Only Child(35)

“You guys, stop. Andy got hurt,” I heard June call.

I ran to where her voice came from, and then I saw Andy. He was lying on the road between our yard and Liza’s house. My arrow was sticking out of his chest. He didn’t move, his eyes were closed, and in the light from the streetlamp I saw the blood. There was blood on his T-shirt, and there was a puddle of blood around him on the road that was getting bigger and bigger, like all the blood from his whole body was running out of him onto the road.

I sat down next to Andy on the road and started screaming: “Andy! Andy! Wake up, Andy! Wake up, wake up, wake up! Andy! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!” I screamed and screamed, and then someone touched my shoulders from behind and started shaking me. I kept screaming and screaming, and someone kept shaking me and shaking me.

“Zach! Zach! You have to wake up, Zach. You have to wake up!” I saw Daddy in the darkness, and he was the one who was shaking me.

“Daddy, I shot Andy with my arrow, Daddy. I think I killed Andy. I think he’s dead! I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do that. We were playing, it was just pretend!”

“What? No, you were dreaming. You had a bad dream again. Look,” Daddy said, and he put his hand up and pushed something to the side. Then it wasn’t so dark anymore, and I could see we weren’t on the road behind our yard. We were in my hideout.

I was blinking my eyes because of the light that was coming in the hideout now, and because of the tears, and I didn’t know why I was in here all of a sudden and why Daddy was in here with me. “But…but…it happened. It really happened. I saw him with all the blood. From my arrow, I killed him.”

“No, buddy, that didn’t happen. You didn’t kill Andy. My God, did you scare me just now,” Daddy said. “Come here.” He pulled me out of the closet and we sat on Andy’s rug, me on Daddy’s lap. I put my head on his chest, and I could hear his heart pounding loud.

“I heard you scream, but I didn’t know where you were. I looked everywhere for you, but I couldn’t figure out where the screaming was coming from. Took me forever to find you in there. What are you even doing in Andy’s closet, bud?” Daddy petted my back when he was talking. I started to calm down a little, and the pounding in Daddy’s chest got quieter, too.

“I guess I was sleeping maybe,” I said.

“But why in Andy’s closet?”

“It’s my hideout now,” I said, and Daddy answered, “I see.”

“I was dreaming about when we played Indians on Liza’s rock at the barbecue,” I told Daddy, and it still felt like it happened like a minute ago.

“That was a great time you guys had, I remember that.”

“It was like an actual adventure,” I said.

“Sure was.”

“But I didn’t kill Andy.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“But he’s dead,” I said, and it sounded like a question.

“Yes, buddy, he’s dead.”





[ 22 ]


    Good-bye


WHEN YOU DIE and it’s time for your funeral, that’s when people say good-bye to you. At the wake you’re kind of still with your family and friends, and they can look at you in the casket if the lid is open or at least in the pictures that get hung up everywhere. But at the funeral everyone says good-bye and it’s forever. Final good-byes, that’s what Mommy called it when it was time for Uncle Chip’s funeral.

People start to forget about you after you die and they can’t see you all the time anymore. It was already happening with Andy. I started to notice that at his funeral that was on the day after the wake. Everyone was talking about Andy, but they talked about him like they only remembered some parts of him, not all the parts.

“Oh, Andy was just such a darling, such a pleasure to have in class.”

“He was hilarious, wasn’t he? What a character!”

“He was so bright, incredibly smart.”

It was like they weren’t really talking about Andy or they were starting to forget about what he was like.

At the funeral I sat in between Mommy and Daddy on the first bench in the front of the church. It wasn’t the church by McKinley or the one where we went to Uncle Chip’s funeral, but a different one we never went to before. Inside it didn’t really look like a church, more like a really big room with a lot of benches. It was freezing cold in the room. There was an altar table in the front, too, and Andy’s casket was in front of it with flowers on top. There wasn’t a Jesus hanging from a cross, only a cross and no Jesus, so that was good. I didn’t want to sit there again and look at Jesus with the nails in his hands and feet like when I was at the church by McKinley.

The whole big room was full of people, and a lot of them couldn’t even sit down and were standing in the back. I turned around and I saw a lot of the people from the wake yesterday. I didn’t stay there for the whole time. I had to go home with Aunt Mary because of the poop. At the funeral it was our family and friends, our neighbors, and parents and kids from school and lacrosse and Daddy’s work and a lot of people I didn’t know, too. When I was just about to turn back around, I spotted Miss Russell on a bench in the back of the church, and she still looked very white with a lot of black around her eyes. When she saw me looking at her, she did a little smile and then she lifted up her arm. At first I thought she was waving at me, but then I realized she was shaking her charm bracelet. It made me think of the charm she gave me, and I thought about it laying in the corner of my hideout, and now I wished I brought it here with me. I smiled back at Miss Russell and turned back around.