As direct as possible, I try again. “Why aren’t you living with your dad, Walt?”
He’s twisting and clicking and all-out ignoring me. I consider what he said earlier, about his mother being in a casket. If his father was left alone to take care of a kid with Down syndrome—God, surely he didn’t just hand money to his kid and send him packing. Walt can’t be more than fifteen, sixteen tops.
“The Cubs are in Chicago,” he says, white squares intact. “They’re good. They’re my favorite.”
Poor kid. I don’t have the heart to tell him, on top of everything else, his favorite baseball team is the absolute worst. “Yeah, Walt. Those Cubbies are something else.”
“Yeah, man,” he says, shaking his head. “Those Cubbies are something else. We should go to a game sometime. But we have to get tickets first.” He throws his finger in the air. “Tickets.”
“What are you guys talking about?”
The shadow behind Walt could have been there five seconds or an hour. It’s creepy, but creepier still—Walt isn’t fazed. He doesn’t jump, doesn’t look up from his Rubik’s Cube, isn’t startled in the slightest. The owner of this new voice steps from the trees like a cautious predator. He’s tall. Freakishly so. And wearing a red hoodie like mine.
“Cubbies, Caleb,” says Walt. “We’re talking about the Cubs.”
The kid called Caleb grabs a tin of ham and plops down next to Walt. Sticking the edge of the can between his teeth, he pops it open. “Walt, what have I told you about the Cubs?”
Walt frowns, finishing off the blue squares. “The Cubs suck balls.”
Caleb nods and takes a giant bite. “Right on. The Cubs suck balls, dude. Always have, always will, you follow?”
I am suddenly aware of my lack of clothing. For some reason, I hadn’t minded the daisy dukes in front of Walt, but with this new kid . . . well, I’m not about to stand up and walk around in these short cutoffs and a soaking wet T-shirt. I pull the blankets up around my legs, covering as much as I can.
“Whaddaya guys got on your face?” says Caleb, staring at me from across the fire.
Suck a duck. I forgot about the war paint. My circle of trust, it seems, is ever-expanding.
“Nothing,” I say, trying to think up an excuse. “We were just—nothing.”
Caleb nods and smiles, his teeth full of processed ham. There’s something about his voice, smile, smell, clothes, hair, hook nose, and shifty eyes that makes me about as uncomfortable as a nun in a whorehouse, as my mom used to say. He’s sitting right here in front of me, a physical being, but hand-to-God, Caleb feels more like a shadow than a person. He pulls a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, sticks one in his mouth—along with the canned ham—and lights up.
“You were just nothing, huh?” Now he’s talking, on top of chewing and smoking. “Real eloquent there, sweetheart.”
“My name’s Mim, jackass.” I pull the blanket up close to my chin, and imagine myself in a small room alone with Caleb. He’s tied down, and I have one pair nunchucks, one pair katanas, one pair sais, and one bo staff. I am Mim the lost Turtle in a Half Shell.
He tosses a half-eaten canned ham into the woods and gets up to grab a new one. “Okay, then, Mim Jackass. Sounded like you guys were having a real nice discussion about moms and dads and roses and rainbows and shit. Now my old man—he was a real creative son of a bitch. Used to beat the hell outta me with household appliances, you follow? Irons, pots, pans, toasters, and the like. For no good reason, too. He wasn’t a drunk, which I guess would have been a reason. Thing is, he didn’t need a drink to be hateful, you follow? He was just fine at it sober. But one day, I was all growed-up, see. So you know what I did? Pulled the fire extinguisher out of his garage and beat the shit out of him.”
Caleb howls, tossing his second can into the woods. I’m beginning to wonder if he isn’t my exact opposite: a violent, smoking moron who throws tin cans into nature. His laugh morphs into a hacking cough, reminiscent of old Arlene’s respiratory issues. The main difference being, she was ancient, and he can’t be more than eighteen.
“So the state sent me to live with foster parents,” Caleb continues, having pulled it together. “Second night I’m there, my foster dad, a guy named . . .” He taps his chin with his finger, but I can tell it’s an act. He knows the guy’s name, or else he’s making it up. “Raymond, that’s it. Raymond raises a fist, but I’d had enough of that, see. Out of the frying pan, as they say.” Caleb puts down his spoon, then peers across the fire at me, eyes ablaze. “I stabbed that son of a bitch right there in his kitchen.”
I swear it’s a shadow. A talking, eating, smoking, cursing shadow.
Walt stands up, fidgets with his spoon, puts it in his pocket, then walks toward the tent. “I’ll get blankets.”
For a moment, Caleb and I are alone. I avoid eye contact by studying the dirt.
Don’t look up.
The sound of Walt rustling around in the tent mixes with the fire’s crackling, which mixes with my heart pounding, which mixes with my blood pumping, which mixes with, mixes with, mixes with . . .
I look up.
Through the dying flames, Caleb is staring at me, and I’m reminded of the familiar nothingness of an old television set. Growing up, my dad refused to buy a new TV. The colors in the corners of the screen were beginning to fade, a promise that before long, every movie would be black-and-white. But here’s what I remember most: That old television, when turned off, produced a little click just as the screen went blank. And within that click, the stories and characters of my shows were swept away, as if they’d never existed at all.