slowly, so he could keep control of himself. “Why is Ann picking on me?”
“I guess she thought it was strange that when she came to her back door, she saw you standing in the window. And then she said you ducked out of sight.”
Sandy heard a whisking sound come from his brother’s side of the room. He and his mother looked over at Chris, who slept on his back, with his mouth wide open.
His mother took a step back from the bed. She folded her arms on her chest. “Okay, Sanford, I’m going to ask you for the last time. Did you throw the water balloon at the Randolphs’ house?”
Sandy stared into his mother’s blurry, greenish eyes. His body felt stiff and sore, as if he had rolled on concrete. Pressure built in his head. His eyes throbbed in their sockets. Something snapped and he exploded, “No! I told you. Why don’t you believe me?”
His mother collapsed inward, as if her plug had been pulled. “I’m going to get your father. Let him deal with this.” She turned and left the room.
Sandy lay on his back in his bed, staring at the flat frosted-white light fixture in the center of the ceiling. It was just like his brother to disappear when the trouble started. He was part of it, too. Sandy wondered if his father was sleeping. He would be madder if he was. He did not like them waking him up. Sandy waited, listening to the bottom of the screen still clacking against the sill. He thought about getting up and fastening it, but he would look guiltier if his father walked in and he was messing with the window. Better to wait. His dad hadn’t spanked him in a long time. Sandy figured he was too big to lie across his father’s lap while his father slapped his butt. It depended on what mood his father was in. He heard footsteps in the hall. He sat up as his dad came into the room.
“Bud, what is going on here? Your mother said someone broke the Randolphs’ window.”
Sandy knew he was safe. His father was in a good mood. “It wasn’t me, Dad!” Sandy said. No one could prove it was. “I heard Jackie Armstrong’s voice outside, then the window broke.” The stakes were getting higher. For the rest of all their lives, he had to keep his brother from telling them the truth. How could he pull that off? But, as time passed, it would probably seem less important, maybe even funny at some point.
“Did you tell your mother that?” his father said.
“Yes,” he whispered. He didn’t want Chris awake while his father was in the room. “But she won’t believe me.”
“Okay. Go to sleep then. I’ll talk to her.” His father pulled the door closed behind him.
Sandy lay awake for a long time. He listened to the leaves shush in the trees in the front yard. He thought he heard voices again outside the window. Maybe Armstrong was out there. Maybe he really did hear him earlier. But Sandy didn’t want to get up to look and wake Chris. Maybe Ann Randolph was out there cleaning up. It was better to let the whole thing die down and go away. It was just a broken window.
Sandy had the sick feeling that he had become a different person. Maybe criminals got started by telling a big lie that nobody believes and then they are forced to keep doing things to make sure no one ever finds out. He wasn’t sure how he was going to deal with Chris. The truth was he felt worst about his mother. He was sad that he disappointed her. She knew the truth and she knew he knew she knew. She probably would never totally believe in him again. The regret that flashed through his mind as he dropped off to sleep was: If only I had thrown it a little bit to the left.
It was two days later after school that Jackie Armstrong caught up with Sandy. Sandy didn’t see Armstrong, so he didn’t think of him. He never gave a thought to the possibility that from what he told her, Ann Randolph might call Jackie’s parents, and that Armstrong would get into trouble for breaking the window.
Sandy was late so he ran down the sidewalk toward the school bus. As he lifted his foot toward the first step on the bus’s stairs, something slammed into him from behind. He crashed into the metal railing and twisted, as Armstrong leaned into him. “Knock it off,” the bus driver yelled. “No fighting on the bus.” Sandy struggled free, climbed into the aisle, and hurried to an empty seat in the middle of the bus. Armstrong walked past with his clenched fist up in front of his bright red scowling face. “You are dead, Sandra,” he said. “When we get off this bus, I’m going to put you where you belong, Asshole.” He didn’t say why. Sandy could not imagine any other reason. Armstrong was twice as big as any other kid his age and he pushed people around, but Sandy had avoided trouble with him. Now he was going to fight Armstrong. The whole situation with the broken window was way out of hand. It was just a window. Nobody got hurt. Until the moment that he stepped off the bus.
Sandy tried to think of something that he could offer Armstrong, as he stood before him quaking at the bus stop and before his blood and guts gushed to the ground. Money. Indentured servitude. His iPad. The only thing he wouldn’t, couldn’t, give up was the truth.
He thought of pretending that he knew kung fu. His dad, who had done some fighting in his younger days, according to Sandy’s aunt, told him that attitude was as important as strength. If he screamed loud enough, chop punched his fists and kicked his feet, and attacked as if he believed he could take Armstrong, he might stand a chance of surviving. But Armstrong was right: Sandy had the killer instinct of someone named Sandra.
Sandy sat looking forward, ignoring Armstrong somewhere behind him. He imagined the bully was burning holes in the back of his head with his glare. He heard his name and turned toward the aisle. Mickey Mason, a friend of Chris’s, who everyone called Mouse, leaned in. “Are you really going to fight Armstrong?” Mouses’s eyes bulged and his mouth hung open so wide, drool leaked out.
“I don’t know, Mouse. Looks like it.”
“I promise to be like a brother to Chris when you’re dead,” Mouse whispered and walked away.
“Thanks,” Sandy said to the open seat in front of him.
Everyone on the bus knew he was a dead man. He looked around. No one would make eye contact. He heard whispering and tittering. Maybe he could run home the second his foot hit the ground off the bus. Dash past everyone into his house and lock the door. But then, he could never come out again. His reputation in the neighborhood would be set for life. Sandra the Weak, the Coward, the Lying, Mother-hating, Back-stabbing, Chicken-hearted Jellyfish.
Normally Sandy hated the bus ride home from school. It took twenty-five minutes and always seemed to take three hours. He could never get home fast enough. This time he looked up and they were already gliding to his stop at the corner, a block from his house. He stood, grabbed his backpack, and hurried up the aisle toward the front of the bus. The door opened and he stepped to the ground. Already six or seven kids gathered around him, in a half circle. The bus drove away. The cloud of diesel fumes swirled around Sandy, and out of the cloud stepped Armstrong. He came to where Sandy stood on the dirt parkway, planted his feet and stared. Sandy looked at Armstrong’s freckled, blotchy, red face. He felt calm. He was sorry for this big ugly kid whom nobody liked and called Baby Huey and Sluggo behind his back.
“Lie down,” Armstrong said, his hands at his sides.
Sandy looked over Armstrong’s shoulder toward his own house. He saw his mother’s car parked in the driveway in front of the garage.
“Go ahead, Sandra. Lie on the ground.” Armstrong clenched and unclenched his fists at his sides.
“What are you talking about?” Sandy said. He looked at the ground in front of him, covered in stickers, dirt, swarming red ants, and chunks of chalky white dog shit.
“Fight him, Sandy,” someone called from behind Armstrong.
“Kick his ass!” someone else yelled.
The kids in the crowd started moving. Sandy could hear their shoes swishing in the dirt and their clothes rustling. He saw Chris, standing at the edge of the crowd with a frantic expression on his ashen face.
“Blood!” som
eone shouted.
Armstrong ignored the taunts. He rocked on the balls of his feet, his hands working at his sides, eyes boring into Sandy. “Lie down before I put you down like a dog,” he said.
“Why? What are you talking about?” Sandy said.
“I want everyone to see what a liar you are. So lie.”
Sandy looked at the ground again. “I am not going to lie in that.” Sandy pointed toward the dog shit.
“Then I’ll put you there.”
Sandy remembered his dad told him that if he got into a fight, the first thing to do was to hit the other guy in the stomach. As hard as he could. One quick punch into the midsection and the fight was over. Armstrong still had his hands down and his gut exposed. Sandy thought about it, seeing if he could raise the ire to hit another person, without any real reason. He only had to lift his fist, pull it back, and launch it into Armstrong’s ample stomach. Armstrong took a step forward, as an aluminum soda can clincked off his shoulder.
“Back off, Sasquatch,” someone yelled.
“Blood! Blood! Blood!” A chant had started among the group watching.
“Come on, Sandy. Kill the oaf!”
Armstrong moved forward, in long strides, insuppressible like Frankenstein. Sandy had another thought about running away, but Armstrong pulled him into a clench. Sandy’s arms were