Course not. But you were.
I was a bitch. I am a bitch. That’s what they call girls like me. Not so far, I mean, at this school. There’s bitchier bitches here. But it will happen.
LaRose sits up. No, you’re just tough. You gotta be.
Lemme show you tough!
She jumps up, bounces the bed, and smacks him with his pillow. He lunges for her and they wrestle off the bed, onto the floor. They stop laughing when their bodies thump down hard. Nola calls out. Maggie is out the door into her own room quick as a shadow.
The parents’ door creaks. Nola’s voice floats from down the hall.
Some books fell, says LaRose from his bed. It’s all right, Mom. You can sleep now. I’ll be quiet.
Maggie?
Whaaaa? Mom? She answers from her own room, pretending she’s groggy and crabby. All is quiet. Falling asleep, Maggie thinks about LaRose. She thinks about him every night. He calms her down. He is her special, her treasure, she doesn’t really know what he is — hers to love.
Suddenly he is there, at her bedside, finger at her lips. He’s never done this before.
She turns toward him.
I wanna ask you something, he says.
Okay.
Who were those boys, you know, in the other school. Whenever. Those ones who held you down. Who did that stuff?
She looks over at LaRose’s skinny boy arms and hair so thick it won’t stay down. His question makes her sick. She thought she was over it, but turns out she’s been holding a pool of slime in her body. Now it seeps from her pores, a light film. Are there tears? She wipes her face. Damn. It still gets to her. And they remember, those guys. Last year Buggy said to her, fake innocent, Hey, Ravich, you still want it? You still want it like you did before? Another time, coming down the hall toward her, Buggy had grabbed his crotch. At least he flinched when she went in for the kick.
She tells: Tyler Veddar, Curtains Peace, Brad Morrissey, Jason “Buggy” Wildstrand.
I think I’ve seen those guys, says LaRose.
Plus there is this Wildstrand sister, Braelyn, just a year above me. She’s mean, pretends she’s hot, wears a ton of makeup. Plucks her eyebrows into half hoops. I hate her. I’m so glad we changed schools. She used to give me the stink eye. The finger. For nothing! I know Buggy said something to her, told Braelyn it was my fault.
I never forgot what you said that night, says LaRose.
You didn’t? The oozy snot dries off her. Their prying fucky fingers fly off her skin. You remember? What’d I say?
Can a saint kill?
A saint?
You meant me. Even though I’m not a saint.
LaRose, oh shit. I didn’t mean you should kill them.
Don’t worry. I’m not gonna kill them exactly, but yeah, now I’m stronger.
No, you’re not, she says. Please!
Tyler is now a high school wrestler. Curtains is ungainly and slow but a hulk. Brad Morrissey plays football. Buggy is nerveless, cruel, and very smart.
It’s over. Over! It does not affect me. Besides, they’re kind of brutal. They’re mean assholes. Promise you’re going to leave them alone.
Don’t worry. LaRose holds his voice down, modest. You know I work out with Father Travis. I have my green belt now.
Oh my god, don’t you try anything!
Ssshhhhhh.
He disappears.
Material of Time
PETER BROUGHT NOLA to his Cenex job and she began to work beside him a few days a week. She ran the registers, stocked the shelves and refrigerator cases, kept the bathrooms fiercely spotless. Not an item was out of place, all labels visible. The coffee station glowed like an altar. As she worked, Nola’s daily ration of sorrow dissipated into thousands of small items — the creamer cups, wrapped straws, adjustable candy hooks, the slushie machine and donut display case. Sometimes she stared long at the hot dog broiler turning endlessly until gold beads of sweating fat glistened on the skins of the lethal wieners. Sometimes she read and pondered the ingredients on the flimsy snack packages. When she counted the ice scrapers or replaced a shoplifted tire pressure gauge or studied the placement of magazines, it seemed that in righting the tiny things of life she was gaining control of herself, perhaps at a molecular level, for she was made up of all this junk, wasn’t she? The beef sticks, which she chewed in the car ride home, the fluffy chemical cups of French vanilla latte from the automatic dispenser. She drew an extra-large cup for herself every morning and sipped all day — the taste growing harsher, the dry acid eating at her.
Then Peter started drinking gas station lattes too. They laughed together at their latte addiction. The laugh flew out of Nola’s throat, harsh and rusty. It dissolved when it hit Peter’s chest. Nola saw it. That night, she rested her head there and closed her eyes.
A COLD RAIN was blowing, not sleet yet, or snow. Fat drops smacked Nola’s face as she came back to the house one afternoon. LaRose was upstairs, the door to his room halfway shut. Walking by the door Nola heard him talking, or rather, having a conversation. He often spoke while he was playing in his action world. He used Legos, blocks, magnets, an old erector set, Tinkertoys, cast-off bolts and odd bits of metal, even butter tubs and cracker boxes, to create a complex citadel. This magic edifice was attacked and defended by members of alliances that shifted and formed in his hands when he played with the many plastic creatures he had found in Dusty’s toy bucket or been given. Tetrahellemon, Vontro, Green Menace, Lightning, Mudder, Seker, Maxmillions, Warthog, Simitron, Xor, Tor, Hiki, and the Master.
He was shy about his games. He never played around people, usually closed the door entirely, sometimes spoke in whispers. But today LaRose was so absorbed in the invented drama before him that he didn’t hear Nola approach, or sense her listening.
Let’s connect our fists and rocket over the dinosaurs.
You can’t push me!
I repeat.
The plasma boat got our back. We’re safe.
Get Xor out! Quick! He’s getting weak!
Triceratops forced him in his jaws!
Good one, Hiki. The Master likes.
Don’t use that one, Dusty.
He lost his powers yesterday. He’s recuperating in the chamber.
Green Menace will stop the infest!
The cycle has begun and we must complete the universe.
Maxmillions. Take Maxmillions.
Yeah, you’re Seker. Hold the exam button down.
Then mouth explosions. Bchchchchch! Pfwoooozhzhz! And the quiet clashing of molded plastic.
Nola sank silently down against the wall beside the open door. Her face was peaceful, her eyes downcast; her lips moved slightly as if she was repeating a name or prayer.
She heard everything. An epic battle between light and darkness. Forms passing through the material of time. Character subverting space. The gathering and regathering. Shapes of beings unknown merging deeply with the known. Worlds fusing. Dimensions collapsing. Two boys playing.
The next day, Nola splashed gasoline on the rotted lumber and ten-year-old tax records and bank statements she had gathered in the burn pit. It was a sparkling, mild, windless day. She threw in a burning twist of paper. There was a dull whump. When the fire was burning hot, she pushed in the green chair.
That’s all over, she said out loud.
Whenever she was alone, tears had filled her eyes. No drug had helped, and even LaRose had not helped at first. But after listening to him play with Dusty yesterday, she woke this morning and got out of bed before she knew she’d done it. There had not been that agonized mudlike hold the bed usually had on her. Then later this morning her old self stirred. Something unknown, internal, righted itself. She felt unalone. Like the inner and the outer worlds were aligned, as with the actions of the action figures. Because the fabric between realities, living and dead, was porous not only to herself. This pass-between existed. LaRose went there too. She was not crazy after all. Just maybe more aware, like LaRose was, like everybody said he was. Special. Something good he was doing for her by playing with her son from the other kingdom.