* * *
The digital clock on the night stand read 12:32—not too late to give up the pursuit of sleep (he’d have to wait a couple more hours before deciding that) but late enough to be the only one awake in the house.
Darrel’s snores rose up through the walls and seeped into Russell’s room. Usually he was pretty good at pushing the sound away, blocking it, but these past couple of nights…
It’s really getting on my nerves.
Ignore it.
Ignore it.
Ignore it.
Lying in bed, staring at the Stone Temple Pilots poster on the slanted ceiling, Russell tried to focus his thoughts on those guys and not his guys, meaning his friends, for lack of a better term.
It was pointless.
Images of Pete, Michelle, O’Brien, and even Hector, kept exploding in his mind. It seemed like the harder he tried not to think about them,
The more I do. Are they even my friends? That’s the question. Pete—definitely. Michelle? She’s more than a friend. She’s—I don’t know what to call her. I wonder how Hector would react if he found out what happened today. Oh, fuck Hector. He’s never going to know. Hector’s definitely not a friend. Scratch him off that short list. While I’m at it, might as well knock Mike O’Brien off, too. He’s gone off the deep end. Nearly scared Apollo to death, jumping on his back like that. It’s a good thing I’ve been keeping him inside lately. There’s no telling what the rednecks would do if they saw a dog his size. Apollo’s a friend. He’s my best friend. If someone were to shoot him, I swear to God, I’d kill whoever did it.
I’ve been talking to myself lately. It’s done silently, in my head, but it’s still talking. Everybody does it, but I’ve been doing it a lot more than is generally acceptable. How do I even know that? Does this mean I’m crazy? Or am I just in love with the sound of my own voice, the one that comes out sounding all smooth and mellifluous? Christ, there are so many thoughts racing through my head right now. I’ve always had that problem. Most of the time, I just drown them out by turning the music on. But the music’s not coming on at night anymore. I wonder why.
Why do I feel like the world is ending just because I’ve had a string of bad luck? More to the point: Why does it feel like the ground I walk on is being tugged out from under my feet? Am I the only one noticing this? Is this my fate—to stand here by myself, isolated and out of touch, while everybody else in the world goes about their daily lives, unaware that some nefarious monster is yanking the carpet out from under them? Do they not feel the movement too, this almost tidal force dragging us farther and farther away from the here and now that is familiar, to some other there, some other then? Or is the movement so slow that those unattuned to it fail to notice the changing scenery? Has the earth spun out of its orbit? I can’t be the only one feeling this.
There were two gunshots this evening: one close, one far. I cringed after both. At least they’re not torturing them, I told myself—as if that somehow excused what they were doing. Then a couple of hours later, that awful yelping coming from Main Street, maybe Lewis Boulevard. Mom and Dad didn’t hear it because their hearing sucks, but I did. I hear everything. Then that dull thwacking sound—I knew right away what was happening—and after that: silence. What was it that made that thwacking noise? A shovel? A garden hoe?
And Apollo sleeps between the wall and my bed tonight, as he does every night. I haven’t walked him since Friday morning, and I’m too scared to walk him now. I’m scared of somebody bigger than me, or a group of people collectively bigger than me, sneaking up from behind, stealing his leash out of my hands, and taking him away to do the unthinkable. Shit, the way things are progressing, they might just shoot him right in front of me. I think the backyard is big enough for him to romp around in, but from now on I’ll be keeping an eye on him whenever he’s out there. These days you never know what might crawl under the fence when you’re not looking.
There has been a lot of death this summer, all of it piling up in under a week. How is that even possible? Pete would know how to calculate the odds on that sort of thing, and I’m sure the numbers he would come up with would be astronomical. But I think even Pete is starting to question his unbending faith in statistics and logic. He might put on the front of being Mr. Scientist, but when the shit hits the fan…
Everybody gets dirty. He understands that now. He knows that Saturday wasn’t a Mulligan, a do-over, because in real life there are no do-overs. It happened. Period. There’s just no getting around the fact that he had stood watching as I hacked an old Bloodhound to death with a garden hoe. And as bad as that had been, Rhoda Baker’s missing face and gaping pussy were worse. Far worse. Her throat was gone! Pete was spared that, at least.
Is he still expecting me to watch shooting stars with him two nights from now? If so, he’s in for a big surprise. Knowing Pete, he’s counting on my being there. I bet he has everything all planned out. Million bucks says he’s already bought the microwave popcorn, Twizzlers, Kit-Kats, and other junk food, because that’s what we did last year. He thinks it’s a tradition now. Things are different this time around, though. I hope he understands that and doesn’t get all pissy when I tell him I’m not coming. I’ll have to let him down gently.
We did have a fun last year. Things had been so much simpler then, sitting up in his room, talking about constellations. Orion, Canis Major, Taurus, Lepus, Canis Minor—Jesus, I can’t believe I remember those names. I meant to read up on them so I wouldn’t sound like an idiot when Pete pointed to the sky this year and asked, "What constellation is that?" And he would quiz me too, because Pete likes to stump me. To try, anyway. I wish I could rewind the earth like Superman and visit that night. I wouldn’t fuck up the space-time continuum by talking to my younger self. I’d just look at him standing on the roof, watching cosmic dust plow brilliant trails through the dark firmament
The Perseids—that’s what the meteor shower is called—named after Perseus, the constellation. I know who Perseus the Hero is, but I have no idea what the constellation looks like. I really should have studied.
How long can I go on talking to myself? Forever, or just until daylight comes?
Russell wouldn’t have to wait for either. He drifted off to a fitful, sweaty sleep fifteen minutes later. It was the kind of slumber that really wasn’t slumber at all—full of twisting and writhing that balled up his sheets at the foot of the bed and kept his dog awake all night with worry.
He did dream, though. But when he awoke at 10:07 the next morning, he could barely remember what the dreams had been about. They were bad—that much he would later recall. Bad dreams about bad dogs.