You're Next (5 page)

And then, at once, he hates him.

Shep is standing again – no, not anymore. Tony M, inexplicably wearing an Angels batting helmet, is cackling that idiotic
laugh, thumping Dubronski’s shoulders, leaping with joy. Shep manages to get to all fours, but he has halted there. For the
first time, he has lost momentum. Dubronski jeering, ‘I told you, you fuckin’ deaf runt. I told you I’d make you stay down.’
Shep looks up at him, the looming fist, unable to rise to it. Mike knows now that if Shep doesn’t rise, something beautiful
will die out there on the browning front lawn of 1788 Shady Lane.

Mike walks outside. Dubronski stands over Shep, victorious. Tony M and three others have formed a half circle around Dubronski,
crowing victoriously. They turn when the screen door bangs. Mike crosses to them, Dubronski’s unease registering on his broad
features. Mike walks in front of the half circle, stands facing Dubronski, two feet away, the distance of an upper-cut. Shep
is behind Mike, still on all fours; Mike can feel the heat of him against the backs of his calves.

Mike says, loudly, ‘Get up.’

He hears Shep breathing hard. He hears Shep grunt with exertion. And then Mike reads the shadow.

Shep is standing.

Dubronski’s face flushes. ‘You queers deserve each other,’ he says, but he is backpedaling, knocking through the others,
dispersing them. They go inside. All is quiet at 1788 Shady Lane. Dusk is coming, and there will be dinner soon.

Shep brushes himself off, as composed as a businessman lint-rolling a suit. Mike heads up the walk.

Shep follows.

‘Where did you get these?’ The Couch Mother stands over them, legs trembling from the exertion, the mini liquor bottles dwarfed
in her flushed, pillowy palm.

Mike and Shep are ten. They are now the same height, but Mike is wider still, more solid, whereas Shep’s body, pulled thin
like taffy, can’t seem to catch up to him.

Shep says, ‘What?’

He has learned to speak softly to control his voice, to over-compensate for his bad hearing, for the guttural bursts and blurred
consonants. People lean toward him to distinguish his words. They take a step or two in his direction. He draws the world
to him, if it is interested. Generally it isn’t. So he has learned something else. He has learned to use his semideafness
to his advantage.

That is never clearer than at this moment.

The Couch Mother’s gaze shifts from Shep, zeroing in on Mike. He stares at her ash-speckled crocheted sweater, grimaces, and
says, ‘Valley Liquor.’

The Couch Mother frowns, her face folding in and in around her lips. ‘We are going back there to return these, and you are
both going to apologize and take whatever punishment you are due. Do you understand me?’

Mike watches the fifty-milliliter nips of Jack Daniel’s disappear into her elephantine purse. ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he says.

Shep says, ‘What?’

The Couch Mother is not fooling, because she marches them outside and lowers herself into her long-suffering Pontiac. Mike
has seen her drive only a few times before, and only to the
hospital when someone needs stitches or a fever won’t break. The passenger seat is stripped to the coils, and her seat is
shoved back so far that Shep has to sit on Mike’s lap in the back. With dread they watch the scenery roll by while the Couch
Mother navigates streets, grunting against the non-power steering, her stomach adding friction to the wheel.

In no time they are behind the counter at the liquor store, standing at attention before Mr Sandoval, who never lets them
handle the comic books, who grimaces when he counts their change for Dr Pepper bottles, who hates them. Mike mumbles out an
apology, and Mr Sandoval, who has set aside his cursing, hateful self before the Couch Mother, makes a big show of patronizing
magnanimity.

It is time for Shep to apologize, but Mike knows that he will not. Shep is not like him or anyone else; he is made of steel
and concrete; he cannot be broken.

‘Shepherd dear, your turn.’

‘What?’

‘You’re not going to play this game with me. Now, apologize to Mr Sandoval this instant.’

‘What?’

It escalates until Mike is uncomfortable, until he backs away so his shoulder brushes the real-size liquor bottles on the
shelves behind them. He notices a picture Mr Sandoval keeps taped to the cash register – his daughter. It is school-picture
day, and she beams proudly, but her little skirt is stained and tattered at the edges. It reminds Mike of the communal shirts
in the dresser, and he is flooded with guilt, his assumptions cracking apart one after another, like dropped eggs. But his
remorse is temporary, because the Couch Mother’s voice has risen so as to drown out all thought.

Just when it seems Shep will triumph, that he has worn them down into defeat, he mutters, ‘Sorry.’

Mike is shocked. He has never seen Shep cave in, and he fears the act will diminish him irrevocably. On the ride home, Mike
pouts. Shep turns on Mike’s lap, studies his face, his own expression unreadable. And then his lips twist in his version
of a smile. Tugging up his shirt furtively, Shep flashes the pint bottle of Jack Daniel’s he has shoved down his pants.

A blurred half decade, and they are fourteen. Shep has taken to wearing a pendant of St. Jerome Emiliani – patron saint of
orphans – that he stole from a pawnshop. While Mike awaits his growth spurt, Shep has, at last, grown into his feet. He towers,
husky with premature muscle. Despite some acne, he now buys Jack Daniel’s without getting carded. At the home, Charlie Dubronski
lives and breathes in constant fear, but Shep has never laid a hand on him. He just looks at him now and then, and that is
enough.

Mike and Shep have ridden the bus over to Van Nuys Park, where the ice-cream man forgets to lock the back of his truck, so
Bomb Pops can be stolen while he’s distracted with paying customers. They have made their way over to the far baseball diamond,
where a father, son, and grandfather play ball. The boys lean against the chain-link by the backstop and watch cynically.
The grandfather pitches, the son bats, and the father plays somewhere between shortstop and left field, retrieving the ball
and tossing it back. They have a pretty good system down. The boy, who is about their age, dribbles a grounder to his father.

Mike says, ‘He can only hit the pull,’ and Shep remarks, ‘’Cuz he’s not good enough to go the other way.’

The father’s car, a straight-off-the-lot forest green Saab, is pulled up onto a patch of dirt behind the fence, and the boy’s
bike, an expensive-looking ten-speed, leans against the bumper.

Mike says, ‘Nice set o’ wheels,’ and Shep says, ‘The 900’s a piece of shit.’ Mike agrees out loud but secretly loves the Saab,
its sleek lines, its odd angles, how it’s not afraid to be ugly and beautiful at the same time. The car reeks of affluence
and power, of accomplishment and control. In its unblemished paint, he sees his own wavery reflection, his idealized self,
a future he cannot
yet discern. The dealer’s plate stares out at him –
WINGATE DEALERSHIP: WE HAVE WHAT YOU WANT!
– and he thinks the name,
like the car, boasts of success. Wingate. Win-
gate
. It has a ring.

A voice from the baseball field shatters Mike’s reverie, the father calling out, ‘Ready for a Fudgsicle?’ For an instant,
in his disorientation, Mike mistakes the man as speaking to him. But then the son smiles and tosses aside his bat and three
generations set out across the park for the ice-cream truck Mike and Shep just looted.

Mike watches them walking away. The boy’s longish blond hair curls out from beneath his cap and makes Mike ashamed of his
and Shep’s buzz cuts. He hates that his whole stupid appearance is a concession to head lice.

Shep walks around the fence and picks up the bat. He comes back. Kicks over the kid’s bike. ‘Wanna piss on it?’

This is something they have done before.

Mike shakes his head.

Shep says, ‘Car first?’ He never uses extra words.

Mike stares at the beautiful Saab, and it seems a shame, but there is something burning deep in his chest that wants a way
out. He’s not sure what it is, but it has to do with the white gleam of the father’s teeth when he called to his son about
getting a Fudgsicle. Mike says, ‘I don’t know.’

Shep says, ‘Why?’

He is embarrassed, but it is Shep, and he can tell Shep anything. ‘I mean, if my mom
is
alive, I owe it to her not to wind up in—’

Shep says, ‘There is no past.’

Mike coughs out a laugh. ‘No past?’

Shep’s lips part, showing off the slight overlap of his front teeth. ‘There are only two things in life: loyalty and stamina.
Everything else is just a distraction.’

‘What about responsibility?’ He is channeling the Couch Mother and hates himself for it.

Shep speaks quietly, as always. ‘You’re not a son. You’re not a brother. No one wants you. So. Make it your own. You can be
whatever you want to be. And right now? You’re a man with a task.’

Mike takes the bat. One headlight goes with a satisfying pop. The moon-crescent ding distorts the shine of the hood, the next
even more so. He is lost in a haze, in something sticky sweet and unslakable.

Mike’s forearms ache. He stops, pants. Across the park, on someone’s boom box, Bon Jovi is going down in a blaze of glory.

Shep takes the bat. He beats down on the bicycle, wheels denting, spokes flying, metal clanging.

A voice from behind them. ‘Hey, loser.
Hey
. That’s my bike.’

The boy has run ahead of his father and grandfather.

Shep says, ‘What?’ The boy steps forward, repeats himself. Shep says, ‘What?’ The boy leans in for a third try. Shep head-butts
him, and the boy goes down screaming and the father is running at them, and Mike is frozen; he has fought plenty, but an old-fashioned
respect for adults has locked him up. The father grabs Mike around the neck, hard, with both hands, and Shep blurs over, closing
the space in no time, and then the father is bent backward, choking, Shep’s hand clamped over his throat.

Shep says, in his trademark hush, ‘I’m gonna let go of you. But don’t touch him again. Understand?’

The father nods. Shep releases him. Offers the boy his hand, helps him up. Says, ‘Don’t call me a loser.’

There are sirens. Shep’s mouth is Bomb Pop red, and Mike is quite certain his is, too.

At the station the desk cop says, ‘The Shady Lane boys, what a surprise.’

Mike and Shep are sent to different interrogation rooms. Alone, Mike stares at the wall, memories of similar rooms flooding
back.
You remember your mom’s name? Hello? What’s your mom’s name?
A detective comes in, sits down, reads the report,
sighs, and throws it on the wooden table. ‘You’re not worth the chair you’re sitting in, you foster-home piece of shit.’

Mike thinks,
Make it your own
.

‘You did about fifteen thousand dollars of damage.’

His stomach clutches at the figure. It might as well be a million. Mike knows at that moment: his life is over.

He looks down at his wrists, cinched in flexible plastic handcuffs – kid handcuffs – because the steel ones kept slipping
off at the park.

‘Before we ship your ass to sentencing,’ the detective continues, ‘your victims want to confront you.’

Panic overtakes dread. ‘I don’t want to see them.’

‘Well, guess what? When you’re a lawbreaking degenerate, you don’t get to choose your options.’

Mike closes his eyes. When he opens them, the kid is there, freckled cheeks tight with disdain, the detective and the father
at his elbows. The grandfather stands in the back, arms crossed. ‘You gonna apologize?’ the kid asks.

Mike knows it is in his self-interest to do so, but he looks at the kid’s ironed shirt, the smudge of chocolate in the corner
of his mouth, and can think only,
Never
.

The kids points at Mike. ‘You’re a
nothing
. You wreck my stuff because you don’t have anything and you’ll never be anything. Well, guess what? It’s not my fault your
life sucks.’

Mike closes his eyes again, for a very long time. He hears footsteps, the door creak open and click shut. When he opens his
eyes, the grandfather is sitting across from him. Alone. The man says, ‘That was my car.’

Mike says, ‘I thought it was your son’s.’

The grandfather laughs. He has a white mustache, impeccably maintained. ‘That would have made it okay?’

Mike stares down at the wooden table. Someone has etched into it,
POINT OF NO RETURN, MOTHAFUCKA.

‘I grew up in the Depression. You know what that means?’ The
man waits for a response but, getting none, continues, ‘If we spotted roadkill on the side of the road, my pop used to pull
over so we could cook it for dinner. For a time we slept in the car. We went two long years without a roof over our heads.’

Mike says, ‘You can’t have everything.’

The grandfather spreads his hands. ‘Why not?’

‘I don’t know. People like us, we don’t get to.’

‘People like us?’

‘Like me and Shep.’

‘How about me?’

‘You have a Saab.’

‘I see.’ The grandfather folds his hands across his old-man’s paunch and nods. ‘How do you think I got that car?’

‘How would
I
know? That’s the first time I’ve been within ten feet of a car that nice.’

‘You’re the predator here, not a victim. Let’s be clear about that.’ His eyes are hard now, and Mike is awed by the force
of his conviction.

Mike looks down at his hands. His thumb has a sticky blue streak from the Bomb Pop. He pictures that beautiful, spotless Saab
(
WINGATE DEALERSHIP: WE HAVE WHAT YOU WANT!
), and for a moment the car and the man before him become of a piece; they become two elegant, polished parts of the same whole. Shep’s words
come back to him:
You can be whatever you want to be
. Mike rethinks the question posed to him a moment ago –
How do you think I got that car?
– and he is speaking, softly, before his brain can catch up: ‘When I get out of juvie, I will work to pay you back for wrecking
your car.’