Only Child(24)

Andy always tries to take Clancy from me to throw him in the garbage because he says he stinks so bad. I try to find different hiding places for Clancy so Andy can’t take him from me, and then sometimes at bedtime I forget where I left him and we have to look all over for him so I can go to sleep. I thought about how now I don’t have to hide Clancy anymore, and he is going to be safe now, safe from Andy.

I wondered how Grandma could know that Andy went to heaven, or his soul, because she said only good people go to heaven. Andy wasn’t really a good person a lot of times. He was mostly trying to be mean to me and make Mommy upset. He did the same things over and over again that made her upset, so it must have been on purpose, because otherwise why didn’t he just stop it?

Now Andy couldn’t be mean to me anymore and he couldn’t make Mommy upset anymore. Right now Mommy was sad and in shock because Andy died from the gunman. But after she started to feel better from that she wouldn’t have to be upset all the time anymore.

Uncle Chip definitely went to heaven, I knew that, because he was always nice to everyone. But Andy? Grandma said the souls of bad people went somewhere else, and I didn’t know where, but if Andy went there instead of heaven, then he would be with all the bad guys now, like the gunman, and that would probably be very scary. I closed my eyes and tried to find a picture of Andy in my brain. I could see his face for a short while, but it was hard to get it to hold still. “Did you go up to heaven, or where did you go?” my brain said to Andy’s face. Andy’s face disappeared. “Anyway, I hope you did.”





[ 15 ]


    Walking Blind


“CAN I HAVE SCREEN TIME?” I put my cereal bowl in the sink. “Can I watch a show?”

“Hmmhmm…” Daddy didn’t look up from his phone, and that sounded like it was a yes, at least not a no, so I went in the family room and turned on the TV. The news came on right away, and the sound was still all the way down. I was going to switch to on demand to see if there was a new Phineas and Ferb, but then a picture came on the news, and on top of the picture there were words that said “McKinley Killer.” I was like frozen and couldn’t move at all. I stared and stared because the picture was of Charlie’s son.

I knew it was Charlie’s son right away. I recognized him from Charlie’s thirty-years party last year in school. Charlie’s wife, her name is Mary like my aunt, and son, I didn’t know his name, came to the party. His wife was really friendly and called us “Charlie’s angels” and said we were so cute, and no wonder Charlie talked about us all the time. Charlie’s son didn’t say anything at the party. He just stood there next to Charlie and looked at us in a mean way, like he was mad. His face looked exactly the same as Charlie’s, only not so old. They looked the same except that his son didn’t smile and Charlie always smiles. Charlie’s mouth went up on the sides and his son’s mouth went down, they were the same and opposites.

Charlie’s son didn’t even smile when Mommy talked to him. She said she couldn’t believe the size of him, and did he remember that she babysat him when she was done with college and he was three or four then? He didn’t smile and he didn’t say anything back. Charlie’s wife answered instead and said of course he remembered, and that Mommy was his favorite babysitter, right?

I wanted to hear what the news was saying about Charlie’s son, but I didn’t want to turn up the sound because I didn’t want Daddy to know I was watching the news and tell me to turn it off. So I kept looking at the news without the sound. The picture stayed up for a long time, and then instead of “McKinley Killer” it said “Charles Ranalez Jr.,” so that must be his name, because Charlie’s last name is Ranalez. That’s what his name tag says: CHARLIE RANALEZ. Then the picture changed and a new one came on. It was a picture of Charlie, smiling, and it looked like the same picture that was on the big screen in the auditorium when we had his party.

I really wanted to hear what they were saying about Charlie, so I turned the volume up a tiny bit. The picture of Charlie went away, and a man from the news came on with a microphone. He was standing in front of my school and was talking to a woman I saw at pickup before, I think she’s Enrique’s grandma.

“What was your reaction when you found out that the shooter was Charles Ranalez Jr., son of McKinley’s very own security guard, Charlie Ranalez?” the newsman said into the microphone, and then he pointed the microphone at Enrique’s grandma’s mouth.

“I just couldn’t believe it. No one can believe it,” Enrique’s grandma said, and she looked very sad and kept shaking her head no. “I mean, Charlie really is the sweetest guy, you know, and we all love him to death. I mean, not to death…I shouldn’t have said it like that. But he loved the kids, you know, like they were his own. He’s seen generations grow up at this school. My son went here and now my grandson….Charlie was always friendly and helpful….I just can’t believe his son could have done such a thing.”

The newsman looked right at me through the TV and said, “Few can appreciate the irony that the school’s very own security guard’s son is responsible for killing fifteen children and four staff in cold blood, before being shot and killed himself by the police. Eyewitnesses tell us his father pleaded with his son to stop shooting, but to no avail….”