Jim Shepard - Project X

He looks at it. It’s not a very big puddle, but still.

“A few years ago I was trying to make a model,” he tells me. He’s got his eye right up to the part of his hand where the paint is. “When I was spray painting it, I found something out.”

“So?” I finally go. “What’d you find out?”

He puts the nozzle up against the part he’s already painted on his hand and sprays again. “You can fuck up your skin like this,” he goes. “If you do it long enough.”

I crouch next to him. Like that’ll help me figure out what he thinks he’s doing. Up close, the smell from the paint’s so intense that I feel like I’m squinting when I’m not.

“You are one weird kid,” I finally go.

“It’s like a burn, but a burn that doesn’t burn,” he goes.

“See?” he goes. “It’s making a blister.”

“What’d you do to your hand, Roddy?” my mom asks as soon as we come into the house.

“Burned it,” Flake goes.

“How’d you burn it?” my mom goes. She’s all alarmed. She gets in front of us.

“Wasn’t careful,” he goes.

“Were you playing with matches?” she asks. She looks at me.

“Oh, no,” he goes.

“Let me see,” she goes. She takes his hand with both of hers. He cleaned the paint off with thinner and that made the blistering worse. There are pink bubbles from his thumb to his pointer finger and down to his wrist.

“I got aloe,” she goes. “You want aloe?”

“My mom gave me some,” he goes.

“Well, I hope you weren’t doing something stupid,” she goes.

“Sometimes I need to be more careful,” he tells her. He means it.

“Were you guys doing anything stupid?” she asks me.

“He was already hurt when I got there,” I go. “I just brought him over here.”

We’re up in my room a minute and a half before the phone rings and my mom calls up the stairs that it’s for Flake.

“Were you painting in my garage?” his dad asks him. I can hear every word he says.

“We tried to clean it up,” Flake says.

“You didn’t try too hard,” his dad goes.

“I can hear like every word he’s saying,” I tell Flake.

He nods. “I’ll clean it some more,” he promises.

His dad swears a few times and then gets off the phone.

We sit and stare at his hand for a while. “Edwin,” my mom calls.

“Edwin,” Flake goes.

I go over to the door and open it. “What do you want?” I call down to her.

“There’s a boy here to see you,” she goes.

I look over at Flake, who thinks it’s funny.

“I don’t know any boys,” I go.

“I’m sending him up,” she says.

Hermie comes up the stairs two at a time.

“Who said you could come over?” I go.

“Your mom,” he goes.

“My mom said you could come up ,” I tell him. “Who said you could come over ?”

“ I said,” he goes.

“You said?” Flake goes. “Midgets make the rules now?”

“Don’t make me kick your ass,” Hermie goes. He’s having the time of his tiny life. “Listen,” he goes. He’s looking around the room.

“Don’t get comfortable,” I tell him.

“I got a proposition for you guys,” he goes.

“A proposition?” Flake says.

“Yeah, a proposition,” Hermie goes. “You wanna hear it or not?”

Flake grabs him by the shorts and the collar of his shirt. I can hear Hermie grabbing at the banister as they go downstairs and complaining about something all the way out. The back door slams, then Flake comes walking back up and shuts the door behind him.

“Did that boy leave already?” my mom calls from the back of the house.

We can’t talk in my house and Flake doesn’t want to go back to his so we walk to the fort. When we get up to the underpass and duck under the concrete Flake hits his head. He’s still swearing when we see Dickhead and Weensie and two other kids sitting there with our candles and sketch pads. We had a box stuck up on a drainage pipe with some stuff in it, and the stuff is spread all over the dirt. There’s nothing on any of the sketch pads that anybody could figure out.

“This is ours,” Flake goes, holding his head.

“Yours?” Weensie goes. “You own the highway?” I don’t know where he got his name. He’s got freckles that look like they were drawn on and a space between his front teeth.

“Oh, this is theirs, ” one of the other kids says. “Everything here is theirs.”

The other kids laugh.

“That’s ours too,” Flake says, about the sketch pads and candles.

“Why don’t you take ’em from us?” Dickhead says.

We stand there, half in and half out. “Fuck,” Flake finally says. He rubs his head some more.

“Hurt yourself?” Dickhead goes.

“You dumped all our shit out,” I go. “Who said you could dump all our shit out?” We had gum, pencils, a little flashlight and some napkins in the box. Flake liked to jerk off sometimes.

They don’t say anything. They just look at us. Dickhead has one droopy eye, and he’s always grinning up at you, like you’re just about to get the joke.

“Gimme the flashlight,” I go. “And gimme the sketch pads.”

“Oooo,” Weensie and another kid go. “Oooo.”

Weensie turns the flashlight on and shines it in my eyes. He turns it off and on again. He shakes his hand to make it like a strobe.

“Give him the flashlight,” Flake goes. He’s finally let go of his head.

They make more scared noises. Flake wanders off and circles around on the slope up to the road. When he comes back he’s got a flat rock the size of a paperback.

“What’re you, gonna hit us with that?” Dickhead goes. “You tryin’ to fucking scare me with a rock?”

Flake takes the flat side and brings it to his head, and then lowers it and brings it back up again, like he’s demonstrating how to do something.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Dickhead goes. He sounds like he really wants to know, all of a sudden.

No one says anything. One of the kids coughs and clears his throat and spits. “Aw, give it to him,” another kid says.

“Why should I?” Weensie asks him. But then he rolls the flashlight over to me.

“Give him the sketch pads,” Flake goes.

“Put the rock down,” Dickhead goes.

“Give him the sketch pads,” Flake goes.

“You put the rock down,” Dickhead goes.

Flake puts the rock at his feet.

“These drawings suck, by the way,” Dickhead goes. He tosses the two little pads out to me.

“Blow me,” Flake goes.

“I’ll fucking kick your ass,” Dickhead goes.

“Kick my ass,” Flake goes.

You can see Dickhead deciding.

“Kick my ass,” Flake goes.

Dickhead starts to get up.

“Let ’em go,” Weensie says.

“Who wants to screw around with these dildoes?” another kid says.

“This is our place,” Dickhead says to Flake. “You find another place to blow each other. And take your rocks with you.”

“Oooo,” one of the kids goes. The rest of them laugh.

Flake turns and is halfway up the embankment before I realize he’s leaving. We don’t talk at all on the walk home. When he turns off for his house, he doesn’t say anything and neither do I.

“You still pissed?” I ask him the next day, which is a Saturday. His dad and mom are spending the afternoon getting shown around a condo they’re not going to buy so they can get a free TV. Flake’s pulled out the guns and ammo and we’re making sure we know how everything fits together.

“You still pissed?” he goes, in a pussy voice.

I tilt up the carbine’s barrel. “Put this in your mouth,” I go.

He’s got newspaper spread on his dad’s bed so we don’t get oil on the blanket. The Kalashnikov’s easy. You can see right where the clip goes. At first I don’t want to put it in because I’m worried we won’t be able to get it out.