Freeze Frame (2 page)

I
opened my eyes. The tiny cell was bright. The sun had risen, but I wished it hadn't. I didn't know how long I was going to have to stay here or what I was supposed to do. It wasn't like Mom and Dad had sent me there as a punishment.

I could just hear how stupid that would've sounded.
Kyle, you really messed up this time. We're locking you up.

Yesterday nobody said anything at all. It was how they looked that made me sick.

I lay back down on the cot.

Footsteps echoed down the hallway. The door slid open.

“Hey, kid!”

I didn't answer.

“Kid, um…” He shuffled some papers. “Kyle Caroll? You sleeping?”

I opened my mouth, but no words came out.

“Caroll, you got visitors here. You gotta get dressed and come out. They're not gonna wait all day.”

I looked at the cop. I thought about the next scene of the movie. Everything got blurry then and went black. But that was the moment that everybody wanted to hear about. Over and over again. What could I say? I didn't know what had happened.

I thought about it again. The air smelled like iron and fire. I saw gray powder and heard a thundering boom. But I couldn't see.

One time Jase and I rented a movie called
Groundhog Day
, where the guy woke up every day on the same day. He had to get the day perfect, because if he didn't, he'd wake up on the same day again.

I kept wishing that would happen to me.

I
looked at the cop standing at the door. I wondered how fast he could run. Sometimes these guys seemed a little too thick around the middle to catch anyone.

“There's a lot of people with a lot of questions, kid. You need to get ready.”

He didn't look too tough. He looked kind of bored, actually. I wondered if he had been up all night. His face looked scruffy. My face never looked scruffy, but I shaved anyway, just 'cause the other guys did. My razors usually lasted about five or six weeks unless I forgot to take them out of the shower and they got all rusty. They lasted way longer than Mel's. It kinda sucked to have a sister hairier than me. Once I asked Jase if Brooke was hairier than he was. “I won't dignify that with a response,” he said.

Dumb question. Jason was one of the hairiest guys in tenth grade.

“I don't have any answers.” I turned my back to the cop.

October 8, 9:16
A.M
., Scene Four, Take One

There was a terrible noise. And a smell like burned matches. Hundreds of them. I choked. Then everything got quiet except for a sharp ringing in my ears—like one of those emergency broadcast tests.

“Oh, shit, Jason. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. Mom and Dad are gonna shit.” I looked around the shed. “Did anything break?”

But Jason didn't move.

“Jesus, Jason, help me out, man. We're in deep.”

Jason was slumped against Dad's workbench.

He didn't say anything. I couldn't hear much anyway, but I would've at least seen his mouth move if he had said something, like in one of those silent films. It was all wrong. He just looked at me funny.

“Jason, don't be an asshole. Help me out. Jason?”

At that moment, I felt like somebody had drained all my blood. Why the hell was he doubled over that way?

The shed door screeched open. Mom blocked out all the light.

“What's going on, Kyle? What was that noise?” Mom
looked at me, at Jason. “Oh my God, Kyle, what happened?”

I stood there.

Mom pushed me out of the way and ran over to Jason. “Mel! Mel, call nine-one-one!”

Mel stood in the doorway, gaping.

We were all stuck, like somebody had hit the pause button, only Mom didn't pause. Mel stood. Jason slumped. I froze. And Mom moved, flittered, vibrated.

“Jesus, Mel. Get out of the way, then.” Mom ran out of the shed and into the house. I could hear the hinge of the kitchen door. It squeaked and stayed ajar. Dad needed to fix the door. Mom came back with a blanket and sat on the shed floor. She held Jason's head in her lap.

Mom whispered something to Jason. It was a deep chant—humming, murmuring, rocking back and forth.

 

The cop came closer. “Kyle Caroll? Kid, you hafta get up now.”

I had to stay still. I had to stop time. Freeze frame. Pause.

“You've got some lawyer, your PO, and your folks here.”

The film wasn't pausing.

“PO?”

“Yeah, kid, Mark Grimes, your parole officer. He was
here last night with you.”

“Oh, yeah, that's right.”

“Get up.”

I couldn't see my parents. I shook my head.

He leaned over me. “Get up and get dressed. C'mon, kid.”

I looked around the cell. They'd told me it was a holding cell—someplace I'd be for only a night or two until they figured out what to do with me.

I turned to the cop. His nametag said
BYERS
. “What's the date?”

“October ninth.” He scowled. “Let's go, kid. They're waiting.”

I looked at him. How was it possible to keep moving forward when everything had stopped yesterday?

T
he same two officers from yesterday were in a cramped room with a smudgy plastic clock hanging crooked on the wall. I looked down at my wrist. They had taken my watch the night before.

The cops were drinking their coffee black. The fatso cop drank in slurps, steam fogging up his glasses. He had to take them off and wipe them. The glasses, thick and heavy, left red indentations on the bridge of his Silly Putty nose.

Mom hugged me—too tight. “We're going to figure this out, Kyle.”

I shuddered. It didn't seem like there was a lot of figuring out to do. They pulled out a chair for me.

“Michael, we need to ask your son some questions,”
said the fatso cop. They knew Dad. I don't know how or why, but they did.

Dad nodded.

I sat between Dad and our lawyer—Mr. Allison, who Dad golfed with every Thursday afternoon. I guess Dad had called in a favor.

Mark held out his hand and introduced himself. “I'm Mark Grimes, the parole officer assigned to Kyle's case. We have a detention hearing tomorrow during which I will recommend that Kyle be left in custody until all his psych evaluations are complete and I can better assess the situation.”

Mark crossed his arms. He wore a blindingly white shirt that showed his muscles. His head glistened—the perfect kind of bald and tan that you only see on Harley guys. There was a tattoo on his wrist of some Chinese writing or something.

 

Mark had come to the detention center when they processed me the day before. “Everything is just procedure,” he said. “Follow the directions of the detention staff when they're booking you.”

They photographed, fingerprinted, and strip-searched me.

When they finished, Mark was waiting. He looked me up and down. “Basically, kid, you belong to the state of Nevada. I work for the state, so now you belong to me.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We're going to be spending lots of time together until things get worked out around here, so you might as well call me Mark.”

I nodded. “Okay.”

They took a mug shot. If Jason had ever had to get a mug shot, Pastor Pretzer would have sent him to hell or something. Maybe I could get him a copy. I was about to ask Mark for my one phone call when I remembered. My stomach lurched and I almost threw up. I leaned my head against a cool brick wall.

“Kid, you okay?”

I nodded.

“It's late. You'd better get some sleep. We have a big day tomorrow. Any questions?”

“Um, is my mom okay?” The lump returned to my throat when I thought about how Mom had looked in the hospital parking lot.

“Your family is fine. You'll see them tomorrow. Get some rest.” Mark clapped me on the back, closing the door to the tiny room.

I hadn't realized how tired I was until then. I couldn't sleep, though. My mind replayed the day over and over again, always getting stuck at that one scene. A black screen faded to forms of gray, as if the shed had been dipped in murky fog. Jason's body was blurred, lying in a black pool. Then the screen became red.

 

“Kyle, are you ready?” Mr. Allison asked. “We need you to focus now.”

“Oh, yeah. Sure.” I nodded, looking around the small room.

The skinny cop stared at me with buggy eyes. He reminded me of Gollum from
The Lord of the Rings
. Fatty, on the other hand, looked more like Igor. It was like
Clash of the Movie Tools
.

I jerked my head sideways and gasped. Everybody in the room stared at me. Dad's hand was on my shoulder.

“Do you need me to repeat the question?” Gollum leaned back in his chair. “Can you take me through what happened yesterday, step by step?”

Both of the officers pulled out their little notebooks at the same time. It looked like one of those choreographed moves in Bollywood. I wondered if one of them would get up on the table and sing. They looked at me in the way adults look at kids on those after-school specials before the kid admits to having tried beer at a party. Do directors tell them to make those faces?

I looked at Dad.

Dad nodded.

I told them everything I knew, up until the blurry scene. Their pencils whirred. They flipped the pages and scratched more.

“We need to know what happened next. Do you remember pointing the gun? Squeezing the trigger? Anything like that?” Gollum leaned in.

“I don't know.” I shook my head. Scene Three was gone—a snippet of the film cut and thrown out. I'd seen a movie called
The Final Cut
where people had these implants in their brains that recorded their entire lives. After people died, cutters would edit their lives and present the recordings to the dead people's friends and family in
the form of a movie. It was like my scenes had already been edited.

Igor looked up over his glasses. “Hmm…,” he grunted.

“Okay, let's skip to what happened next. We'll go back to that part later. What do you remember after that?”

October 8, 9:18
A.M
., Scene Four, Take One, Continued

Mel and I watched Mom and Jason.

I heard Dad's car drive up. “Dad's back with the syrup, Mom.” Now we could have our pancakes and go back to our regular day. I remembered I hadn't eaten yet. I wondered if we'd have time to eat before the game. I felt hungry—starved.

“Mel, get yourself together and go get Dad.” Mom held Jason's head in her arms. She still rocked back and forth. “Now, Mel.
Go!
”

Mel moved in slow motion. She rested her hand on the doorframe and stepped back out of the shed.

“Hurry!” Mom shouted.

Mom changed at that moment—she became a still image. Everything in the shed lost the illusion of motion, as if the film had slipped off the reel.

Freeze frame.

Fast-forward…Pause…But there was no rewind.

Play.

“Hurry!” Mom hollered again, the film spinning back on the reel.

Mel jerked into action. Her ponytail bobbed up and down with each step. The kitchen door slammed shut. I heard distant shouts and hollers.

Jason and I were the only ones left on pause. Stuck. I started to worry we'd never catch up.

Come on, Jason. Get up, get up, get up, get up, get up.

Dad got to the shed in three strides. Mel ran behind him. Dad wrenched the shed doors open all the way. The rusty metal and hinges moaned. Light streamed in. The gray disappeared and I felt relieved, squinting in the bright October light. Maybe the dream was over.

“Oh, Jesus, Kyle.” Dad gripped my shoulders and slipped the gun out of my hand. The gun was hot, burning through my palm. When it was gone, I felt like I could step away. Rewind everything and start again. But the rewind button was jammed, and we just moved forward—without direction, without a script.

This wasn't supposed to happen.

“God, Maggie, what's going on?” Dad held his fingers to Jason's neck. “Jesus Christ, oh Jesus,” he whispered.

“I've called the ambulance. There's a lot of blood. I, I—” Mom's chin wrinkled and her voice wavered. “Michael, you need to go get Gail and Jim.”

Why did Dad have to go get Mr. and Mrs. Bishop?

I glared at Mom. I knew they'd be pissed. But they never said
pissed
at the Bishop household. So they'd probably be “totally disappointed.”

Jason was just messing around. He was gonna get up soon. I waited for him to say something.

“Kyle, come on.” Dad pulled me out of the shed. Mel stood outside, shivering. “Melanie, get a coat. You need to wait out front for the ambulance. I'm going to get the Bishops.”

Mel nodded dumbly, and Dad left me standing outside the shed in the wet grass. By then, I couldn't feel my toes. I couldn't feel anything.