them alien abduction books, do they ever take kids?
Sometimes, he answered. They’ll take just about anybody.
I went, But what about kids like me?
He said, I’m sure they’d love to have you, Wiggins.
I was like, Cool. Cool.
Then he said, I need you to do me a favor.
I said, What?
He said, Go get some diapers for me.
I said, From in your room?
No, he said. I need you to go to the store. I ran out.
It’s pretty late, I said.
He went, It’s barely midnight.
I said, What’s open?
Econofoods is twenty-four hours, he said.
I was like, What about Orange?
He said, Tim doesn’t concern himself with my issues.
I said, Yes he does.
He said, You can take the car. It hasn’t been driven in a while but there’s gas in it.
I said, I don’t got a license.
He went, You don’t?

I shook my head.

I’m only thirteen, I said.
Okay, he said. Okay.

Then he almost fell asleep.

When his eyes opened he said, What the heck, go ahead and take the car anyway. You’re pretty coordinated, right?
I went, I’m coordinated.
He said, Driving’s a piece of cake. I’ll let you keep the change.

I thought about his Taurus. It’s gray with rust spots. In a flash I saw me and the Frog driving off somewhere. I would take her to a amusement park and we’d ride one of those rollercoasters that twists upside-down and I’d get her a hotdog and some cotton candy.

Orange came down from upstairs. He just appeared like a spirit.

To Mr. Merlo he said, Where’s your chair, fucko?
I said, He was trying to walk.
Orange was like, That’ll be the day.
I’m going to walk, Mr. Merlo said.
To his dad Orange said, You quit rehab after two days!

Because I wasn’t ready, he cried.

Mr. Merlo’s eyes were really bulging now. Like he was trying to use them to breathe.

Jesus, Orange said. At least put a shirt on.
You
put a shirt on! Mr. Merlo yelled back.

I went back down into the basement and washed my hands and fed the Frog a bowl of Chex and gave her her Flintstones multi-vitamin with extra C. I sat on the floor with her and watched her eat.

She said, Thanks, Toofairy.

She stopped eating her Chex for a second and touched my face.

What? I said. What’s wrong?

Your toof, she said. What happened?
I got punched, I told her.

She was like, By who?
Doesn’t matter, I said.
She said, Does it hurt?

I shook my head cause the truth was I was rolling double and nothing hurt. I could’ve got hit by a bus and I wouldn’t have knowed the difference.

I would get her a hotdog and some cotton candy and then we’d go into the funhouse and stand in front of one of those big freaky mirrors and make faces.

She went, Where is it?

I reached into my pocket and gave her my tooth.

She said, I can have it?

I nodded. It looked big in her hand.

She said, Looks like a aminal toof.
I am a animal, I told her.
Are you a woof? She asked.
I’m a boy, I told her. Boys are animals. So are girls. You’re part animal too.

It’s good to tell little kids the truth about shit.

She said, I’m a aminal too?
I was like, That’s right.
I’m a woof, she said.
You’re a wolfgirl, I said.

I pointed to my tooth and said, Don’t lose it or I’ll punish you.

She nodded and started eating again. Her hair smelt. It was pretty, the way blond hair can be on a girl, but it stank like those dead raccoon babies. The whole basement smelt like that.

After she ate her vitamin she showed me her tongue and said, Do you love those dead aminal babies?

Her space alien eyes looked big and stupid.

I nodded and she kept eating.

She said, Do you love those dead aminal babies more than me?

I shook my head.

You could hear Orange arguing with Mr. Merlo. I think they were still in the hall. At some point Mr. Merlo started crying. He sounded like a car honking on the highway. It was like he was pressing a button to make the sound.

For a second I thought maybe him and Dirty Diana should move in together. She could come live at his place and help him change his diapers and borrow his car cause Dirty Diana crashed our Nissan Versa in March. Cortina could come over and Miggy too and they could all watch Skinemax and take Mr. Merlo’s pain pills and maybe have a orgy.

You could hear how Orange went and got him his wheelchair and was helping his dad into it.

Mr. Merlo was grunting and groaning.

Stop crying, I heard Orange say. I’ll go get you your goddamn diapers.

During the last week of school Bounce made Wiggins and me slap-box in the boys’ bathroom. He was sposed to be in Language Arts and I was sposed to be in P.E. but Bounce put notes in our lockers.

Three rounds, Bounce said. Don’t be pussies. Ninety seconds per round.

She uses the stopwatch feature on her iPhone 4.

Demarcus Peeples came in to take a piss but he turnt right around when he saw Bounce.

Come here, Peeples, she ordered.
But he didn’t come in far enough to where I could grab him. He was lucky.

I’m taller than Wiggins and I got longer arms, but he’s quick like a project nigger cause he lives in the nigger projects. He knows how to bob and weave and come up under you. He stuck me four times in the first round and I kept missing him. I caught his shoulder once but Bounce says that don’t count.

Come on, Orange, she said. Hit that little pretty freak.

I was trying, I really was, but I kept missing.

Once I slapped the corner of the stall and cut my palm.

In the second round I caught Wiggins on the top of the head, but that don’t count as much as a slap to the eye or mouth. Bounce keeps points in her head.

Twelve-eight Wiggins, she said.

After I grazed his jaw, Wiggins came up under me again and popped my chin and I bit my tongue and it started bleeding.

Nice, Wiggins, Bounce said. Good little beast!

I could taste the blood in my mouth. Blood tastes stupid like a doorknob.

During the third round we were both winded. I get tired cause I smoke too much weed with Lyde and his boy Starnell. Starnell’s always got Jamaican skunk. So does this guy called Grover Cleveland Steamer who sprays down shoes at the bowling alley. He trades me dimebags for my dad’s pain pills.

Wiggins don’t smoke weed, and he’s always doing push-ups so he’s got fitness.

My best move was when I pushed Wiggins in the last stall and he fell back on the toilet and I smacked him good across the face. Then I got him with the left, and the right again. Pink snot was coming out his nose.

Fifteen-thirteen Wiggins, Bounce called, but I knew I was beating him and she was just trying to motivate her man.

Wiggins couldn’t get off the toilet so I knew I had him.

When Bounce calls knuckles we get to use our fists. She only calls it for the last ten seconds.

Knuckles! she shouted.

Wiggins caught me square under my chin and got back to his feet. I hit him in his ear and then he caught me under the chin again and I bit my tongue even harder. Little fucker, I thought. Little quick white nigger bitch. I punched him square in the mouth as hard as I could and then it was over.

When we came out of the stall Bounce said, Good little monkey-boys. Good.

My fist hurt and my tongue was burning.

Wiggins spit a tooth into his hand. It was the one next to the two in the front.

And since the last week of school he’s been walking around looking like one of those homeless kids from the halfway house over on Anthony Avenue. They’re all either missing teeth or they got cigarette burns on their arms.

Who won? I asked.
It was a tie, Bounce said. Twenty-one to twenty-one.

I told Wiggins I was sorry for knocking his tooth out.
Fuck it, he said. It’s just a tooth.
Bounce said, That’s your eyetooth. You look tough. Now hug.

First I had to puke some blood in the sink and then we hugged.

Wiggins hugged me harder than I hugged him cause he’s soft like that.

You smell like shit, I told him. Why don’t you shower?
I shower, he said.

You both stink, Bounce said. Let’s get out of here.

We snuck out in the cafeteria. The janitor sweeping the floor watched us walk through the tornado doors like it was nothing. His name is Barney and he used to be in prison for credit card scams but now he carries the Bible around in his back pocket and blesses everyone.

Bless you, he said as we were leaving. I think he even made the sign of the cross. People find Jesus and they get stupid as shit.

We walked over to Bounce’s crib in Golden Oaks where the houses are so big you can grow trees in them. Her parents ain’t never home. I’ve only seen them once. They both wear expensive clothes and they look like twins. It doesn’t seem like Bounce is their daughter. Once I asked her if she was adopted.

I was like, Were you adopted?
She said, I came from nowhere.
I said, Are your parents really your parents?
I actually gave birth to
them,
she answered. They ran out of me with nice haircuts and Armani suits and went right to work for Plaxco. It was either pharmaceuticals or porn.

Then she gave us a Oxycotton each.

Meds for the Chuckleheads, she said.

Everything in her living room feels like it’s from a museum. There’s this chair that looks more like a statue than a chair. And a huge painting of a orange blob.

That’s a Rothko, she said about the painting. It’s worth almost as much as this house.

Then she told us how Rothko was a abstract expressionist and how he killed himself by slicing his arm open.

Wiggins went, What’s abscratch express? Is that like a rap group?
Abstract expressionism is a school of painting, Bounce explained. It’s a bunch of freeform sloppy bullshit that a few of them got famous for.
I said, I could’ve made that painting with a dead cat dipped in ice cream.
And Bounce was like,
You’re
a dead cat dipped in ice cream.

Then she licked her finger and put it in my ear.

Their couch is so nice it’s like you need a permission slip to sit on it.

Wiggins was really into the painting. He was staring up at it with his mouth open.

It’s a headless buffalo, he said. You can see the little hairs on its back.
I was like,
You’re
a headless buffalo, freak.

Showers, Bounce ordered.

We all went upstairs to her parents’ bathroom and took a shower. The bathroom was bigger than my bedroom. The bar of soap was green and smelt like salad dressing. The shampoo had a French name.

Bounce made us all take our clothes off on the count of three. I don’t never wear no underwear so I was naked first. Bounce was second. And Wiggins wears underwear and basketball shorts under his jeans so it took him the longest.

I was like, Why you wear basketball shorts under your jeans?
And he said, Cause your mom likes the way they make my junk look.

He thinks he can get to me when he says shit about my mom like that but I could give two wild fucks about her.

Wiggins don’t got pubes yet. At least I got like seven.

Bald bitches, Bounce said. Who’s bigger?

I am, I said.

Go dick-to-dick, Bounce ordered, but Wiggins turnt towards the corner.

Wiggins is bigger, Bounce said. Bigger by a longshot.

She was just saying that, though, cause my junk is healthy.

Bounce’s bush is black. She let me soap it up and I got a boner and then so did Wiggins.

Faggit, I said to him.
I ain’t no faggit, he said back.

Focus, monkey-boys, she said. Focus.

After the shower, we all put big fluffy robes on. We were definitely starting to roll. Bounce gave Wiggins a extra Oxycotton for his tooth. Sometimes my dad’ll take two of them pills and just stare out the patio doors and drink Cherry Coke and fart continuously. Bounce’s parents got like whole bins of the shit. Oxycotton, muscle relaxers, and this stuff called Klonopin, which she says is for seizures and panic attacks.

Bounce fed us microwaved Cinnabons and we sat on the big gray couch and she showed us all these brochures of the prep schools her parents want to send her to. One is called the Kent School and it’s in Connecticut, way out east. The buildings look perfect, like they got baked in a oven with some brownies.

My heart suddenly felt like there was a hook in it.

I imagined Bounce walking in between those buildings with a bunch of rich kids, wearing a uniform and kicking leaves and watching videos on their iPhones.

There was another school called Groton. And one called Canterbury.

We’ll never see you again, Wiggins said.
You wish, Bounce said.

Then she showed us this other brochure for a handgun. In the brochure it looked like a toy, too perfect to be a gun, like it would squirt water or Kool-Aid.

It’s called a Glock, Bounce said. It’s German. The craftsmanship is stunning.
How much? Wiggins asked.
This baby goes for a little over six hondo, she answered. We’re two-thirds of the way there.
I suck at math so I said, What’s that?
Wiggins said, Like four something.
Bounce went, Two more weeks of collecting should do it. We’ll have to hit Burr Oaks and Cedarwood Heights.
So to buy it you call the brochure? I asked.
Bounce said, We give the cash to Wally Nerf. He’ll take care of it for us.
Wally Nerf’s the shit, Wiggins said.
I went, He is the shit.
Bounce was like, The shiznit Wally Nerf iznit.