Unlocked (5 page)

Becky Ann didn't believe me,
even when I vowed
I could bring it
to her after school.
Blake offered to loan
it to me. She
Yeah, righted
and sped off, her heels
clicking all the way
down the hall.

The “something” she'd promised
apparently meant “nothing,”
which, to someone
who desired her so fiercely,
was worse than nothing,
which was what I was
content with prior
to her revving up my heart
with her short skirts
and oh-so-sexy smile.

But at least I had Blake,
meaning a friend,
meaning something
loads better than nothing.

And I had the gun too.

Who knows why
contemplating it
impressed me so.

Maybe “excited”
is closer to what I felt.

I knew what Dr. Phil
would've said.

You loaf through enough
daytime TV with your mom

when you're skipping school
a few days for a fake migraine,

and you watch
Oprah
just because it's on.

Maybe Blake and I bonded
because of our shared “daddy issues.”

Blake's daddy? Dead.
My daddy? “Emotionally absent.”

But here's where Dr. Phil's
homespun smarts had it wrong.

Even Dr. Zigler's psychobabble
missed the mark on this.

What Blake and I had
was a 9mm Beretta.

Its secret. Its high-impact ammo.
Its dark, smooth weight.

You share a secret like that,
you belong to something

greater than yourself,
a sky full of lightning

that could split the world
in half at any moment.

Most go their whole life
without knowing that kind

of power, that kind
of wild potential energy.

After a few weeks of normalcy,
Mom started crying again. A lot.
Words started streaming over into tears,
just like she did when she pleaded
with God over Grandma's health.

I swore I was sorry, am sorry,
and tomorrow will still be sorry
I stole the keys and forced my own
parents to stop trusting me,
and I more or less meant it too,
but even as the words slid out, I knew
I'd meet with Blake later
to touch the gun again and
feel it buck in my hands
like it had a spirit of its own
as we emptied a box or two
into cans, bottles, telephone poles.

To think she believed me enough
to feel bad about canceling
my Warcraft account
and giving the iPod
to Cousin Ricky in Chicago,
who she felt sorry for,
her sister being so poor.

I almost told her then,
knowing that if anyone
would get it, it'd be the person
who splintered ice with a meat hammer
and fed me slivers all day
when I had that fever, or who
struggled with me all summer
to make sure I wasn't held back
thanks to my brain's insistence
that A
²
+ B
²
did NOT equal C
²
.

I almost told her.

Blake had the day
blacked out—
not circled
or starred,
blacked out—
on a calendar
in his locker.
No, I didn't break
in again. I just
saw it obliterated
with a Sharpie
when he went
to the bathroom
and I wanted
to see if my birthday
would fall on
a weekend
for once.
It didn't.
The bell rang,
and Blake
slammed
the locker
shut as he
shuffled off
to social studies.
I never asked him

what it meant.
Friends don't
interrogate
each other.

I had never visited Blake's home before
and quite suddenly wanted to see it,
all the more because he told me never

to come by there.

I wasn't all that hot on having people over either.
If my parents weren't pissed off or just being themselves—
as embarrassing as letting a fart slip in church—
our place was too small, too dingy, too pathetic.

Sure, I knew his neighborhood, though.
The lawns were golf-course green,
and an ex-cop manned the thick iron entry gate.

His father had been some type of defense contractor
prior to that car bomb that made all the headlines.
From the look of this area, he made great money.

I stood shivering outside the well-manicured community,
the December wind only part of the reason,
unsure how my feet got me there to the brick wall
with iron spikes atop it in a long, sharp row.

That was his house—there. With the big white pillars.

Was he there now in his own big bed, stewing
over what to do with that gun, remembering

the powder flash so hot on his hands, the Beretta's
thunder still echoing in his mind?
Or was that just me?

I tanked the math test.
After class, Mr. Oliver asked
if I'd flunked on purpose.
No,
I told him, knowing
he'd come down hard on Sue,
his best student.
I just suck at math
.

At least I got an A in English.
My creative assignment about
the boy who could shoot laser beams
out of his eyes and saved the world
seemed to impress Mrs. Hawkins,
who had published three short stories
of her own, she repeatedly assured us.

One A, three Bs, a C, and an F.
My father fired Sue (thank God!)
and threatened me with Catholic school
like my mom had suffered through (and still hated).
She told me it wasn't a real threat
but that I needed to do better.
Just try
, was what she pleaded.
Just give us an honest effort
.

When she wasn't sobbing,
Mom could be pretty persuasive.
That word again buzzed
angrily in my ears.
Honest
.

Blake was gone
for three weeks.
Aspen, I think.
Somewhere you
could ski all day
and sleep away
the nights in log cabins

We stayed home
and suffered through
a freak ice storm,
which shut down everything
for twenty-four hours,
whitening this dreary place
like frosting on a dumb cake.

Blake didn't call or text, but
he later admitted that the first day there,
he plowed headfirst into
a Colorado snow bank so far
that he had to be yanked out
by the ski patrol.
The phone was lost in the hubbub, apparently.

I missed him. But I missed
the gun more, its terrific
kickback when it fired.
Its confidential existence.
Its ability to cement
my friendship with Blake.

I wondered if that said
something about me,
that it took a gun to do all that.

With my mom planning
her usual laundry list of resolutions,

 

1. be 8 lbs. slimmer

2. see Grandma more

3. save an extra $5 a week
etc. etc. etc
.

I picked at leftover turkey
and pried chunks of pineapple
off the honey-glazed ham
we weren't eating
until tomorrow night.
The TV was on—some
holiday show with orphans—
but I watched the window,
hoping for a whiteout
that never came.

March 5.
The date came back to me
like an old wart
you couldn't quite shake.
I pressed another piece
of turkey to my lips,
but it had gone cold.

I sealed it back
into the Tupperware.

March 5.
Like most unknowns,
it made me anxious.

Blake and I started school
again like we'd never left.

We ate together, walked
the halls together, and we
fired the gun as often as three
times a week together.

I started to smell gunpowder
on my hands in school,
so I took some heavy-duty
soap from my dad's office
and scrubbed at my skin
until I was nearly bleeding.

Like trying to scour out
a memory, the gunpowder reek
didn't leave my hands.

It never occurred to me
to stop shooting the gun.

It never occurred to me
that I could hit
10 for 10 now
without
effort.

locked herself
in the bathroom
one Saturday
and refused
to come out.
Then came
the sound of
shattering.
The mirror,
we thought.
Maybe
the hair dryer too.
And from
the sudden smell,
a perfume bottle.

Give her some
room
, Dad said
as we went out
for ice cream.
The clamor crescendoed,
and he shrugged.
Grief does funny
things to people
.

With Grandma
worsening daily,

I was suddenly glad
I hadn't burdened
my parents with anything
about Blake or the gun.
Crazy as my mom
had become,
she'd probably
throw me in jail herself.

When I was maybe sixteen
,
Dad began, shutting his eyes
as if that helped him remember
himself as anything but a uniformed
nitwit with his initials emblazoned
on a stupid brass belt buckle,
I played the saxophone. I could
make that horn howl something great.
But then my brother and I got
into it and he bashed me in the face
.

One minute you're listening, I thought,
the next you're standing there like
you're buck naked in a classroom
and everyone's staring. I shifted
heel to toe, playing and replaying
the last few weeks in my head
as I licked my mint chocolate chip cone
and tried to get comfortable
in the cast-iron chairs on the outdoor patio.

My dad hasn't smoked for years,
yet right then he fished a cigarette
from his pocket, found matches,
and tore one free. He lit it slowly,
as if savoring the flame that threatened
his fingertips.

I've never seen a saxophone around here
,
I finally said, thinking more of Blake
alone in the Winn-Dixie parking lot,
waiting to meet me later, than the distant gaze
in my dad's slate eyes.

Dad said,
I listened to your uncle
when he said Ma would whip us
for roughhousing, so we waited
too long before confessing. The dentist
couldn't set my jaw right, so that
was that
. He sucked lazily on the cigarette,
the smoke leaking marvelously from
his nostrils between his words.
I wasted time
, he said,
and now
time wastes me
.

Why are you telling me this?
I asked,
mesmerized by this image of a man
I began to realize I didn't know at all.

Cling, clang,
Mr. Clean.
Cleans up soup,
Smells like poop
.

Because you're a man
, he told me
as he stubbed out his cigarette

in what was left of his strawberry sundae.
The butt sizzled, then finally went cold.
And it's okay for a man to know life
is full of choices, and most of the
ones we make are wrong
.

Aaron must've had the mother of them
because he tore through the hallways
that morning, knocking freshmen flat
without stopping to enjoy it. Blake
didn't see the tornado coming, his head
inside his locker. Aaron kicked
the locker door shut on Blake hard enough
to leave my friend clutching his throat,
gasping like he was the one with asthma, not me.

Blake didn't answer my texts
about shooting after school,
and I couldn't stop thinking
of how the cricket song
always stopped even before
we fired our first shot,
and the thick silence
settled over everything,

expectantly.

Without warning, March 5
entered my mind again,
and it didn't leave as easily

this time.

Especially since my dad
was bitching about
having to fix a pair
of smashed-in rooftop vents.

Again.

came and went
with me barely
noticing. Nothing
really mattered
the same way
anymore. All I cared
about was that gun.

I didn't think about
Becky Ann, Sue,
or anybody at all.

I didn't do the math
to learn that March 5
was only nineteen days away.

Blake grew sullen
and didn't hang out
with me as much,
but we still shared the gun.
We still had the pact
of it between us.

Aaron still knocked Blake around.
Dad was still pissed at me.
I still sucked at math.
But with the Beretta

in my hands,
the future was unwritten
instead of just a repeat
of the same loathsome
story of my past.

Let me be honest—
that gun put me in charge
of my own autobiography.

Becky Ann started up a Fashion Club.
Sue got a week's suspension
for selling cigarettes at school.

Nicholas broke up with Sue (again)
but won an award for a sci-fi
story in Mrs. Hawkins's class.

My dad worked longer hours
now that Pete was in Seattle,
trying to be the next Kurt Cobain.

Mr. Green tried to two-hand stuff
a basketball and fell so hard
on the playground concrete
that he had to be hospitalized.

A retired math professor from Tennessee
was hired as my tutor. When my
parents left the room, she snapped,
Stop screwing around and learn
.

Mom started up classes
at the community college.
Painting 101, I think. And
something about ceramics.

Grandma got even worse,
fired her nurse, and told everyone
to leave her the hell alone.

Blake and I fired the gun
and talked about how much
we hated everything.

God knows why
he brought the MJ
rookie card to school,
but when Aaron
and two others stopped
Blake in the hall to push
him around and laugh—
“Buttsmacker!” and
“Psycho-geek!” they said—
no one expected him
to shred it and toss
the confetti at Aaron's
feet before storming
past them, mumbling
under his breath as he
wrung his hands.