Only Child(33)



I dry-heaved and took off my shoes and socks, and there really was poop in my left sock and all the way down on my left leg. I took my pants and underwear all the way off and poop fell out and landed on the floor and it was so gross I started to cry.

All this time I didn’t cry. When the gunman came and I had to hide in the closet with my class I didn’t cry. When Daddy told me Andy was dead and Mommy acted crazy at the hospital and we had to leave her there I didn’t cry, and all the times after that when tears were coming in my eyes, I never cried. But now I did. And now it was like all the tears that didn’t come out before all came out together, and it was a lot. I didn’t try to do the squeeze-away trick, I didn’t even want to. I just let the tears come out, out, out, and it felt good.

I tried to get some toilet paper and wipe the poop off the floor, but I made it get spread all around. I tried to clean off my leg and butt, and I used a lot of toilet paper from the Jumbo Twin Roll Tissue Dispenser. I cried and I wiped and I ripped off more toilet paper and then I tried to flush, but it didn’t go down, probably from too much paper.

Then the door opened and a man walked in that I didn’t know, and he saw me without my pants on because I never closed the door from my stall, so he saw me right away. He covered his mouth with his hand and went right back outside. I locked the door to the stall. A little while later someone came in again and I heard Daddy’s voice.

“Zach? Jesus Christ. Oh my God. What’s going on in here?”

I didn’t answer him because I didn’t want him to know.

“Open the door, Zach!”

So I opened the door and Daddy saw my whole mess, and he pulled his suit jacket over his nose, and I could tell he was trying really hard not to dry-heave.

I was supposed to be a big boy today, and now it was the exact opposite. I was being a baby. Mommy came in the bathroom, too, even though it was a bathroom for boys, and girls are not supposed to go in the boys’ room, she could get into trouble for that. When she saw me, she made a loud “OH” sound, and she pushed Daddy out of the way and hugged me tight. She didn’t even care that poop probably got on her dress. She hugged me tight and rocked me and cried and cried, and I cried and cried, and my head was starting to hurt from all the crying. Daddy stood there with his suit jacket over his nose and just stared at us.





[ 21 ]


    Battle Cry


“FINE, WHATEVER, YOU CAN STAY if you’re not annoying,” Andy called to me from the top of the rock, and I started to climb up to him before he changed his mind. The rock was very high and the side was smooth and I kept sliding down.

“Take your Crocs off, then it’s easier,” Liza said. She was climbing up behind me.

I kicked off my Crocs and they bounced down the rock and halfway down Liza’s yard that was like a small hill down to her house. Liza put her hand on my back and pushed me up.

From up here, I could see right into Liza’s bedroom—that’s how high the hill and the rock are in her backyard. The rock was hot under my feet and it hurt a little, but I got used to it. The air was very hot, too, and the back of my T-shirt was wet from sweat. It was like you could see the hotness in the air, coming off the rock. It looked blurry, and the sun made little crystals in the rock very sparkly.

I could hear the hotness, too—it was making a “zzzzzzzzz” sound. Crickets were all around us. I couldn’t see them, but I could hear them: zeep-zeep-zeep, all singing together, but starting and stopping at different times.

First Andy said I wasn’t allowed to play with him and Liza and the others, but then he said OK. Maybe because Aiden was there, too, and he was six, like me, he’s James and June’s cousin, and their mom said they had to play with him. And probably because of Liza: she is nice to me, and when she’s there, Andy acts nicer, too. That’s probably because Andy has a crush on Liza and wants her to have a crush on him. When she asks him to stop doing something, like calling me a loser or telling me to get lost, he does it and he doesn’t get his bad temper.

“You can be on the tribe,” Andy said to me when I sat down on the rock next to him. I watched him make a bow out of a stick with the pocketknife. It was Daddy’s pocketknife, and Mommy didn’t want Andy to use it because it’s too dangerous and he could get hurt from it. But Daddy said, “I’ve had this knife since I was younger than Zach, for God’s sake! Let the boy do regular boy things. Always being so overprotective, right?” and he slapped Aiden’s dad on the back, and then Mommy didn’t say anything else about it.

The game we were playing was Indian tribe. Andy was the chief and he was sitting in the middle of the rock, crisscross applesauce, like how Indian chiefs sit. Around his head was a blue headband with different-colored feathers glued on it. The headband pushed his hair up on the side so it looked messy.

“It’s important that all the little branches get cut off on the sides and the stick is really smooth, see?” Andy said to me. I knew we were pretending, but it felt real, and I had an excited feeling in my belly.

“Can I try?” I asked.

“No, you can’t use the knife, it’s way too dangerous for you. That’s only for me,” Andy said.

I could feel the rock making my butt hot through my shorts.

“It’s a good lookout up here,” Aiden said.

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