Free Project X by Jim Shepard Page A

think I have problems?” Bethany asks as she goes by with a girlfriend.
    â€œI reserve the right to not answer that question,” he tells her, and they both laugh.
    â€œMighty quiet in there for diarrhea,” he tells me once they’re gone.
    Up yours, I think, on the way to homeroom.
    Step two is figuring out a way of sealing up the little door in the gym. We talk about it either at Flake’s house or in the fort. After what my mom said about our sitting around and talking about getting even with people, my room’s out.
    Step one I get all the credit for, according to Flake. Step one was figuring out we could do it in the gym instead of having to lock up the whole school.
    The door’s not very big but it’s a harder problem than it looks like. It has to be something we can do fast. It has to be something we can do with stuff we can bring to school without anybody noticing. And it has to be something nobody’d notice for at least a few minutes.
    We’re not coming up with anything right off the top of our heads.
    We’ve already figured other stuff out. We’d have the guns in our lockers. We’d go for the all-school assembly before Thanksgiving. They hang big crepe-paper turkeys and shit on the windows and doors, and that might help hide whatever we do to the lock.
    I keep coming back to duct tape, because it’s one of those doors where you hit the bar to open it from the inside. But Flake thinks duct tape’s too easy to see and wouldn’t be strong enough anyway.
    â€œWith enough tape it would be strong enough,” I go. We’re in his bedroom and he’s got the
Great Speeches
CD going in case his mother or somebody wanders by the door.
    â€œWhat’re you, gonna stand there for thirty minutes wrapping duct tape around things?” he goes.
    â€œI don’t think it would take that long,” I tell him.
    â€œWho do you think was the best serial killer?” he goes. He knows I have a book about it.
    â€œIt depends,” I go. “Ed Gein was pretty fucked up.”
    He looks grossed out. I told him about Ed Gein.
    â€œI keep thinking we could get a hammer or chisel and just smash the shit out of the thing that goes into the wall,” he goes. “You know, the thing that sticks out.”
    â€œYeah, like that wouldn’t make a gigantic noise,” I go.
    â€œWell, I’d rather make a gigantic noise than stand there for eight hours,” he goes. “If nobody sees you right when you do it, you could take off by the time people came.”
    Suppose they came and checked out the door, I ask, and he makes a face. What about we bring a lock, I ask. Like a bike lock.
    â€œThere’s nothing on the wall to lock the bar to,” he says.
    We think about it. He’s got a sketch of the door and draws lines from the bar in various directions. “What we need to do is do like a test,” he goes.
    He’s right. That’s the only way we’re going to figure this out. “We can’t be all set to go and get there and find out it’s not gonna work,” I tell him.
    â€œWho’s got doors like that that we can screw around with?” he wants to know.
    â€œThe mall,” I go.
    â€œNo, those are different,” he goes. “Besides, who’s gonna let us screw around with doors at the mall?”
    I keep thinking.
    â€œUse your head,” he goes.
    â€œUse yours,” I tell him.
    We sit there, Flake drawing big X’s on his sketch pad.
    â€œWho’s this?” I ask him, about who’s talking on the CD.
    â€œCharles Lindbergh,” he goes. “Some of those doors in the basement near the furnace were the bar kind.”
    â€œWe’re gonna go back there?” I go. “We broke the window. They know someone was there.”
    â€œWe’ll check it out,” he says. “We’ll wait a few weeks. If it doesn’t look easy, we won’t do