Eric Puchner - Model Home

“I thought we were going to look for Jonas,” Lyle said.

“He’s not here,” Dustin said. “It was a stupid idea.”

“Now you tell us.”

“What do you think? He’s camping in the yard and no one’s seen him?”

“We came all the way out here,” Lyle said. “We should at least look. ”

“Can’t you see he’s petrified?” Taz said angrily, glaring at her.

It was true. Dustin’s face had gone rigid, his arms tucked in as if he were bracing against a wind. He would not move his eyes from the dashboard.

“I’ll go help Lyle look,” Hector said. “We’ll find Jonas if he’s here.”

Dustin snapped toward him, “What the fuck’s wrong with you? My little brother’s disappeared, maybe dead, and you’re acting like he’s your own fucking relative!”

Hector took a step backward. He looked pale, as though he might throw up.

“Why don’t you go home for once? H-O-M-E . We have a fucking pet already.”

“Dust,” Lyle said.

“All he does is stand around looking miserable!”

“I’m the one who did it,” Hector said quietly.

Lyle looked at him. “What are you talking about?”

“The stove. I left it on by accident. I broke into your house because I was mad at Lyle.” He caught his breath, staring at the curb. “I blew up your house.”

Lyle was suddenly scared. A peacock cried from somewhere below, the call echoing down the canyon.

“It’s my fault. I was sick… I left some water on the stove.”

Hector started to cry. For some reason, Lyle remembered letting him eat that pistachio ice cream cone the day he’d wandered into The Perfect Scoop, the way he’d closed his eyes to swallow, hunched over to mask his suffering. Dustin got out of the car suddenly: his face was so awful, so red and still and strange, that Lyle wondered if he would strangle Hector with his bare hands. Instead he reached into Hector’s shirt pocket and pulled out the sugar glider, gripping the furry creature in his glove. Hector shook his head, eyes wide with fright. Dustin turned and crossed the street toward the Constables’ house, holding the tiny animal in front of him like a grenade. He strode swiftly, as if he were carrying an actual bomb. When he reached the Constables’, he walked down the sidewalk to where you could see the blue glimmer of their swimming pool through the bushes. The deep end was a stone’s throw from the street. He was going to heave the thing into the Constables’ pool and watch it drown.

Lyle rushed across the street but he’d already cocked his arm, his bad one, letting it fly. She waited for a glimpse of fur, for the hurled creature to open in midair — a puny flying carpet — before gliding into the pool with a splash. Nothing happened. When she reached Dustin, he was standing on the sidewalk, clutching his arm. His sunglasses lay at his feet. He opened his fist and the remarkable creature was still there, panting like a heart.

“You couldn’t kill it,” Lyle said.

“I would have. It stuck to my glove.”

The animal’s claws were still dug into the leather, eyes big as marbles. Even scared out of its wits, it was infuriatingly cute. Taz and Hector watched from the car, frozen like statues. Zap, Lyle thought. Us vs. them. She glanced back at her brother, who was staring at the scrub oak across the street.

“Jesus,” he said.

Caught high in the branches, where the leaves were spotted from blight, was one of Lyle’s old T-shirts. It was ratty and yellow, but filling in some letters she could still make out the slogan: MURDER IS A FAUX PAS. It must have escaped the fire only to get stuck in a tree. Once she’d walked around with jokes on her chest, believing herself to be unhappy. The shirt flapped in the breeze, like a kite she couldn’t get back.

People. Jonas had never seen so many in one place before. Smoking pipes by their cars or dancing like noodles to noodley music or playing Hacky Sack as though they were learning a Russian dance. Blasts of mossy perfume made his eyes water. On the roof of a van, a woman was swaying in a circle, a hula hoop spinning around her neck. “Steal your face?” a man asked Jonas. He held up a T-shirt with a skull on it. Jonas hurried past. This was the third time someone had asked if they could have his face. He did not know what they planned on doing with it. Perhaps they were unhappy with their own faces, which were gaunt and hairy and sometimes even missing teeth.

The parking lot went on forever, bristling with cars and vans and motorcycles. Jonas entered a maze of vendors selling jewelry and skateboards and T-shirts with teddy bears on them like the ones on Griselda’s bong. He stopped in the narrow shade behind a booth, wondering what to do. He did not know where Major Meltdown and Griselda were. He’d gone with Captain Lobo to sell the tickets they’d picked up from the stationery store, the ones they’d had copied onto special cardboard and cut out carefully with scissors, making sure the little skeleton doffing its hat didn’t get snipped off at the top. People had bought these tickets believing they were real. Captain Lobo had not felt bad about this: he called them Trustafarians. Trustafarians were from Trustafaria, a very rich planet. They did not deserve their money, and therefore it belonged to the “mendicants of Earth.” Explaining this to Jonas, he’d smiled to show off the gunk in his teeth, as though it were proof of his impoverishment.

Captain Lobo had seemed less happy when three of the Trustafarians had found him behind a porta-potty and demanded their money back, waving their fake tickets in his face. When he claimed not to know who they were, they tackled him all at once, punching him in the face while he screamed and cried for help. Jonas had run away as fast as he could, ignoring the panicked yelp of his name.

Now he was lost and frightened, a haze of smoke stinging his eyes. Where had they parked the RV? He ventured into the hot sun again, searching for the flutter of Griselda’s hands. His stomach growled. He hadn’t eaten anything all day, unless you counted the day-old maple bar he’d had for lunch. He dreamed about calling his family — as he had a hundred times before — but he could not bear to spoil their relief. Sometimes he’d trick himself into believing they missed him, that they maybe even wanted him back, but then he would remember Dustin’s face and what he’d done and how his dad or mom or brother looked at him sometimes as if they wished it were him. The truck driver had said they were probably drinking champagne.

Jonas froze. Up ahead, near the wiggly heat from a grill, several people were squatting in a circle and tending to a man who was jerking comically on the ground, his bare feet pointed like a ballerina’s. A guy ran up with an Evian bottle and poured some water on the man’s face. Jonas backed into a van, which came alive and touched his shoulders. A beautiful woman with tufts of hair in her armpits. He had never seen anyone with this particular deformity. Her breasts, naked under her dress, were lower than they should have been.

“It’s all right,” the woman said. “Got dosed, probably. Bad news.” She looked down at Jonas’s pants — his filthy, flowered jeans — and her eyes sparked with interest. “All by your lonesome today?”

Jonas nodded, worried that she might know about Captain Lobo and have him arrested. The woman’s face softened. She put an arm around his shoulders and led him over to a VW bus twinkling with music. A group of people — two shirtless men with ponytails and a girl not much older than Lyle — were sitting in foldout chairs behind it. The girl was holding a baby, her top pulled down on one side so that it could suck at her breast.