The line was the glow-in-the-dark filament or cord or whatever you call it from the new edger my dad wouldn’t let me use yet. The glow-in-the-darkness was complete stupidity, because who edges at night, everybody would complain about the sound, but still, the one my dad had bought had been the last one on the rack, and it came with a pair of safety glasses tinted in some way that made the glow string really pop, so you could get that edge right where you wanted it.
As for that spool of glowing string, it’s like fishing line times a hundred, will only break from slapping into the edge of concrete ten thousand times at high speed. I leaned back on it, each end already looped into junked joysticks because I knew the line would slip from my gloves otherwise.
Tim fell back into me, away from being choked, and I set my feet, let him kick his desk, which dislodged his mouse, switched tabs on his screen and started the video he’d had ready behind the game, for after he made the next level and could stop.
It was the movie we’d taken Manny to. The same one Shanna had been pirating.
I slacked off the line a bit, said without thinking, “Why—why this one?”
He just pulled at the line with his fingers, pulled like if I’d let go please he could maybe explain why this movie tonight, but I was in too far to stop now, couldn’t let him get enough breath to answer me, because then I might not start in again. But then he did kind of answer. He scrabbled in his pants pocket, kicking to get the angle right, and pulled up that torn ticket stub he hadn’t been able to find the night of the prank. Like showing it to me now meant “admit one,” I guess? And it kind of did. He had paid for the movie, so downloading it now was just finally using his ticket, was hardly even illegal. But still. I wasn’t an usher, right? I didn’t have a flashlight to cup in my hand, make his ticket stub real. I was something completely different.
I squinted my eyes in pain with him and pulled back harder, let him scrabble at his neck, at his breathing passages that weren’t passing air anymore, his fingernails going deep enough to scratch bright red blood up, the ticket stub fluttering down to rest on the toe of my right shoe.
In the reflection of his monitor I could see his face, dying, and my balaclava’d eyes above, crying.
“I love you, I love you,” I said to him during his last few kicks, because I didn’t want him to die any more scared than he had to. My shoulders were shaking, my forearms burning, and if I hadn’t worn gloves, my hands would have been bleeding, leaving every kind of evidence.
Finally he slumped over, and this was the part I hadn’t been expecting, the part the spy movies never go into. His muscles, without blood flowing through them anymore, I guess, keeping everything in there slick and lubricated, they went kind of instantly creaky, if that makes sense. I could feel them rubbing against each other, I mean, rubbing against each other in a way I could tell was going to lock into place in a few minutes, once the blood pooled in his lower extremities like in all the CSI shows.
I let go fast and pushed away, suddenly sure that creaking-inside feel was going to rush up from him, get into my muscles, leave me dying as well, or at least kill some important part of me. But I guess it kind of did anyway. I fell back onto his bed, cried the rest of my insides out, almost throwing up from it, then rose, punching his stupid Star Wars pillow, hating Manny for making me do this. It wasn’t my fault, I wanted to scream. I shouldn’t have to feel this, like this. I was the hero here, not the bad guy. I was saving lives. The few I had to take shouldn’t count against me, shouldn’t hurt so much. Not when considered against all the people not dying.
Finally I started just breathing deep and raspy, really heaving air in and out.
When I could, I studied Tim dead in his chair, the superhero movie he’d never seen playing right there in front of him.
Finally, hours too late because I’m not a seasoned criminal, I angled my head up to catch any sounds coming from the rest of the house. This hadn’t been a completely quiet thing, right?
He didn’t have a dog to bark the alarm, though, and his little brothers slept deep enough to sleepwalk sometimes, and his parents were all the way over on the other side of the house, and Meg, his big sister, was probably at a college party or something, wasn’t even thinking of her family, of this house.
I came back to Tim, wiped my eyes with my sleeve.
I couldn’t let him look like he’d done this to himself, I knew. I could at least give him that, or not add that on, whatever.
To be sure his mom wouldn’t have to carry her son having been this big surprise suicide around with her for the rest of her life, I pulled out the flea market knives I’d brought as backup and used them to pin Tim to the wall like an insect in biology. The hands were easy even if getting him up on my shoulder at the same time wasn’t, but evidently the feet are full of bones or something, not at all like frogs. When I couldn’t get through, even hammering on the butt of the biggest knife with the heel of one of his winter boots, I just pushed the knives through the extra skin of his ankles, jammed the blade tips into the wall as best as I could. It wasn’t structural support or anything, but it had a good enough look, and, with both hands stuck to the wall now, and both feet, no way could Tim have killed himself. He was a victim. And, if I was going to keep on with this, he was a random victim, a big mystery murder, a death out of the blue just like Shanna.
Kids at school would be talking about him for years. For forever.
“You’re welcome, man,” I said to him, and touched his chest for probably a long ten-count with my forehead, which felt like a real ritual that mattered, that meant everything, that meant enough, and then I left the way I’d come in, wiping the key shiny clean and tinking it back down the frog’s throat.
Ten minutes later I had to push my dad’s motorcycle the last twenty yards up to the garage, since I hadn’t built up enough speed to coast all the way in.
I would remedy that next time.
I was learning.
8
TWO DAYS LATER I called an emergency meeting of those of us not yet dead.
It wasn’t to poison the punch on them or explode some homemade bomb. That would have saved a lot of grief, don’t get me wrong, but . . . remember about our families? A bunch of kids murdered one by one for no reason anybody knows can pull moms and dads and brothers and sisters together, but four kids playing with incendiary devices down on the curving pier or long dock or whatever it is down behind Twisty Treats during what would have been seventh period on a weekday, that was the kind of needless tragedy that could leave them all shell-shocked, looking for vices and addictions and affairs to fill our missing spaces with.
I was the first there, but I just watched from the trees in the park, so JR was actually more first.
I wanted to see if he could feel anything from the water, from where Manny had to be sleeping. I wanted to see if the lake would slosh even higher up the shore, from if Manny was sensing a disturbance in the force.
JR just peeled up splinters from the boards at the very end of the dock and threw them like wingless paper airplanes out into the water. Or maybe like little pretend spears, I don’t know. He might have been able to see flies or gnats I couldn’t make out from where I was.
Did he look like a guy who had just lost two of his lifelong best friends?