December Park(79)

Scott and Peter stopped walking as they exited the underpass. Michael quickly followed suit.

I glanced up to where they were looking and felt my stomach sink. Beyond a rickety wooden fence and a line of trash receptacles that separated December Park from the Dead Woods sat Nathan Keener’s pickup.

“Son of a bitch,” Michael muttered. “What the hell is he doing here?”

“Who?” said Adrian.

“Nathan Keener,” Peter said. “He’s just about the biggest * you’d ever want to meet.”

“We still owe that bastard for what he did to you, don’t we, Angie?” Michael said.

“Just forget it,” I said. I felt a needling chill at my spine.

“What’d he do to you?” Adrian said.

“Forget it,” I repeated, not wanting to go into it.

“They clobbered him,” Michael said anyway.

“Oh.” Then something dawned on Adrian. “Are those the guys who jumped you and beat up your face?”

Resigned, I uttered, “Yes.”

“That goddamned guy,” Peter said.

“I don’t see anybody there,” Scott said. “The truck looks empty.”

“We owe him,” Michael repeated.

“No one owes anything,” I said.

“Says you,” Michael said, then took off running toward Keener’s truck.

The rest of us didn’t move at first. In fact, Michael was already scaling the wooden fence on the far side of the park before we sprinted after him. We hit the fence simultaneously and scrambled over it like rats, our backpacks doing their best to weigh us down.

“He’s gonna get himself killed,” Peter shouted.

We approached Keener’s truck together. The driver’s window was down. I touched the hood and found that it was cold. The truck had been sitting here for a while. There was no sign of Keener anywhere.

Scott withdrew his butterfly knife from his coat. He twirled it around with impressive dexterity. “We can slash his tires.”

“Tires are tires. Big f*cking deal.” Michael gripped the side mirror and planted one foot on the narrow running board.

I shook my head. “Mikey, what are you doing?”

Michael extended one finger, held it straight up in the air. “I love you, Angie. Do you know that? I would die for you, if that’s what it came down to. Shit,” he said, his voice rumbling with laughter, “I would die for any of you guys. You hear me? You dig me? Also, don’t call me Mikey, you shithead.”

With that, he unbuckled his belt and dropped his pants. Then he hoisted himself up and forced his pasty white ass through the open driver’s side window. “Lucky for us it was taco day in the cafeteria,” Michael said and proceeded to evacuate his bowels onto the driver’s seat of Nathan Keener’s truck.

Peter exploded with laughter. He doubled over, clenching his stomach and crying so hard tears wrung from his eyes. His face turned a mottled purple.

Scott stared in astonishment, his butterfly knife suddenly limp in his hand.

Adrian clutched both straps of his backpack at his shoulders, his eyes as large as saucers behind his glasses. He uttered a singular laugh that came out like the chirp of a tiny bird.

I felt a laugh threaten the back of my throat, too. And by the time I surrendered to it, Scott and Adrian had joined in, and soon we were all laughing like lunatics.

“Socks!” Michael cried when he’d come to the end, tears bursting from the corners of his eyes now, too. “I need socks to wipe!”

“God!” Peter howled, rolling his back along the grille of Keener’s truck. “Oh please oh God oh stop it please oh please oh God!”

Scott and Adrian stripped their socks off and tossed them at Michael. He wiped his ass with them, then pitched them into the open window. By the time Michael hopped down from his perch and tugged up his pants, I was mopping tears from my eyes and my stomach ached from laughter.

“He ever finds out that was you,” I said after I’d regained some of my composure, “he’s going to end your life.”

Michael grinned. “Let the games begin.”





The Harting Farms Public Library was a dark brick building with smoked windows. It catered not only to the residents of this part of town, but it also served as the primary library for students who attended St. John’s on the other side of Center Street.

On this day in early April, the manicured front lawn was populated by St. John’s students in their pressed khakis and purple polo shirts with the school’s crest embroidered in gold over the breast. Some of them sat on the wall that flanked the curving driveway, and they eyed us with marked suspicion when we arrived. We must have looked awfully conspicuous in our T-shirts, torn jeans, and muddy sneakers.

I loved everything about the library—from its shelves crowded with books and its uncomfortable chairs of molded plastic to the inspirational posters of astronauts clutching volumes of Shakespeare and Mark Twain. Charles and I had come here often to listen to librarians read Roald Dahl and Beverly Cleary in the Children’s Corner. When I first learned to read, my grandmother helped me fill out a form for my very own library card—a faded yellow bit of cardboard that I still carried in my wallet—and I recalled the relish with which I stalked the aisles, hunting for the perfect book to check out. It was a great adventure, a grand mystery.