Emmy Laybourne - Monument 14

“Hey, little man, do me a favor,” Jake said to my brother. “Get me some rope so I can tie up the Hulk over here.”

There is something very wrong with being tied up with rope your own brother brings from the Sporting Goods section.

After they tied me up, Jake took Brayden back into the store. He and Niko thought maybe the air in the storeroom was still polluted.

Niko stripped off his clothes and threw them in a trash can. He told Alex to do the same. They took the antibacterial soap and spring water that Alex had brought, and stripped and washed down. They just stood there on the cement floor and scrubbed down together.

“Are you okay?” Niko asked Alex.

“I think so,” Alex said.

“That was pretty scary.”

“Yeah.”

I hated hearing that. I hated hearing Niko comforting him. He was my brother. I should be the one comforting him. Only I had attacked him, you see.

“Here!” came Sahalia’s voice, and some garments came flying through the door.

She had picked out pink tracksuits for us, complete with fluffy pink slippers.

I was starting to feel like myself again.

“Guys,” I croaked, my voice horse and scratchy. “Guys…”

Niko stopped dressing to cough into the trash can.

“Are you okay?” Alex asked Niko.

Ask me, I wanted to say.

Niko nodded, wiping spit from his chin.

“The blistering is going down. Washing was a good idea. I think if I’d been up there any longer it could have been really bad.”

Alex nodded sympathetically.

“Guys!” I said from the floor.

“Okay, Dean!” Alex snapped at me. “Just wait!”

Niko examined his chest. The blisters were fading away. Vanishing almost.

After they’d both dressed, they came over to look at me.

I saw Alex had my glasses sticking out of his shirt pocket. He must gave grabbed them during our scuffle. Pretty considerate, after I’d tried to tear his scalp off.

“You’re feeling better?” Niko asked me.

“Yeah,” I croaked. “Well, I feel like a buck fifty. But I feel like myself.”

“Who is the president? What day is it? What’s Mom’s favorite flavor of ice cream?” Alex asked me.

“Cory Booker. Wednesday. She’s lactose intolerant.”

They let me up.

When we came out of the storeroom and walked back to where the others were waiting, we must have looked really funny in our pink sweatsuits.

Astrid started to ask us if everything was all right, then she burst into laughter.

“Hey, kids, look, it’s the ladies’ track team!” Astrid announced with a flourish, and they all cracked up.

Jake and Brayden joined in laughing. Alex, too.

But I still had some weird stuff happening in my body.

What I wanted was Astrid. She looked so good to me I wanted to take her, in a dark and terrible way.

Pardon my bloodlust. It’s just a little something they whipped up over at NORAD.

I swallowed. Tried to get my breath back.

“We made you guys some pizza,” Max said.

“Then we ate it all so Astrid’s making you some more,” Chloe added.

While Jake, Niko, and Brayden filled Astrid in on what had happened, I took a look at my brother, who I had really done a number on. The shopping cart of medical supplies was still in the Pizza Shack area, so I poked around, but I didn’t see what I wanted.

“Alex, please, come with me,” I said. “So I can fix you up.”

I knew what I needed to do the job right: Bactine. Our mom swore by it. She never used anything else to clean scrapes or cuts or what have you. She even carried it, in a small travel bottle, in her purse.

So I motioned for Alex to follow me and we headed back toward the Pharmacy section.

I felt horrible.

I had clawed him across the face. So brotherly of me. And he had a huge bruise developing along his jaw. Such familial tenderness. His eyes were red from crying. Because of me.

I rummaged through the fallen merchandise until I found the good stuff. I also grabbed a bag of cotton puffs.

“It wasn’t me,” I said, swabbing the first of his many scrapes. “Something in the air made me go crazy. You know I’d never attack you like that.”

Alex nodded, looking at the floor.

“Please,” I begged. “Say you forgive me. I feel so horrible. I couldn’t feel any worse.”

Tears welled up in my little brother’s pale eyes.

“It’s just…,” he said, his voice getting thin. “It’s just that I wasn’t scared before…”

And now he was.

Thanks to me.

“I don’t understand what’s happening,” he said. “Why you acted like that. Why Niko got those blisters and Brayden started seeing things.”

“We’ll figure it out,” I told him. “And I won’t… I won’t let myself get exposed to the chemicals in the air again. I promise.”

“But, Dean, if you can’t go outside, how are we going to find Mom and Dad? How will we go home?”

I could have lied. But Alex was smarter than me.

“I don’t know,” I said.

After I got him cleaned up we walked back together toward the others. He had forgiven me, but he was still kind of stiff with me. Wary, I guess. Or maybe he was just physically sore from the beating I had given him.

As we approached the Pizza Shack we heard: “I did too go to Emerald’s!” from Max.

There was this big disconnect between what the big kids were dealing with and what the little kids were thinking about. For example, while I was patching up my brother after having tried to rip him apart due to a chemical compound–induced mania, Max, Batiste, Ulysses, and Chloe were discussing Emerald’s, a strip club located near an off-ramp at the outskirts of town.

“He’s lying. You never went to Emerald’s. They don’t let little kids in there,” Chloe protested.

“They do if your uncle’s the bouncer!” Max countered.

“What do they do in there, anyway?” Batiste wanted to know. “Our church is always trying to get those sinners to repent. But I don’t even know what kind of sinning they’re doing.”

“Probably cursing,” offered Chloe.

“Tons of that!” said Max.

“That’s a sin.” Batiste sighed.

“And drinking liquor?” Chloe asked.

“Totally,” said Max. “They have these little glasses in all kinds of flavors like watermelon and peach passion and hot apple. But they taste horrible. Sweet and horrible. I had three of them one time and then I puked them all up, right on the bar, and my mom said if my uncle ever takes me there again, she’s gonna call the cops.”

“Drinking is a sin,” said Batiste.

“Wow,” Chloe murmured.

“I don’t want to go back, anyways,” Max continued. “Boring. Just a bunch of moms dancing around in their string underwear. Big whoop.”

I stifled a laugh.

“What?” Chloe said. “What’s so funny?”

“Oh… Alex was just telling me a joke,” I said.

“Tell us!” she demanded. “We love jokes.”

Alex shrugged, lost. “I forget.”

“Come on!” they pleaded.

“Okay, okay,” I said. “How do you make a tissue dance?”

“How?” Max said.

“You put a little boogie in it!”

Nothing. Not even a groan.

“That’s the worst joke I ever heard,” said Chloe.

“I don’t even get it,” said Max.

Alex and I left the grade schoolers to discuss the finer points of adult entertainment and went over to where the big kids were gathering. We crossed past Josie, who was sort of slumped in a booth. Still not saying much. Well, anything.