Trollhunters (22 page)

I awoke before Tub. Leaving him spread-eagled on my bed alongside Jim Sturges Jr. 2: The Decoy, I stashed my ruined clothes in a gym bag and tiptoed to the shower. The
medallion tapped against my chest as I soaped; I tried to ignore it. The water swirled at my feet in currents of mud black and blood orange, and I watched it slip through the drain on its way to
another world.

The thought of cereal made me sick. Instead of flakes growing soggy with milk at the bottom of a bowl, I visualized coiled white Nullhuller intestines. I avoided the kitchen altogether, undid
the ten door locks, and dove into the daylight, gulping down fresh air in the hopes that it would calm my stomach. My arms hung at my sides as if they each clutched an iron horseshoe. I sunk to the
steps beneath the security camera, folded my arms across my knees, and wondered how long I could sit here before I ran back inside and double-checked each lock.

Dad came around the corner, surprising me. He was dressed for mowing in his work gloves, stained shirt, old pants, and steel-toed boots. Thankfully, the most ridiculous parts of his
wardrobe—the goggles, face mask, and hair net—were still stashed, allowing me a rare opportunity to take him seriously. He hesitated as though equally surprised to see me, then took off
his work gloves, stuck them in his back pocket, and took a seat next to me on the stairs.

His brother,
I thought.
His brother is alive
.

It was something I couldn’t say, because how could it really be true? How could that lean and fearless kid from the underworld be related to this man of the hairless pate, collection of
worry lines, and Band-Aid glasses?

“A bit late today,” he said.

“Sorry.”

“Not you. Me. My trimmer was clogged. Just spent two hours hacking at it with a screwdriver. But we’re good to go. You want to come along? I’m doing Joseph A. Kearney Park.
Good chance to put in some time piloting the big guy.”

“I don’t know. I’m pretty tired.”

He nodded. “Yeah, I figured.”

We sat in silence for a minute. I kept an eye on his profile as he watched life going on as usual. Little girls on bikes rode by ringing their bells. A teenager washed his car a few driveways
down. Across the block, there was hammering—a new deck, maybe a tree house if some kids were lucky.

“I suppose we should have a talk,” Dad said.

Such a sentence would have terrified me had I not been wrung dry.

“About what?”

“Jimmy.” He gestured over his shoulder. “The kitchen.”

It was a lifetime ago that Tub and I had come upon the trolls in the kitchen. I tried to recall the damage, but there was too much: the obliterated ceiling fan, the scorched microwave, the piles
of broken dishes.

“Dad,” I said. “I…”

“It was bound to happen. How long could I expect you to run around like a trapped rat before you tried to break out? You know, I originally wanted more kids. Four was the number I decided
on. Two girls, two boys, so nobody ever had to be lonely. Even when things got bad at the end there, I kept making my case to your mother. Can’t blame her for saying no, I guess. Having more
kids is no way to save a marriage. I suppose at that point I wasn’t trying to save the marriage, I was trying to save you. I’ve had it both ways, you know? I had a brother. And then I
was an only child. I know the difference between the two. And I kind of feel like I robbed you of that. Having someone for when I can’t be there. Which is often. I know that.”

“Dad.” I knew no other words beyond that.

“With a brother? Hell, there’d be messes worse than that kitchen. You can’t have two boys and not have things break. Catch fire. Explode, even.” He turned his glasses to
the clouds and laughed. “You wouldn’t believe the trouble Jack and I used to get into. You honestly wouldn’t believe it. They had these chemistry sets marketed to kids back then,
rockets that you ignited with fire. They should have been sold with tourniquets and directions to the nearest hospital. There weren’t bicycle helmets back then. Or locks on doors.” His
smile died out. “I don’t know. Maybe there should’ve been.”

“I’ll clean it up.” This promise came out with startling ferocity. I
would
clean it up, cleaner than it’d ever been, and I’d ride my bike to the store, get
replacement dishes, a new mop, some cleaning products, and a new ceiling fan, which I’d buy on layaway along with a serviceman to install it, and when Dad got back from mowing, soppy with
perspiration and dotted with grass shrapnel, he’d light up with renewed energy when he saw what a success his son could be when he set his mind to it.

Dad brushed it all away with a shrug.

“Already cleaned,” he said. “Don’t give it another thought. It’s festival week. I want you to enjoy yourself. I ran into Mrs. Leach at the hardware store this
morning. Why didn’t you tell me you’d gotten the lead in the play? I mean, I know why. Late-night rehearsals. You were afraid I wouldn’t let you do it. Well, I
am
letting
you do it. I’m not going to lie, it makes me nervous. Practically sliced my hand off in the trimmer this morning thinking about it. But that’s
my
hand. Yours is
yours.”

For the first time that morning he faced me. A fresh dotted line of scabs trailed down from the left corner of his lips, the tracks of the schmoof that had spent the previous night snoozing
inside his stomach:
Sluuuurp. Sluuuurp. Sluuuurp. Sluuuurp
. It was my fault that Dad had been subjected to that. I felt on my back the full weight of what I knew.

“I want you to be great in that play, Jimmy. I want you to be great at something. Or, heck, if that’s too much pressure, I just want you to have fun.” His smile faltered, but
he tried to make it work. “Don’t stay out too late. I mean, no later than you need to. I won’t give you grief about it. Not this week. Maybe not next. What I’m saying,
Jimmy, is that I’m trying. All right? I am beginning to try.”

I looked into the sun, hoping my fresh tears would tip back into my eyes rather than streak down my cheeks. Posed in that way, I managed a nod. From my peripheral vision, I saw Dad’s hand
raise as though he was going to pat my back. Part of me prayed that he wouldn’t—the tears would roll from my eyes as easily as marbles. Part of me wished that he would.

He stood, taking the gloves from his back pocket and slapping them across his thighs to knock free the adhered grass. He adjusted his glasses and I thought, in its own way, the Band-Aid around
the temple had a sort of courage—it clung to the glasses with the same tenacity that Dad clung to his responsibilities in the face of a lifetime of fear.

A minute later he was pulling out of the driveway in the San Bernardino Electronics van. He gave me a toot of the horn as he backed into the street. It was only as he pulled away, observing the
posted speed limit, of course, that the screen door behind me opened with a crow squawk.

Tub clomped down the steps as if he had been sewn together from corpse parts. He staggered past me, stood in a wide stance upon the lawn, and stretched his arms in a yawn. The pink-smeared shirt
pulled taut across his wide back.

“You—ow. You have a nice—ow. A nice talk with your—so sore! Talk with your dad?”

I shrugged. He looked from me to the step I sat on, but seemed dubious that his leg muscles could take the pressure of lowering his bulk. Instead he just stood in place like an overstuffed
scarecrow, teetering in the mild breeze. I waited for the spill of expletives that would mirror my own feelings: we needed to screw irons bars to the floor beneath my bed, whatever it took to stop
the trollhunters from returning.

Instead, his puffy, pillow-scarred face cracked into a lopsided grin.

“Crazy night, huh? I mean, no girls were involved, but still, I’ve been waiting fifteen years to be able to use that phrase and mean it.
Crazy night,
am I right?”

I shook my head miserably.

“I can’t do this, Tub.”

“Yes, you can. You
did
. We both did. Sure, we didn’t ace it, but how could we? I mean, graduating from a baseball bat and hockey stick to a couple of gnarly swords is going
to take more than one night. You think they’d give me one if I practiced? You know, showed them what I could do?”

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Huh? Nothing’s wrong with me. You’re the one who looks all freaked out.”

“Tub. Wake up. We can’t do what they asked us to do.”

“Jim.” He smiled, but it died when he saw my cold expression. “Jim, don’t do this to me.”

“To you? I’m doing something to you?”

“They’re coming back tonight. They said. And we’re going to help them.”

“It’s not your decision.”

“It’s not?”

“You heard them. You’re not a trollhunter.”

Tub’s metal mouth snapped shut. A red color began to creep up his neck.

“That’s crappy of you, Jim. To treat me like that.”

“What do you want me to say? ‘Yahoo, let’s go get ourselves killed’? Didn’t I translate enough for you last night? They’re talking about war. Real war.
Something called the Machine. You and me weren’t meant to do this, Tub. We’re in way over our heads.”

“Our heads? Who’s ever cared about our heads before this? Jim, you’re wrong. We
were
meant to do this. This is exactly what we’ve been waiting for. They’ve
chosen
us
. Of all people! Us!”

“Not us. Me.”

“This means that all those times I told you we weren’t worth anything—”

“I never said that. Don’t include me in that.”

“Fine!” His face was scarlet now. “Then just me! I’m the one who isn’t worth anything! Jesus, Jim, take a look at my life! You know what I’m worth? To anyone?
Zero! Nothing! I’m a fat loser and will always be a fat loser. Until this. This is like a present. Full of, man, I don’t know. Hope? I know how cheesy that sounds, but I swear
that’s what it feels like.”

“That’s easy for you to say. I’m the one being asked to risk his neck.”

Tub’s voice cracked.

“They won’t take me without you!”

Over his shoulder on the other side of the road, I saw a man with a stapler and a handful of flyers look up at the noise. He had been about to attach one of the flyers to a phone pole but
instead started walking toward us. I groaned. A salesman was the last thing we needed right now. The idiot didn’t even look for traffic before he crossed the pavement.

“Sorry to interrupt, boys,” he said, “but—”

“Not a good time,” Tub muttered.

“I’m sorry. I just wanted to ask if you’ve seen my little girl.”

“We just got up,” Tub said. “We haven’t seen anyone.”

“Last night, maybe. Maybe you were out last night and saw—”

“Listen, man—”

Tub whirled around to give the guy a mouthful, but it died on his tongue. The man was around forty, with a dyed black goatee and eyes that were red and exhausted. Dog poop was smeared on the
side of his shoe and he didn’t seem to care. Every sign suggested he’d been out for hours canvassing the neighborhood.

The man held out a flyer with a trembling hand. On it was the color-photocopied face of an eight-year-old girl with purple glasses, a sweet face, and a grin missing at least three baby teeth.
The seven block letters above her head must have been pure hell to type:

MISSING

“There’s a reward.” The rise in the man’s voice conveyed that he didn’t believe in the inherent goodness of kids, just their perennial need for cash.

Tub took the flyer.

“We’ll let you know if we see her,” he mumbled.

The man forced a rumpled smile and nodded. He backed away, still nodding, the pictures of his daughter crinkling in his grip. His shoulders relaxed when he returned to the telephone pole across
the street. It was easier, it seemed, pinning his hopes on inanimate wood rather than on the whims of self-involved, shiftless teens.

Tub stared at his feet for a few seconds before lifting his eyes in a glare.

“Don’t let us down, Jim. Don’t you goddamn do it.”

He shoved the little girl’s face into my palm and charged away.