Glass Boys (25 page)

“Shit,” he said, and his fingers crept up his chest, sought out the eagle. “Should I ask her?”

“Why not?”

“What if she laughs.”

“Laugh back.”

“What if she says yes?”

“You're stuck, then.”

“What do I do when the song speeds up? Fast dance? Keep slow? God, it goes on forever.”

Ween pushed up his glasses, stared up at taller Toby. “You really asking me this stuff? Man, I don't do dances. You just dragged me here.”

“Oh God.”

But she was beside Toby now, and she leaned in, her candy breath on his ear. Smell of strawberries and sugar. “You want to, you know?”

Shock stopped Toby's natural functions, and he froze. Ween struck him in the head, and finally, Toby squeaked, “Um, yeah. Yeah, sure. Cool.”

Jamming his hands in his pockets, Toby walked beside her into the clump of swaying bodies, and before he knew it they were standing before one another, rapidly assessing where hands went and feet went and if a cheek might brush against a cheek. Toby felt her flared hips just below the belt on her jumper, and her bent arms touched him, palms burning into his shoulder blades. Beat ignored, he moved his feet side to side to side, shuffle, shuffle, like an arthritic man, turning her in contained rounds. He did not shift his hands or face even though he noticed all the boys surrounding him were freely groping backsides and making fox bites on their partners' necks.

The song marched forward, word by word, painfully slowly, and Toby at once wished it would carry on into eternity and that it would be instantly over. He knew he would enjoy the dance much more not in creating the memory, but reflecting on it. All during the dance, he spoke to her nonstop inside his head, told her he thought she was really good-looking and that he didn't care if the other boys were always calling her a carpenter's dream and that he would love to know her middle name. And if she wanted to be something important when she grew up, like Ween did, or if she was more like him, and had no idea and didn't really care. And he mentioned, in silence, that he hoped she didn't like vinegar on her chips.

As soon as the last note faded, Toby dropped his arms, wouldn't look her in the eye. She mumbled something he didn't hear, and Toby said, “Yeah, cool,” then turned on his heel and searched the sideboard for Ween. Ween was up in the bleachers, book once again open in his lap, bluish penlight glowing in the crowd.

“I wants to leave,” Toby said. “I feels funny.”

Ween snapped the book closed, held it in his arms. “I idn't surprised. I bet 'tis the hormones is making you sick,” he said. “Page two hundred and sixteen. Really doesn't mean anything, you know. Chemicals from your hypothalamus driving you crazy.”

“I think 'tis more than that.”

“That's what your brain wants you to think,” Ween said, nodding. “You can't trust your brain no more. Or your other parts, for that matter.”

“What can you trust?” Toby thought about Melvin, then. Thought about how his brother seemed to be running so fast and hard from invisible ghosts, he barely even noticed Toby anymore.

“Me, Tobe. I can be your voice of reason. So far nothing or no one got a hold of me.”

“Thanks, man.”

As Toby and Ween came down off the bleachers, Clayton Gibbon struck Toby's shoulder, knocked him into the barrier surrounding the rink.

“Hey, dickwad.”

“Watch it,” Toby said. “Watch where you're going.”

Clayton gripped Toby's arm. “Who you telling to watch it, quiff?” Swung Toby around. “And where the fuck did you get that.” Two fingers hooked around Toby's eagle necklace, pulling.

Toby gulped, felt his heart beating, just as rapidly as when he'd been dancing, but with fear now controlling the pump.

“Get what?”

“Don't be a spaz, dickhead.”

Something in Toby's gut told him to lie about the necklace.

“Found it.”

“Yeah, like shit. How the fuck did you find it in my fucking room?”

“On the side of the road is where.”

Clayton yanked, and the leather stretched, burned a line in Toby's neck, and burst.

“You can't do that,” Ween piped up. “That's his. I seen his bro—”

Toby stomped on Ween's foot, said, “That's okay. Just a piece of shit anyways.” And though he felt instant guilt for insulting the gift Melvin had offered up, Toby sensed it was smarter to let it go. “Let's blow this place, Ween.” Besides, he just wanted to get home, slip into the dark and the quiet of his bedroom, think about every tiny detail of his first slow dance with a girl. And he tried to choke out any image of his father's eyebrows, tangled and low over those eyes, forbidding Toby from ever touching Angie Fagan again.

“NO. NO, HE's in bed. Do you want me to rouse him?”

“Do you think he seen Melvin?”

“I don't expect. Young feller's been in all night.” Throat cleared. “And, to be honest, Lew, I don't see your boy around much these days. Not like he used to be.”

“Ah.” Lewis wrapped the phone cord around his wrist, pulled. “Awful sorry to wake you like this.”

“Don't even mention it. I'm sure he'll turn up any minute.

Nothing we didn't do to our folks, hey what? Torturing 'em.”

“Sure, sure,” Lewis replied with an empty laugh, and placed the phone in its cradle. As he left the kitchen, he gently clicked the back door closed. He slid into the driver's seat of his car, still warm, and twisted the key, engine cutting through the silence of a still spring night. Lewis checked the house, waited for a snap of light. Toby had been asleep since he'd come home from the dance, and the last thing Lewis needed right now was the boy waking up. Insisting on coming along. Perched on the edge of the car seat, hands pressed together between his knees. Dread making him stiff.

Lewis drove slowly around Knife's Point. Back roads and main roads. Watching the forest, checking ditches for any sort of unusual hillock. The curled body of his son. Nothing. He made his way towards the water. Parked on a cliff, and got out. Scanned the length of the beach, bright and vast and empty in the moonlight. How many nights had he made this trek? Searching, searching for Melvin. A thick knot of fear clogged his throat, and he rubbed his neck.

Deep inside, Lewis knew Melvin would turn up by morning, his body unscathed, teenaged attitude oozing from his sneering mouth. Though these days, even when Lewis saw his son, face to face, his heart wouldn't stop saying
Your boy is missing. Your
boy is lost.
His noisy heart tormenting Lewis until aggravation took over, and he clenched that beating muscle, muzzled it.

MAYBE SOMEONE stole them.

Maybe somebody did.

Maybe.

In the brightness of a full moon, Melvin could make out every blade of young grass covering the backyard. He could see the bumps of new buds on the row of trees between the properties and the glimmer of dampness on the fence posts. But that night, he had no interest in simply seeing the youthful signs of springtime. He only wanted to smell them. Two o'clock in the morning, and Melvin was outside the home of his math teacher. Out there, without an invitation. He crept around the corner, scraped his body behind the naked branches of a dogwood, and passed a blackened hibachi perched on the back stoop. Bending close to the grease-caked grills, he sniffed, drew a deep breath in through his nostrils. Nothing. No rank stench of old burnt meat. No whiff of squirted lighter fluid. The part of his brain that announced odors remained silent. Told him he'd just inhaled dead air.

As he edged along, he kept close to the clapboard bungalow, and finally stopped underneath what he guessed was a bathroom window that was slightly ajar. He never would have considered entering this way previously. Never would have needed to. In the past couple of months, his father had been called to three or four homes, and once word spread around Knife's Point of the break-ins, people stopped leaving their doors unlocked. People weren't afraid, really, but they weren't as open anymore to late night visitors. And so, Melvin had to seek out open windows on the main floor or basement windows that he could wedge open with the screwdriver he kept in his back pocket.

Other than the odd trinket or book for Toad, an apple or an opened pack of cigarettes, Melvin wasn't intent on burglarizing. Instead, he was seeking the answer to a question that vibrated constantly within him. Made his teeth chatter with irritation, and skewed his vision. Someone had stolen from him, plain and simple, and he wanted to discover who it was. His objective would confuse the average person, Melvin knew this, but it was straightforward for him. Someone had taken two of his senses. Even the doctor had said so. And Melvin was going to discover who, if he had to rummage through every house in Knife's Point.

He crouched underneath the window, thought about how he missed his smell, his taste. Several months had passed, and his senses showed no indication of returning. During a follow-up appointment with the doctor, Melvin explained how these parts of him had gone missing, and how he couldn't understand where they might be. How, if only he knew where to look, he might find them again. He told the doctor about the soggy sense of worry whenever he chewed a meal, and knew he might as well be eating cardboard. Or, even worse. And how he panicked outside during a wintry night, knowing that no matter how deep he breathed, he couldn't track the sour strand of smoke on the wind or the stench of car exhaust pushed down to the ground by the cold.

“I knows what it's like to be an animal.”

“An animal?”

“Taken out of my world. Waiting to be caught.”

The doctor shook his head. “You've always been precocious, Melvin. But don't you worry. They'll come back in time.”

“No. I got to find them.”

Laughing, “You talk like you lost them in a field somewhere.”

“Nope. I didn't lose them. They're just gone.”

The doctor scribbled a note in his file, said offhandedly, “Maybe someone stole them, then.”

“I never thought of that.” Seed planted, earth tamped down.

The doctor laughed again, closed the file. “You got a good sense of humor, son.” Didn't understand that Melvin wasn't joking.

Melvin climbed on top of a painted bench, balanced on an armrest, sneakers sticking to the thick coat of yellowish paint. Reaching underneath the glass, he unhinged the window and tugged it open as wide as it would go. One foot hoisted over, he hunched hard, then squeezed and quietly inched his skinny body in over the sill. Slid down the wall directly into a bathtub.

Without breathing, he waited in the tub. Wondering if anyone had awoken. Counted backwards from fourteen, Mississippi. No shadow appeared in the faint orange glow from the hallway, and Melvin got to work. He smelled the bar of soap, the sopping facecloth jammed into the corner, stepped out of the bathtub, lifted the lid on the plastic laundry hamper, stuck his nose down into the rank clothes, damp towels. Nothing. Smelled around the sink, opened the bottle of Aqua Velva, poured an ounce down the drain. Smelled the cleaners underneath the sink, smelled the tarnished doorknob and his own fingers.

Shuffling slippers moving across the carpeting, and Melvin stepped back into the tub, turned himself into a shadow behind the shower curtain. Mr. Simms, his math teacher, trundled into the bathroom, stood wavering in front of the toilet. Sat down, sighed, toilet water splashing. Even though he could have reached out and tapped Mr. Simms on the shoulder, Melvin wasn't nervous. He believed he would never be caught. Parts of him were missing now, and as he moved through this night world, he was no longer who he once was. So even if Mr. Simms noticed him standing there, behind the mildewed curtain that released no odor, it would not really be him. Just a portion of him. More like a memory of a past time. He would be a partial projection of himself, and nothing more.

Mr. Simms didn't flush, and eyes closed he wandered back to bed. Melvin once again stepped out of the tub, got down on all fours, smelled around the toilet. Smelled inside the bowl, but was unable to decipher any hint of heavy yellow nighttime pee. Heel to toe, heel to toe, he moved into Mr. Simms's bedroom, where the teacher slept alone. Moonlight streaming through the window, the man appeared gray and calm, hands folded across his chest. Cuticles growing up his nails even as Melvin watched. What if he opened an eye and Melvin chose to reveal himself? Would they talk about differential equations, the business of relating a function to its derivatives? Or would Mr. Simms bolt upright and bust past Melvin, dash to the phone on the wall near the oven? Call Melvin's father? What would Melvin do then?

Melvin stepped closer to Mr. Simms, leaned in to smell the breath. Though he could identify nothing on the warm air pulsing out from Mr. Simms's parted lips, Melvin guessed it would smell like loneliness. Wet wool and boiled onions. The slightest hint of rot. Outside, someone drove by, engine sounding very much like his father's car, and the headlights moved across the wall of Mr. Simms's bedroom. Melvin stepped back into the hallway, out into the cramped living room, framed pictures of long-dead relatives decorating the wall space. The largest, a framed picture of a cat. Melvin smelled the top of Mr. Simms's chair, which should have smelled like years of a resting scalp, but smelled like nothing.

Mr. Simms disliked Melvin because he never had to work at math. Melvin often ditched school for days, showed up stoned, and still aced Mr. Simms's lame exams. But even though Mr. Simms called Melvin a loser for wasting his potential, Melvin recognized that the man hadn't stolen from him. There were no smells hiding there, underneath tongues or bathroom sinks, or inside fabrics or the fridge. So Melvin walked quietly to the front door, unlocked it, and strode out into early morning. The first bird had just begun a tune. Some eager buds burst open. Tips of Virginia creepers starting to snake underneath unraked leaves. But, no smells. Melvin sighed, bowed his head, started the long walk home.