Jim Shepard - Project X

You also can go up and block somebody’s slam, which means both of you are hitting the wall at the same spot. On some serves, when the return bounces high, you can get way back and get a running start.

We go at it until it gets dark. I jam a finger and Flake gets grit from the roof shingles in his eye. I bang the shit out of my tailbone again and almost have to stop. I slam three in a row, and he starts leading with his knees when he goes up. He nails me in the balls and we have to take a break while I recover. I cut his legs out from under him on a block. “Asshole,” he goes. “Fuckwad,” I go back. “You are such an asshole,” he goes. “You are such a fuckwad,” I go back.

He wins 21–17. When we’re heading in, the neighbor on that side of our yard calls from his kitchen window, “I’m sorry to see that game end.”

A couple hours later on the way home Flake takes a dump on the guy’s picnic table. He tells me about it in school the next day.

“How about this?” he goes. We’re hanging around the school yard. Both our buses got there early, and we’re not in a hurry to get inside. There’s a jungle gym out in the middle of the field surrounded by a little fence because some kid almost got killed on it. “How about you went down the street with like an armored personnel carrier and blew in every other front door? Imagine how everybody’d freak trying to figure out what the deal was?”

“I don’t think I wanna go to gym anymore,” I tell him. “Think I could pretend to have parasites or something?”

We’re pitching little rocks at each other’s feet. We’re pretty close to each other, but we haven’t hit anything yet.

“Bethany what’s her name is like everywhere lately, you notice that?” he goes.

“I never see her,” I go.

“You never see her,” he goes.

The first bell rings. They call it the first bell but it’s a buzzer. “We better get in,” I tell him.

He gives me that look. “You didn’t see her. You didn’t see her hanging out with Fischetti and those guys near the thing?”

“Yeah, I saw her there ,” I go.

“You saw her there,” he goes.

“What do you, like her?” I ask. He’s the one who brought it up.

“Suck my dog’s chew toy, how’s that?” he goes.

“Your mother’s still busy with it,” I tell him.

He doesn’t answer for a minute. We’re kind of hurrying because it’s a long hallway. In big letters along the ceiling it says THE WALL OF RECOGNITION. There are all these framed photos of old teachers.

“Forgot my fucking homework,” he says to himself. “God damn it,” he goes when we’re right outside his door.

“Bites,” I go.

The second bell rings.

“Have a good day,” I tell him. Then I catch my toe on the stair and almost kill myself. He leans his shoulder into the door to his room. “What’re you, my mother?” he goes.

When I was little, one of the things I really loved was boating. Flake hadn’t moved to town yet, but I really liked going with my parents. We had this six- or eight-foot sailboat that was seriously wide and dumpy, almost as wide as it was long. From the back it looked like a dog dish with a mast. My dad called it the Spirit Breaker, and when I asked him why he said it was a private joke. Every weekend in the summer we’d take it to the reservoir and toot around on it, all three of us jammed in. When you turned the rudder you hit somebody. When you were beaching and pulled out the centerboard, the other person in the front had to lean back.

One time we gave these other kids in a Sunfish a tow. They broke some hardware at the top of their mast, so they were stuck over by the marshes, just drifting around and arguing. They didn’t want to get out in the muck and walk the thing all the way around. My mom brought us about in a snappy little turn and my dad asked if they wanted a tow. There was a good wind. I remember being surprised he asked and surprised how happy it made me. What did I care? We had like eight hundred feet of rope in the bottom of the boat sloshing around in the water, for tying up to the dock. I got to be the guy who threw the rope when my mom brought us around again. And I held it while we pulled them along until my dad tied our end to the cleat in back. We got going pretty good. I remember the kid in front’s face as we bounced through some waves the powerboats had left. He was older than I was but I still thought, Good for you, kid, like I was his dad. “That was really great,” I remember telling my parents on the drive home. “It really was,” I remember my mom agreeing.

“Mr. Pengue came by today,” my mom goes.

“Okay,” I go.

“He was surprisingly upset,” my mom says.

We’re all waiting for the pizza to heat up, and it’s taking forever.

“Do you have it on defrost?” my dad asks. He’s sitting at the table with his hands together on his plate.

My mom poses alongside the control panel like she’s demonstrating it.

Gus is on his stomach under my chair with his hands around my ankle. He’s squeezing and making hissing noises. One of his recent things is playing boa.

My mom pops the door and checks the pizza. It’s a pile of four or five pieces, so she checks the middle. She thwaps the door shut again and loads in another thirty seconds. The pizza’s two days old, so that may have something to do with it.

“Is there some other way to check it besides putting your thumb in it?” my dad asks.

“Not that I know of,” she says.

Gus is still squeezing. “I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe,” I tell him. He laughs. There’s a tug when he bites my pant leg.

“So that was some story you told about Mr. Pengue,” my dad says to my mom. The guy wants us to pronounce it “Pengway,” but we say it like it’s spelled. He’s not a big favorite of ours.

“Yeah, so he came by,” my mom goes. “Said he found the most interesting thing on his picnic table.”

The bell dings on the microwave, and when she looks at me instead of doing something about it, I open it myself and pull out the pizza.

She’s got a sitcom-mom look on, hand on her hip.

“It’s ready,” I go. Gus lets loose of my ankle and climbs out from under the chair. He hits his head on the table.

“You don’t know anything about this?” she goes.

“I’m not an expert on pizza,” I tell her.

“You know that’s not what I mean,” she says.

“Get me a beer?” my dad asks.

I stick the dish with the pizza on the table and go to the fridge.

“Listen to him sigh,” he goes. “All he does is work to serve us.” When I give him his beer and Gus his juice, he says, “So what’s your mother talking about?”

My mom goes, “Tell your father what Mr. Pengue found on his picnic table.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” my dad says. “You tell me.”

“I don’t know what anybody found on their picnic table,” I say.

“You don’t,” my mom goes.

“Oh my God, ” my dad goes.

“I want him to say it,” my mom explains.

“A severed head,” I go. “A dying weasel. Four tickets to the Super Bowl.”

“A pile of human—poop,” she finally says.

My dad laughs.

“Encourage him,” my mom goes.

“What do you, think I did it?” I go.

“You or your friend,” she says.

“Because I didn’t do anything,” I go.

“Did you or did you not have some words with Mr. Pengue when you were playing out there?” she asks.

“We didn’t have words with anybody,” I go. Meanwhile the pizza’s cold again.

“I don’t need you all sullen. I’m asking you a question, is all,” she says.

“It’s cold again,” my dad goes, dropping the pizza back onto the dish we warmed it up in, like that’s the perfect end of a perfect day.