Free Bone Dance by Martha Brooks

of his closet,polished, the laces replaced, and left conspicuously beside his chair where he would find them.
    And from Pop, a new hockey stick laid across Lonny’s bed. A hand briefly hugging his shoulder as he sat doing his homework. The word
son
appearing in every single request: “Come to town with me, son.” Or, “Help me with the chores now, son.” Blessing him, pulling him away from his dark thoughts.
    They left Deena’s Deli, and he and Robert got into Pop’s truck and ate their burgers, parked on the main street of the town of Lacs des Placottes. Its sun-soaked streets, its tall overhanging trees, the cheerful mall by the grain elevator, the farmers and their round wives, the John Deere dealership up the street, the bakery and all the pretty girls who worked there had seemed at first strange to him when he was a small boy, coming from Winnipeg.
    Tammy Martel slowly made her way up the street, a white T-shirt skimming her navel, her little dark-haired brother leaping on the end of her hand like a trout fighting air.
    â€œHey, Tammy,” Robert called out the window, slapping the side of Pop’s truck. “C’mere!”
    Tammy in a back bedroom at Tyler Lakusta’s family cabin on Fatback Lake. An eleventh-grade drinking party with a mix of kids from all over the valley. Tammy, breathing underneath him, her hair smelling like vanilla. For weeks after, she would call him at home, show up at the gas station, arrange to sit besidehim in band class, her slender hands moving like liquid up and down the strings of a bass guitar.
    By then, he had moved on to Jen, her arms fragile as wings, her breath hot as July, who pulled him behind Petro-Can, where they both worked, and said, “I don’t know where you think this is going, Lonny, but I’m tired of your bullshit. Talk to me.”
    â€œI don’t know what you mean,” he said.
    â€œSure you do,” said Jen. “Do you think you can just go around getting involved with people’s hearts and then walk around like you don’t respect them?”
    â€œWhat? What the hell have I done? Tell me what I did.”
    â€œYou don’t call me, that’s what. Then, when you feel like it, you pick me up and take me to the quarry, and you pull out a blanket and a condom, and I’m supposed to be so damn impressed. Well, I’m sick of it. You don’t love me. You don’t talk to me. I’m just some… some
temporary distraction
. What the hell is wrong with you?” She stood there waiting for him to deny his guilt. But it was true what she said.
    After a long terrible silence, in which he kicked at the ground and wished for it all to be over, she finally said, “You just like to screw me. That’s all. No big deal. Nothing. I’m a
person,
Lon. Look at me.” Big tears welled up in her eyes, rolled down her cheeks.
    â€œI’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry. It’s me, Jen,” Lonny mumbled. “I’m sorry… for everything.”
    â€œOh, yeah, you big jerk,” she sobbed, her thin shoulders heaving. “Don’t you ever touch me again.”
    Tammy Martel strolled toward the truck, Lonny’sside. Her baby brother broke free and crouched down in his little red rubber boots, his John Deere cap slapped on the back of his head. Lonny watched him scratch a beautiful iridescent green beetle out from between the cracks of the sidewalk and place it, helpless, on its back in the center of his palm.
    â€œHi,” said Tammy, dangling one soft perfumed arm over the open window, her brunette hair a shiny cloud around her face.
    Robert, face flushed, said, “What are you doing later?”
    â€œNothing much,” she said casually, peeling away to glance back at her brother, who was now poking at the desperate beetle with a small stick. Lonny had to look away to keep himself from saying something.
    â€œYou want to do something