Charles Benoit: You

“Trick or treat,” he says, and tosses you a can of Odenbach beer.

Derrick catches his beer with one hand. “Excellent. Where’d you get these?”

“Guy down the street. Helped him cover his pool. I noticed he had an outdoor bar. I found a whole six-pack in there and a bottle of tonic water.”

Max opens his beer and takes a swallow. “Four of us, six beers. Big frickin’ deal.”

“Be thankful you get any,” you say, hoping Ryan will give you one of the extra beers. You’ve never had more than three in one night and you’re not all that crazy about the taste, but if you drink them fast enough you can catch a buzz.

Ryan flicks his cigarette butt toward the baseball diamond, the red dot arcing through the brisk night air, falling short of its target. “Let’s get out of the wind.” And with that you all follow him toward the back wall of Neil Armstrong Middle School.

It’s a long and low building that your parents said was new when they went there. When you started sixth grade, construction crews were finishing up a major renovation and all the teachers could talk about that year was how multipurpose the building was and how lucky you all were to have such an inspiring new learning environment . But you had never been in the building before, so it didn’t mean anything to you. Maybe that’s when it started, when they told you how the new school would change everything you thought about school, it would be an exciting adventure and learning would be fun . And then it turned out to be just like any other school. So, yeah, maybe that’s when it started.

You kept up your grades that year-made honor roll every quarter-but you started to wonder, is this it, just more worksheets and quizzes and ridiculous group projects that wouldn’t have challenged your kid sister?

That was the year you had to read the book about a kid in the Civil War, the book the teacher never stopped raving about, the one she called truly inspiring . But you couldn’t get past the second chapter. That had never happened before. You used to love to read and always had a book in your hand. Then they assigned you the truly inspiring book and you found out how much reading could suck. So you read the back cover and you went online and then you wrote the book report. It was total BS and you knew it and you were actually nervous all weekend knowing that on Monday the teacher would “want to see you after class” or call your parents and let them know that you “were slipping a bit.” And on Monday you got the book report back and there was a big old A plus on the cover.

If that wasn’t the moment it was probably close to it.

Neil Armstrong Middle School. One small misstep for you, one giant waste of time for everybody.

Back against the wall, Ryan lights up another cigarette.

“I really hate American beer.”

You all nod but none of you, not even Ryan, knows the difference. Then you start talking about other things that you don’t know anything about, like which girls in your class are easy and what bands are coming to town and which teachers hate you the most and who’s sleeping with who and which jocks are the biggest assholes, and then it happens. Max tugs on the back door, the one that leads to the maintenance room and the cafeteria, and it opens.

He looks over at you and his eyes are bugging out of his head and his mouth is hanging open and for a second none of you do anything. Then Max lets go and the door starts to swing shut.

If you had let it go, let the door close with a clear double click, would things have turned out differently?

Probably not, but you’ll never know, will you?

You hold out your half-empty beer can, catching the door before it shuts.

“What are you doing?” Max says, his voice up an octave. “There’s an alarm. The cops’ll be here. We’ll get busted. Take it out.” He reaches for the beer can and you knock his hand out of the way.

“I don’t hear any alarm.”

They all tilt their heads and listen. No one is breathing.

“Maybe it’s a silent alarm,” Derrick says, “at the police station or something.”

Ryan takes a long draw on his cigarette. “Let’s find out.” He looks at you. “Leave it there.”

You nod and without another word the four of you dart across the grassy field, jump over the low chain-link fence and duck into the bushes that separate the school from the dark professional building where your dentist has an office. Your black clothes blend into the night and you can feel this hot rush of adrenaline just under your skin. For the first ten minutes every nerve is dancing and you take it all in-the bird that’s sitting up in the tree by the bus loop, the slight breeze that rattles the hooks on the flagpole lines. You can smell Ryan’s cigarette and the beer Max spilled as he fell over the fence. You’re waiting for sirens or flashing lights or the cutting beam of a car-mounted searchlight, but nothing happens. If the cops do come they’ll be too busy with the door and you’ll be long gone before they even think to look for you. Then you remember the beer can and for a few panicked moments you think about fingerprints, but the more you think about it the less you worry-the cop would just pull the can out and shut the door. It’s not like somebody died.

That’s still weeks away.

You’re sitting there in the cold and it goes from intense to boring real fast. After fifteen minutes you find yourself wishing the cops did show up, just so you’d have something to do.

Ryan is the first to stand. “All right, let’s go.”

You jump over the fence, Ryan and Derrick following after you, Max hangs back.

“The cops could still be coming.” It’s Max and he’s right, and you all know it, but you keep walking to the sliver of light. There’s a pause and then you can hear him stumbling back over the fence to join you.

You start off with big, quick strides, but you slow up as you get closer, easing your way into the light that fans out of the crack. Derrick goes around and grabs hold of the door handle and you catch the now-empty beer can before it falls to the concrete step. One hand on the door, Ryan leans in and looks around. “Hello,” he says, repeating it, louder this time, and you all listen, expecting a reply, expecting a shouted hey-you-kids-what-the-hell-are-you-doing. But there’s nothing, so you step inside.

Later that night, when you’re lying in bed, looking up at a ceiling you can’t see, you think about that door.

It was locked, just not pulled all the way shut, and that’s why Max could open it. Not that it made a difference-there was nothing in the room anyway. Some empty plastic garbage cans, a couple wet mops, broken-down cardboard boxes. It smelled like stale milk in there. The double doors that led to the cafeteria were still locked and not even Ryan wanted to bust them open. Two minutes after you went in, you were back out, the lock clicking this time. A small distraction on an otherwise dull Saturday night.

But going through the door changed things.

Hanging out in the cemetery or over at that construction site where they were putting up the new track homes? Or that time you all lifted Derrick up on your shoulders and he pulled down that fire-escape ladder and you all ran around on the roof of Sears until you saw the cop car way over at the other entrance? That was trespassing. If the cops had caught you then they could have taken you to the police substation, the one next to the library and the town hall, and your parents would have had to come and pick you up and you would have been grounded and all that crap.

They could have done that if they had caught you.

Now would they have taken you in?