Free Everything Breaks by Vicki Grove Page B

waited for the remote to fall from the spot where it was delicately balanced on the chair arm, near Bud’s elbow. I was willing to bet the clatter of that wouldn’t quite wake Bud but would jerk the most amazing snore yet from him, a real record breaker.
    And then my heart started doing a dance in my chest and I knew I was about to do something I shouldn’t do, ever. I held my breath and swiveled around to crouch facing the dark screen of the TV. I gazed at my own reflection, with sleeping Bud murky in the background. I touched my eyes with two fingers, then I drew a straight line across my lips through the dust on the screen. Then I began to raise myself from my crouch slowly, slowly until the very top of my head disappeared, then most of the top of my hair disappeared, then my forehead began to disappear, and then all of my head was gone to just above my eyebrows. Gone! Just
gone,
like the brain part of Zero was . . . just
gone,
all that smartness just shredded into nothingness like a used-up pencil eraser.
    â€œYou and me should go see them Chiefs play.”
    I shot to my feet and whirled around. “Wow, Bud. You really scared me.” My heart was acting like it’d come right through my rib cage and bounce around on the carpet. Had he seen, heard? “Yeah, maybe, sometime. I better get to bed. School tomorrow.”
    I tried to hurry out of the room, but my legs wouldn’t do hurry. Some fledgling scabs had broken open when I’d crouched. If I wanted to move at all, it had to be in slow motion, one leg a few inches, the other a few inches.
    â€œNo time like the present. Now, this week. My treat. Hot dogs, the whole kaboodle.”
    I glanced at him and saw something in his eyes, some spark of something, nearly hidden by his grizzled mess of white eyebrows. Something that made me think he
had
seen what I was doing when I’d mimicked dead Zero, seen it and understood why I’d done it. But how
could
he understand something so shameful and crazy?
    â€œMaybe. G’night, Bud.” I felt like a spineless idiot. It wouldn’t happen, going to a game, because neither of us could drive. He hadn’t accepted the hard, cold fact that
he
couldn’t drive and I couldn’t begin to explain to him why
I
couldn’t drive. I couldn’t explain that to Bud or anybody else because I couldn’t understand it myself.

VI
    IT WAS A THRUMMING kind of quiet at school the next day. The kind of intense and unnatural quiet it would be if we were all in a play and Mr. Heggleston had given us stage directions.
Now, people, your friends died suddenly and tragically this past weekend. Act stunned. Act disbelieving. Cloak yourselves in layers of disbelief and horror, all right, people?
All day kids and teachers came up to me and said things I couldn’t quite comprehend but I knew were sympathetic, put a quick hand on my shoulder as we passed in the hall, met my eyes, then gave me a heavyhearted look, things like that.
    My last girlfriend, Alyssa, toodled her fingers at me in algebra, then looked very stricken and drew a tear down her cheek with her fingernail. I sort of waited for her outside the door after class, and she came up and took my arm. “I tried to call you. Several people are trying to call you, Tucker, but your
phone
isn’t working.”
    It was an accusation. Alyssa is one of those people that feels not to have your phone always with you is criminal talk neglect. “I lost it,” I lied.
    Alyssa and I were probably never that good as a couple. She always wanted to know what I was thinking and was always telling me what she was thinking, which was usually that I wasn’t telling her what I was thinking. But now she put her hand on my cheek, stood on tiptoe, and gave me a quick, friendly kiss. That was nice.
    â€œYou
call
me.” She shoved me in the chest to bring home the urgency of that, then hurried on to her next class. If I called