The Last Martin

My eyes widen, and I take off for first.

  zing!

  Poole falls in behind and chases me to first. “Faster!”

  “You’re crazy!” I jam my whistle in my mouth and start tweeting.

  Zoom!

  “Oh!” Tweet! “That hit my back.” Tweet, tweet. I speed to second.

  Poole chases me three times around the bases before I collapse in the fungi jungle near home plate. “Fine,” I gasp. “Finish me off. It’ll happen soon anyway.”

  Poole nudges me with his foot. “So what are you going to do now?”

  I groan. “Ice my butt.”

  “Sorry ‘bout that. Didn’t see any other way to get you to play.” He kneels. “So you’ll go home and what, sit in the tub? Plan your funeral?”

  “You think this is funny.” I push to all fours, wince, and slowly stand.

  He shakes his head. “Like I said, what I think doesn’t matter much, does it?”

  I shuffle away from Poole and into the outfield. It’s a long walk home, and there’s a barn owl in a panic by now.

  “Good heavens, Martin!” Mom throws open the door and pulls me in by the arm. “Where have you been?” She squints at my neck, grabs my collar, yanks, and peeks at my back. “Bruises. Everywhere. Who did this to you?”

  “A kid.” I step toward the stairs, but her grasp stiffens.

  “A ruffian, no doubt. We need to document the damage or the police won’t take this seriously.” “Police?”

  Her hands shoot to her hips. “Martin, you’re a victim of A-S-S-A-U-L-T. This is a police matter. Strip!”

  “What?” I glance around the living room. “Here? Now?”

  Lani bounds down the stairs. She looks at me and grimaces. “Who beat you up?”

  I roll my eyes. “A kid.”

  Her eyes are huge, like I did something great. “Cool! Did you fight him off?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Strip to your boxers, Martin.” Mom fiddles with her digital camera.

  I point at Lani. “Not in front of —”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake, you used to share a tub. This is nothing new.”

  “Ew!” Lani dashes up the stairs, and I move into the kitchen.

  I wince and pull my shirt off. Mom gasps and reaches for the camera. “My son, my son. What has this ruffian done to you?” Click. “The pain.” Click. “A mother should never have to see this kind of — turn around, Martin — injury inflicted on her child.” Click.

  She captures my spots of black, blue, and yellow from all angles. “Now the police cannot shirk their responsibilities. They’ll find your assailant and throw him behind bars. And you can believe that at his trial we will have words. Oh yes, we will have word —”

  “But I know my assailant.” I grimace into my shirt and limp from the room. “We were just playing baseball. I fell. Sort of. A lot.”

  “Who was it? Who? Who?” cries the Barn Owl.

  Monday morning comes quickly and painfully.

  I gimp to the mirror. A particularly nasty neck bruise mocks me, and I gingerly push a comb through my hair.

  “School. Neck bruise. Bad combination.” I stroke my blue skin with my fingers. “Make-up? No. Face paint? No …”

  Turtleneck!

  I pick the weighty red one, the Christmas one with the battery sewn inside. Touch near my heart and Christmas trees will flash to the musical stylings of chipmunks singing pa-rum-pa-pum-pum. But at least it’s way big and hides the bottom of my chin.

  Perspiration gathers and beads. It drips near the brow, at the neck, in the pits. The shirt is muggy and a scorcher but this woolen tomb is my only choice. I haul sore muscles down the steps and stop.

  8 x 11 portraits hang all around the living room. Post-it notes title each picture.

  Martin Boyle’s abdomen.

  Martin Boyle’s left thigh.

  I walk into the kitchen. Six magnets clip a life-sized blow-up of my mottled rear to the fridge.

  “Officer Wilkins will be stopping by around ten.”

  Mom pours coffee at the table. “He describes the incident as petty, but these pictures will change his mind.” She sips and gestures toward my buttocks with her mug. “I affixed Post-it arrows to highlight the most painful blows.”

  I shake my head and trudge out of the kitchen just as Lani rushes in. “There better be a bagel — Gross! There’s a photo of Martin’s butt on the fridge. How am I supposed to eat?”

  I slip out of the house, find a nice-sized stone, and kick it all the way to the bus stop. The sun burns, too hot for April, and by the time I arrive I’m a nappy-haired, bruise-butted sweatball.

  “Dressed a little warm, aren’t cha?” Charley runs toward me, pencil and paper in hand.

  “I was out of clean shorts and T-shirts.” I yank at my collar. “It doesn’t matter any —”

  “Big favor time.” Charley shoves the paper into my chest. “I really need some more of that knight story.” He starts to dance. The Charley Dance. His arms, legs, and hips all gyrate at the same time. Frightening. “And put in plenty of love-o-rama between the knight and what’s her name.”

  “Alia.”

  “Yeah, her. Lots of love stuff. And I need it before third hour or I’m going to look dumb.”

  I shrug. “You do look dumb.”

  The bus’s brakes squeal. We clamor in and take our seats.

  “No air bag?” Charley backhands my chest. “What’s the deal?”

  I think on that. “Just forgot. I forgot the mask too. And the sanitizer and my vitamin C tablets. I forgot everything.” I pause and sneak a peek at my friend. “Say, Charley, I, uh, found out something at the cemetery.”

  “Your mom is bizarre and your dad’s stuck in the 1800s.”

  How do I tell my best friend I’ll be dead in three months?

  I stare straight ahead and breathe deeply. “Three more months is all I got.”

  “It’s so great!” His beady eyes sparkle. “Can’t wait for summer myself. But about the story. You know, The White Knight? I gave you some more time to think about it.” He holds a pencil beneath my nose. “What are you going to do now?”

  I shoot Charley a glance. “What am I going to do now? You’re the second person in two days who’s asked me — Where did you hear that?”

  “Hear what?”

  The bus bounces over the repaired pothole and my friend babbles on, but I don’t listen. What am I going to do now? I have three months.

  I sit up straight. Three months.

  I peek at Charley. He’s still talking.

  “… see, so I know you probably didn’t want to hear that, but it’s really going great between me and Julia …”

  Julia.

  CHAPTER 7

  FIRST PERIOD PHYS ED. FIFTY MINUTES OF embarrassment. I sit sweaty-necked in the locker room watching other boys suit up.

  Mr. Halden lumbers in. “Get dressed, Boyle,” he booms. “Then march that underdeveloped body of yours into the weight room.” Halden checks his watch. “You’re two minutes from late. You know what that means, boy.” He cracks a hideous smile and then his knuckles. “You’re asking for The Treatment.”

  The Treatment. Sweating turns to shivering. I’ve never gotten The Treatment. Nobody has. Halden’s sinister threat is so terrifying, we all hop to. But today I can’t hop, not in my chipmunk turtleneck. Halden leaves and I stare into my open locker at my perfect blue T-shirt and perfect blue shorts and wonder what’s coming.

  Will runs into the locker room, laughs, and points at the clock. “You’re not going to make it! Halden’s in his office preparing your Treatment. Move, you idiot.”

  Suddenly the room fills with boys. The chant begins.

  “Treatment! Treatment!”

  From the back room, Halden hollers. “Here it comes. First time in thirty years I’ve ever had to administer this. Boyle? Office. Now.”

  I nod and push to my feet. “I’m coming, I’m coming.” Head drooped, I shuffle between jeering lines of frothy boy
s … and dash for the locker room door.

  “Catch him!” Will hollers and dives for my feet. I stumble but stay vertical and explode into the hall, serenaded by helium-lunged chipmunks.

  “Get ‘em, boys!” Halden releases his demented herd. It’s the running of the bulls, and I’m wearing red, and if I slip, I’m toast. I fishtail around the corner.

  … pa-pum-pum. “Shush, sweater.”

  Girls’ bathroom!

  Panic pushes me inside. I leap into a stall, slam the door, and hop on the bowl. My heartbeat steadies, my head thuds against the door, and I swallow hard.

  This is crazy!

  Hinges creak and I brace myself, peeking out the crack.

  Oh no.

  “Crazy guys,” Keira says. “Wonder what Martin did.”

  “Probably squirted someone with Germ-X.” My Julia tosses her hair back and peers into the mirror. I don’t have my Germ-X today, thank you very much! “Whatever it is, I feel sorry for the guy, you know?” Keira turns and leans against the sink. “He seems nice.”

  “How would you know? He’s mute. And he’s been in my classes since, like, kindergarten. I don’t think he has a tongue. But whatever, Charley’s different.” Julia glances down. “I almost told him about my parents yesterday. He’s so easy to talk to.” “And dumb.”

  “That’s what I thought.” Julia smiles and bites her lip. “And then he wrote this story, well a piece of a story, and … it’s so, I don’t know, like romantic or something. Everything’s different. Does that make any sense?” “You like Charley because of a story?” My story!

  “He’s supposed to bring the next part today, third hour.”

  Keira pulls Julia toward the door. “You’re crazy.” “Maybe, but —”

  Yipping voices of frothy gym boys echo in the hall. “Hey, Julia, have you seen Martin?” Will shouts. “What do you think? I’ve been in a bath — “

  Slam. The bathroom is very quiet. I let my head fall against the stall door with a thud.

  Pa-rum-pa-pum-pum! I grab at my turtleneck. “Stupid chipmunks.”

  I close my eyes. “See, Julia? I do have a tongue.”

  I pass the time in the bathroom, which makes me late to every class. Flimsy tardy slips are better than the attacks of rabid gym boys.

  But there’s no escaping the pack during lunch hour.

  I race to the round table, the one tucked in the lunchroom corner. Stay low, eat fast, and pray. Stay low, eat fast, and — Charley.

  My best friend drapes over the isolation table. I ease up behind him.

  “Charley?” I peek over my shoulder. “You dead?”

  “Wish I was. I’m such a loser.” He lets out a moan.

  I plop down. “I won’t argue with that.”

  Charley lifts his head and squints. “It’s mostly your fault. A true friend would’ve given me a page, a paragraph, anything to make Julia happy, but no! You had to hold back. And after all we’ve been through.”

  I want to feel bad for my friend, but I can’t. “So what —”

  “I’ll tell you what! I wrote the next section of the story and …” His forehead thuds against the table. “I showed Julia.”

  “You added to my story?” I clear my throat. “Couldn’t have been that bad.”

  Charley digs in his back pocket, pulls out a ratty sheet of notebook paper, and slaps it down in front of me. I smooth the paper and read.

  The night was scared. The night was angry. The other night was scared and angry. They were scared and angry at each other. They hit each other. The white night hit the black night. The black night hit the white night. They both said ouch.

  “Oh boy,” I whisper.

  “She had these beautiful drawings. She spent days working on them.” Charley buries his head in his hands, then spreads his fingers to talk through the cracks. “She said she couldn’t get the story out of her mind and then — they both said ‘ouch'? What was I thinking?”

  I exhale hard. “You know, maybe I should have —”

  “There he is!”

  I glance around me. A ring of boys encircles the table. “Halden’s looking for you.”

  “He’ll probably forget, right?” I say. “He has other kids to torture.”

  “Next time we have gym …” Will slaps my back. “I wouldn’t want to be you.”

  He scans the lunchroom and grins. “Hey, Halden’s in the teachers’ line. Over here, Mr. Halden!”

  The pack snickers, and I jump. “Gotta go, Charley.”

  I push through the circle, duck behind lines of tray-shuttling kids, and slither into the hall.

  Where to hide. Where to hide. Media Center!

  I take a sharp left, scamper through the hall, and turn right at the book showcase. I burst in the door and Ms. Kellian sets down an armful of heavy books. “Hello, Martin. It’s been a while.”

  “Tough couple days.” I breathe heavily and pat a computer screen. “Can I hide behind one of these?”

  “Be my guest.”

  I sit and twiddle on the keyboard. The Treatment and Julia and my lunchroom escape fill my mind, but now in the silence, a cloud descends. I hate being chased, but at least I’m moving. In three months, nobody will chase me. They’ll look down at me; I’ll stare without blinking — face up, from a box. I can see it now …

  “Come on, Mr. Halden.” Will yanks on his sleeve. “Can’t you give him The Treatment?”

  The funeral home erupts. “Treatment! Treatment!”

  “Hush, boys. No, we can’t. Look at him. Dead as a doorknob.” Mr. Halden leans over my stiff body and whispers, “You got off easy, kid.”

  I blink hard and my arms feel heavy. I’ve been angry since the cemetery. But not now. My body slumps and my eyes sting.

  I want to cry.

  “Cruel. Fool. Gruel. Poole,” I mutter, and mindlessly whack the keyboard. “How come all rotten words rhyme? Hearse. Worse. Curse …”

  I Google geneology and enter my name and city. “There I am. Let’s find the other unfortunates. Martin Boyle. Enter.” The screen fills with former Martins’ birth and death dates, the pattern undeniable. I click on the first Martin link.

  Died heroically at Fort Snelling.

  How can everyone miss these dates? Dad should know the curse’s pattern.

  I straighten, click print, and grab the sheet off the tray. There’s no way out. It’s time to tell the family of my impending doom, starting with the one who matters most.

  I run home from the bus stop, salty sweat coating my lips. I have sixty minutes of unhindered Dad time. Then the Owl alights and lunacy begins.

  I leap up the steps, stumble through the door. “Dad? Dad!”

  Footsteps shuffle above me. I pound up the stairs. “Are you up here?”

  “Higher!”

  Not the attic.

  My room rests on the only secure level of our home. The Owl’s nest and Underwear World lie beneath my feet. The creaky, microbial, spore-filled attic promises danger overhead. I live between, sandwiched safe and sanitary, and more than once have vowed never to climb the stairs at the hall’s end.

  “Come up here and help me!” Dad calls.

  I clutch the paper that proves the curse and tiptoe toward the steps. Above me, the attic floor creaks and pops. Unfinished attic hardwood turns every step Dad takes into a scene from a horror flick.

  I reach the stairway and think of Poole.

  Creak. Pop.

  Whistle a happy tune. Think, Marty. Anything cheery and —

  Creak.

  There are no happy tunes in my world. Life is like the door at the top of the steps — closed and dark and —

  That door flies open and Dad smiles. “Come on up, I want to show you something.”

  I climb into a cobweb-infested attic. It smells of must and mothballs.

  “Here.” Dad whispers, and bends over in the corner.

  I walk, slow and silent as a cat, to where he stoops. He glances at me, winks, and pulls back a swath of insulation. ?
??Ever seen a sleeping bat?”

  Fuzzy, black-winged mice clump in a heap on the floorboards. I jerk back and my head slams against a ceiling beam. I stagger limp-legged toward the door.

  “They’ve been sleeping here?” I wince and massage my skull. “Right above my head?”

  “Your mother doesn’t know. She’d be none too pleased.” Dad reaches out and strokes a beast. “There, there. Cute little fella. Want to pet one?”

  I jam my hands deep into my pockets.

  Dad nods. “They’re fast asleep. I’ll need to remove them, but don’t you think they give the house character?”

  “Remove them?”

  Dad points over my shoulder to the far wall. Sheets of contact paper, coated with dismembered bat heads and wings, cover the rafters. Bat bodies ball on the floor beneath.

  “The little guys get stuck and pull and pull. They yank so hard their heads pop off.”

  A rumbling begins deep in my stomach. I can feel the burn in my throat. I’m five seconds from sick.

  Death everywhere. I run down the steps, race the length of the hall, and duck into the bathroom. I sit on the side of the tub and prepare for a violent stomach lurch. Dad’s steady footsteps approach.

  “I didn’t mean to frighten you, son.” He steps inside the bathroom, sweeps away the shower curtain, and eases down beside me. “I thought you might be interested to see who lives here besides us.”

  “Yeah, well.” I swallow and lift the pulpy paper to his nose. “There will be one less here soon.”

  Dad uncrumples the sheet and studies it top to bottom. His gaze shifts to me. “I’m going to ask you a serious question, Martin. I need you to be truthful. How long have you been thinking about death?”

  “A little while.”

  He puffs out a blast of air. “I know I’m not around much, but it looks like I need to be. Would you consider talking to a counselor?”

  “About …”

  “This obsession with dying.” He makes a fist and bumps my thigh. “Your mother mentioned it after our cemetery visit. I thought she was being her quirky self but maybe —”

  I grab the sheet back. “I am not the problem. Look!” I point at the dates. “Don’t you see a pattern here? And in three short months, who is going to be born? Uncle Landis’s Martin Boyle. And who is going to die?” I point at myself. “Your Martin Boyle. This is not an obsession. Does this not look a bit curse-like to you?”