Free Stick by Andrew Smith

tonight.”
    *   *   *
    While Bosten showered, I cleaned the spare room.
    Saint Fillan’s room.
    I had to replace the sheet and bedspread with clean ones, so that the room actually looked like a guest room—which it definitely was not—in case any visitors happened down that hallway. The door was only kept shut if someone was inside, and nobody ever stayed in that room in my entire life except for me or Bosten.
    I thought, my parents are very unhappy, but me and Bosten aren’t.
    Not yet.
    Sometimes I wondered about what made them that way, but Bosten told me that things don’t make people the way they are. He said it’s not like catching a cold or something.
    You just are .
    So Bosten said, “I did the math, Sticker.” And he figured that he was the first mistake that ruined their lives.
    â€œLook at me,” I said. “I am number two.”
    Now that’s math.
    *   *   *
    The pail always had to be emptied into the incinerator pit, then hosed clean with bleach and water. Then it had to be left, upside down, on the rocks beside our well house.
    That was how we had to do it.
    Then, after dinner, I’d have to go get the pail and put it back inside the empty closet in the dark spare room.
    I threw Mom’s hand cream in the incinerator, too.

PAUL
    In the morning, Dad went fishing with Ian Buckley.
    He left before we got out of bed.
    Mom never cooked breakfast. Breakfast for Mom was a cigarette and two or three cups of coffee with sugar and half-and-half. Bosten and I ate toast with apple butter. Bosten couldn’t sit with his back against the chair. The night before, Dad got mad at him for leaning forward at dinner, so Bosten had to sit back.
    *   *   *
    On Sunday afternoon, we were going over to the Buckleys’. When the dads got home from fishing, we would have dinner and then the grown-ups would drink and smoke and play cards until we had to go home.
    Mr. Buckley smoked a pipe.
    When I was small, even before I talked much at all, I thought Mr. Buckley’s pipe was magic, because it always made smoke and never seemed to go out.
    I liked those nights.
    Nobody cared at all about what we boys did.
    It was like the bugs had escaped from the bottle.
    Mom made potato salad in the kitchen.
    I stole into the living room and quietly dialed Emily’s number on the telephone next to Dad’s chair. On the seventh ring, her mother answered.
    â€œHello, this is the Lohman residence.”
    â€œOh. Hello, Mrs. Lohman. It’s Stark.”
    I felt guilty just talking to her. I felt myself going pale.
    â€œWho                   are you                    talking to?”
    Mom stood in the doorway. She held a knife in one hand and a cigarette in the other.
    She didn’t like me talking on the phone. She said it was a bad habit for boys my age to get into. I guess she probably believed that telephones were like gateway drugs to jacking off.
    I could have set her straight on that.
    For boys, oxygen is a gateway drug to jacking off.
    â€œUm. It’s Mrs. Lohman, Mom. I was calling to speak with Emily.”
    â€œStick? Do you want to speak with Emily?”
    â€œYes, ma’am.”
    Mom shrugged and spun back into the kitchen, trailing smoke like our UFO behind her. “I want you     off that phone in two minutes.”
    â€œYes, ma’am.”
    Mrs. Lohman couldn’t tell I was talking to Mom.
    â€œIs everything all right, Stick?”
    How could I have done that to her?
    Mrs. Lohman was the nicest person in the world.
    â€œYes, ma’am. Everything is fine.”
    â€œEmily said you two had a great time together
    yesterday.”
    I almost felt like I would throw up, thinking how much of a goddamned liar I was.
    â€œWe had fun.”
    â€œWe love having you