“Since this year.” He started to scoop all his papers off the kitchen table and wad them into one big mass. “I got tired of faking it. I like to win. When you play games you’re supposed to win. That’s the whole point. If you’re not trying your hardest to win, then you’re not playing it right.” He began shoving books and wads of what I hoped was doodles but knew, knew was his homework in his backpack. “If you’re following ‘rules’”—he pulled a face at the word—“then you’re not trying your hardest. Games shouldn’t have rules, not if you want to win. They’re . . . um . . .”
“Mutually exclusive?” I provided.
He zipped up the backpack. “Exactly. If I’m going to play a game where I’m supposed to win, then I’m going to win. Coach VanBuren doesn’t understand. He says I have ‘poor impulse control issues,’ ‘the attention span of a frigging gnat,’ and I’m a ‘little psycho asshole.’” The three quotes, I could hear them as if that potbellied, balding, worthless excuse for a human being was standing beside me. I felt a flush of anger, but Cal was indifferent. He was snorting at the man’s idiocy. “For a coach he doesn’t know anything about winning.”
I supposed he didn’t. He’d also been demoted from good man to jackass in my book. “No, he doesn’t. You know what my teachers tell me in the dojos?” I hadn’t thought it was time for that yet, but I’d been wrong.
Stuffing a candy bar in the zippered pocket of his backpack, he slung it on, finally ready for the morning in his worn Batman T-shirt, faded jeans, and scuffed sneakers. “What?” he asked curiously.
“That in there are rules and honor, but outside in the real world, rules and honor only get you . . . mugged or worse.” I’d been about to say killed, but we had enough of that word for the past few days. “You don’t have poor impulse control and you’re not a psycho. You know how to protect yourself, to come out on top, and that’s something your coach doesn’t know himself.” I gave him a nudge for the front door. I could hear his bus wheezing down the street outside. “Come home straight from school, lock the doors, and don’t let anyone in. All right?”
“And jack-off Junior next door?”
“Language.” I’d told myself that battle was lost, but the reaction was knee jerk. I gave him a carefully light swat to the back of his head. “Behave.” As for Junior, that sad miserable lump of a neighbor was making my life a living nightmare and he had genuine monsters to compete with in that area. “I’ll think of something at school today. Now go. Catch your bus.”
He was gone and climbing onto the creaking yellow whale. Looking through the windows he gave me a half wave. When you had one person in the world, just one, who gave you affection, you were slow to outgrow that. I waved back. I hoped he didn’t for a long time, because it was true of us both. We each only had one person.
Inside the bus a kid nearly half a foot taller than Cal stood up and said something insulting from the sneer on his face. Behind the smoky glass I saw Cal look up at him and bare his teeth. It wasn’t a smile or a grin. What had he said the other day? “I like lions. They’re cool.” Cal showed the would-be bully the teeth of a lion and the kid sat back down hurriedly, letting Cal walk on to find his seat. By now the bus was halfway down the street and I was thinking that hateful idiot VanBuren could be right this one time.
Cal probably shouldn’t play sports anymore.
Lions didn’t play to win. Lions didn’t play at all.
Lions survived.
There was nothing in the newspaper or on the Internet in the high school library about a missing prostitute. But it had been only last night. That sort of information would take days, maybe weeks to pop up considering her occupation. Considering if she went with Junior at all. She could have the worst drug habit in the world, but one look at the sweaty, watery-eyed, generally leaky blob that was Junior could change anyone’s mind and put them on the straight and narrow. It could be that Junior had been asking for directions or decided that a prostitute the hepatitis yellow of old chicken fat was one disease risk too many. He did work in a hospital, cafeteria or not. He had to know some people were deathly ill by looking at them no matter how dim he was.
The hospital. Lawrence Memorial, had to be, it was basically the only hospital to speak of in New London. I could tell Cal we were checking to see if Junior did work there or if he’d lied. If he was behind plastic, slowly scooping up burned squares of lasagna with a blank expression, wearing a hairnet and plastic gloves, looking as harmless as he had in his bathrobe only more so, Cal could be persuaded no one like that could be a serial killer so clever that the police wasn’t aware he existed. I could convince myself as well. After last night, I was not having doubts, but . . . questions. Junior wasn’t a killer, but you didn’t have to be a killer to be a predator. It was best to cover all the bases.
“Hey, Leandros.” There was a hot and heavy breath hitting the skin of my neck not covered by my ponytail. “My uncle lives on your block. He says your mom’s a whore.” There was the laugh of an excited monkey, screeching and aggressive. “’S’at true?”
I turned off the library computer and swiveled in my chair to see buzzed brown hair and gunmetal eyes. Rex. That wasn’t his real name. That wasn’t a dog’s real name these days, but it was all I could be bothered to remember. Rex. Bully. Brothers who were already in prison and waiting for him to join them. Completely not worth my time. “She is,” I said agreeably, standing a little too close in his personal space. He automatically stepped back and my lip curled. Bullies, so predictable. “But she charges extra for pathetic fumbling virgins like you. You might want to save up.” I walked around him and went out the door.
Cal was a lion, but he wasn’t the only one.
Cal shifted from foot to foot in the autumn brown grass. He was nervous. Cal didn’t get nervous or he hadn’t much past the age of seven. “It’s a good plan,” I repeated. “We go in, find the cafeteria, check that Junior actually works there. We might even be able to talk to some people there.” Or I would. Cal was not especially adept at being casual if there was nothing physical to be gained. “Ask what kind of place it is to work. Are the people nice. Are there any weirdos because I’ve worked with them before and I don’t want to again. It’s simple and it’ll work.” I wouldn’t use the word weirdos if it weren’t a con, if only a little one. When I went to college, I’d fit in. My vocabulary would be correct, my behavior perfect, my grades exemplary, and that would save Cal and me.
Being perfect.
Ducking his head, Cal stared at the strip of grass we stood on along with its one spindly tree that would explode with cherry blossoms in the spring. For now it was bare and vulnerable and Cal was doing a flawless imitation of the same. “It’s a good plan,” he echoed me with an uneasy mutter. He looked up at the ER entrance, the place that had the most people coming and going. Blending in would be easier there than the front. I’d taken a look there first. The moment you stepped in you were facing an information desk with sharp-eyed elderly volunteers who wanted to know where, why, who, when . . . trying to be helpful. They would’ve been more helpful without the security office six feet away.
“Then what’s the problem?” I said impatiently. I shouldn’t be that way, but this was mostly for him. It was getting old, all of this and I was losing my patience. I had more important things to do than to keep trying to drag the ridiculous and stubborn delusion of a killer out of my brother’s head.
He wrapped his arms around himself. Normally he would’ve snagged a hand on my sleeve if something was bothering him, but I was annoyed and I had let him hear it. “It smells.” He swallowed. “Even from here. It smells like blood and death and cancer. Cancer smells like blood frying in a burned skillet, did you know? It does. But it smells like that mouse that died in the wall that one time and rotted until we found it. It smells like that too. And pus—it’s sweet but sick at the same time. How can it smell like both? They put alcohol over it all but that only makes it worse because it’s all still there. It’s like a graveyard but no one knows they’re dead yet. No one knows. . . .”