Allen Zadoff - Boy Nobody

The knife is sitting on a cutting board next to the sink, ten feet away from us. A safe distance away.

I relax and exhale. I sit at the table, and I reach into my backpack and take out a ballpoint pen.

Jack’s dad looks at me from the refrigerator, a question on his face.

“You taking notes?”

“When you talk baseball, I listen,” I say.

Jack’s dad smiles. I smile.

When in doubt, emulate.

I turn the cap until it clicks, exposing the point.

Jack’s dad reaches forward to hand me the cold soda.

I push the end of the pen into the meat of his forearm. The action depresses a miniature plunger.

His eyes widen as the drug hits him. His mouth puckers, forming the familiar Wh—.

Maybe it’s why he’s trying to say.

Maybe it’s what , as in What are you doing?

But the drug is fast-acting. Its actual speed depends on age and conditioning, which is bad news for Jack’s dad.

He’s out of shape.

So it is fast. Faster even than a word can form.

Jack’s dad stumbles, and I catch him, place him on the floor by the kitchen table. I don’t let him fall, because I don’t want Jack running downstairs to see what caused the noise. I don’t want anyone else rushing in. Not yet.

I need fifteen seconds.

Six seconds to lay him down, arranging the body, limbs splayed as if from a fall. I use an elbow to knock over the can of beer next to him. The foam hisses.

Five seconds to put away my pen and notebook, zip the backpack where it hangs from the back of a chair.

Four more seconds to play out the chain, let the chemical reaction in Mr. Wu’s body take him beyond the point of resuscitation.

Fifteen seconds.

Done.

I look at the body. The man who was Chen Wu is gone.

A husband is gone.

A father is gone.

“I trust you,” Jack said.

That was your mistake , I think.

Twenty seconds have passed. The outside edge of my operational window.

“Oh my god!” I say. “Help!”

I fling open the front door. “Someone!” I shout.

Jack comes running down the stairs, and his face turns white with shock. A sound comes out of him, something between a moan and a scream.

The security people rush in. One look at the body and the first guy knows.

It’s all a show after that.

I stand to the side and watch it happen.

Resuscitation attempts, the ambulance, all of it.

I push forward like I want to be in the middle of the action, be near my friend Jack. The Suit from the baseball game stops me.

He puts an arm on my shoulder, gently, like he’s my father or something. I want to shrug it off, but I don’t.

“Maybe it would be better if you stepped away,” he says.

“What about Jack—?”

“It’s a family matter,” he says.

I relax my shoulders beneath his arm.

“I need my backpack,” I say.

He steps into the fray, grabs my backpack, hands it to me, and guides me out the door.

I glance back. My last image is of Jack on the sofa, his back hunched, his head almost to his knees.

A profile of grief.

All because of me.

I WALK PAST THE REVOLVING LIGHTS OF THE AMBULANCE.

Past the security vehicles, the police officers, the chatter of voices over shortwave radios.

“Do you need a ride?” the gate guard says.

“I’m good,” I say.

“Tough day,” he says.

“Terrible,” I say.

“It happened on my watch,” he says, shaking his head. “But they can’t blame me, right? I’m not God. I don’t get to decide when and where.”

Not true. You don’t have to be God to decide when and where. You only have to take action and be willing to deal with the consequences.

“Take care of yourself,” he says.

“I always do,” I say.

He opens the gate for me, and I’m out.

I walk down the street slowly, like someone who is traumatized. But I’m not traumatized. I’m already thinking about what comes next. I’m reviewing my exit strategy.

And maybe, just for a moment, I’m thinking about Jack.

He was my best friend for four weeks.

But not anymore.

He might not like it much that I killed his father. Not that he’ll know. The drug leaves no trace. Jack’s dad had a heart attack. That’s what the autopsy will show, if there is an autopsy. Strings will be pulled. Or the modern equivalent—computer keys pressed.

If an autopsy is done, it will show nothing at all.

Natural causes.

That’s my specialty. People die around me, but it never seems like my fault. It seems like bad luck following good.

Good luck: You meet a great new friend at school.

Bad luck: A tragedy befalls your family.

The two don’t ever seem connected, but they are.

Jack didn’t know that when we became best friends a month ago. I slipped into his life easily, and now I’m slipping out just as easily.

I’ve broken another guy’s heart, changed the course of his life. Lucky for me, I can do it and not feel it.

I don’t feel anything.

Not true.

I feel cold, I feel hungry, I feel the fabric of a new shirt rubbing against my skin, and I feel gravel beneath my feet.

But those are sensations, not feelings.

I had feelings once, too. I think I did. But that was a long time ago.

That was before .

HIS NAME WAS MIKE.

And he was my best friend.

Or so I thought.

He was the new guy in school, but he didn’t seem new. The minute he started, it seemed like he’d been there forever.

“What are you into?” he said the first time I talked to him.

“I like to read,” I said.

I was twelve then, and I had so many books that my dad had to build a second bookcase in my room.

“You read that vampire stuff?” he said.

“No. Action, adventure. Sci-fi if it’s good.”

“Cool,” he said. “Me, too.”

It didn’t feel strange when we became instant friends, like when you feel separated at birth. A brother from another mother. That’s what they call it.

Within a week, we were inseparable. Within two, he was sleeping over at the house.

We stayed up late, defying my parents, talking about everything under the sun. We exchanged books. We talked about girls.

It was during that year that I noticed girls were wearing bras, and you could see through their shirts if the light was right. Mike taught me you should always let the girl get between you and the window on a sunny day because it improved your viewing options. I thought he was a genius.

Mike and me. Two twelve-year-old kids, laughing and shooting the crap, thrilled to have found a partner in crime in each other.

In hindsight, I should have found it strange that I never saw his house, never met his parents. He said his dad was a corporate lawyer who traveled for business. My dad was a professor and scientist who sometimes went to conferences, so I knew what he meant. Kind of.

His mom got overwhelmed, he said. She didn’t like kids around.

My mom got overwhelmed, too. Not with guests, but with my dad. At the time, they’d been fighting for what seemed like months. I didn’t know what it was about, but it was one of those fights that was going on even when it wasn’t, even when everything was quiet.

It went on for so long it felt like our family was having a nervous breakdown.

I told all this to Mike.

He was my friend. It felt good to tell him, to confide in him.

I didn’t know he was going to kill my parents.

THIS HAPPENS SOMETIMES WHEN I FINISH.