We Are the Ants (13 page)

It was a stupid idea to schedule PE immediately after lunch.

Coach Raskin informed us after we'd dressed that we were going to be running four miles—mandatory ­participation—­with him jogging behind us screaming inspiration in the form of personal insults, as if that were actually going to work. Yes, I did want to go home and cry to my mommy. No, I did not care that a one-legged octogenarian could outrun me.

I managed to jog the first mile, but the air was thicker than tree sap, and the pizza I'd eaten for lunch instead of the “BLT” squirmed in my stomach like a bottled-up squid. I tried to keep up my pace for the second mile, but I developed a stitch in my side, right under my ribs, and I was panting so hard, I thought I would faint. When everyone else had finished and gone to the locker room to change, I still had two laps to go, and Coach Raskin made sure I completed them.

The first bell had already rung, so the showers were empty, which I was grateful for. Showers after gym had been mandatory in middle school, and I'd spent years perfecting how to be naked for the least amount of time. The other boys seemed comfortable in their own skin; I felt like an alien. If I hadn't been soaked with sweat and smelled like the inside of one of Charlie's sneakers, I would have doubled up on deodorant and skipped the shower. But since I was already going to be late for last period, I decided it didn't matter. Besides, I didn't want to reek when Diego took me home.

Even though he'd clearly mentioned his ex-girlfriend—possibly to make sure I knew he wasn't into me—I am more confused by him than ever. But I know what it means that I get excited when I see him and bummed when I don't. I'm starting to like him, and that's a losing scenario for everyone. Even if the world wasn't coming to an end, Diego and I are an impossibility. Beyond all reason, he wants to be my friend but would never be interested in more.

Even if things were different—if the world weren't ending and Diego were into me—I can't take the chance that it was my fault Jesse hanged himself and that I might cause Diego to do the same. It might seem ludicrous to believe I caused Jesse's suicide, but in the dearth of answers he left behind, it makes as much sense as anything else.

The warning bell rang, and I rushed to rinse the last of the shampoo from my hair and shut off the water. I retrieved my towel from the hook on the wall and tried to dry off in the humid air. The best I could hope to do was mitigate the disaster.

I was drying my hair, the towel draped over my head, and didn't hear their footsteps.

They were on me before I knew what was happening. One on each arm, dressed in black, wearing alien masks. They weren't
my
aliens. The oval eyes gave them away. There were no shadows, either, and sluggers wouldn't have grabbed me and slapped a sweaty hand over my mouth to prevent me from screaming.

The three aliens wrestled me to the floor. They were stronger, but I kicked and bucked and tried to run, dignity be damned. My knee slammed into the tile floor, and my leg went numb. An alien stuffed a pair of boxers into my mouth, while another bound my wrists together with tape. My shoulders ached from struggling like they were going to pop out of their sockets. When they finished with my hands, they pulled my legs out from under me and secured my ankles, leaving me prone on the wet, mildewed floor. I sobbed and tried to breathe, but I snorted water up my nose instead.

This is how I die.
In the midst of the chaos in my mind, that's the thought that calmed me. This didn't matter. Nothing they did to me was important. I'd been ready to let the world end, prepared to sit back and wait for the apocalypse. What did it matter if I died a few weeks early? What did I matter at all?

“Hurry up!”

“Where's Coach?”

“Taking a dump.”

“Bring it, bring it!”

The tile was slippery, and I swung my legs around, trying to squirm away. The tallest alien kicked me in the testicles with his grass-stained sneaker. The pain was excruciating, and it clawed through my stomach and up my spine. I gagged, trying not to puke with the underwear in my mouth. My vision blurred around the edges, and I thought for a moment the sluggers
had
come to save me. But no one was coming to save me.

Everything hurt. It hurt to move and breathe. I wished they'd kill me and be done with it. I looked up; one of them stood over me with a five-gallon bucket. I swore I saw him grinning through his garish alien mask. “Now you can be an alien too, Space Boy.” He tilted the bucket and poured green paint on my chest and legs and arms. It was cold and spread across my stomach like pancake batter.

“Close your eyes, Space Boy.” I clenched my eyes shut and held my breath as he emptied the bucket over my head.

“Shit, guys, come on. Time's up.”

I heard the empty thud when the bucket hit the floor.

“Hold on. One more thing.” I was too afraid to move when one of them pulled something down over my head. I blew paint out my nostrils and, when I breathed, it smelled like latex and cut grass.

I lay sprawled on the shower floor, waiting for the next kick, but it didn't come.

Look at you. Look at what you've become without me.
Jesse's voice was muffled through the paint and whatever else covered my head. But it wasn't him. Jesse was dead. I'd seen his body. His parents had insisted on an open-casket funeral, and I'd looked. Despite my brother's warning not to, I'd looked. He was so dead, and that last image of Jesse was the one that remained with me. Dead was the way I saw him from that point forward.
You're a punch line, Henry. The butt of a cruel joke.

It wasn't Jesse.

I'm beginning to think you should have hanged yourself rather than me. I probably would have cried over you, but I wouldn't have come to this. Jesus Christ, you're fucking pathetic. I don't know what I ever saw in you.

It wasn't Jesse. I repeated that over and over. Jesse was dead, Jesse had loved me, Jesse never would have said those things.

I only killed myself because of you. To escape you. You smothered me, Henry Denton. You loved me to death. You should be dead, not me.

It wasn't Jesse, couldn't have been Jesse, but he was right. I should be dead. I wish I were dead. Because you can only die once, but you can suffer forever.

  •  •  •  

Coach Raskin discovered me at the end of last period when he came to shut off the lights. Finding me victimized and covered in green paint on the shower floor probably confirmed his opinion of my weakness. I'm willing to bet there was some small part of him that thought I deserved it. He cut the tape around my wrists and ankles, moved me into his office, and gave me a towel, but he refused to let me go home.

Principal DeShields arrived shortly after and hammered me with questions: Who had attacked me? Had I provoked them? What were their names? Why was I in the showers? I did my best to provide answers, but my head throbbed, and the fluorescent overhead lights buzzed, bright and sickly. I wanted to go home, clean the paint off, and never return to CHS again. I didn't mention smelling Marcus's cologne because it would have pitted his word against mine, and he had the benefit of both a car and money.

The paramedics' arrival saved me from further interrogation, but aside from scraped knees and elbows, and slightly swollen testicles, I was unhurt. They took my vitals anyway and tried to clean some of the paint from my face and around my eyes. The police arrived next.

“Are you Henry Denton?”

The officer stood in the doorway of Coach Raskin's office. Her name tag identified her as Sandoval. She was stiff-backed with serious eyes and a crooked nose. I should have been grateful to see her, but this made it real. She'd file an official report, and everyone would know I'd been assaulted. Now I had no chance that this would quietly disappear.

Principal DeShields straightened her cream-colored jacket and shook Sandoval's hand. Her dour frown met Sandoval's humorless eyes, and it looked like a competition to see who could take my situation more seriously. “I'm Margaret DeShields, principal of Calypso High School.” Then she fell silent, like she'd planned a whole speech but had forgotten it.

“I need to speak to the victim,” Sandoval said. I wasn't Space Boy or Henry Denton; I was The Victim. Coach Raskin's office was cramped, and I had to gulp for breath to get enough air into my lungs. Sandoval must have read my mind because she said, “Alone.”

Everyone cleared out, but Principal DeShields hovered outside the doorway, probably mentally strategizing damage control.

Officer Sandoval produced a reporter's notepad and pen from her pocket and turned the full weight of her somber gaze upon me. It was the kind of look I knew could extract the truth the way a dentist tears free a rotten molar. Only, Sandoval wouldn't use Novocain. “Walk me through what happened.”

I recounted the attack, sticking to the facts and avoiding conjecture. Even though I was sure I knew the identities of the three aliens who attacked me, I couldn't prove it. Officer Sandoval listened closely but didn't write anything down. I didn't tell her about Jesse speaking to me.

“They were wearing masks?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you hear their voices? Could you identify them if you heard them again?”

Marcus McCoy had called me Space Boy so many times that I knew by heart the way his faint Southern accent stretched out the
a
and clipped the
y
, but doubt lingered. Maybe I'd imagined it—his voice, the smell of summer. I didn't want to believe Marcus was capable of attacking me. “No. Nothing.”

Sandoval frowned and scribbled in her notebook. “Do you know why anyone would have targeted you?”

I could have given her a hundred reasons:

I was Space Boy.

Marcus was still pissed I'd refused to hook up with him again.

Adrian wanted revenge for our fight in the locker room.

I was Space Boy.

I was weak.

Fuck it, fuck this place, fuck them all.

“It's Halloween,” I said. “And I was an easy target.”

Officer Sandoval pursed her lips—she definitely wasn't buying that line of bullshit. However, I'd endured enough shame for one day. I was sure Principal DeShields, Coach Rankin, or anyone else she asked could tell her what she wanted to know. I was done talking.

The sharp rattle of a slamming door outside the office caused Officer Sandoval to glance over her shoulder, but I knew who it was before the shouting began.

My mom had come to take me home.

  •  •  •  

The sluggers abducted me from the bath. I'd spent two hours under running water, scrubbing with washcloths and loofas until my skin was red and raw. My mom kept trying to invade the bathroom under the guise of offering me different methods of removing the paint—the oddest of which was a stick of butter—and I had to lock the door to get any privacy.

Diego sent me a handful of text messages, at first asking where I was, then begging me to let him know I was all right. I felt terrible about not returning his texts, but I couldn't bear any more pity. Especially not from him.

I also figured out what the One More Thing was while Mom drove me home from school. A photo of me sprawled on the shower floor—bound and green, wearing only a gray alien mask—had spread virally through SnowFlake, each new person who shared it heaping on derision. I tried to trace it back to the original poster but eventually gave up—Space Boy had become an international phenomenon. I was
Raumjunge
in Germany,
Garçon Cosmique
in France,
in Japan,
Chico Cósmico
in Spain, and
Ruimtejongen
in the Netherlands. At least Marcus had blurred out my junk before exposing me to the world.

“I'm not pressing the goddamn button!” I shouted. My voice didn't echo in the exam room. The darkness devoured it in a way that reminded me of the auditorium where I'd watched Jesse rehearse
The Snow Queen
freshman year. He only had a small part, but he spoke his lines as if he were the lead. His strong tenor reached even the back row where Audrey and I sat, she doing her homework, and I unable to take my eyes off the boy flapping his wings, willing us to believe he was a crow.

The rotating projection of the earth disappeared, but the button remained, as either a taunt or a promise. I didn't know which, and I didn't care. Fuck it.

“Why me?” Though the sluggers had left me alone in the room, I knew they were watching. They were always watching. “If you can save Earth, then do it! Why do you need me?”

Even if they had answered, I doubt I would have comprehended them any more than a rat would understand the reasons a scientist dropped him in a maze and forced him to navigate it for the cheese at the end.

I was startled by a slugger who appeared from the darkness and approached me at a crawl. I'd never noticed before, but it had tiny legs that grew from it like a centipede's. They were absorbed back into its body when it halted.