Untouchable (12 page)

He looked like he was in a trance.

The Kid turned back to the classroom doorway. Miss Ramirez was way at the end of the line, reprimanding Razz for something. The Kid waved his arms to get her attention. The girls in the front of the line plugged their noses and stepped back at the smell that was released when The Kid lifted his arms. He ignored them, kept waving to get Miss Ramirez to look his way. Rey was still walking toward him, mouth hanging open. The Kid started clapping his hands. He didn’t know what else to do. He had to get Miss Ramirez’s attention. The kids in line looked at him like he was crazy, like maybe he was still clapping for the news about the Halloween party. Miss Ramirez turned from where she was scolding Razz and said, “Whitley, enough, please,” her voice frustrated and sharp. Rey was still coming. The Kid stopped clapping and started knocking on the door as loud as he could to get Miss Ramirez’s attention. The girls at the front of the line stepped back even further, looking at The Kid like he had really lost it. Miss Ramirez turned from Razz again, narrowing her eyes. “Whitley, I’ve said that’s enough.” She turned back to Razz. The Kid didn’t know what else to do. Rey was walking almost directly into the wall now. He looked sick. He looked scared. The Kid had an idea, and before he could decide whether it was a good idea or a bad one, he grabbed Norma Valenzuela’s arm, leaned in close and breathed in her face. A full blast of hot bad breath germs. Norma screamed. Miss Ramirez turned from Razz and marched to the front of the line, eyes burning at The Kid. When she got to him, he turned and pointed down the hall, stopping her in her tracks when she saw Rey and the look on his face.

“Rey?” she said. “Rey, are you all right?”

Rey stopped walking. Or, actually, he stopped moving forward but his feet kept walking in place. It was the strangest thing to watch. Rey kept looking at whatever he was looking at down the hall, walking in place.

“Rey,” Miss Ramirez said. “Rey, look at me.”

Rey turned his head at the sound of her voice. He looked at Miss Ramirez the same way he had looked at the invisible thing behind The Kid. Amazed. Then he lifted his skinny arms, held out his hands and threw up into them.

Norma Valenzuela screamed again. Rey kept throwing up, a long, steady flow coursing over his hands, splattering on the tile floor. Miss Ramirez ran over to him, waved back at the kids in line, told them to go out to the yard. Most of the kids turned and ran, heaving and gagging at the sight of Rey throwing up. The Kid stayed behind, watched as Miss Ramirez led Rey back down the hallway toward the nurse’s office, Rey still holding the bathroom pass, his hands and shirt covered with throw-up, that look still on his face, like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

The Kid and Matthew sat at a lunch table out under the pavilion. The Kid was reading one of the
Captain America
comics Matthew had given him for safekeeping, writing a description of each page in his notebook so Matthew could still follow the story even though he wasn’t allowed to look at the comic.

“It’s stupid when everybody gets so excited,” Matthew said. “When everybody claps for something dumb like that.”

The Kid knew that Matthew was upset because he wasn’t allowed to dress up for Halloween. It was against his religion. When they were littler kids, Matthew used to beg his father every year to let him dress up and go trick-or-treating with The Kid. His father never gave in. The last few years Matthew hadn’t even bothered asking. Instead, he just told The Kid how stupid the whole thing was, that it was a demonic ritual anyway, that he could care less whether he got to dress up or not.

“Look at that,” Matthew said. “There’s a police car and an ambulance here.”

Matthew was right. A squad car and a bright white ambulance were on the other side of the fence, parked by the flagpole at the front of the school. A couple of policemen were walking toward the front doors, hitching their belts up on their waists.

“What do you think happened?” Matthew said.

The Kid shrugged.

Matthew took a pull on his juice box. “I think they’re arresting Rey Lugo for throwing up in the hall.”

The Kid heard someone approaching from behind, running fast across the asphalt toward the table. He stashed the comic in his grocery bag, watched Matthew’s face to gauge the level of fear, to see if it was Razz or Brian running at their table to attack. But Matthew just looked confused, like he couldn’t figure out why whoever was running toward their table was running toward their table.

The Kid braced himself, turned. It was the new girl, Arizona. She sat down next to The Kid and smiled.

“Hi,” she said.

Matthew and The Kid said nothing.

“Is anybody sitting here?” she said.

The Kid shook his head.

“They said that you never talk,” she said to The Kid. “They said that you only write things in a notebook and that you never say anything out loud. Is that true?”

“It’s true,” Matthew said.

“Is something wrong with your voice?” she said to The Kid.

The Kid shook his head, getting embarrassed suddenly, going red and hot in the ears.

“Then why can’t you talk?” she said.

It’s a conscious decision
.

She leaned in to read the line he’d written, brought her head back to look at the whole notebook.

“How full is it?”

The Kid flipped through the previous pages, three-quarters of the notebook, all of them covered with writing and drawings.

“Is that the only notebook?”

The Kid shook his head.

“How many are there?”

“A bunch,” Matthew said. “Probably a thousand.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Then maybe like a hundred and fifty. Maybe two hundred.”

Ten,
The Kid wrote.

“How long has it been since you’ve talked?” she said.

“Twenty years,” Matthew said. “He’s older than he looks.”

“I’m asking him.”

Matthew made a face and looked away, out at some kids playing kickball on the other side of the yard.

About a year,
The Kid wrote.
A year almost exactly.

“That’s a long time,” she said.

The Kid shrugged.

“Why did you stop talking?”

The Kid didn’t answer. He sat and looked at his brown paper grocery bag, the name of the supermarket printed across its front. He waited through questions like that. He’d learned that he could wait a long time, longer than anyone else. He could outlast the question.

“It’s a secret,” Matthew said, still looking out at the game.

“Do you know the secret?”

“Of course I know the secret. I’m the one who told him how to do it.”

Arizona looked at The Kid. “If I ask you a question, will you answer with the notebook?”

“Of course he’ll answer with the notebook,” Matthew said. “How else would he answer?”

“I mean answer with something you’ve already written. Something from before in the book.”

The Kid shrugged, nodded.

She smiled. “What’s your name?”

The Kid flipped pages, settled on one. Held it up, pointed to the relevant line. Matthew leaned over the table to see.

Captain America.

Arizona laughed. It was a nice laugh, warm and surprisingly deep.

“Where do you live?” she said.

The Kid flipped, settled on a page.

Under a garbage can.

“That’s true,” Matthew said. “His house is falling apart.”

She laughed again, and Matthew laughed, too.

The Kid liked this, making her laugh. He wanted to ask her some questions. He wanted to ask her about her old hometown, what it was like out there, what the people there were like. If they were all like her. But that wasn’t the game. He wasn’t supposed to write anything new and he didn’t want to scare her away.

“Ask something else,” Matthew said.

Arizona looked at the notebook, looked at The Kid. Didn’t flinch from sitting that close to him, didn’t seem to mind the smell.

“Someday will you tell me the secret?” she said. “If we’re friends long enough?”

Matthew looked at The Kid. The Kid kept his eyes down in the notebook, flipped pages.

“No, he won’t,” Matthew said.

“I’m asking him.”

“You won’t be friends long enough,” Matthew said. “You’d have to be friends a long time for him to tell you and you won’t be friends that long.”

“Why not?”

“Because you won’t. No one’s friends with us but us.”

Arizona kept looking at The Kid. “I want him to answer.”

“He can’t,” Matthew said. “If he tells you the secret, it won’t be a secret anymore.”

“I want him to answer.”

The Kid found a page, a line he’d already written, turned the notebook for her to see. Watched her face, her expression falling, disappointed as she read.

Loose lips sink ships.

He called Bob and Bob came. That day, after the cops left, after he’d stood in the kitchen for he didn’t know how long, after he’d told The Kid the story of what had happened to Lucy, he called Bob. He didn’t remember what he told Bob on the phone, most likely a leaner version of what he’d told The Kid: Lucy fell in her classroom; Lucy’s gone. He didn’t know who else to call. Over the next few days he’d call Amanda, he’d call Lucy’s mother in Chicago. Over the next week he’d find cards and letters and flowers on the front porch. The Crumps would pay their respects, offer to help any way they could. Amanda would bring lunch; Amanda would bring dinner. Amanda would arrange a memorial service at her church. Darby would take The Kid to the mall and buy him a new black suit for the service, too long in the arms, too long in the legs. But that afternoon, that evening, he would do only two things: tell The Kid the story of what had happened, and call Bob.

Bob came and stood on the porch on the other side of the screen door and listened to what Darby said. His hair was pulled back in a loose, greasy ponytail, dangling from under the back of his black cowboy hat.

When Darby was finished, Bob asked how The Kid was, and Darby said that he was upstairs, he was up in his room drawing his comic. Bob nodded, like this was a good enough answer to his question. It was a hot night, still humid after the earlier rain, and Bob wiped moisture from his eyebrows with his fingertips. He kept nodding, slowly. The familiar response from job sites, from parking lots and doorways and living rooms. Bob nodding slowly, waiting for whoever had met them at the door to tell him more or tell him nothing or start screaming or sobbing or laughing, the whole litany of reactions they had encountered over the years. Bob’s response honed to that simple, measured movement.

The Kid heard Bob’s voice and came downstairs. Bob looked at The Kid through the screen door and then he looked back down at his boots and Darby could see Bob’s nod dissolving into gulping sobs, saw Bob trying to hold them in for his sake, for The Kid’s sake, trying to swallow them down, keep them back, but it was no use, Bob’s great shoulders heaving, and then a sound escaped his mouth, a strange squeak, wholly out of proportion to Bob’s size, and Darby took the handle of the screen door, gripped the handle like he was going to open the door, like he was stepping out onto the porch to put a hand on his friend’s shoulder, but he realized that he was gripping the handle to hold the door shut, to keep this outside, Bob’s bulk shaking, his face wet, The Kid watching from the foot of the stairs and Darby holding the screen door closed, the muscles straining in his forearm, keeping Bob safely out of the house.

They stayed like that until it passed. A minute, five minutes, Bob finally gulping air, shaking his head and blinking, pulling himself together, embarrassed, apologetic. It was another minute before Darby’s fingers relaxed on the door handle, before he could be sure it was over. Before he stepped away from the door and let Bob in.

The ring was in his pocket. He kept touching its shape through the denim of his jeans to convince himself that he had really taken it, that it was really there.

He stopped at a cell phone store on Sunset and bought a new phone. He had lunch at a hot dog stand. He couldn’t stop thinking about the ring. He had taken this thing. He had taken this thing to keep it safe. He placed the ring in the pickup’s glove compartment, closed the hatch.

He crouched down on the sidewalk in front of the house, peered through the holes in the manhole cover. He waited, eye pressed to the hole, but whatever was down there was quiet now. Whatever was down there was waiting him out.

He pulled the garage doors open to a wall of boxes, crates of books, a crowding of old furniture. Broken long-necked lamps, a couple of small tables. The Kid’s crib, a rocking chair. Lucy could never throw anything away. He dragged stacks of boxes out into the driveway, clearing a narrow path. There was a workbench at the back of the garage, with drawers he’d built when they first bought the house. The ring would be safe there, hidden. He dragged box after box, clearing a path, wiping the sweat from his eyes.

Halfway through, he found a box marked
Extraordinary
. These were the comic books that The Kid made with Matthew. On top of that box was an unmarked shoebox. Darby lifted the lid. Inside was The Kid’s tape recorder, a row of cassettes of
It’s That Kid!
episodes. Lucy’s cursive labeling on the paper cards in the cassette cases, the thin loops at the tops of the letters, the words slanting gently to the right. He felt weak at the sight, the forgotten familiarity of her handwriting.

There were other, unlabeled tapes in the box. The Kid had carried the recorder around with him for the better part of a year, taping everything, anyone he came into contact with. Darby lifted an unmarked cassette out of its case, slid it into the slot in the recorder.

It was his voice that came forth from the machine, Darby’s voice explaining the process of replacing the pickup’s battery. He remembered this, an afternoon last summer, bending under the hood of the truck, The Kid standing beside him in the driveway, holding the microphone as high as he could reach. The Kid had been quizzing Darby about things he knew how to fix, had asked Darby to explain how to pump a bicycle tire, how to unclog the kitchen sink, how to change the battery in the pickup.