Free Project X by Jim Shepard

butt,” Gus says.
    â€œDoes it still hurt?” my mom asks.
    â€œWanna see?” Gus says to me.
    â€œMaybe later,” I go.
    He gets up on his chair and drops his drawers. The rash doesn’t look so good.
    â€œWhoa,” I go. It’s just what he wanted to hear.
    â€œYou remember when I was six and there was that huge birthday party, pool party?” I ask my mom and dad. “And I didn’t want to go?”
    Gus pulls up his pants and sits back down. “We remember,” my mom says.
    â€œHow come you made me go to that?” I ask.
    â€œYou told that little boy you were going to go at least a dozen times,” my mom says. “Remember how he kept calling to make sure you were still coming?”
    â€œI really didn’t want to go,” I tell them. “I
really
didn’t want to go.”
    â€œWell, maybe we shouldn’t’ve made you go,” my dad says.
    The kid’s older brothers had all their friends there. They took my bathing suit. They locked me in the pool shed. When I got out I had to run around trying to get my suit back, covering myself with a Frisbee. Two kids took my picture.
    â€œPoor Edwin had a hard time today,” the kid’s mother told my mom when she came to pick me up. I got a shovel from our garage and tried to go back. My mom had to call my dad.
    â€œNo more pool parties,” my dad goes.
    â€œYou better believe it,” I tell him.
    â€œAll right, we made a mistake,” he tells me. “From now on, whatever happens, it’s because we made that one mistake.”
    â€œCan we just drop this?” my mom goes.
    Gus is taking all this in without saying a thing.
    â€œI don’t need to talk about it,” I tell her.
    The phone rings. Nobody answers it. The answering machine clicks on but whoever it is doesn’t leave a message.
    â€œYou just shouldn’t have made me go, that’s all,” I tell her.
    â€œOh my God,” my mom says.

5
    My English teacher is coming down the hall in the morning before homeroom. Of course I’m having trouble with my locker and when I finally rip it open I’m rushing to dump stuff out of my knapsack and pick up other stuff for first and second period. My math book and some papers flop onto the floor, and Dickhead, the kid who beat me with a plank, is going by and scuffs them out into the middle of the hall.
    Of course my teacher doesn’t see that. She helps me pick stuff up.
    â€œThanks, Ms. Meier,” I tell her.
    â€œWhat’s this?” she goes. It’s a drawing of a pot with curvy fumes coming off it. The pot has a skull and crossbones on it and next to the pot it says 200 degrees in Flake’s spaz handwriting.
    The look on my face catches her attention. I’m staring at the thing thinking, I can’t believe I didn’t get rid of this.
    â€œWhat is this?” she goes.
    It’s a chemistry experiment, I tell her. The bell rings.
    â€œYou’re not old enough to take chemistry,” she says.
    â€œNo, I don’t mean for school,” I go. “My dad got me one of those sets.”
    She turns the paper over to look at the front again and asks, “What’s supposed to be in the pot?”
    â€œI don’t know,” I tell her. “Chemicals.”
    â€œWhy does it have a skull and crossbones?” she wants to know.
    â€œI don’t know. Because it looks cool,” I tell her.
    She thinks about it for a while and then hands it back to me. “Can you write me a pass?” I ask her.
    She says okay and before homeroom I go to the bathroom. There’s a boy leaning over the sink to put on Chap-Stick in the bathroom mirror. In a stall I tear the picture into two thousand pieces and flush them down the toilet.
    â€œBowel trouble?” the vice principal asks when I pop out into the hall. It’s empty and quiet.
    â€œI got diarrhea,” I tell him.
    â€œMr. Davis, do you