Jim Shepard - Project X

There are four other kids in detention with me, two ninth-graders, and Tawanda, and another kid who always pulls his sweatshirt hood completely over his head and face. The monitor hasn’t shown up yet.

“What’re you doing here?” I go to Tawanda. The ninth-graders ignore us. One’s cleaning his fingernails with a credit card. There’s a photo on the wall of a kid staring into space. Underneath it says, THE MIND IS A TERRIBLE THING TO WASTE.

“You know,” Tawanda goes. “Just bein’ my old self.”

The monitor comes in and gives us some rules and sits and starts doing his grade sheets. I pull out some homework. I’m the farthest back, near the window. The sweatshirt kid just sits there, a hood. One of the ninth-graders goes, “She took an entire grade off just for that ?” There’s a little scratching noise and when I look out Flake’s doing his constipated monkey. I can’t hear the inka inka inka through the glass. He makes a few signals that I can’t figure out and then loses interest and leaves.

I’m behind on what I’m supposed to do for the World of Color project. There’s paper and markers in my pack, so I could do that. I can’t tell if Tawanda’s working on it or not. She’s too far up front. The idea sucks but it’s our fault. Michelle wanted to do a poster of a rainforest tree with people of all different colors as fruit. Tawanda made a face and wanted to know if she meant heads hanging down like apples. They didn’t have to hang like apples, Michelle told her. I asked if they could be severed heads. Michelle asked if we had any better ideas. Tawanda said she didn’t. They both looked at me. “You tell me what to draw, I’ll draw it,” I told them. So we’re supposed to be doing the apples.

We already started it. Some of the heads are already on the tree. My red Indian looks like Lava Man.

The ninth-grader in front of me tears the piece of paper he’s been working on from his binder and passes it back. I’m so surprised that I take it and look at it. It says, “Asshole asshole asshole asshole asshole asshole asshole asshole asshole asshole asshole asshole asshole asshole asshole,” all the way down the page. The whole thing is filled. “Asshole,” he whispers.

“No talking,” the monitor says.

“Asshole,” the kid whispers again, after a minute.

“Mr. Hanratty,” the monitor says. “What did I just say?”

“ I didn’t say anything,” I go.

“Can I move my seat?” the ninth-grader asks.

“Leave him alone, Mr. Hanratty,” the monitor says.

I’ve still got the sheet of assholes in my hand. It’s a pretty amazing thing, when you think about it.

The ninth-grader raises his hand.

“What is it, Mr. Sfikas?” the monitor wants to know.

“He’s swearing at me,” the kid goes. “Can you tell him to stop?”

“He keeps putting his hand down his pants and grabbing himself,” I go. “He keeps doing this thing with his hand.”

The kid turns around with his mouth open.

“His whole chair moves,” I go. “It’s gross.”

The other ninth-grader’s laughing. Tawanda’s turned all the way around in her chair. The kid gets a megadeath look on his face. “I’m gonna fucking kill you,” he whispers. He says it like he can’t really believe it himself.

“He’s doing it again,” I tell the monitor.

We get put into separate empty classrooms and told to not move. Mine has a big sign that says BLACK AND WHITE AND READ ALL OVER and has reviews of books by sixth-graders pinned up on the walls all around the room.

The monitor looks in every ten minutes or so. When he lets me out at four-thirty, the kid’s waiting on the side steps with his friend. One of the custodians breaks it up. But before he gets there my shirt’s torn off and one of my teeth gets knocked through my lip.

“So I know where that kid lives,” Hermie tells me a couple days later between classes. He’s wearing black-and-white camo pants. I didn’t even know they made them that small.

“Can I help you?” I go. I’m wrestling with my combination lock. I’m in no mood for anything.

“Spin it all the way around three times before you start,” he tells me.

I spin it once and then give it a yank. The whole locker shakes.

“Your mouth looks all fucked up,” he says.

“Up yours, midget,” I tell him. The hall’s starting to thin out. The few lockers that are still open get shut.

My lower lip’s so swollen that it feels like I could touch my nose with it. When I pass down the hall, kids look at it. The nice girls flinch and the mean ones talk about it.

“You are such a tube steak,” he goes. He takes off to make it to his class. I make a caveman noise and bang my head against the locker and try it once more. It doesn’t open. I leave my head against it. The bell rings. I spin the thing three times and try again, and it pops right open.

Before detention that afternoon he sticks his head into the detention room and gives me a little wave.

“You seen Freddy Budzinski?” he goes. His hair’s a rat’s nest on top but crew-cutty on the sides. It makes his neck look like a stick.

“You seen him or not?” he goes.

“What do you want?” I ask.

“I’ll go slow,” he tells me. “Have you seen Freddy Budzinski?”

“I have no idea who you’re talking about,” I tell him.

He looks around like he’s thinking about buying the place, and then checks down the hall to see if the monitor’s coming. “This your last day of detention?”

I take out my math book and flop it open.

“I’m gonna kill Freddy Budzinski when I see him,” he goes.

“It’s very hard to concentrate with all the noise in here,” I tell him.

He flops in a chair next to me and sits still for a minute, spreading his legs as wide as he can. He starts drumming on the desktop with his thumbs.

“I really like that sound,” I tell him. “Keep making that sound.”

He stops and looks up at the history-project covers pinned on the walls. His mouth hangs open, and he breathes through it like something’s clogged. On the floor there’s a poster of a sunflower that somebody’s torn down.

“So you don’t want to know where that kid lives?” he finally goes.

I take off a sneaker and shake it out and fish around in it and put it back on. It takes a minute to tie it up again.

“Where you guys hanging out tonight?” he wants to know. Then he hears the monitor coming down the hall and he’s out of his chair and over to the door in a second. “I’ll come by and see what you guys’re doing,” he says. He bumps into the monitor trying to get through the door.

“This Student Council?” he asks.

“Does it look like Student Council?” the monitor asks.

“It really doesn’t,” Hermie goes. “I’m all turned around.”

I can hear him getting running starts and sliding on the polished floor, all the way down the hall. The monitor’s new today, taking over for the other guy. “What happened to you?” he wants to know when he sees my face.

Hermie comes by that night and bangs on the back-porch screen, but we don’t let him in. Before he finally leaves he tells us where the ninth-grader lives. We spend the night coming up with things we could do to the kid but nothing any good. We walk over there the next night to see if anything better comes to us and run right into the kid and his friends and they chase us halfway home. One kid gets some great shots in on Flake’s head before we get away, and someone else kicks me in the tailbone again, just when it was starting to feel better.

The next night we’re all pissed off and depressed and sitting around in Flake’s basement. “So you wanna check out my dad’s guns?” he goes. His parents have gone out to a movie or dinner or Canada. They’re not going to be back until late.