Applewood (Book 1) Read online

  “Can’t ride the bus without a ticket kid. Rules are rules.”

  Dugan knew it was a lost cause. He turned around to begin the long walk of shame down the three steps, but for some reason he decided to turn and make one last try.

  Looking into Marden’s stony face, he said, “You know I take this bus every day. You see me here every day. Every single day.”

  He waited another moment before he gave up and got off the bus. He wasn’t going to beg. Sometimes Marden let kids ride the bus and sometimes he didn’t, and as far as Dugan knew, that was the one immutable law of the universe. As he descended the three long stairs he began to hear assorted jeers and catcalls directed at him through half-open windows from some of the nastier kids.

  He turned around in time to watch Jimmy say to Marden, “You’re a real prick, you know that?” before he and Larry both followed Dugan back onto the street below.

  Dugan supposed it was just in case they hadn’t heard him before that Marden repeated, “Rules are rules, kid,” before he reached over and pulled the lever that closed the door. Larry bent down to pick up the nearest rock he could find and threw it at the departing bus. They watched it smack against the rear emergency door before spinning off into the woods. Only after the bus had disappeared altogether did they begin the long walk to school. It was about two and a half miles.

  It took forty-five minutes to get there, but they knew they might make it just in time for homeroom if they jogged part of the way. As they approached the school, they heard the two short bells signaling two minutes to homeroom so they were able to slow down some. Mr. Larsen, the school’s security guard, was standing at the side door. He had been about to lock it as the three of them approached.

  “Nice of you gentleman to join us today,” he sneered as they passed.

  They split up quickly after that. Dugan ran to his locker to hang up his coat and shuffle his books before looking down at his watch. He figured he had just enough time to run to the almost empty cafeteria and grab an orange juice.

  While standing at the counter, he glanced toward the glass front doors and saw what looked like the aftermath of a ticker tape parade. Torn and shredded pieces of newspaper were strewn all around the floor. After paying for his juice, he walked over to investigate. He saw a small kid with red hair crawling around underneath the tables on hands and knees. He was picking up the trash and putting it all into a brown paper bag.

  Dugan noticed then that some of this newspaper had been painted green. He moved closer and began to see one-inch pine stalks scattered all over the dirty linoleum. He stepped on something and stopped to lift his sneaker. A tiny Confederate soldier had impaled his rifle into the worn tread of his shoe. Reaching down, he pulled it out and heard quiet sniffling from the boy on the floor. Just as the long bell rang signaling his last chance to be in homeroom, Dugan got down on his hands and knees and began to help Mike.

  The two crawled around silently underneath the tables. Dugan used one of his books to make a small pile of ripped up newspaper, broken toothpicks and pine needles, and shoveled it into the paper bag with his hands. When he looked at Mike, he saw him using his shoulder to wipe tears from his eyes. After they had gathered up most of it, Dugan spoke for the first time.

  “Who did this, kid?” Mike shook his head and looked down.

  “It’s all right, Mike. I won’t say anything, I promise. Just tell me who did this.”

  After a moment, Mike looked up. “Who do you think?”

  Dugan just nodded. He didn’t have to ask again. It was Harris, and his brother Michael, and Cotter, and that gang. Dugan recognized their handiwork.

  After they finished cleaning up the mess, Dugan stood and looked down at Mike. “You gonna be all right, kid?”

  Mike looked down at the ground and nodded. Dugan didn’t know what else to say, so he began walking away, but turned around suddenly.

  “You wanna know something, kid?” Dugan waited to meet Mike’s eyes before saying, “That was the coolest thing I ever saw. I mean it.”

  Mike half-smiled and looked away. Dugan began running toward his homeroom. He knew he was already late, but a grim smile crossed his face when he thought that at least this time, he didn’t need a ticket.

  4

  Stephen Harris has a headache

  Thick smoke clouded the interior of the vehicle. Stephen Harris and Johnny Walsh were seated up front, Harris in the driver’s seat. Cotter and Michael Harris were in the back. Cotter kept flicking his lighter on and off and staring into the flame.

  “Cut that shit out,” Harris said. The noise made his headache worse.

  Cotter flicked the lighter a couple more times before shoving it into his coat pocket. Michael handed the joint up front to his brother. Harris took the last hit and threw the remnant down onto the floorboard in front of him. He watched it burn for a moment before closing his eyes to quiet the throbbing in his head. The four sat in stoned silence amid the bluish haze.

  “Whose car is this, anyway?” Michael asked.

  “Don’t recognize it,” Walsh said.

  Cotter began leafing through a stack of college-level textbooks he had found in the back seat. “Must belong to one of them loser college kids here for car-eeer day,” he said, sarcastically stretching out the word. He began tearing out pages in thick chunks and crumpling them into a small pile at his feet. He stopped suddenly to snicker, “Hey Harris. There’s a book back here about you.” The slight lisp caused by his two fully formed sets of front teeth made the name come out sounding like Harrith.

  Although he had begun to nod off, Harris managed to raise his bleary eyes and look into the rear-view mirror to see Cotter holding up one of the books. Harris looked away. He couldn’t read that well anyway; it was even worse when he was stoned and had a headache and the letters were all backwards.

  “Yeah? Whatsit say?” Harris closed his eyes again.

  “Abnormal Psychology: Treatment and Effects,” Cotter said, then he and Walshie erupted with laughter.

  From his perch in the back seat, Michael was smart enough to wait for his brother’s reaction before daring to join in. Harris slowly raised his head and opened his bloodshot eyes to grin into the mirror. Cotter threw the textbook back into the pile.

  “Career day. Does it get any lamer than that?” Walsh asked.

  Michael looked out the window toward the school. The last lunch bell had already rung, which meant it was too late now for any of them to get back into the building without going through the office-note bullshit. Michael knew that none of them would even try, and the words were out of his mouth before he could stop them. “I dunno. People gotta do somethin’ with their lives, don’t they?”

  He was thinking about how the four of them would split soon and spend the rest of the afternoon down in someone’s basement, hanging out and getting even more wasted. He remembered foggily that things had been better for him until the sixth grade. Back then, he even had a few friends of his own. But that was the year they decided to hold his older brother back, his brother Stephen who was sixteen years old and still in the ninth grade.

  “Shut the fuck up, ya homo.” Walsh turned his head around to stare daggers at Michael in the back seat. Cotter abruptly stopped drumming on his knees.

  Michael watched his brother begin to raise his head, the movement as slow as an uncoiling snake. He turned slowly toward Walsh. Walsh must have sensed something wrong too, because he remained frozen in position until Stephen Harris spoke.

  “Whaddyou call my brother?”

  Walsh curled his lips upward in imitation of a smile. He turned his head slowly toward the driver’s seat. “Steve…come on, man. You know I was just kiddin’, right?” He turned back around to look at Michael. “No hard feelings, right?” Walsh’s eyes implored Michael to help get him out of this. Michael probably would have, too, but it happened way too fast.

  Harris reached across the front seat with both hands and grabbed Walsh by the hood of his trademark white sweats
hirt. Twisting it around his neck, he used the hood to push him hard against the car door where his head made an ugly thump against the glass.

  Walsh put his hands up in a defensive posture, but it was already too late. Harris sprang out of his seat like a jack-in-the-box, pushed Walsh down and began to pummel him mercilessly. Open-mouthed, Michael stared in mute horror at the explosion of violence in the front seat. While he immediately recognized the sound of screams and moans, Michael realized that they sounded different somehow. It occurred to him that of course these would sound different because this time he wasn’t the one making them. He felt rather than saw Cotter resume pounding his feet and drumming on his knees to music that only he could hear.

  As Michael tore his eyes away from the scene, he caught a glimpse of himself in the rear-view mirror. His mouth was open and silvery liquid dribbled out. He turned away to look out the window toward the school, moved his hands up against the glass, and pushed as hard as he could. It felt like he was drowning, and the only dry land for a mile was in that brick building just across the way.

  “You didn’t answer my question,” he heard his brother shout. “What did you call my brother?” He kept repeating that as he pounded on his friend.

  For his part, Walsh was determined to take the pummeling like a man. He knew that the coppery taste in his mouth was coming from a split lip, but whatever else was going to happen, he knew one thing for sure: however many times Harris asked him what he’d said, he sure as hell wasn’t going to repeat it.

  5

  In the sweet, summertime, summertime

  The three friends lay on top of huge slabs of hard granite that jutted precariously out into thin air thirty feet above the cool water, baking in the midday sun. Larry was covered head to toe with suntan lotion. Jimmy and Dugan didn’t worry about that. Before the summer was over Jimmy would be brown as chocolate. Dugan just let himself burn.

  “Hey jizzboy, pass me a beer, willya?” Jimmy said. His short blond hair was spiked up in front from his dips in the water, and the first pink of summer tan was already showing on his forehead.

  Dugan lifted his head and looked over at Larry. Suntan lotion had congealed in the corners of his nose and dribbled down to form white stalactites underneath his chin. Dugan laughed out loud before laying his head back down on the towel as Larry reached into the cooler.

  “I like that,” Larry said, “Makes me sound like a superhero.” He passed the beer to Jimmy. “I want both you guys to call me that from now on.”

  Jimmy laughed. “Sure, but only on the condition we never have to hear exactly what kind of superpowers you have.”

  The three had hooked up at 8:30 that morning, before the heat of the early summer day fully set in. They pooled the beers each had surreptitiously collected over the long winter with sandwiches and bags of chips, carrying it all in a Styrofoam cooler along the abandoned granite railway, three miles into the woods, and up to the old quarry.

  The first summertime leap into its bottomless depths always set their legs shaking, and on his first dive of this summer, Jimmy didn’t come up for almost a minute. Larry had a thing about heights, so he didn’t make the jump and wouldn’t go anywhere near the edge. He’d walk to the bottom of the quarry and join his friends there. The three spent the morning diving, swimming, and splashing water at each other. When they’d grown tired of that, they climbed back up the hill to eat, drink, and bask in the midday sun.

  The top of the abandoned quarry was eighty feet above the icy water, but they usually set up camp somewhere around the thirty-foot level. Nobody in town knew just how deep the water really was; some said it was eighty feet, others had done the math and claimed that it had to be at least two hundred. Every kid in town had been taught the history of the quarry. Grantham granite had been used throughout colonial times and into the Twentieth Century, shipped out of town on the now defunct and abandoned granite railway.

  Some had been used to build the Bunker Hill monument, and some had gone into the pylons of the Brooklyn Bridge. A lot of it went into buildings right here in town: the town hall, the railroad station, the old library that was now home to the Grantham Historical Society, and the thick stone walls of the state prison where Jimmy’s father worked. Outsiders knew Grantham Granite only as the nickname for the town’s sports teams, but the boys all knew it had been a pretty big deal once.

  “Hey Larry, you been burpin’ the baby regular?” Jimmy asked.

  “No, but I’ve been floggin’ the General incessantly,” Larry answered to shared laughter.

  Dugan smiled to hear Larry use so many Ss. He had a slight lisp, so he’d mastered staying away from the S sound at all costs, at least when he wasn’t among friends.

  Jimmy said, “Hey, Dugan.”

  “Yeah?” He expected to be asked about his own personal habits, but Jimmy surprised him.

  “Tell me somethin’ I don’t know.”

  Dugan thought it over before deciding. “Gimme a beer and I might oblige.”

  He heard the cooler open and seconds later sat up like a shot as Jimmy laid the cold beer on his chest. Shrieking with laughter, Dugan popped open the beer and grabbed his sunglasses. He put them on, lit up a smoke, and gazed into the placid waters below.

  “All right,” he said finally, “but you guys gotta promise to keep this one to yourselves.”

  “Goes without sayin’,” Jimmy said.

  “I’m insulted,” Larry snapped. Dugan smiled. They both knew that was the most solemn part of the code. He took a long swig before he began to speak.

  “You guys remember that time I had my clothes stole last fall?”

  Both friends nodded. Larry coughed loudly and squeezed his balls. It had happened the day Dugan’s class took their physicals. The boys all had to get undressed and then walk across the hall to await their turn, sitting on the cold metal folding chairs outside the nurse’s office wearing nothing but their jockeys. All three of them had been through this particular circle of junior high hell and as far as Jimmy was concerned, the story was nothing new.

  “I said tell me somethin’ I don’t know.”

  Dugan waited a moment before going on. “All right, well here’s the part you don’t know.”

  Interested now, Jimmy sat up on one elbow to look at Dugan.

  “I saw those clothes the very next day…” Dugan downed the rest of his beer and crumpled up the can “…and someone else was wearin’ ‘em.”

  Dugan’s friends needed a moment to process this information. As soon as they did, they both began talking.

  “Get out!” Jimmy said.

  “No way!” Larry hooted.

  “True story,” Dugan said, seriously enough to warn against any further hooting. After a pause, Jimmy asked the unspoken question.

  “Well? Who was it?”

  Dugan lifted the top of the cooler to deposit his empty and grab another beer before going on as if he hadn’t heard.

  “They were my brand new school clothes. A plaid shirt and a pair of gray Levi corduroys. I’d only worn ‘em once. I liked those clothes. My mother bought ‘em for me.” He raised his head to look off into the distance, then cracked his beer and downed some of it.

  “The school nurse, she didn’t even believe me at first. She came out and helped me look around awhile. And I’m standin’ there with my hands over my dick.”

  Larry laughed, but Jimmy didn’t.

  “So anyway, she finally gives up too, and they go and get my gym clothes outta my locker and then they lemme go home for the rest of the day.” He paused before going on. “Very next day, I’m walkin’ down the hall and I see someone wearin’ ‘em. They were my clothes, no doubt about it. The pants were a little long on him, so he had to kind of roll up the cuffs. The shirt didn’t fit too good neither, but he walks right on by me like he wasn’t even tryin’ to hide it or nothin’.”

  Breaking the long silence that followed, Jimmy asked, “So what did you do? Did you go up to him? Did you say anything?”
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br />   “Naw, I didn’t. I mean I thought about it, but what am I gonna do? I’m standin’ there lookin’ at someone else wearin’ my clothes. It kinda creeped me out. I wouldna believed it myself if I hadn’t seen it with my own two eyes. I mean, I expected to find ‘em maybe shoved down a toilet or up in a tree or somethin’. That I could deal with. But the last thing I expected to see was someone else wearin’ ‘em.”

  Dugan took off his sunglasses and shoved his shoulder length brown hair behind his ears. “I mean, howsaguy supposed to deal with that?” He lay back down on the towel and closed his eyes. “And the last person I expected to ever see wearin’ ‘em was Michael Harris.”

  “Holy shit,” Jimmy whispered after a moment.

  The Harris name alone was enough to strike a Grantham middle schooler mute. But the silence that followed Dugan’s story was something different. Jimmy and Larry both knew that Michael Harris had taken a perverse joy in making Dugan’s life hell, from his very first day of junior high, and both knew that Dugan hadn’t told them the half of it.

  “Maybe he’s queer for ya or somethin’,” Larry said quietly.

  Dugan didn’t respond. He’d considered that possibility at the time, but rejected it. Michael Harris was a lot of things, but queer for Dugan he was not. The silence lingered until Jimmy spoke up.

  “No. That’s not it. That’s not why he did it.”

  Turning to face his friend, Dugan was surprised to see Jimmy already looking straight at him. They stared at each other for a moment. “All right. I’ll bite. Why’d he do it?”

  Jimmy turned away to look off into the distance. Another minute passed before he spoke.

  “He did it because he wants to be you, man. Wants to be like you, anyway.”

  Dugan was stunned by the insight. Jimmy’s theory was the only thing that halfway made sense. It was one possibility that would never have entered his own mind during his lonely struggle to understand the bizarre incident. But Jimmy’s theory scared him more than Larry’s did.