“Go on,” said Will. He said it like a dare. “Tell your mom,” Will said.
“I am going to,” said the boy. “You guys are going to get in tons of trouble. I mean tons. My dad is a fireman. He's six feet three inches tall. One time he spanked me for just getting lost.”
“Go tell him. Tell your mom too. Just try it.”
“I am,” the boy panted.
Will pushed the jabbering boy out the door. For a moment the face of his mother now was the face of the boy on the other side of the door, the begging eyes, the not knowing what to do. It seemed like he might never go away. It seemed like he might never shut up. The boy wanted to come back in but Will yanked the door shut on his knuckles. Skin curled away from the boy's hand like a torn envelope.
“I dare you,” Will said. “Pussy,” he added.
“I'm going right now,” said the boy.
When he had gone, Will picked up the hose. He swept the hose back and forth and pretended the spray tearing into the flat cushiony water was bullets and he was on the sandy bluffs over the lake. Below the sand dunes the waves washed in on the swimmers, their white and brown shoulders taking the waves in their order. The pool water was only knee deep, but it didn't matter. No one was going swimming today. Now something else was going on. He couldn't help it if he couldn't be trusted.
They could fight it out back at the old farm.
The cat was back outside and the hose was right in Will's hand. He could have easily soaked it. But because the boy might be somewhere nearby, bringing his mother or father or both, he left the cat alone. That was one thing Dennis had taught him. You never knew who was going to care about animals.
Will stood in the hallway, the patterns of the wallpaper running up before his eyes to some height. The light coming out under the crack in the door was full of the golden undergrowth of carpet and Kristen's muffled cries. His belly crawled and tightened. He had been catching up on his sugar, lifting it out of the metal canister with a scoop they kept in there. The grains made a sifting sound and bounced on his trousers and spread. He could imagine the noises of the trip back to the old farm where they would wait to be met by another set of parents. Some kids got to live there for years. The boy with the jaggedy teeth never left. He was always in trouble but he was happy.
He explored the bathroom in the house. On the counter were three toothbrushes and the kind of toothpaste with red and green stripes in it. In the closet were stacks of towels, thick and dark green. There were strange brushes with white bristles, hard and soft, large and small. Extra toothbrushes, extra tubes of toothpaste. Red bottles of perfumed powders he didn't trust; he knew some were for boys and some girls. Liquids whose labels were crammed with words. Tupperware containers full of lozenges--they tasted like cough drops, the foul kind. Everything in the bathroom had carpet on it. He stopped and watched his hands shivering. It was like he needed something and he'd forgotten what it was. The cough drop taste was sour, so he opened the tube of toothpaste and meted out a line on his finger. They had the red stripe, but apparently they'd run out of the green.
The freckled boy was coming through the back yard with someone. Will was in the kitchen, searching: he heard them rustle through the grass and scrape across the hardtop around the pool. It wasn't what he expected: an angry father or a mother who turned red. This was just an older boy, in a white T-shirt and moustache. Will found the flip lock on the screen door and fastened it.
They whacked the back door with branches they carried before they seemed to notice Will standing right inside. “Oh,” the boy said.
“That's him?” said the moustached boy.
“That's the one I was talking to.”
“Let us in,” the moustached boy said. He focused through the screen; Will could feel the wire there between them, catching their eyes. They weren't talking to him directly. A hand jerked on the handle, but the lock stayed.
“How old are you?” Will asked.
“He'd better let us in,” the moustached boy said.
“We're going to kick your ass if you don't let us in,” the freckled boy declared.
“Shut up, Allen,” the moustached boy said. “You're going to scare him.”
“He's not scared of us,” the freckled boy whimpered. To say this seemed to drive him into a kind of frenzy. He tugged at the flimsy aluminum door. “He told me to come tell.”
“I'm sure he didn't tell you to come tell,” the older boy said. “Come on.” And they went away. Will stayed at the door to watch them go. They dropped the thick branches not far from the door and went wordlessly through the yard, peering around. Will looked out to make sure it was safe and then he stepped outside. The branches were sawn off and skinned. He dragged them back into the kitchen and leaned them on the counter. Then he relocked the door.
He wasn't sure what was going to happen now.
When was dinnertime? Every few days, it seemed, someone tried to teach him how to read a clock. But if dinner happened whenever his mother came home, what he learned about the clock didn't matter the next day. His throat felt full of dark, tasteless air. From the room upstairs the bed repeated its birdlike squeak. He wanted sugar, a mouthful. He remembered the pen down between the oven and counter: something only his hand could get. He had to remember to get it before Dennis was done and took him home.
Two boys were at the back door. They were hullabalooing and staring in. They were not the ones he had met. They were no one he knew. He got up off the floor and nearly lost his feet in the swirls of the living-room carpet. Brown-haired heads moved along the sill of the front picture window and rose like black ghosts behind the frosted portholes of the front door. There was a knock, then two, joining those from the back. The house began rumbling. The faces saw him, but they didn't seem interested in yelling at him at all.
When Kristen shrieked at the noises and took off, grabbing the sheet to take with her, Dennis rolled onto his back and pulled his feet up to hug his knees. He heard the bathroom door close and water begin to run. His body was slick with sweat and tiny familiar blotches of red. The rhythm in his ears--both his heart marching and the strange banging in the house--made him half expect to see Will burst through the ceiling in a spray of white plaster. Beside him on the chair, his clothes were folded, as ready as any Sunday morning. Now that someone was finally home, he supposed he'd better get into them. He heard water running and a panicky shriek in the bathroom. They always panicked when they were found--girls. His brother. Other people. To Dennis it was as if he were looking at a map, an atlas of the home: okay, she is in there. I will be here. They will not move me. He anticipated the civility of parents, the way they yelled, the way they would recognize his neatness and behavior, the way the darkness on the sheets would still fit him. He was the boss of things, someone to be trusted. The light was stained by the half-drawn curtain, the nonwhite of sheep, of wool. He heard footsteps coming up the short stairway toward him and rejoiced in what he'd done: the sweaty place he'd made, that he could fight for, that announced that he belonged. He clenched his guts as the door opened. But it was just his brother, his sweet face all fidgety with excitement.