Warren smacked his hand off the button. “Don’t do that!”
David jumped up from beneath the window and slapped both hands against the glass. The motion was soundless, hampered by the thick glass, but that didn’t keep both men from jumping back.
Carl’s leg snared on his chair, and he fell to the floor in a twisted mess.
“What the fuck!” Warren shouted.
David grinned back at them both from the other side of the window. He laughed silently while Warren found the light switch and plunged the room back into black.
—Charter Observation Team – 309
1
I did take the gun and on August 8, 1989, the year I officially became a teenager, I planted my butt firmly upon the bench in the cemetery and waited. The weather was particularly warm that day, and I felt like an idiot sitting there with a jacket on, but that was the only way I could properly conceal the weapon. I tried sticking the gun down the waistband of my jeans (both in front and in back) like they do in the movies, but the gun toppled out and fell to the ground after only a few steps. There was also the odd bulge in my pants that would have to be explained—even with a tee-shirt pulled down over it, the gun was plainly visible. I grew that year—from four-nine to five-three in just the past nine months. I only weighed one hundred and two pounds, though. I looked like a telephone pole dressed up in last year’s long-forgotten fashion. My scrawny body simply wasn’t meant to hide a gun—that’s something that wouldn’t feel right for a few more years.
Dunk’s dad owned an ankle holster, but my leg was a little too small and the gun a little too big for that, too, that left only my jacket. Mr. Krendal gave it to me, a brown leather bomber jacket that had belonged to his son. I later learned he was lost in the war. The jacket had two pockets on the inside, and the gun rested comfortably in either. Because the jacket was large and bulky on me, the shape of the gun was lost in the folds, creases, and assorted bumps my body had yet to fill in.
The jacket was perfect, aside from the heat.
Eighty-six degrees when I left Dunk’s apartment, and no sign of cooling until the sun took leave.
I didn’t want to take the gun, but Dunk made a good case for it, and he had made that same case almost every day for the past year. When I finally agreed, he looked relieved.
“It’s a Rossi 352 two-inch .38 special. Five shot capacity—” He jerked his wrist, and the cylinder popped out, revealing the heads of five gold casings. He gave the cylinder a quick spin, then slammed it back into place with the palm of his hand. “You can pull back the hammer with your thumb if you want to scare them, but the gun will still shoot if you don’t, the trigger pull will just be a little longer.” He did all of this with the skill of a veteran. His dad felt it was better his son be familiar with the weapon, understand the dangers, and know how to use it. “The sites are fixed,” Dunk went on. “All you have to do is line up the one in the front to the one in the back and pull the trigger. If you do pull the trigger, exhale before or just hold your breath. If you breathe while shooting, the movement can screw with your aim.” He pointed at the bottom of the gun. “This here is the trigger guard. Always keep your finger on the trigger guard until you’re ready to shoot. If you put your finger on the trigger, there’s a chance you might fire the gun by accident and shoot yourself in the foot or something.”
Dunk held the gun out to me, barrel down. “Put it in your pocket and don’t take it out unless you think you’ll need to use it. Pop always says you can’t pull a gun unless you’re ready to kill someone. Once you reveal a gun, there’s no going back. You ready?”
I reached out and took the gun from him. It was heavier than I remembered—it didn’t have bullets when we were practicing. I was shaking, but Dunk didn’t say anything about that. I slipped the gun into my jacket pocket.
Dunk smoothed out the leather, then ruffled the jacket back up. “Are you sure you don’t want us there?”
Willy should have been there by now, but he was running late. Earlier that summer, he started a job at Magic Mike’s Car Wash on Valladium Drive, and on days like today they tended to keep everyone for overtime.
I shook my head. “They’ll know.”
I still had nightmares about last year.
The roar of the engine.
The impact.
We told Auntie Jo someone stole my bike from school. I bought Willy’s old one, a black BMX with silver stripes. Not quite as cool as Dunk’s but way better than the one I had. I could have bought a new one. The envelopes arrived every month, and I had over sixteen thousand dollars hidden away, but I didn’t. Willy’s old bike suited me just fine.
So, on Tuesday, August 8, 1989, I rode my new used bike through the evening heat, up the road at the cemetery gate, and left it sitting in the grass beside the mausoleums, then walked over to the bench and took a seat, my chest, back, and arms covered in sweat under the thick leather jacket with the gun in the pocket. I sat there and waited. When six o’clock rolled around, I waited longer. When seven came and went, I began to think Dunk and Willy had followed me and were hiding in the trees, somehow frightened Stella and the others off, but when I turned and looked, I didn’t see anyone. By eight o’clock, I had only seen two other people, an older couple a few hundred feet away, down the hill, placing flowers at a grave. With the approach of nine, and the loss of the sun, now gone more than thirty minutes, I stood from the bench, retrieved my bike, and rode home where Willy and Dunk waited impatiently, and had waited the entire time.
2
1990 saw the release of Nelson Mandela from prison, the arrival of the Furby, and the discovery of the most completed T. Rex skeleton in South Dakota. Paleontologists named it Sue. My days were filled with thoughts of Stella. I filled sketchbook after sketchbook with Stella, finding drawing to be the only way to erase her from my mind, if only for a little while. My nights brought the dream more times than I could count, and I became obsessed with the box my father handed to Auntie Jo. I tore our apartment to pieces looking for it. I even asked Auntie Jo about it once, and she said, and I quote, “Your father was such a selfish prick, he wouldn’t have given me a cold. I don’t know nothing about no box.”
Stella didn’t come to the cemetery that year, either. I decided I’d leave the gun at home next time. Maybe they somehow knew about the gun.
With 1991 came the death of Freddy Mercury, the start of Operation Desert Storm with the invasion of Kuwait, and Boris Yeltsin became the first elected President of Russia. Something called “the Internet” arrived—it would change the world, we were told. Auntie Jo said it would just be a new way for the pervs to find their porn.
No Stella that year, either.
I wouldn’t see Stella Nettleton again until August 1992.
PART 2
