The Worst Thing I've Done (14 page)

“W
HY DON'T
you have flowers in that vase?” Jake once asked Mason's father after his piano lesson.

“Because lemons don't wilt.”

“Oh—”

“Lemons last longer than flowers, and once they fade or get spots, we use them for lemonade.”

“Can we have a lemonade stand?” Mason asked.

“Sure. You can have these.”

When Jake, Annie, and Mason got ready for their sale, they were so excited that they kept zipping back and forth on their street. From Annie's basement they lugged a card table and set it up on the sidewalk. Jake's mother gave them sugar and her insulated pitcher with the red lid. In Mason's kitchen they squeezed lemons, added water and sugar. Annie printed huge letters, STOP, on both sides of a paper plate, colored the white space yellow, and trimmed it in the shape of a lemon.

“I bet the first car is silver.” Mason fastened his roller skates.

“Green,” Annie said.

“Bet you a nickel—”

Just then they spotted the car—silver, indeed—

“I win!” Mason yelled and rolled sideways along the sidewalk, full face to street, like a dancing girl, Mason, waving his palms, windshield-wiper style, pointing toward the lemonade bucket.

When the car slowed, Annie wielded her STOP plate and ran a few feet into the street.

“Be careful—” Jake shouted.
Already such a good audience for their daring.

“Go in the middle of the street, Annie,” Mason yelled, “you're such a girl.”

“That's what I am. A girl.” She flapped her sign at the car.

It swerved. Didn't hit her.
Annie—

“You idiot!” Jake screamed. “Get out of the street!” Hopping up and down on the sidewalk. Screaming. “You idiot!”

“Don't be so dramatic,” Annie said in her grown-up voice.

“Lemonade!” Mason chased the car on his roller skates. Greedy. Fierce. “Stop! Hey! Look at me, Jake—”

And Jake was grateful because Mason singled him out for being friends. Even though grateful felt sticky. Still—he felt the excitement of risk,
the badness
, that became his when he was with Mason.

When the car got away, Mason plopped himself on the curb. Dropped his forehead to his knees. “I can't do this day.”
All the light out of him. Sudden. The way he'd get sometimes.

Annie plopped down close to him. Jake on his other side. Across Mason's curved back, they looked at each other.

“There's a car,” Jake said.

Mason didn't move.

“Another car—” Annie poked him.

Four cars passed.

“We got a lot of lemonade to sell,” Jake said.

“That's it.” Annie knelt in front of Mason, started to undo his roller skates.

Mason tried to kick her away.

But she got them off. Still stronger than Mason. Bigger.

During the next hour, only two drivers bought lemonade, though Annie and Jake took turns swinging the STOP lemon plate at every car. They kept watching Mason.
So still. Just a lump on the sidewalk, really.
And when he stirred,
finally
, they laughed with relief.

Laughed when he demanded his skates. And when they helped him fasten them. And when all at once he was up again, doing his skate routine, adding a movie star smile.
Mason.

By late afternoon, every drop of lemonade got sold.

“Let's make plans for the money,” Jake said.

“We'll buy something together,” Mason said. “Something we
all
want.”

“We need poster board and markers,” Annie said, “so we don't have to use paper plates for our next sale.”

“First we have to buy a flashlight,” Mason said. “With different color lenses.”

“You want it for yourself,” Jake said.

“I want it for us. The yellow light keeps bugs away, and the red light means stop. I saw them at the hardware store, and two boys at school have them.”

“Poster board—” Jake started.

“I'll guard the money,” Mason promised.

But Jake knew Mason would promise him whatever he wanted…and all it meant was that Jake would get nothing.

“My house is like a bank,” Mason said.

“Your mom only works at a bank,” Annie said.

“Not so. It belongs to her.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“But the bank is not in your house.” Jake knew. Because his parents had their checking account in the bank where Mason's mother worked.

Mason started counting the money.

“Why can't I keep it in my room?” Jake asked, wishing he'd said it differently, because asking was handing it over to Mason. He tried again. “I want to keep the money in my room.”

“With all those kids running around, it'll only get lost…or stolen.”

“You're the one who runs around.”

“That's for sure,” Annie said.

And it was. Jake didn't want Mason and all those others—except Annie—at his house every day. Wanted to go to their rooms instead and mess them up. Mostly Mason's, throwing his toys and clothes around, crushing Cheerios on Mason's floor so they'd get stuck to the bottoms of his feet and get into his bed and make him feel itchy. Bouncing on Mason's mattress—except in the Pianos' house, you didn't get a good bounce because the mattresses lay on the floors.

But at least Mason got punished for breaking the blue robot Jake got for his fifth birthday. Even though Jake took it into his bed that night to guard it from Mason. Once it was morning, he knew, Mason would play with it.
And break it.
Jake knew how:
First Mason twists the arms, then snaps off the head.
Jake's stomach was hot like just before throw-up. Scared-hot. Though he was bigger than Mason and could snap off his head. But Mason was family income. And Jake had to keep his robot safe. Had to—
Don't—But I have to. Stop Mason from twisting off the blue robot's arms.
Jake did it, then. Twisted off the arms.
Like this. Stop Mason from snapping off the blue robot's head.
Jake did it, then. Snapped off the blue robot's head.
Like this. Before Mason can. Mason, who's making me do this.
And when he blamed Mason, it was true because it would have happened.
Like this—

“W
HY ARE
the Pianos' mattresses all flat with no space underneath?” Jake asked his mother one morning when he helped her clean up yesterday's day-care mess.

“Because they don't like to spend money,” his mother said. “They let it grow in the bank.”

Jake wished his parents could grow money too. Because they had less than the other parents on the street. That was why he helped his mother clean up. Pride in that, being useful. But rage too. Because what the day-care kids needed came first. While his mother was stuck with him—he knew that even when she kissed him—and once his sister was born, his mother had two children who were not paying guests like Mason, who chased Jake's mother around, making his whinnying sound, high-pitched through his nose like an ambulance and a horse, till she yelled at him, “Please? We don't run and yell inside this house!”

We?

The unfairness of it.

We.

Meaning me too.

Searching for something nasty to hide in Mason's lunch. A half-dead fly in the spiderweb by the woodpile next to the stove.
Half-dead means half-alive.
Freeing it from the web, carefully, and pressing it into Mason's cheeseburger when no one saw.
You always want something special.
When Mason took a bite, Jake's heart lifted, exhilarated.

A
NNIE AND
Jake outvoted Mason. “Poster board and markers.”

“But I worked harder than you at the sale.”

“No way you didn't,” Annie told him.

“Plus I slammed my finger in the ice chest.”

“So what?” Jake said, brave with Annie watching.

“I'll never do another sale with you if we don't get the flashlight.”

Jake almost gave in. Without Annie, he probably would have. But with Annie, he could tell Mason no. Tell him, “We're buying poster board. And markers.” Though he didn't care what they bought. Only cared about having Annie on his side. High from persistence, he repeated, “Poster board and markers.”

Mason pouted. “Those lemons are from my house.”

“But the sugar comes from my mama's kitchen,” Jake told him. “It's her baking sugar.”

Annie rolled her eyes. “And the bird turds are from my front yard. So we're even.”

“Gross.” Jake wished he had her guts.

Mason was giggling. “Yeah, gross.”

And for an instant they were no longer at odds. Annie had pulled them once again into one. And Jake felt that warm flicker between his ribs that he got when he was with both of them. Safe. It made him feel generous.

And so he consoled Mason: “We'll buy the flashlight with money from our next sale.”

Mason was kicking his left heel into the ground, watching the dust swirl around his sneakers. “Okay…”

And because he had a pocket with a zipper on his shorts, and because Jake and Annie had ganged up on him, they did not say no when Mason said he'd hold the money for them.

But the next day Mason went ahead and bought what
he
had wanted all along. That flashlight with three lenses. “It was on sale. So we're really saving money.”

“Not fair.” Annie shoved at him.

Then Jake shoved, hard. Felt Mason's bones against his fist. He pulled back, startled.

But Mason was already dancing away from him. “Now that we have the flashlight, we'll earn more when we sell lemonade.”

Again, Annie shoved him. “Asshole.”

Bad word.
Jake was awed.

“We'll earn ten times as much—”

“Triple-dipple asshole.”

“—because people will see our flashlight from far away. And then we can buy a bigger wagon to haul the lemonade.”

“Jake already got a wagon.”

“A bigger wagon than Jake's,” Mason said.

“It's plenty big enough,” Jake said.

“The more we haul, the more we'll earn. Enough for new bicycles.”

“I bet you want the first bicycle,” Annie said.

“Three new bicycles. We'll buy them all at the same time.”

“Just don't do this again,” Jake warned, wishing he had the guts to say
asshole
to Mason.

But late that afternoon, he said the word when he and Annie whispered about Mason in Annie's room. Whispered as if Mason were close enough to hear and get mad because it was always the three of them together. Whispered excitedly about what Mason had done and what Mason had said.

Annie's left ear against his lips, Jake whispered her a secret though he was not allowed to repeat anything his mama told his dad about the day-care kids. “Mason is a wild card. I heard his mom say it to my mama.”

Annie smelled of sweat and dust. Her red hair stuck to her temples, darker where it was sweaty. “His own mom said that?”

“A wild card. That's what she called him.”

“What's a wild card, Jake?”

“W
HEN THAT
movie came out,” Mason's father says, the smell of smoked almonds on his breath, “I had a friend who lived in the same apartment building, Joey Robinson, and when we saw his mother…me and other boys…we'd snicker and yell, ‘Hello, Mrs. Robinson.' ”

“He was fifteen, our Mason,” Mrs. Piano whispers, “and I grabbed him by the shoulders and—” She draws her scarf around herself. “—shook him, not hard, until he said, ‘Okay, Mom, you win.' ”

Annie nods. “The winning thing…that's Mason.”

“And then he smiled at me.” Mrs. Piano folds her hands on her black skirt. “Still, afterwards I felt queasy.”

Jake feels queasy too. From the weirdness of the conversation. From the normalcy of watching the television screen. When Mason was a kid, the Pianos disapproved of television and didn't own one though everyone else in the neighborhood did. And now they're stuck to it.

What do you want from me and Annie?

“It's not like Mason was a baby,” Annie consoles Mrs. Piano. “A baby you'd hurt, shaking like that. But a fifteen-year-old…no.”