The Pet Part 11

"Go to your room," Norman said before she could answer. "Go to your room and don't come down until you have a civil tongue in your head."

"Sam," Joyce said.There was no time then; no sound; no air.

Don raised a fist, and Norman looked at his wife in shock and disgust.

"Oh," she whispered, and ran out of the room.

There was red, briefly, before Don became aware of what he was thinking.

He lowered the fist, forced the fingers to open, and headed for the staircase, his father behind him. At the landing he looked down.

"What if I'm not sorry?" he said flatly.

Norman swallowed and came up a step.

He knew it then-he knew as surely as he could see the red gathering in the corners that if his father lifted his foot one more time, one more step, there was going to be a fight. He was going to hit his father, or his father was going to throw the first punch. He had seen it in the movies and thought it stupid, that it never happened in real life. But he hadn't been able to feel it until now, until he saw this stranger looking up at him, not even the courtesy of hatred in 107.

his eyes, this stranger fighting with himself because all the rules said you can't hit your son when he's almost eighteen.

"Do as I tell you," Norman said tightly.

"I'll go," he answered, not conceding a thing.

He sat cross-legged on the bed, his back against the wall, his hands in his lap.

He deliberately avoided looking at the shelves, the neat desktop, the window, the floor.

He looked at the stallion, forever charging through the forest, and he thought.

First he thought about what it would be like to be an orphan and how he might accomplish the fact without leaving school to take a job; He thought about Tracey and why she hadn't said anything to him about going out again, or seeing him at school, or even seeing him around; He thought about Brian and Tar and the not-always-rotten Fleet, and why he had to be known as Donny Duck when he wasn't the only Don in the school, when there were others who had worse and funnier names, when there were others who were clearly meant to be the b.u.t.t of stupid jokes; He thought about Chris, thought about what she was like under that sweater, and wondered how many there were who knew exactly what was there and why did she have to talk to him and ruin everything about her; He thought about the Rules.

He thought about how he could get all these people off his back before it broke in half and he was left lying in bed, crippled and dying.Finally he thought about nothing.

At midnight he stirred.

108.

There was nothing left in his mind he could cling to for more than a few seconds, but he smiled when he felt a curious settling inside. He looked down at his chest and was amazed to see how wet his clothes were; he touched his hair and it was matted to his scalp; he touched the bed and it was unpleasantly damp. But he didn't move because he still felt himself settling. It was the only way he could describe it to himself-a ma.s.s of something light piled high on a plain that had nothing but horizon, something that shifted and settled and eventually became a small something else, a nugget, compact and incredibly hard.

He reached without moving his arms, and he touched it, and it was hot, and it was red, and it was perfectly fitted to the palm of his hand when he picked it up and stared, and knew what it was.

There was a moment as he watched it-all the rage, all the frustration-when fear hovered over him, a storm cloud rumbling before the first clap of thunder. Yet despite the heat, the red, the hardness it had, it was more than anything something comforting, something familiar.

It was his, and it was him.

A smile, just barely.

He shifted to the edge of the bed, let his feet touch the floor, let his hands grip the mattress.

He switched on the light over the headboard and turned away from the bulb until his eyes adjusted. Eagerly he leaned forward, ready to explain to his friend what he thought had just happened.

But he couldn't.

He could only open his mouth in a scream that was never more than silent.

The poster was still there, taped over his desk.

The forest, the road, the darkening sky.

The poster was there.

109.

But someone had tried to destroy the black horse. It was streaked, barely visible, as if a knife or a pen had attempted to sc.r.a.pe the picture off and leave only the background.

110.

110.

111.

FIVESunday's dawn never showed the sun; there was rain instead, a driving downpour that filled the gutters swiftly and washed driveways into black rivers. Leaves dropped sodden into the streets and onto the pavement, the Ashford Day medallions on the boulevard lampposts were twisted on their wires in the wind that followed. The park was deserted. A handful of pedestrians ran from shop doorway to shop doorway, heading for the bakeries and their hot cross buns, their dinner cakes and breakfast rolls. Cars hissed. Buses sprayed the shoulders. Headlamps were weak in the not-quite-daylight.

And when the downpour was over, the drizzle remained. Colder somehow, more touched with gloom. It prevented the puddles from holding clear reflections, prevented the windows from seeing clearly outside; the wind was gone, but collars were kept up and umbrellas stayed unfurled, and when a church bell tolled on the far side of town, it sounded like a buoy heralding the fog.

In Don's room the light was grey but he didn't notice it at all. He sat against the wall, on his bed, and stared at the 112.

poster, eyes puffed and bloodshot, hands palsied at his sides. He wore only his shorts, and his chest barely moved.

His mother had checked on him shortly after breakfast, and he had stared at her until she had backed out and closed the door.

His father hadn't come to see him at all.

He didn't mind.

He was working on a new set of Rules.

The telephone rang.

Tracey bolted from the couch and raced for the kitchen, but by the time she got there her mother had already answered. An aunt, by the sound of it, and she waited until she knew it would be one of those long, Sunday conversations that mixed with the aromas of Sunday dinner and the quiet of Sunday afternoons, when the house was ordered peaceful, a fiat from her father.

Later, she thought; I'll call Don later.

Brian was worried about the size of his neck. Several times before he left the house he checked himself in the hall mirror to see if it was getting too bulky, too thick. He didn't want to end up like Tar or Fleet, with necks sticking out to the ends of their shoulders, looking like goofb.a.l.l.s and sounding like they had cotton shoved halfway down their throats. He wanted to look as normal as possible. A thick neck meant you were dim-witted and stupid to those a.s.sholes out there, and he wasn't kidding himself-once his professional career on the field was over he would have to make it in a real job, and you don't get real jobs if you look stupid, or bloated, or like your face had been stomped on by a herd of elephants.

Now he adjusted the rearview mirror and pulled at the top of the sweater, just to be sure nothing had changed in the past five minutes.113 "Jesus Christ!" Tar yelled, cringing back in his seat. "Will you for Christ's sake look where you're going?"

A bus horn blared. Brian yanked the wheel hard to the right, back to the left, and grinned as the car held on the rain-slick blacktop. "No sweat."

"No sweat, f.u.c.k you, pal," Tar said. He wriggled lower until he could prop his knees up on the dashboard, his head barely rising above the edge of the door.

"Chicken?" Brian asked with a grin.

"Careful."

He laughed, shook his head, and swerved off the boulevard onto a street that took a sudden plunge down halfway along the block. They were headed for the flat below the school, and after checking his neck once again, Brian glanced into the backseat to make sure they had everything.

"I still think," Tar muttered, "we should've made Fleet come, y'know?

h.e.l.l, it was practically his stupid idea in the first place."

Brian shrugged. He didn't give a d.a.m.n. Fleet Robinson had sort of dropped out anyway, ever since he picked up Amanda Adler and got into her pants. Not, he thought with a palm rubbing over his chest, that he wouldn't mind it either. She wasn't all that bad, considering she didn't have much in the t.i.ts-and-a.s.s department. He guessed Fleet was into something different, like that a.s.s-long pony tail of hers. Maybe she whips him with it or something. He grinned. Maybe she does.

Tar was right though. The creep oughta be here, with them, driving into a place that looked like G.o.d forgot to clean up. The houses were ancient and falling apart; there was silt over everything now that it had rained, from the factories whose smokestacks rose glumly above the trees. You could hardly tell it was the same town, and he wondered why all the girls who came from down here had the best bodies.

114.

"Jesus, what a dump," Tar said, his chin hard on his chest. His hair was short, dark, cropped high over his ears; his face was pale in the late afternoon's dim light. He sniffed, and fumbled in his shirt pocket for a cigarette, lit it, and rolled the window down to let out the smoke.

Brian hated smoke.

Another right, and Brian slowed to not much faster than a brisk walk.

Since they'd left the boulevard they hadn't seen a single car or a single person. Early dinner for the rubes, he thought. He snapped his fingers, and Tar groaned as he unfolded himself, reached into the backseat and pulled the two plastic garbage bags to the front. He stuffed them carefully into the well between his legs, and rolled the window down a bit more. Despite the ties that held the bags closed, he could still smell the c.r.a.p, and he wiped his hands on his jeans.

"Beautiful," Brian said.

"Fleet oughta be here.""Jesus, will you give it a rest, Boston? He ain't, and that's that, and besides, he'll regret it when he sees the look on the Tube's face tomorrow morning."

Tar considered it and decided Brian was right. As usual. Even when he was wrong.

A left, a right, and Brian pulled to the curb on a deserted street, the homes here in considerably better shape than the ones they had pa.s.sed.

They were still old, and still looked as if their owners made less than a buck an hour, but the tiny lawns were well kept, the houses clean and painted, and no rusted hulks cluttered the road.

Water dripped from the leaves onto the roof, loudly.

Brian rubbed his hands together and leaned over the steering wheel to peer through the windshield. "There," he said, pointing. "The green one, two in from the corner."

Tar followed the finger's direction and nodded. Then he checked the neighborhood again. "What the h.e.l.l is he doing living down here, man?

The way he talks you think he lived 115.

in f.u.c.king Scarsdale or something." He peered at the nearest house.

"Maybe we got the wrong address."

"No," Brian said, though he'd been thinking the same thing. "He probably lives in the same house he was born in. Too f.u.c.king lazy to move out."

"Maybe he's got a secret lab in the cellar, where he experiments on women."

"The Tube? You gotta be kidding. If you were a girl, would you want that thing on top of you?"

Tar shuddered, and laughed, and took a deep breath. "Y'know, our a.s.s is doomed if we get caught."

"Shut up, Boston, okay? We're not getting caught, and besides, we voted the f.u.c.ker deserved it, right?"

Tar didn't need to think about that one. "Right. But I still don't get why we don't just bash the Duck's face in. That black eye of his would be the best thing left on his body."

"Because," Brian said, wondering why Tar had to think so much all the time.

"Because why?"

"Jesus, are you stupid or what?"

"I ain't stupid. I just think-"

"Look," Brian said, his hands kneading the wheel, "we bash up the Duck and everyone knows who did it, right? His old man comes down on us like we were killers or something, and we won't see graduation from the a.s.s end of a warden. But we do this, Tar baby, and the Duck gets creamed.

His old man creams him, Hedley creams him, and maybe even if we getlucky the frigging cops cream him too. So what the h.e.l.l's the b.i.t.c.h?"

Tar didn't know. He supposed it made sense. "All right," he said. "But if we sit here much longer, someone's gonna call the cops on us, not the Duck."

Brian grunted his agreement and checked the green house again. "Okay.

We'll go around the corner. I'll keep the 116.

engine running, and for Christ's sake, don't forget the other thing, all right?"

As Brian pulled away from the curb, Tar scrubbed a fist over a nose that'd been broken three times since he was a freshman. "I could use some help. That's why Fleet was supposed to be here, in case you didn't know."

"I know, I know, okay?"

"So help."

"So you run faster than me, okay?"

"Not that much faster," Tar muttered as they rounded the corner and parked on the left, facing traffic.

There was no time for further argument. As soon as the car stopped, he was out with the bags and running hunched over back to the green house.

He sprinted up the walk, turned once in a circle, and heaved them both against the front door. He was already back on the pavement when they hit, when they burst open, when they spilled dogs.h.i.t and rotten eggs and vinegar onto the porch. There was a low hedge in front of the property, and just as he veered onto the sidewalk he dropped Don Boyd's windbreaker onto it, dragging a sleeve until he was sure it had caught.

Then he was back in the car, Brian pulling away before the door shut. He didn't drive so fast as to leave rubber, but fast enough to have them out of sight by the time Adam Hedley responded to the thumps upstairs and left his bas.e.m.e.nt, his plaid robe tied tightly around him, his nose already wrinkling in disgust before he took hold of the k.n.o.b and pulled the door to him.

Brian didn't laugh as he headed back up the hill. He just looked at Tar with a grin that never reached his eyes.

"Mission," he said, "accomplished."