I lean into the microphone. "Yeah." Oops. I'm supposed to say, "Yes, sir," or something like that, right?
"Don't have a car yet, do you?"
"Nah." Oops. Again.
"Well, stop by the lot. We'll take care of you."
The crowd goes crazy with more applause.
And then it's all done, thank God. The final round of applause dies out and the mayor thanks everyone for coming and that's that, and I breathe a sigh of relief.
Dad starts to make his way toward me while the mayor makes sure to get one last picture with me.
"Are you serious?" I ask the mayor. "About the car?"
"Of course! We'll help you spend a little of that reward money, huh?" He slaps me on the back and laughs like it's a joke, but it's not. "I'll get you a great deal, don't worry. Give you my cost on the whole thing. I've got the perfect car in mind already."
Being mayor of Brookdale is not exactly a high-paying gig. We learned that in an elementary school unit on local government. I think he gets like ten grand a year, which—if you ask me—is probably ten grand too much to run this place. So he has to have a regular job, too, and this particular mayor owns a car dealership.
This is actually a pretty sweet deal, all things considered. Dad wasn't going to be buying me a car any time soon, after all. I wouldn't need Flip to drive me everywhere all the time. I could have some freedom.
Even though I don't really deserve it.
Because...
And then Dad's on the stage, shaking the mayor's hand, and he puts his other hand on my shoulder and the mayor says, "You must be so proud of Kevin."
And it kills me when Dad says, "Yes. I am."
SELF-LOATHING #1
My DAD—NOW THERE'S A HERO, I GUESS. He carried a gun. He served his country. He walked the desert sands, never knowing which step might be the last he would take.
And me? Yeah, I saved Leah's life.
But I did something else, too. Something no one knows about.
I don't know which would be worse—the world learning the truth, or the world never learning. Because if people find out, my entire world would crumble.
But worse than that is this: if no one ever knows, I think this secret is going to eat me alive from the inside out.
Chapter 7
Smart People
DAD ALWAYS SAID THAT MOM WAS THE SMARTEST PERSON in the family, and I agree with him. She proved it the day she left us.
If Dad thought Mom was the smartest in the family, she always returned the favor: "Your father is too brilliant for his own good," she would say. I never believed it because I never saw it. Dad was just ... Dad. One day I was feeling particularly snarky, so I asked him why he didn't do something more with his life, something important. I didn't put it that way, but that's what I was getting at.
He leaned back, stared at the ceiling, and thought for a while. Then he said, "I had to opt out of the opt-in society."
Which to this day still makes no sense at all. Not even to Flip.
So maybe he's just the smartest garbage man in the world. Doing all that physical work is good for him, he says. It lets the brain shut down and the body take over and maybe that's kind of like his own personal safety valve.
Isn't that what Mrs. Sawyer called it in history class—the safety valve? When America was young and things would get rough and then everyone would just move west and things would calm down because everyone was spread out and not getting on each other's nerves anymore?
Yeah, that's what they called it—the safety valve. That's what my dad has. That's what everyone needs.
Dad has to get up at like two in the morning for his job, so he goes to sleep at four or five in the afternoon most days, which is why he gets the apartment's only bedroom. I don't have a room of my own—I have the foldout sofa in the living room. See, when Mom left, Dad couldn't afford to keep the townhouse anymore, so we moved into this little apartment on Main Street.
The apartment is basically a basement with "delusions of grandeur." (That's one of Flip's pet phrases and I stole it because I like the way it sounds.) Mrs. Mac is our landlady—she lives in the house above us. She's like ten million years old and even though she's supposed to make sure everything is running right in the apartment, she usually ends up calling Dad when her pipes are acting up and stuff. She makes these really lousy blueberry muffins that are as dry as sand and half as tasty, and she's always bringing bunches of them to Dad and me.
So we've got one bedroom and one bathroom and a tiny living room and this little hallway with appliances that counts as a kitchen. There's junk piled just about everywhere because Dad goes off to work and comes home with all kinds of crap. I mean, sometimes I wonder if anything actually ends up in the truck. It all seems to make its way to our place instead.
Dad's all like, "We live in a disposable society. It's reprehensible." (He uses that word a lot.) And, "People throw away perfectly good things." And things like that.
He's got all of this old sporting equipment, like dented baseball bats ("I can pound that out") and rusting barbells ("They just need to be cleaned up") and other junk. At last count, there were ten broken VCRs stacked up in a corner. ("I just need to take 'em apart and get them working again," Dad says.)
I used to fold up the sofa every morning and unfold it every night, but eventually it hit me that no one visits us anyway, so now I just leave it open all the time. Fortunately, Dad has gotten used to this because now I hide my video camera and my tapes under there. I should toss all of it now. I really should. Can't bring myself to do it, though.
Not that I would throw it away here, anyway. I'd have to go to a Dumpster or something. I never toss anything incriminating at home. You never throw away anything that could prove you guilty when you live with a garbage man. Trust me on that one.
I mean, it's bad enough he digs crap out of other people's garbage. "Rescuing," he calls it. Which is why we have stacks and piles of "rescued" junk all over the apartment, so that there's barely enough room for us to move around. Bad enough he does that. But he totally checks out our garbage, too. I threw away a tube of toothpaste once that hadn't been rolled all the way up and he just about freaked on me. "Do you realize how wasteful this is?"
And heaven forbid I toss a piece of paper! As long as it's blank on one side, he'll cut it up into quarters and use it for note paper or shopping lists or whatever.
"We live in a limited world, Kevin," he told me once. "Everything runs out at some point. People need to realize that. I'm not going to have my son contributing to the problem."
I said something smart-alecky at that point about recycling bread crusts ... and he just launched into a tirade about how bread crusts could be ground up to make bread crumbs, which could be used in recipes (because he totally cooks all the time), and I realized—then and there—that there's just no point arguing with my dad.
Chapter 8
Two Sparrows
THE COOL THING ABOUT A DAD WHO SLEEPS in the evening (the only cool thing) is that I get to do what I want most nights, as long as I'm in bed by two a.m., when Dad gets up. So tonight, like so many others, I meet the Council at SAMMPark.
SAMMPark is the Susan Ann Marchetti Memorial Park, but no one in their right mind calls it that. Everyone just calls it SAMMPark. The town built it about five years ago, and it's pretty much one of the only places worth going to in Brook-dale.
When they first opened the place, it was a big deal. It was like Fourth of July and Memorial Day rolled into one. People took off work to come with their families, to listen to bands play, to barbecue, play Frisbee, all that stuff.
I was ten or eleven. My little brother, Jesse, was five or six. We were still a family back then. Dad and Mom and Jesse and me.
I couldn't believe how big the park was. There had once been an office park here, right on the edge of town, but after the economy went bad, the place just sat abandoned for years. Then the town suddenly had a wad of cash and the next thing you know—ta-da! SAM
MPark.
Before Dad would let us run off to play with the other kids, though, he dragged us over to a spot near the entrance to the park. There was a statue there—a lifesize replica of a woman dressed like a nurse.
"See this?" Dad asked.
Jesse was all fidgety. Mom put her hands on his shoulders to keep him still.
"Yeah, Dad," I said.
"All of these people are just here to have a good time, and that's OK, but..." And then he started rambling and I couldn't understand half of it.
"What your father is trying to say..." That was a big phrase for Mom. She said it all the time. When I was younger, I thought she had telepathy or something, seeing as how she could figure out what Dad meant to say. Especially when it seemed like he had no idea.
"What he's trying to say, is that people should know why the park is here. That's important."
Dad took a deep breath and nodded. "Right. Right. See, it was built for ... It was built by..." He blew out his breath. "Look. Here. See it?"
I read the inscription on the pedestal: Susan Ann Marchetti Memorial Park. Under that: Dedicated and built in her name by the man who gave her life and the man who gave her death. There were also two dates, just like on a gravestone.
"What does it mean?" I asked Dad.
"She was killed back before you were born," Dad said, "by a drunk driver." Dad had found a rhythm now and was comfortable. "Ran her off the road while she was on her way home from nursing school. The guy who did it wasn't much older than you—he had just turned eighteen. And he killed someone. He got off pretty light, too. His family was from Breed's Grove."
Breed's Grove was on the west side of Brookdale. Rich people lived there. Like super rich, you know? I suddenly felt guilty, even though I hadn't done anything.
"A few years ago, he came back to Brookdale. He was a big success, made a lot of money. But he came back here and the next thing you know, he was working with her father to build this park in her memory."
Dad stared at the statue for a long time. Jesse started fidgeting again. I kept waiting for Dad to say something else, but he just stared. Finally, Mom cleared her throat and told me and Jesse to go play. We ran off, but I looked over my shoulder. Dad was still just staring at the statue. Mom took one of his hands and stood there with him.
I went over to the playground area. It's like every kid in Brookdale was there—the place was all chaotic fun. Except for Jesse, who sat on a swing, not moving at all, staring down at his feet.
"What's wrong, Jess?" I thought maybe he wanted me to push him. He knew how to swing on his own, but he still liked being pushed.
I crouched down next to him and that's when I realized he was crying. I got angry and confused at the same time. "What happened? Did someone hit you?"
He shook his head ferociously. He never let Mom cut his hair, so it flopped all around his face. "No."
"Then what's wrong?"
"Why did she die?" And he started bawling. Other kids looked over.
"Calm down, Jesse." I knew who he meant—the dead girl. The one they'd named the park after. I should have known this would happen. Jesse cried at cartoons, for God's sake.
I pulled him off the swing and took him over near some bushes where I could calm him down and get him settled. "Remember how Pandazilla created Aquahorse?" I asked. It was this totally silly memory. We'd been playing together in the backyard and this gigantic stuffed panda—we named it Pandazilla because it was the bad guy for our army toys and superheroes—picked up a horse to throw it at something and instead Jesse tripped and the horse went flying into the wading pool. Jesse was four and this was, like, the height of comedy for him. The horse was taking a bath, we decided, and then we decided that the horse loved the water and we named it Aquahorse. I could always count on that stupid memory to make him laugh.
It worked again this time. "The horse took a bath," he said, sniffling a little bit.
"Yeah, that's right." And pretty soon he was doing all right and I helped him wipe up his tears with the edge of his shirt and we went off to play.
Later that night, when we were home and tucked in bed, I asked Mom why Dad had told us the story about the dead girl.
"Dad just likes for you to know these things. It's important to him."
"Why?"
A troubled look flitted over Mom's face for just a second. Looking back, that was probably my first clue that she was going to leave him. Us. "It's just important to him," she said, in a tone of voice that added, Beats the hell out of me, too.
That story—that day—always pops into my brain whenever I come to SAMMPark, which is actually a lot these days because the park is the Council's official outside-of-school meeting place. It's big enough that we can always find someplace to sneak off to when we need to discuss whatever mayhem we're going to concoct next.
Flip picks me up in his beat-up old orange coupe. We're the last to arrive; everyone else is already at the park. He keeps up a running stream of commentary about the ceremony at the school and all of the great ideas he'd had to disrupt it.
"But out of respect for a fellow Fool, I held back," he admits, then waits for me to fall all over myself thanking him. I'm not in the mood, though, so I just sit there.
"We should do something with the key," he says after a moment, pretending that the silence never happened. "I mean, there's got to be something we can do with it, right?"
I think about the key. It's actually on my key chain now, because ... Well, because it's a key, right? Not much else to do with it. And besides...
"If we do something with the key, they'll know it was me."
Flip's eyebrows shoot up. "Very true, Fool Kross! Very true. Nicely done. Good show."
Just then, we pass the big sign that reads, KEEP BROOKDALE BEAUTIFUL! I bite my lip because Flip is about to say...
"You know the problem with that sign, Kross? It pre—"
"'It presupposes that Brookdale was beautiful to begin with.'"
"Guess I say that a lot, huh?"
Only, like, every freakin' time we drive past it.
"The truth must be spoken." He steers into the parking lot at SAMMPark. "Let us disembark!"
Just inside the entrance is the statue of Susan Ann Marchetti. As he does every time he comes to the park, Flip saunters over to it and slaps it on the ass. "Hey, there, Susie baby!" he calls out. "Lookin' good, sweet thang!"
I hate it when he does that.
"So hot for someone made out of cold stone," he says on his way back to me. "I would have hit that, Kross. I really would have."
I almost tell him that he wishes he could have hit that. That Fam only hangs out with him because she's a freshman and she likes having a boyfriend who can drive. But there's no point to it. I mean, Flip once told me that he knows Fam is only his girlfriend because it's convenient. He doesn't care. He just likes having someone who hangs on his every word.
But I don't say anything because Flip'll just come back with something I have no answer for. So instead, we head further into the park for the party.
When I say the Council's having a party, you have to realize that a Council party is just the six of us hanging out at SAMMPark until it's too late at night, eating buckets of takeout wings from Cincinnati Joe's and drinking beer in the bushes so that no one busts us and smoking and listening to Flip, who blathers on about whatever wild thoughts have invaded his brain lately—radiation from quasars, prime numbers, college student plagiarism, last night's TV, sex. Whatever.
By the time the sun's gone down and the park has emptied out of the families, we're all pretty smashed, except for Flip, the designated driver. ("Dying in a car wreck isn't Foolish—it's just stupid.") Then again, Flip's permanently high on his own adrenaline and brainwaves, so he doesn't need booze or drugs.
Speedo had the foresight to bring a little baggie of pot, so we roll up and light up and sort of blunder around the park, losing more and more touch with reality. It's a great way to access Fooldom. You think and say stuff
while drunk or stoned that you'd never think or say otherwise.
I end up lying in the grass near the baseball diamond with Tit, the two of us just staring up at the stars, which suddenly look like giant, winking eyes. I've known Tit the longest of the whole Council. We grew up together in my old neighborhood, back when Mom and Dad were still together. We always end up doing this—splintering off—when the Council gets together. Flip calls us the Subcommittee.
Tonight, it's like the sky is watching us from every angle, and even though I'm stoned, this doesn't worry me or make me paranoid. It sort of makes me feel safe and secure. Like someone has my back.
It makes me think of my favorite verse from the Bible. Not that I know much about the Bible, tell the truth. I mean, I'm no scholar or anything. But I paid attention back when I used to go to Mass, and this one verse really hooked me one time when Father McKane was giving his sermon, so I looked it up later.
"Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered."
That's from Matthew. And what it basically means is that God's watching and he doesn't miss anything, which is a good thing.
And it makes me think like maybe tonight God punched holes in that big black vault overhead so that he could keep tabs on me and keep me from doing anything else really, unbelievably dumb or evil.
It's too late for the dumb, evil things in my past, but maybe there's still time to rescue me from my future idiocy.
Tit starts blabbing about girls.
We Fools, we tell each other everything.
Almost.
We keep no secrets from each other.
Almost.
So Tit's babbling about girls and that makes me think about Leah, and I wonder how the universe can be so screwy that I've ended up in this position—called a hero when I know I'm nothing of the sort.