John McManus - Fox Tooth Heart

“How’d you get back?” Caidin said. “Did you pay a coyote?”

Juaco giggled. “This rich guy got me a visa.”

“Oh.” He wondered if Juaco could hear his ears’ thrumming. “If we could make it to the impound lot, I’ve got my mom’s credit card.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Because I want to.”

“Do you think hot people are better than regular people?”

“I just, you can’t get by here without a car,” Caidin said, except of course the city was being destroyed anyway.

The phone rang. “Why haven’t you left, Snot?” said his brother Caleb, on the other side of the world.

“Tomorrow morning. Are you okay?”

“I’m the only guy from Houston whose folks haven’t left,” Caleb said, sounding more petulant than concerned.

Caidin listened to the whistling emptiness of the Iraqi steppe. “Are you the only one whose dad bribed him to go to war?” he heard himself say.

“Don’t talk about Dad that way,” Caleb said.

“I wrecked the Porsche,” he said, suddenly wanting to hurt his brother. “I was high. It’s probably totaled.”

“You’ve always been a shitty liar.”

“Seriously, who tries so hard to send his sons to war?”

“Who talks about his dad that way?”

Before Caidin could answer exactly who, the dial tone began to hum.

“Will your dad bribe you too?” Juaco asked.

“It was more of a threat than a bribe,” Caidin said. “But it only works if you care whether he’s ashamed.”

They played Xbox awhile, and then they watched the evacuation. When Juaco fell asleep on Caidin’s bed, Caidin muted the TV and watched him instead. Just barely, he let his finger brush against the tiny hairs on Juaco’s arm. Of course hot people are better, he was thinking when the knocks came, in the blast-beat pattern of the Poisoned Wasteland theme music.

The door swung open, the light came on. “I need my games,” said Jeff. “We’re leaving in an hour for. . Oh.”

Juaco opened his eyes. “Are you Jeff?”

“My folks are waiting,” said Jeff, ejecting a cartridge from the console.

“If you’re Jeff, Milo thanks you for being nice.”

Meticulously looking away from the bed, Jeff took another game from the shelf. Say something, Caidin thought. Say I saw you touching Juaco just now. Say dead people can’t give thanks. Say dude, the kid you’re lying next to killed your friend. But Jeff said only, “Hope you booked a hotel.”

“Mom’s friends with the whole Capitol,” Caidin said. “We’ll probably sleep in the governor’s spare rooms.”

Jeff turned out the light and closed the door behind him. Soon Juaco was snoring again, and Caidin lay awake wondering who else Milo had left messages for. Was there one for Caidin, too hatefully worded for Juaco to show him? Or had Juaco deemed the message too kind? He might never know. He fell asleep and awoke to a ringing phone. “Put Cleo in her carrier,” his mother said. “We’re almost home.”

Outside, wind was whipping the live oaks. To the east the sky was ash-gray, while an otherworldly green light shone in the west. “Juaco’s coming with us,” he said.

“Get dressed, Caidin. They’ve raised it to five.”

“You’d rescue a cat and not my friend?”

“You told me his aunt?”

“There’s no aunt. He came back alone to get the automatic scholarship.” Instantly Caidin knew his guess must be a correct one: their school was the best in Texas, and Juaco was at the top of their class. Juaco hadn’t returned for Milo, Izzy, Caidin, or anyone but himself.

Just as quickly, Caidin realized how dumb it was to think so, when it was at school that Juaco had been exposed.

“Cleo’s part of our family. Your friend has a family. Now where’s the Porsche?”

“I got high on salvia and flipped it.”

“We need it in the garage!”

“Most likely it’s already at a garage. After I go surfing, I’ll call around.”

Juaco was up and putting on his shoes. “We’re taking the Volvo,” Caidin told him. “We’ll meet up with my folks in Austin.”

“Dude. Is that even your car?”

“No, it’s my girlfriend’s. Come on.”

Juaco crossed the room, turned to study Caidin. “Best of luck,” he said, and he headed for the stairs.

Caidin followed him down. “I mean, where else would you go? San Salvador?”

“Not to hurt your feelings, but I’d rather live in Fallujah than stay with your folks.”

Juaco had reached the landing. Behind him, Caidin grasped for any threat or promise that would stop him from exiting into the gale. He thought Juaco must have seen what unreturned love had done to Milo, and yesterday’s kiss was his revenge. It was a plan so elegantly cruel that Caidin wondered what percentile Juaco had scored on the IQ test. Separate from his withering heart was a sudden dread that his parents’ maid, Consuela, might be approaching the door as Juaco opened it. She wasn’t. He walked out, and dwindled into the shower of lantana flowers and air plants. What a stupid thing to have feared. So was the entire storm. Rita could destroy Houston for all Caidin cared, because aside from this, nothing was ever going to go wrong.

VICTOR WAS A PECULIAR BOY, said his parents’ few friends, an assessment that irked Victor even as he suspected it was correct. Take his cage dream. Lying awake nights, he fancied himself shackled to a wall beside the home-schooled boys from across the road. A hook-nosed villain would poke him and those boys with a pitchfork, naked. If he felt himself falling asleep during this fantasy, he pressed ice to his face to sustain the scene. What was this if not peculiar? He carried needle-nose pliers in his pocket for extracting snot without touching it. Journeys of any length had to begin on his left foot. He peed sitting down. After brushing his teeth he swallowed the toothpaste, risky as that might be, because he’d always done it that way.

In 1985, when Victor was seven, a friend of his mother’s came to visit Yazoo City. This spice-scented, easy-mannered fellow, who had the mellifluous name of Micah, said to Victor, “You’re trouble.”

“Don’t,” said Victor’s mother, but Micah went on: “It’s true. When you’re older, Victor, you’ll be a truckload of trouble.”

Something stirred in Victor to hear it, but he kept quiet. Later, after Micah had gone, Victor found his mother weeping in the kitchen. “I won’t be trouble,” he said to her.

“Micah’s telling people bye is why I’m crying.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“I mean he’s sick.”

“I’m sorry,” Victor could have replied, or “Why,” but instead he said, “Micah’s a name I wouldn’t hate.”

“You can change your name when you’re grown.” They’d been through this already. To base his favor on the sound of names was another quirk of Victor’s. If he were, say, a Micah, hearing tell of a Victor, he would hate that boy’s guts — not because Victor meant winner but because the name’s ugly asymmetry suggested an ungainly boy. It disappointed his parents, Mary and Ralph, for him to feel this way. But theirs were neutral names. Victor didn’t adore one or hate the other, the way he did with Albert and Sievert Alfsson across the road.

Albert and Sievert were twins with identically curly manes of yellow hair, but from Victor’s bedroom window perch he could distinguish them readily. Albert was chubby, for one, but more importantly Victor’s grandfather had been an Albert. The name connoted decrepitude, unsightliness. He’d never known a Sievert, on the other hand. Sievert — impish, lithe, fresh — was the only twin Victor yearned to touch. If asked what sounded nice about the boy’s name, he couldn’t have answered. Why were bluebirds pretty? Self-evident. The problem started when Sievert quit coming outside.