Squirm

“WHERE…ARE…YOU?” I call to the invisible pilot.

  The drone wobbles slightly, and a small shiny packet tumbles from a compartment on its underside. I reach up to catch the falling object, but I miss.

  Splash.

  “No!” Stretching over the side of the boat, I try to grab the packet before it disappears underwater.

  But it doesn’t sink. It floats.

  “Bubble Wrap,” Lil grumbles, rowing quickly downriver in pursuit. Dad’s quadcopter follows us by air.

  I scoop up the little package and unpeel the wrapping. Inside is another neatly written note—and what looks like somebody’s molar.

  It’s yours, Billy, the note informs me. The first one you ever lost.

  “Seriously?” Summer says. “Now he’s the tooth fairy?”

  I lock eyes on the hovering spy craft and wonder how my father expects me to react. The yellowed nub in my hand is small enough to be kid-sized, but so what? I drop it in my pocket and read the last line of the note.

  See you in Florida, it says.

  SEVEN

  So here I am, bagging groceries at Publix again.

  After returning from Montana, I tried to find a job outdoors, where I could mostly be by myself. No luck. A golf course in our neighborhood had openings on the landscape crew, but the manager said I wasn’t old enough to drive the riding mowers. He said their insurance policy didn’t allow them to hire kids.

  Which is why I ended up back at the supermarket. Belinda’s working at T.J. Maxx, and Mom’s still driving for Uber. She didn’t get fired for kicking that creep out of her car, but the company put her on probation. They said one more “incident” and she’s gone.

  Publix gives me twenty hours a week, which leaves plenty of free time to go snake hunting west of town in the dead orange groves and ranch scrub. Mostly what you find out there are banded water snakes and garter snakes, but on the dry patches you’ll sometimes luck into a speckled king snake or a corn snake.

  What I like best about hunting snakes is the peace. All you hear are wild birds and your own footsteps. It’s a long bicycle ride from where we live, so sometimes Mom gives me a lift. She downloaded the Uber app to my phone, so I can call her to come get me when she’s between customers.

  One afternoon I’m walking back toward town along Highway 70 when an old junker pulls off the road. The engine sounds like a washing machine full of chipped rocks. It clatters and shakes for a minute, then conks out.

  A young driver emerges. He’s wearing a faded black hoodie and dragging on a cigarette, which raises the possibility that he’s not a genius. There’s a neon-blue skull tattooed on his bony right arm. The skull is smoking a cigarette, too.

  “What’s in the bag?” he asks me.

  I open the pillowcase and show him.

  “Oh #!$*&!” he cries, scrambling to the other side of the car.

  “They’re harmless,” I say.

  “I hearda you, bro! You the Snake Boy.”

  The kid isn’t exactly a model of good hygiene. His teeth are stained brown from the tobacco, and his pale skin looks blotchy and pitted. He’s got small brown eyes and a homemade buzz cut.

  I can’t stop staring at the skull tattoo. Everyone at school still talks about it.

  “Hello, Jammer,” I say.

  He looks pleased that I know who he is. “You the one got my old locker, bro?”

  “Yeah. Can I ask why it smells so bad?”

  “Dirty laundry and stuff,” he says.

  “Oh, come on.”

  “Yo, I was livin’ in the boys’ bathroom at the F Building. The one next to where the band practices. That was my crib for, like, half the year.”

  “How’d you end up there?”

  “ ’Cuz my stepdad threw me outta the apartment. Everything I owned got put in that locker. Socks, shirts, jockstraps. Some of it got washed, some didn’t.”

  Jammer offers his own version of why he got expelled from school. “Some dude’s Jeep got jacked after a football game. The cops found it, but they said they’s a laptop missin’ from under the seat. They said it was me that stole it, but, see, I was at my girlfriend’s house when all that #@&$ went down. She was gonna testify for me, too, but then her family moved back to Dallas. So I copped a plea and went to juvie. Yo, they’s no way to fight back when the whole system’s rigged against you.”

  “Rigged how?” I ask.

  “Hell, I’d still be in school if I was a rich boy like you. They wouldn’ta gone and kicked me out.”

  “We’re not rich. Where’d you get that idea?”

  “Yeah, right,” he says.

  I check to make sure I’m wearing what I think I’m wearing: a dirty T-shirt, board shorts, and nasty mud-splattered sneakers.

  “Does this look like I shop at Vineyard Vines?” I say.

  Jammer shrugs. “The cops set me up is all. Know what I’m sayin’? I bet they never mess wit’ you.”

  “What’s wrong with your car?”

  “Fan belt. Can I use your cell, bro? Mine’s dead.”

  I toss my phone to Jammer because he won’t come anywhere near me and my snake bag. He dials a number and tells—not asks—somebody to come pick him up. Afterward he slides the phone back to me across the hood of the junker.

  “Why’d you give out your locker combination to so many people?” I ask.

  “Just friends. They messin’ with your stuff?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “You put a badass snake in that locker is what I heard. That’s ultra-sick, man.”

  “Nobody got hurt.”

  “Yo, can I have, like, five bucks?” Jammer’s gaze drops again to the pillowcase in my hand. “Know what? Never mind.”

  “Did the police ever find that missing laptop?”

  “I ain’t sure they ever was a laptop. Know what I’m sayin’?”

  “See you later, man.” I start walking away.

  “Bro, what’s your true name?” he calls after me.

  “Billy Big Stick.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Ever heard of the Crow Indians?”

  “Is that, like, a baseball team?”

  I turn around. “FYI—cigarettes choke off the arteries to your brain. You should really quit.”

  Jammer waves lightheartedly and blows a circle of smoke.

  I walk way down the road before stopping to call my mother. Minutes later, a rusty SUV with bald wheels honks as it speeds past. Jammer grins at me from the passenger seat. The driver is looking down, totally texting on his phone.

  My feelings aren’t the least bit hurt when they don’t stop to offer me a ride. In fact, I’m relieved.

  When Mom finally arrives, I get in on the passenger side. A middle-aged man sits in the back seat. He’s wearing a short-sleeved uniform shirt from Taco Bell. I’ve never laid eyes on him before.

  “Billy, this is Mr. Randolph. I’m driving him to work.”

  “Hi there, Billy,” says Mr. Randolph. “My wife’s sister borrowed my ride. That’s why I’m Uber-ing.”

  I look sharply at Mom, who pretends to be concentrating on the traffic. She’s not supposed to transport family members while she’s driving a paying customer.

  “What’s in the sack?” her passenger asks me pleasantly.

  “Nothing,” my mother cuts in. “His lunch. That’s all.”

  She doesn’t want poor Mr. Randolph leaping from her car at fifty miles per hour, which might very well happen if he learns the pillowcase is full of squirming reptiles.

  I play along. “Yeah. It’s just my lunch.”

  After we drop Mr. Randolph off at the Taco Bell, I remind Mom about the importance of sticking to the Uber company’s rules. She acts like she’s agreeing, but I know better.

  “I just don’t want you
getting in any more trouble,” I say.

  “You’re a good kid for worrying about me so much.”

  “But you’re still gonna do things your own way, right?”

  She says she spotted a small drone flying above the house today. “I swear it followed me to the post office!”

  “What did it look like?”

  “Gray,” she replies, “with a dark stripe on the bottom.”

  “You’re sure it was gray?”

  “It made me think about your father.”

  “Lots of people have drones,” I say.

  “Right, I know, but why would this one follow me?”

  “Mom, it’s probably just some neighborhood kids foolin’ around.”

  I still haven’t told her about Dad’s Bubble-Wrapped note that said he was coming to Florida. There’s no point getting her all worked up, in case he never makes it. Anyway, I’m not even sure she’d want to see him.

  Back at the house, Mom goes inside to start dinner while I head for the garage. There I open the pillowcase, remove the four snakes I caught, and lock them in one of the larger aquarium tanks. Then I rummage through a bunch of cardboard boxes until I find what I’m looking for.

  My slingshot.

  * * *

  —

  One of the first things I did after returning from Montana was ride my bike to the dentist’s office and show her the tooth my father delivered by drone.

  “Well, it’s definitely a human molar, and definitely from a child,” she said, “but I can’t say if it came from your mouth or somebody else’s.”

  “What about a DNA test?”

  “We don’t do that sort of thing here, Billy. The question doesn’t come up very often.”

  I’ve been home a week and still haven’t told Mom or Belinda about the tooth. Don’t worry—I’m not keeping it under my pillow or anything. I hid it in the plastic case that holds the dental retainer I almost never wear.

  But let’s say the tooth was really mine. Is that supposed to prove Dad cares about me? Just because he saved a dingy little chomper all these years?

  He’ll have to do better than that.

  One morning I’m working at the supermarket when I spot Chin, the kid who got jumped by the lacrosse player at school. He’s waiting in the checkout line with a man who looks identical to him, only older. He calls the man Pop.

  Chin looks totally recovered from the beatdown. The bruise above his eye has healed, and the bandage over his ear is gone. I try not to look at him or his dad while I’m bagging their groceries: a gallon of low-fat milk, a package of free-range chicken breasts, a head of romaine lettuce, two pints of Häagen-Dazs (vanilla and chocolate), half a dozen tomatoes, a can of black beans, a bunch of carrots….

  But Chin recognizes me, and now it gets awkward. If either of us says something, then Chin will have to explain to his father who I am and how we met. What happened in the school hallway that day is probably something he doesn’t want to talk about—and I’d rather not be part of that conversation.

  Finally we make eye contact.

  He nods. I nod. That’s it.

  Chin and his dad walk out of the store with their grocery bags.

  I’m feeling that I handled the situation pretty smoothly until I look at the checkout counter and see I forgot to bag one small item: dental floss.

  Waxed, with spearmint flavoring.

  I can’t believe I missed it. Seriously.

  The cashier hands me the little box of floss saying, “Go take it to those customers. Hurry up now. They paid for it.”

  So I jog to the parking lot and hunt down Chin and his father, who are arranging their groceries in the trunk of a small sedan. I step up and say, “Sorry, I forgot to bag this.”

  My tone is painfully polite. Chin studies me, standing there in my goofy green Publix apron. I’m not sure what he’s thinking. His dad takes the dental floss and tries to tip me a dollar, but I shake my head saying, “No, sir, that’s not necessary.”

  I turn around and propel myself back toward the entrance of the supermarket.

  “Hey, thanks!” a voice calls out. A kid’s voice.

  It’s Chin, not his dad.

  I don’t look back. “You’re welcome,” I say over my shoulder.

  Mom swings by to pick me up after I get off from work. On the way I home I ask, out of the blue, if it was she or Dad who used to do the tooth-fairy thing when Belinda and I were little.

  “It was always me,” she says. “You didn’t lose your first baby tooth until you were five and a half years old. Dennis was already gone by then, Billy.”

  “Oh.”

  “Gone on his great Wild West adventure.”

  “Right.”

  “What made you think to ask?”

  “No reason,” I say.

  Back at the house, I walk straight to my bathroom, pluck the little yellow molar out of my retainer case, and flush it down the toilet.

  * * *

  —

  I’m still in a crappy mood later, when Dawson shows up. Belinda invited him for dinner. She makes a point of holding his hand, a reminder to Mom: See how much I care about him? Please don’t make us move again.

  I feel like telling my sister her romance act is unnecessary. Mom hasn’t said a word about moving, because the bald eagles are still happily sharing their nest on the Indian River. We faithfully check on them every Sunday morning. Basically it’s our version of church.

  “Dawson wants to go with us to see the birds next time,” Belinda says.

  Mom, who’s broiling pork chops, says that would be fine.

  “Bring some binoculars,” I suggest.

  “Dude, I’ve got something so much better,” says Dawson. “My dad’s camera. Just the lens cost ten grand!”

  “Wow. Is it made from diamonds?” I ask with a straight face.

  “It’s a five-hundred-millimeter telephoto.”

  “So, that’s what—twenty bucks per millimeter?”

  Belinda says, “Knock it off, Billy.”

  Look, I know camera equipment is expensive. I just can’t stand listening to people brag. Dawson is so dim that he doesn’t even get that I’m roasting him.

  Mom asks if his father is a professional photographer.

  “Oh no, he’s a venture capitalist,” Dawson replies. “His specialty is funding start-up tech companies. You know, the Googles of the future!”

  Now I’m ready to lose it, so I slip outside to practice with my slingshot. Our next-door neighbor has a tall palm tree that’s full of green coconuts. I’m shooting copper BBs that bounce harmlessly off the thick husks. My aim is pretty good.

  Of course, the coconuts are just hanging there on stems. It’s not like trying to hit a moving target.

  Dawson ambles out the front door and asks what I’m doing, as if it isn’t obvious. He eyes the slingshot and says, “Hey, dude, let me try!”

  This might turn out badly, but I can’t come up with a reason to say no. I guess I don’t want to hurt the guy’s feelings.

  “You ever used a slingshot before?” I ask.

  “Are you kiddin’? My cousin’s got one that’s solid titanium. It’s like shooting a twenty-two!”

  “Well, this one is plain old oak.”

  “Here, Billy, observe…and learn.”

  Dawson snatches the Y-shaped piece of wood from my hand and grabs some BBs from the jar. His first shot somehow misses the entire tree. I hear the little copper ball plop into our neighbor’s swimming pool. Dawson’s second try pings off the trunk of the palm. His next shot lands at his feet because his fingers tangle in the rubber bands.

  Finally he manages to nick one of the larger coconuts. Then he hits two more in a row.

  “Now I’m officially bored,” he declares, and turns to take ai
m at a calico cat that’s been watching us from the cherry bushes.

  I can’t say what happens next, but it happens fast. Dawson ends up flat on the ground with my knees on his chest. He seems to be having trouble speaking.

  The cat scampers off as I twist the slingshot out of Dawson’s hand and fling it aside. I don’t do this in a particularly gentle way.

  Although he’s bigger than I am, Dawson can’t shake me off. His face goes red, and he splutters furiously. After he throws a wild punch, I pin his arms saying, “If you don’t shut up, Belinda’s gonna hear you. I’m guessing you don’t want her to see this, right? Her boyfriend getting thumped by her little brother?”

  Dawson quits thrashing and catches his breath. His face returns to its normal color, though I wouldn’t say he looks calm.

  “Why would you want to shoot somebody’s pet cat?” I ask. “Where’s the sport in that? You’re pathetic.”

  He opens his mouth to reply, but no sound comes out. He’s staring past me, over my shoulder, at something in the air above us.

  It’s not a bird, either. I can hear those little propellers humming.

  Dawson cranes his sweaty neck to get a better look.

  “What’s that thing doin’?” he wheezes.

  I climb off of him and pick up my slingshot.

  “Go inside now,” I say.

  Then I grab a handful of BBs.

  EIGHT

  “Dad, is that you?” I ask the gray quadcopter.

  Dumb question. Who else would be spying on our house?

  “Dinner’s ready,” my mother calls from inside. She doesn’t see what I’m seeing.

  “Be right there, Mom.”

  After loading a BB into the pouch, I raise the slingshot and draw back the heavy-duty rubber bands. To counter the light crosswind, I aim a little left of dead center. The first BB sails too high. Instantly the drone begins to elevate.

  I reload and shoot again. This time there’s the sharp crack of metal on plastic. Something flies off the top of the quadcopter and flutters like a leaf to the ground.

  It’s part of a prop blade.

  Down comes the drone, twirling in a sickly spiral. It crash-lands in the middle of our yard, shredding grass. I pounce on the crippled aircraft and carry it into the garage, yanking the door down behind me.