Only Child(18)

A lady with a microphone was standing in front of McKinley next to the sign that says MCKINLEY ELEMENTARY. I could see it said WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 6TH on it, and that was yesterday, so Charlie forgot to put the date on today, which is his job first thing in the morning before school starts. Behind the news lady were some police cars, but no more fire trucks and ambulances. There were a lot of the vans with the standing-up bowls on the roofs, like I saw in front of the church.

I could tell the lady started to talk in the microphone because her lips were moving, but in the family room it was just lips moving with no sounds coming out in a very quiet room. I really wanted to hear what she was saying and if she was talking about the gunman, but I didn’t want people to know I was behind them on the yellow chair, so I stayed quiet and watched the lady’s lips move.

Pictures of people came on the TV, and over the pictures it said “19 Confirmed Dead” and then the pictures got big on the screen, one at a time, and stayed big for a little while, and then the picture went back to small. The next picture got big and then the next. I realized it was pictures of people who got killed from the gunman. I knew who all the people were in the pictures, some kids from fourth and fifth grade, and it looked like the pictures of them were from field day because they all had on McKinley field day T-shirts. And there were pictures of some grown-ups from school, too: Mrs. Colaris, our principal, Mrs. Vinessa, Andy’s teacher, Mr. Wilson, our gym teacher, and Mr. Hernandez, the custodian.

I knew all the people in the pictures, and yesterday I saw some of them at school, and now they were dead. In the pictures they looked like they always look at school, and I thought that now they didn’t look like that anymore. Now they were lying in the hallway with blood on them.

The next picture that got big was Ricky, so that meant he was dead, too. I wondered if Ricky’s mom knew that Ricky was dead, or if she was still at the hospital, waiting in the waiting room, and then I remembered that Daddy told her we were going to check if Ricky was there when we went through the NO ENTRY door to see Mommy, but we never did that, and that wasn’t very nice of us.

After Ricky came Andy. He looked sweaty and was bending his knees like he was getting ready to jump. His blond hair was sticking up in the front from the sweat, and he was making a silly face with his tongue out of the side of his mouth. Andy always makes silly faces in pictures, and Mommy gets mad because we don’t have a single good picture of our family where everyone smiles and we can hang it up on the wall.

I stared at Andy’s silly face. It looked like he was going to jump out of the TV right into the family room, and I held in my breath and wanted him to jump, but then his picture got small and disappeared. Another picture got big, and Andy’s silly face was gone.





[ 11 ]


    Secret Hideout


I TURNED AROUND IN THE YELLOW CHAIR and saw Daddy sitting in the kitchen. I went to him and tried to swallow the lump of breath in my throat. I swallowed and swallowed and my mouth got really dry, but the lump didn’t move. I tried to get on Daddy’s lap, but Daddy was looking at his phone, not me. He only let me sit on one leg, and it wasn’t comfortable.

I tried to sit all the way on Daddy’s lap, but he said, “Buddy, give me a second to breathe, OK?” and he pushed me off.

Grandma came over and the red lipstick was back on her lips. “Zach, Daddy’s very tired. Let’s give him a break,” she said to me. Then Mrs. Gray our neighbor came in the kitchen and said, “Oh my God, Jim, I’m so sorry for your loss,” and Daddy got up to talk to her, so his second to breathe must have been over.

I had to walk some steps backward because Daddy’s barstool pushed into me. I started not to like how Daddy’s face looked with the smile/not smile that was back on it, so I left the kitchen and went upstairs.

The party sounds followed me up the stairs like they were taking a piggyback ride on my back, and they were getting louder. It was all I could hear, even though I was walking away from the party. I walked faster down the hallway and shook my head to get the sounds out. I wanted to get to my room and leave the sounds outside. But when I passed Andy’s room, I had to stop and look inside. It was like there was an invisible force pulling me in. Right away my eyes went up to Andy’s empty top bunk.

I always want to be in Andy’s room and see his things and hang out with him, but Andy never lets me. He would probably be really mad at me for being in here now. I pretended like I was a spy, scouting out the enemy, looking all around, touching the enemy’s things, opening drawers and doors and looking for clues. I touched the robot arm on Andy’s desk and pretended it was the enemy’s weapon and I had to figure out how to use it.

Andy got the robot arm from Mimi for Christmas, and that wasn’t fair because she gave me Hungry Hungry Hippos, and that’s a baby game. I wanted something cool to build like Andy. It looks like a real robot arm and has a motor and batteries. You can make the arm move up and down, and the claw can pick things up—it’s so cool. I asked Andy if I could try, but of course it was a no. Andy built it all by himself, no grown-up helped him, even though the box said “12 & up,” and he was only nine then.

I heard Mimi talk about it to Mommy in the kitchen: “Andy’s so incredibly smart, too smart for his own good.” People say that all the time about Andy—“He’s so smart,” and “I’ve never met such a smart kid.” And it’s the truth, he really is smart, like more smart than other people, he did a test once that showed that. He just doesn’t feel like doing his work, and he doesn’t want to sit in one place for a long time. He went to a special class for smart kids when we still lived in the city where they did third-grade work in first grade, but at McKinley they don’t have a special class like that, so Andy hates school now because it’s boring for him.