Jim Shepard - Project X

Back downstairs, I ask my mom, “My alarm work?”

She looks up from the TV. “I’ll get you up, honey,” she goes. She turns back to the TV.

I climb back up to my room and fiddle with the thing. I set it for ten minutes ahead, then five minutes. I can’t get it to work. It’s a little plastic travel thing and I pound it flat a few times.

What difference does it make? I end up thinking. I’m not going to go to sleep anyhow.

Everybody’s in a group. Everybody spends all their time thinking about their group. Or how they want to be in a different group. It’s a big shitpile with everybody shitting downward, so you want to be high as possible. On top are the jocks, though not all jocks. If you only do cross-country, you might as well be on the chess team. Next to the jocks are kids they call the Buffys, because they look like they came off TV. First day of seventh grade Flake and I were in homeroom and a girl said to him about this new guy, “He is so Angel.” The guy was good-looking and had that shit in his hair. And Flake said back to her, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Behind the Buffys are the school-spirit types, the ones who organize the Cookie Drives and Theme Dances and Administration Appreciation Days. Behind them, the kids who play music in a band. Behind them, the other jocks—the track teams and the guys who swim the twelve-thousand-mile race and stuff like that. Behind them, the artsy types. Behind them, the kids that are good at something real, like math or writing. Behind them, the theater kids. Behind them, the rebels. Behind them, the druggies. Behind them, the kids nobody notices. Behind them, the fuckups. Behind them, the geeks. Behind them, the kids from like the sticks, the trailer types. Behind them, the retards and kids with missing jaws and shit. Behind them, us. Our group is a group of two.

Every so often people do nice things for each other but mostly you don’t trust anyone out of your group. That’s just the way things are.

They’re all ants. Jock ants, artsy ants, theater ants.

Boil water and pour it down an anthill, the ants come out another hole, Flake says.

My mom has a bad dream. I hear her downstairs. I go down without making any noise and peek into their room. She’s quiet and then flops over and makes a whining noise. My dad sleeps through it. She makes the whining noise again.

It’s just about three o’clock. I go back upstairs to get ready. I think about cutting holes in an old wool hat like a bank robber and then imagine Flake’s face when he sees it. When he walks into the yard, he’s wearing the saucepan on his head. I wave from the window and climb down.

The grass is wet and the crickets are going like it’s summer. It feels great to be out. There’s no moon I can see, so it’s pretty dark. Flake sticks his arms out and takes a huge deep breath, then pounds on his chest like a gorilla. We walk over to his yard.

Behan sleeps in the neighbors’ house. We check out the situation and everything’s quiet. We walk over to the doghouse like we’re all Whatever, but we’re ready to run if we hear a noise. My feet are already soaked. When we get there Flake hands me the saucepan and crawls inside. His legs and butt don’t fit in. I’m interested in the shingles on the little roof. You can pick off the pebbly stuff with your fingernails. He backs out with a Baggie in his hand and we take off.

“Nice watchdog,” he says once we’re out of the yard.

“Where’d you get the saucepan?” I ask. It doesn’t look new.

Turns out he got it from the Goodwill bin.

“How do you think of shit like that?” I ask him.

He shrugs as he walks. We’re moving pretty fast and keeping to the backyards. “I’m smarter than you,” he goes.

He’s smarter than me in some things, dumber in others.

Something’s sloshing and I realize he’s got a canteen on his belt under his sweatshirt. He sees me looking at it.

“Gotta have water,” he says. “Wanna have to find a sink once we get in there?”

The school’s a pretty good hike away, on foot. I don’t know how long it takes to get there. At a red light we see a cop car, just hanging out.

When we finally get there I’m yawning like crazy.

“Now you got me doing it,” Flake says. We’re both pretty nervous.

My feet are tired. “How’re we getting in?” I ask him.

“Watch,” he says. He leads around to the old part of the building, to a window under the back stairs. It’s totally dark under there and I can’t see anything at all. I hold my hand out but can’t even feel anything.

“Shit,” Flake goes.

“What?” I go. “What’s wrong?”

“I stuck a card in the window to hold it open,” he goes. I can hear him feeling around. “Somebody must’ve found it.”

“They found it?” I go. “So they know we’re coming?”

“Yeah, it’s a trap,” Flake goes. “The whole thing’s a trap.” He ducks out from under the stairs and comes back a minute later. Glass breaks like somebody dropped a mug on the floor.

“You just broke the window?” I go.

“C’mon,” he tells me. There are little brittle noises while he breaks away the broken pieces. “Watch the glass.”

“They’ll know that’s how we got in,” I tell him back. I can hear him already sliding through. I feel around the opening, then hop up on the ledge and slide one leg inside.

“You have to drop down a little,” he says. “Hang on to the sill.”

“Can we get out this way?” I go.

“Jeez, I sure hope so,” he goes.

He knows where everything is, once we’re in.

“You been down here before?” I ask him.

He takes out a little flashlight and starts shining it around in front of his feet. We come to three straight doors that turn out to be unlocked. Behind the last one I can see the little red pilot light of the furnace. I can feel the heat on that side of the room.

“Hold this,” he says, handing me the flashlight. He squats and takes the saucepan and sets it on the floor and undoes his belt and slides out the canteen. I’m sweating and I’m not even doing anything. He pours the water into the saucepan and dumps the powder into the water. He reseals the baggie and stuffs it into his pocket, then sloshes the pan a little to stir things around. He stands up.

There’s a pin like the thing you stick in a turkey in the biggest pipe leading into the furnace, at the part where the pipe’s going sideways. He slides the pin out and shifts the pipe around until it moves. It opens, but not far enough for the saucepan to fit in.

“Shit,” he says.

“It doesn’t fit?” I go.

“Shit,” he says. He wrestles with it for five minutes, with me holding the light on it. Then he kicks the side of the furnace and sits on the floor.

“How about we pour some of it in the baggie and just leave the baggie open in there?” I ask him.

He doesn’t say anything. He’s probably wondering if you could get enough stuff in the baggie to do any good.

“God damn it,” he finally says.

The furnace clicks on. The open pipe makes it sound louder than it probably normally would.

“Lemme think,” Flake goes. He stands up and walks over to the furnace. I zigzag the light around while he’s thinking. “Shit,” he goes. He slides the pipe back where it was, then drops his pants and pisses on the side of the furnace.

Walking home he’s mad because his piss ended up splashing around and got on his shoes.

“What’re you looking at?” he wants to know.

“Absolutely nothing,” I go.

He squishes along. My feet are wetter than his, but his probably feel wetter. “Somebody’s going to pay for this,” he finally says.