“All right,” Mom said at last, with only a hint of a sigh. “You can go. But only to the movie and back. I expect you back here the second it’s over.”
“Deal,” I told her. And I didn’t wait another second. I handed her my plastic pumpkin full of candy, and Fallon and I pushed our way through the mountain of kids at the door.
“You don’t even know how big I owe you right now,” I told Fallon as we made our way through the sea of costumes to the theater.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said with a smile.
• • •
“Hey there, Trent,” Mr. Jacobson greeted me as he handed Fallon and me each a blue ticket from a giant roll like they have for raffles at carnivals. The Halloween movie was free, but there were only so many seats, so you needed a ticket. “Hi, Fallon.” So I guess Mr. Jacobson knew her, too. “Your dad on duty today?”
“Yep,” Fallon said.
“Well, you tell him thanks for keeping our community safe,” Mr. Jacobson said.
I wondered how a perfectly pleasant person like Mr. Jacobson could have such a terrible son like Jeremiah. I wondered if Mr. Jacobson knew that his son was terrible, and if he felt bad about it, if he stayed up late at night wondering where he had gone wrong in raising his monster of a child.
“Better hurry and get a good seat,” Mr. Jacobson told us. “The theater’s really filling up.”
“Thanks.”
While Fallon went to load up on popcorn, I hurried to the bathroom.
And so obviously that’s exactly where I whammed right into Jeremiah.
Wham!
He was right behind the door, standing there with one of those industrial-sized toilet paper rolls hanging off each arm. Noah Gorman was in the bathroom, too, picking his teeth or whatever he was doing in front of the mirror at the row of sinks. There were probably eight other people in there, peeing, washing their hands, doing things you do in bathrooms. So of course Jeremiah was the one I whammed into.
“Oh, sorry, didn’t see you there,” Jeremiah said, eyes on the ground as he shuffled away from the door. And then, one second later, he looked up and noticed that it was me who’d accidentally whammed into him, and not some super-important movie theater customer like he must’ve originally thought. Which I guess is also the moment he realized he’d just apologized to me. Which, as you can guess, he didn’t seem too happy about.
“Look where you’re going, butthole.” That’s what he said.
I guess I could’ve let it go. Not said anything. Peed and washed my hands and gone to see the movie, no problem. But I didn’t exactly feel like peeing in front of Jeremiah Jacobson, even if he couldn’t think of a worse thing to call me than “butthole.” So instead, I decided to hold it, and I spun around on my heel, heading back toward the door. And okay, I’ll admit it, I sort of not-so-accidentally whammed my shoulder into Jeremiah’s as I went by.
“You already peed yourself?” Jeremiah called after me as I opened the door.
“Nah,” I said, walking out into the lobby of the theater. “I’m just gonna whizz all over the floor later, so you’ll have to clean it up.”
And I really thought that would be that. I guess I thought I could get the last slam in, just this once, maybe.
I guess I thought wrong.
Thump!
Thump!
The sound of two industrial-sized toilet paper rolls hitting the floor.
A hand on my shoulder.
“What did you say to me?” That was Jeremiah, obviously.
I took a deep breath. “I said,” I told him over my shoulder, and I tried to think my words through very carefully as I said them. I could feel the rage building up in my chest, the hot, angry fire, and I didn’t feel like ignoring it this time.
“I said that you couldn’t tell a butthole from your own face.”
It was pretty obvious, from the way Jeremiah tightened his grip on my shoulder, that he wanted to punch me, and wanted to punch me hard. It was also obvious, from the way his face fell when I turned around to look at him, that there was no way he was going to do that in his parents’ movie theater.
I grinned at him. “You’re supposed to tell me to enjoy my movie,” I said, pulling my shoulder away.
“You’re right,” Jeremiah called after me as I walked away. He was so mad, his voice shook a little. “I hope you and the Bride of Frankenstein have a wonderful time.”
It didn’t take longer than a blink for all the rage I’d been carrying around to boil over.
Before I knew it, I had Jeremiah Jacobson pressed against the wall, his back slammed into the drinking fountain, and I was giving it to him. Punching my fists into his ugly little face, and it hurt my knuckles, it burned, but I didn’t care, because the burning in my knuckles was better than the burning in my chest, so I kept going, pound pound pound. And Jeremiah was grabbing at me, trying to get a punch in, a kick in, but he gave up, he couldn’t get me anywhere, I was too fast—pound pound pound—so he grabbed my hair, but that wasn’t going to do it. I threw my head forward—whack!—and slammed him farther into the drinking fountain, and I must’ve set it off spurting when I slammed him, because I heard the whish! of it, the stream of water, and that was the first sound I remembered hearing, but after that it was like I was bombarded with sound. Jeremiah groaning, shouting at me. Screams from the crowd in the lobby. Popcorn popping. Noise from the theater as the door opened and movie trailers got louder. And a holler, a real holler, as I was wrenched off Jeremiah.
“Get off him, Trent, jeez!”
It was Noah Gorman. He tossed me back, and I fell to the ground. Noah propped up Jeremiah, slumping over the drinking fountain. He was wet, down his front, and I didn’t know if it was water from the drinking fountain or if he’d peed himself.
“Oh, my God.”
I’d been in a haze, I guess, with the rage and the punching and the fire and everything. But when I heard Fallon’s voice, I snapped back. Fallon was standing, not ten feet away, holding a jumbo tub of popcorn, and she was staring at me, her mouth hanging open. But only for a second. Because as soon as her eyes caught mine, she dropped the popcorn. Right on the floor, kernels everywhere.
And she ran out the door.
I wanted to run after her, tell her to wait, but I couldn’t. Just at that moment I was yanked off the ground and slammed into the drinking fountain myself. At first I thought it was Jeremiah, back to really take a go at me, or maybe Noah, even, deciding to beat the crap out of me for beating the crap out of his best friend. But it wasn’t.
It was Mr. Jacobson. Jeremiah’s dad.
“You do not,” he shouted—and he didn’t need to shout, seriously, because he was only one inch from my face, but I guess he felt like shouting anyway—“mess with my son. Do you hear me?”
Of course I heard him. He was shouting into my face. I looked over my shoulder at the floor, where the popcorn kernels made a yellow rug.
“Do you hear me, you little creep?” Mr. Jacobson shouted at me. He shook me as he said it, too.
I blinked and focused back on him. And when I looked at his face, it was like I could see into his brain, hear the thoughts that he was thinking.
You killed one kid already, that’s what he was thinking. I’m not going to let you do it again.
The fire twisted in my chest. It wrenched at me, pulled all my internal organs up into my throat, until they were choking me. I couldn’t swallow.
I couldn’t breathe.
I broke free of Mr. Jacobson’s grip, because I needed air. I needed to go outside. My face was wet. I needed air. I needed to find Fallon.
“Don’t think I won’t tell your mother about this!” Mr. Jacobson shouted after me as I ran out the door.
I didn’t care. I was running, pushing through the zombies, the witches, the ninja turtles, trying to find her. Fallon.
> Trying to breathe.
FIFTEEN
I found her, after a while. After I gave up searching the crowd on the street for an angry hippie girl and finally wised up and went directly across the street into the shop. She must’ve gone there immediately, because by the time I stepped inside, my mom was on the phone, and I could tell just by the look on her face that I was in for it.
“Where is she?” I asked Ray, who had quit handing out candy for the moment. He was standing next to my mom on her phone, while the trick-or-treaters huddled in the doorway, confused. “Where’s Fallon?”
“She’s in the stockroom,” he said, pointing to the back. “She locked herself in. She won’t come out.” He squinted at me. “What happened, Trent?”
“I’ll tell you in a minute,” I muttered, and I left him and Mom wondering on the saleroom floor. I headed to the back.
Sure enough, the door to the stockroom was closed.
“Fallon?” I said softly. I tried the doorknob. Locked. “Fallon?”
“Leave me alone,” she said. I’m pretty sure I heard a sniffle, too.
“Can I come in?” I asked.
“No.”
“But—”
“Leave me alone,” she said again. “Your mom said she’d call my parents. I just want to go home.”
“Fallon, can I talk to you?” I was getting angry all over again, hearing Fallon so upset. That jerk Jeremiah, he didn’t know how horrible he was. “What Jeremiah said,” I told her through the door, “he’s just a moron. Don’t listen to him. Ever. He’s a moron.”
“I know he’s a moron,” Fallon said. Her voice was louder then. “You think I’m . . . ?” She trailed off. Another sniffle. “Just go away, okay?”
“No,” I said. And I meant it. I wasn’t going away. I wasn’t leaving Fallon there, to be sad or angry or whatever she was. I was going to fix it.
“I’m staying right here,” I said, slouching down on the floor so my back was to the door, leaning up against it. “I’m staying right here till you come out.”
And I did. I stayed there, sitting on the floor. I could see straight through to the main room, where my mom was still on the phone, glancing back at me like she didn’t know whether to feel sorry for me or furious. Ray went back to the trick-or-treaters.
“Fallon?” I said again through the door.
“I don’t want to talk to you.”
I thought about that. There was only one thing to say.
“Why can’t you ever get hungry at the beach?” I asked her.
It was quiet for a long time. But then, through the door, I thought I heard a soft padding, and then the swift! of a lock, and before I had a chance to stand up, the door flew back, and I thumped down on my back, lying flat, staring up at Fallon straight above me.
She blinked at me, slowly.
“Because of all the sandwiches there,” she told me.
She let me in the stockroom.
• • •
“I have this dream sometimes,” Fallon said softly. We were both sitting on the floor of the stockroom, backs against Ray’s bookshelves, and she wasn’t looking at me. She was playing with the belt on her dress, running her fingers over the woven leather. It had been silent for so long, us two just sitting there, listening to the muffled sounds on the other side of the closed stockroom door, that I’d figured she wasn’t in the mood to talk. And then, suddenly, she started talking about dreams. “A lot, actually,” she went on. “Ever since . . .” She dug her fingernail deep into the folds of her belt.
“What kind of dream?” I asked.
She looked up at me quickly, like she was surprised I’d said anything. Maybe she’d forgotten I was there. Maybe she’d just been talking to herself. Her eyes darted back to her lap. “It’s different every time,” she said. “Well, it starts out different, anyway. There’s usually someone chasing me, or breaking down the door to my bedroom, something like that. Once I had a dream that someone followed me into the locker room at the public pool.”
“That sounds awful,” I said. Because what else was I supposed to say?
Fallon still wouldn’t look at me. “I can’t scream,” she said.
“What?”
“In the dreams. I always open my mouth to scream, and nothing comes out.” She looked up at me then, and I swear, she looked afraid. Like, really, truly scared. I’d never seen her look like that before. She always looked so confident, like nothing could ever touch her. “I just keep trying and trying and . . .” She blinked, turned her gaze back to her belt. “I have that dream all the time, about the screaming. It’s horrible.”
I’d never had a dream like that, but I knew what bad dreams were.
“I’m sorry,” I said. Even though it wasn’t my fault.
She shook her head, like she was wiping away the memory. “It’s just a dream, right?” she said. And she even gave me a smile, only I could tell it wasn’t a real one. She went back to playing with her belt. “Only lately I’ve started to wonder if maybe it’s real, if maybe I actually forgot how to scream.”
“What do you mean? Of course you can scream.”
“Yeah, but how am I supposed to know for sure? It’s not like I ever go around screaming in real life. Not like a really, really loud one. Maybe I can’t anymore. If I needed to do it, it would come out all scratchy and soft, like in the dream. And the worst part is that I won’t even know for sure until something terrible happens, and then tough luck for me.”
I sat forward from the bookshelf. “Scream right now,” I told her. “As loud as you can.”
She let out a snap of a laugh. “Shut up,” she said, wiping at her nose.
“I dare you,” I said. “Scream right now.”
“You’re crazy,” she said. “I’m not gonna do that.”
“Why not?” I was serious. Fallon was upset, and I was going to fix it. I put my hands on my knees, rocking slightly. “Come on, it’ll be great.”
“Your mom and Ray will run in here and think you’re murdering me or something.”
I hopped to my feet. “So I’ll just tell them I’m teaching you how to scream. Hold on, I’ll be right back.”
“Trent.” She reached out and grabbed my hand before I could open the door. “Don’t, okay?” She lowered her eyes again.
“Oh.” I didn’t know what to do after that. I shuffled my feet for a little bit, and then finally went back to sitting. But I sat across the stockroom from Fallon instead of right next to her, like before.
I wasn’t sure why.
“Sorry,” I said after a while.
She scrunched her mouth to the side. “It’s okay,” she said.
There was a thin strip of her right eyebrow, if you looked at her face carefully, that was missing, right where the scar crossed her face. Just a thin strip. And her eyelashes on her right eye, just the half dozen or so that were in the path of the scar, they weren’t dark brown like the rest of them. They were white.
“I’m sorry about what Jeremiah said,” I told her. “I know you know he’s a jerk. But still. He shouldn’t have said that about you, that you were the Bride of Frankenstein, or whatever.”
She looked up at me then. Those big, round, dark eyes. One. Two. Looking directly at me, on either side of her scar.
“Is that what you think I was upset about?” she asked.
“Um,” I said. “Yes?” What else would she be upset about?
She shook her head. “You’re kind of a jerk, too, you know that, Trent?”
“What?”
She rolled her eyes at me. “I don’t need you to protect me,” she said. “You think people like Jeremiah don’t say stuff like that to me all the time? Or worse? I can take care of myself. I do it every day.”
“I know,” I said. “I know you can. But—”
“And I don’t want you
to try to protect me.” All of a sudden, something flashed over her. She definitely wasn’t smiling anymore. “I don’t want you to get into fights, Trent. Especially not for me.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and leaned back into Ray’s filing cabinets, even though the metal drawer pulls were poking my back. “You know, it wouldn’t hurt you to get angry every once in a while,” I told Fallon. “You don’t have to just sit back and listen to everyone being mean to you without doing anything.”
“I think you’re plenty angry enough for the both of us,” she said.
And that’s when the door opened, and my mom said Fallon’s parents were on their way to pick her up. So I didn’t get a chance to say anything to that at all.
• • •
You can always tell when Mom is angry, because her mouth squinches up so small, it practically disappears. The angrier she is, the less of a mouth she seems to have.
That night, after we’d gotten home from the shop, and Doug had gone to bed (probably listening at his door to me getting in trouble), and Aaron was still out with his girlfriend, and it was just Mom and me alone in the kitchen, her mouth was so small, you’d’ve needed a microscope to find it.
“I’m not sure I can do this anymore, Trent,” she said at last, after staring me down for a while. She’d tricked me into sitting at the kitchen table, because I thought she was going to sit, too. But it turned out she was never planning on sitting. Instead she stood at the kitchen counter with her back against the edge of the sink, her arms folded in front of her. Which made her look like she was about two feet taller than me, and way scarier than normal, with her death-ray eyes and her tiny, pinprick mouth.
Nice power play, Mom. Seriously.
“Do what?” I asked.
“This,” she replied. “I love you so much, but I don’t know how to . . .” She ran a hand over her face. “I think it might be best for you to stay with your dad for a while.”
“What?” I shrieked. “No! Mom!”