Eric Puchner: Model Home

“Someone’s come to see you,” Angela said, leaning over the bed.

The boy opened his eyes, flinching in terror. “Mommy?” he said, trying to sit up. When he saw who it was, his face fell so completely that Dustin wanted more than anything to be his mother.

He began to visit the boy every week, driving out to Torrance Memorial on one of his days off work. The boy never seemed particularly pleased or unpleased to see him. Even when Dustin brought him something — a GI Joe, a Matchbox car — he would clutch the toy to his chest without taking it out of the package, refusing to talk. To fill the silence, Dustin would tell him about his own burns and how pissed off they’d made him, how sometimes he’d wanted to kill himself instead of going through another day. He still felt this way occasionally, when the itching wouldn’t stop or when he made the mistake of looking at old pictures that had been salvaged from the fire. Except for a tightness in his brow, the boy’s face gave no indication he was listening. It was a handsome face with miniature, doll-sized ears and eyes that ticked like a watch when he blinked. His eyelashes were unnaturally long, curled at the tips like a camel’s. Dustin wanted to clean the goop from them, but didn’t dare try for fear of making him scream.

It wasn’t until he started bringing him food, smelly bags of Wendy’s or McDonald’s, that the kid began to brighten when he entered. His favorite were vanilla shakes. Dustin made sure to pick up one for each of them. The kid would slurp at his shake ferociously until it was gone, his cheeks sucked in like an old man’s. When he could slurp no more, Dustin would give him what was left of his.

One day, after finishing both their shakes, the boy stared at him instead of the TV, as if working up the courage to speak. “Does my face look like you?” he asked finally. Dustin’s heart plummeted. He’d fooled himself into believing he looked unremarkable.

“No,” he said softly. “You look normal.”

The boy frowned, as if he didn’t believe him; the kid had no idea that his burns were confined to his legs. Dustin left the room and went to talk to a nurse, who gave him a hand mirror. It was the same one his father had held up to his face after the accident. On his way back, Dustin stopped for a second and leaned against the wall to catch his breath. He brought the mirror to the room and held it in front of the boy, who studied it fearfully before easing into a grin. This is what had been worrying him the whole time: the idea that they looked alike.

Later, as he was leaving, the boy met Dustin’s eyes: a look of such fierce attachment that Dustin almost flinched.

Outside the hospital, in the parking garage, he grabbed the hand putty from the passenger seat and kneaded the pain from his fingers. He still had an hour before he was supposed to meet Taz. More and more, it was his decision to visit; he couldn’t remember the last time she’d driven out to Auburn Fields. It should have been humiliating, this crawling after her, but then when he actually saw Taz in person — standing there all tan and friendly and contrite — he forgot the grievance he’d been nursing or whatever they’d been arguing about on the phone and felt only the frantic stage fright of losing her completely. Dustin tried to think when this fear had begun in earnest. Her birthday, probably. He couldn’t even remember what they’d fought about; what he remembered, clearly, was returning to his mom’s place with muddy shoes and seeing Taz waiting at the door, damp-eyed and apologetic, newly seventeen, and the flood of happiness in his chest giving way to a sort of panic. Lately she’d begun backing out of dates at the last minute, calling him to say she wasn’t feeling well or that her dad was getting too suspicious. He couldn’t be sure, but Dustin suspected she was actually going out with friends her own age. Yesterday he’d called her line at home and it had been busy for over an hour; when Taz answered, on the tenth try, she claimed she’d left the phone off the hook by mistake.

In these desperate moments he still missed the old Taz, the one who’d hugged him so hard she’d left bruises. He was afraid of her confidence. But it was also what attracted him: now that he was a freak, an outcast himself, he’d stopped glamorizing the freaky and unpopular. He needed someone who didn’t eat glass to like him.

Dustin slipped the Dart into reverse and headed back toward Hawthorne Boulevard, making sure to keep his thumb up in the air so it wouldn’t cramp. Last week, drawn by some irresistible force, he’d stopped by Jungle of Pets. He’d parked in front of the store and waited in the car, nervous as a child, unsure if Hector still worked there until he saw him appear in the window. Here was the person who’d ruined his life, dressed in a green polo shirt and matching khakis. Hector bent down to show something to a customer, and Dustin could see Ginger, the sugar glider, nestled in the pocket of his shirt. Amazing that the tiny creature was still alive. He wanted to feel angry, but what he felt at the moment was wonderment. This strange man who carried animals around in his pocket: he hadn’t intended to destroy Dustin’s life, and yet he had, thoughtlessly, without even meaning to. Now he seemed to have returned to his life as though nothing had changed. Dustin imagined that if he came here every day, if he parked in the same spot and spied on Hector, tracking his every move like a scientist — if he did this, something might be revealed to him, a deeper meaning; the reason behind this obscene cosmic joke would present itself.

Hector bowed his head as he talked to the customer, dispensing some sort of advice, his tall shoulders stooped like a vulture’s. The truth was, Dustin missed his companionship. He had no other friends; often, if he wasn’t working, he went to the movies by himself. He waited for Hector to look up and see him through the window, knowing that he would not have the courage to come back, but Hector had turned his head and walked the customer to the front of the store.

Now Dustin drove through Palos Verdes on his way to Rat Beach, where he was meeting Taz. It was ridiculously warm for February; the sun glinted off the cars in the parking lot and hurt his eyes. He put on his cowboy hat and walked down the dirt path to the water, wearing a long-sleeve shirt to protect his scars. It was the first time he’d been back to his old surfing spot since the accident. The waves were small and mushy, four-foot cappers that foamed off on the sand; a few kooks in wetsuits did their best to ride them, spilling off their boards as though yanked by a cane. Dustin was relieved not to see any of his old friends out on the water before remembering they were all in college. It amazed him that he used to call this his life.

How long ago — centuries, it seemed — that he’d come down here with Jonas to meet Kira.

He found Taz near the first lifeguard stand, talking to several teenage girls in sweatshirts hanging to their knees. Even from a distance she looked poised and Kira-like, flinging her hair back when she laughed. She’d stopped dyeing it a while ago; her witch’s forelock shone in the sun. Taz reached up to touch her earlobe — just a touch, but Dustin could see the effort it took to keep herself from picking at it. The secret struggle gave him hope. She peeled away from her friends without waving at Dustin and wandered over to greet him.

“Who was that?” he asked.

“Some girls from school,” she said, refusing to glance their way. “They’re playing hooky, too.”

She looked at his cowboy hat, furtively, and the embarrassment in her face made him heartsick. He wondered if she’d chosen this time to meet him — three on a Wednesday afternoon — because she’d thought no one would be here to see them. He took off his hat and tossed it in the sand, knowing how burned he’d get even in February. The sun on his face felt like a long-lost friend.