Content warning: Offensive and ableist language
Wednesday, March 15, 2028
It had been a doctor’s appointment instead of school in the morning, so Peter Heron was asking for chicken nuggets, medium fries, and a medium Coke-a-cola. His sister Clara asked for the same, and then their mother reiterated to the drive-through speaker. Their mother didn’t like them drinking soda, but on a day like today there was nothing to be done. At least you’re not asking for larges, she seemed to say.
“Bar-B-Q sauce okay?” the speaker asked.
“Bar-B-Q sauce?” their mother asked, though she must have known they could have already heard. Peter found himself angry. He didn’t know why adults did that, and his mother should’ve known their favorite sauce by now.
“Sweet and sour?” he asked.
Clara said the same thing. “Sweet and sour?”
Copy-cat, he thought, but he said nothing, and so the thoughts boiled over to his shaking hands. Fucking parrot.
Peter saw on the screen that each ten-piece meal came out to $11.94. Their mother’s order had a different price, but Peter didn’t see before the screen changed and the speaker said to move.
They pulled up to the window. “Two ten-piece meals and a…?” the worker asked, but once again it didn’t matter to Peter Heron what his mother ate.
“Yep,” said his mother.
“Twenty-four ninety-seven,” said the worker.
She gave the worker her card, took it back again, then pulled up to the next window as instructed. They got their food and she drove off. Peter looked at the time.
“Can we please not go to school today?” Peter asked. “It’s 11:24. We won’t even be there for anything. It’s just gonna be eighth and ninth period, and that’s it.”
“That’s not true!” Clara blurted. “Pete’s supposed to stay after for tenth. Mrs. Balm’s been asking him for weeks because he hasn’t been doing the readings.”
It was a gross injustice that there was no way to tell his mother that Mrs. Balm had only been asking him to stay for three days, and that the situation only involved one reading, and that on top of that he had tried his best to do it but had understood it so poorly that no one would believe him. This was not so anymore. Clara only needed a bit of the truth to make the whole lie true.
“See?” his mother said. “You’re supposed to stay after.”
Clara grabbed one of his chicken nuggets. He tried to grab one of hers, but she moved the box out of the way.
Their mother took a drink. After a moment, she said, “I didn’t know you weren’t doing the readings.”
“I am.”
“Nuh-uh,” said Clara, and she pinched him.
Their mother did not tell her to stop. She seemed more concerned with Clara’s lies. “Do you need help?”
Like you could help me, Peter thought.
“What was that?” his mother asked, but he was sure he hadn’t said the thing out loud.
Maybe I think too loudly, he tried, but nobody heard that. “Nothing,” he said.
“I can help. Maybe tonight?”
“I don’t need help.”
Clara stole another chicken nugget. Rather than attempt to balance the score, Peter opted to cut his losses. He stole a handful of her fries — a small handful, just to get her to stop, but she wailed and wailed, much too loud for a girl in the fourth grade, and pinched him again, harder than before. Peter smacked her hand away.
“Hey!” their mother said, and then she turned around. Peter winced. Even years after everything that had happened with Rue, any distracted driving made him feel wildly unsafe.
“Stop it, you two.”
Both of them? Then again, the thought crossed Peter’s mind to grab the wheel himself.
He blamed his mother, of course.
…………
They came to school at the start of seventh period, which was during Peter’s lunch and after Clara’s. If there was any justice for what had happened in the car, it was that.
In fact, in the spirit of justice, even after Clara’s theft Peter had left the car with four nuggets, a packet of sweet and sour sauce, and some Coke. Clara left the car with nothing. He ate slowly in the cafeteria, the envy of all the boys. True, some of their parents had the time to pack them lunches some of the time, and those were good enough, but for most of them Wednesday was pizza day, and the school pizza was shit.
Roger Lark was the last to sit down out of the lunch line. He slammed the tray of gray slop on the table — rock-hard square of pizza, fruit cup half full of syrup, chocolate milk carton, and all — and yelled into the cafeteria chorus: “To hell with Michelle!” Nobody knew who had started that. Of course Roger said that he had, but so did Corbon Mayfeld in the year above them, and half the boys two years above him, or so the rumors went.
Nobody knew who had started the ritual. Perhaps there was no origin, and it was middle school boys all the way down, but what everyone did know was the effect Michelle Obama had had on the middle school lunchtable economy.
Liam Keyes, who was scary thin and always hungry, asked Peter for his lunch. “Not the nuggets!” Liam clarified. “I wouldn’t ask for those, but seeing as you won’t be wanting pizza…” Peter slowly dipped his third-to-the-last nugget into the sauce. “And who says I won’t be wanting pizza?” He left the nugget there and took a swig of soda. No one dared to steal it. They could get away with stealing a Dorito or a stocky french fry, but a chicken nugget from McDonald’s? The boys were no Clara.
“Well, I just… I sort of assumed…”
“You know what they say about assuming?”
Warren Mur laughed his ass off, even though it wasn’t very funny, and Peter found himself incredibly angry that someone already knew the joke.
Perry Finch kept giving his thin and lazy grin.
Warren was the only one among them who had brought a lunch from home, at least on pizza day. He wasn’t one of those preps who brought one every day, like Drew Garribe and Laura Gode, but he didn’t suffer pizza on Wednesdays. He produced the lunchtime holy grail from underneath a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and held out his desert. “Who wants it?”
Some of them made offers, but with nothing from home they had nothing to give. Roger offered his fruit cup, Perry offered his chocolate milk, and Franklyn Swallow offered both, but none of them were ever going to win Warren over. Then Franklyn called his bluff by offering everything on his tray, and Warren still said no.
“I don’t know…” Peter lied. “I might just want my nuggets.”
Warren looked over and counted them, and frowned when he saw only three.
I should have eaten one more sooner, Peter thought. Or Clara shouldn’t have stolen two — I would have eaten faster, then. “I’ll give you two. And the sauce.”
“All three.”
“Two.”
“All three, bro.”
“I’m not giving you three.”
“It’s a cosmic fucking brownie. What else are you gonna do? Fucking bargain, actually.”
In the end, Warren was right, and while Peter had started with ten nuggets, he only ever tasted five. Even the taste of Little Debbie was little consolation, but Peter hadn’t traded for the taste.
Warren’s favorite word set the mood, and it was awful funny joke after awful funny joke for the rest of lunch. They were all laughing at Roger when Mrs. Poole walked past. Roger stopped what he was doing, which was talking about Apache attack helicopters and rubbing two pepperonis together in a vaguely sexual way, and all of them went silent. She gave them a look, but said nothing and walked on, right down the middle of the aisle in her blue-and-white striped shirt, and they fell back into their laughter. Roger stood and even gave a stony impression of the teacher, stomping by their table like a true authoritarian.
Perry asked them, “Did you know that she’s related to the Carpsons in Emmonsville? Like, that one woman who killed her husband for cheating on her in Iraq?” “Literally how the fuck would we know that?” Warren asked.
“Of course I knew that,” Franklyn said. “He found her in that village. A… pu… Guh… Abu Guh… Abu Gur…?” Liam tried to say something, but Franklyn kept talking over him. “Abu something. Jesus. Imagine serving your country for years, and then you come home to some interrogation, and then she just kills you. What a monster.”
Roger grinned at that. “Speaking of dying…” he said. How many years was it since Rue had died? Three? Four? The boys never stopped making jokes, and they’d been joking since they’d found out. Roger Lark had been laughing since the day itself, or maybe that was just another rumor. Peter had heard it from someone who had heard it from someone who had supposedly heard it from a girl who had heard it from Wally Gray, who claimed he had been there with Roger in the parking lot, but that was so long ago that Peter wasn’t sure he could even recall his own link in the rumor chain.
There in the cafeteria, Roger was screaming his head off, two hands swerving an imaginary car with an imaginary wheel. “Screeeeeeee — pshhh!” he said, before he fell into a laughing fit along with all the boys around him. Peter laughed too, though he didn’t want to. He had no spine. He blamed his mother, of course.
It had been Peter and none of the others who had shared secrets with Rue in the Elementary school playground, from kindergarten to the second grade. He remembered them teasing him for it. “First comes love, then comes marriage…” they had sung, but that wasn’t true. Whatever secrets they had bonded over, whatever they had whispered to each other after lunch, it hadn’t been puppy love. What those secrets were, though, were lost behind some shadows in his head.
Then Franklyn Swallow opened his mouth again. “Really, you can’t feel too bad for her. You know what they say about girls and cars. They get too much fun out of them anyway.” None of them knew what he meant, until one of them gave a stupid knowing-unknowing grin, and then they all were wearing it.
All of them, that is, except for Liam. He gave them all a confused look, and Roger said to Peter but really to them all, “Liam doesn’t get it.”
Franklyn ignored this. “It’s true, too. Trust me. I’ve asked around.”
“What’s that?” Liam asked. “What do they say about girls and cars?”
“Jesus Christ,” said Franklyn, and Roger of all people flinched. “Do you know anything?
Girls and cars. Put them together.”
Liam thought for a moment, for more than a moment, and said nothing.
“Girls and cars. Put them together.”
“I have no idea what you mean.”
“Fucking Dumbass,” said Roger, and Franklyn said something worse.
That was when the teachers called them by table to go outside. When they called theirs, all but Liam dumped their trays and empty chicken nugget box and followed the crowd to a game of four-square. Peter never got his pizza, and they all left Liam wondering at Franklyn’s newest nothing joke.
“You need a coat!” the teachers told them, but no one listened. The play would keep them warm.
Four children occupied four corners of that Punnett square of chalk on the asphalt. They hit a dodgeball around — a real rubber dodgeball, not those foam ones from gym — so that it hit somewhere in someone else’s square, until that square’s child couldn’t hit it back. Someone got out, the others snaked toward the King’s square, and then the King served, and those were the only rules that anyone could agree on.
When Peter joined the line, Rachel Fernan got out. By the time Peter was next in line, Perry was the King. He served to Franklyn across from him, who tried to hit it, failed, and said, “No, you gotta dribble it first.”
Peter was closest to the ball, but Roger went and got it anyway and threw it to Perry. “Didn’t call it,” Perry said.
“I just did.”
“You tried to hit it, though.”
Franklyn shook his head. He spun his finger, said, “I wasn’t ready. Do-over,” and got ready for another serve.
Perry nodded. He served it to Clayton Horm, who gave it to Warren, who gave it to Franklyn, who spiked it to Perry, who caught it. “You can’t spike it.”
“Since when?”
“Since a week ago, when I couldn’t spike it to Drew Garribe. There’s a pre-ce-dent.” Perry said the last word staccato, teeth stuck out like a donkey.
Franklyn didn’t even go back to the line. He just stormed off.
Peter was in, and Clayton moved to the second square. Perry served to Warren, who gave it to Peter, who gave it back to Warren, who caught it. “No returns.” “No returns?” Peter looked at Perry, who sighed.
“Yeah, you’re out. No returns on serves.”
“Is it no returns, or no returns on serves? Because it wasn’t a serve.”
Warren gave the ball to Perry. “Fuckssake. He already said you’re out.”
Peter went to the back of the line, and felt a crumpled paper ball in his pocket. He squeezed it until it hurt, and pulled his hand away when he realized what he was doing. He looked up and found that he had been replaced by Rachel.
Perry served it to Warren, who gave it gently to Rachel, who spiked it to Clayton. The ball went a mile high before landing yards away from the end of the square.
Clayton exaggerated a shrug. “What was that? No spikes, right?”
Perry shook his head. “Just on serves.”
“That’s not what happened earlier.”
“Bro, you got out. I don’t know what to tell you.”
Clayton walked out behind Warren, Rachel filled his square, and Roger filled hers.
Perry served to Roger, who gave the ball to Rachel, who gave the ball back to Roger, who couldn’t get to it fast enough and walked off without arguing the ruling, without King Perry even giving a ruling.
The whole thing was a headache.
Roger casually cut Clayton in the line to talk to Peter. “Is it true? About the doctor’s?”
Peter stared blankly. He wasn’t going to play this game of asking for things wanting to be asked.
“They gave you the shot.”
“Oh. Yeah.” Peter lifted up his sleeve to show that stupid SpongeBob band-aid.
“Just the flu shot?”
“Just the flu shot.”
“Jeez. I’m sorry, man.”
“For what?”
“You know what they’re saying about it.”
“Sure. I don’t really… I mean…”
“What, you don’t believe in that stuff?”
“I mean, yeah, kinda.”
Roger looked down at him. “They’re making more speds, Peter. Speds, and fairies.
You’re nice, but you’re really just innocent. You’re naive, is what you are. Jeez, the stuff Franklyn tells me. It’s all just money.” He talked loudly and looked around — and there she was, Laura Gode, grinning at what she overheard.
“Of course it’s all just money! Anyone with a brain could say that.”
“Then why do you believe them?”
Dumbass! Peter thought, and a number of other insults, and he knew that they were true, too. What he couldn’t think in was logic. “You know,” Peter said, “you sure love listening to Franklyn.”
Laura frowned in his periphery. Franklyn was there too, in the other direction, talking to Wally Gray of all people.
Roger huffed. “He knows everything. You could learn from him, too.”
Peter noticed that the line had moved ahead without them. They were alone, easier for Laura and everyone else to observe them.
“Maybe. Maybe you like listening to him.”
Suddenly Perry was there, and Peter felt a chill. “Your mother,” he said, with no prompting at all. Then, “What are we talking about?” “You got out?” said Roger.
Perry shrugged. “When you’re out, you’re out. But what are we talking about?”
“We’re talking about how Peter got the shot, ’cause he’s a fucking sped who doesn’t think for himself and doesn’t know that everything is money.”
Peter wondered how recently Roger had heard that word from Franklyn.
Perry gave that horrible grin and said, “Don’t talk about your mom like that, Roger.”
“I wasn’t fucking talking about my mom!” Roger yelled, but Laura Gode was already laughing and half the students outside were sharing giggles and whispers. “Don’t you talk about my mom like that!”
“I never did! She’s a beautiful woman.”
It seemed that everybody laughed but Peter and Roger himself, though that was only everyone in Peter’s periphery. Perry took the opportunity to put a hand on Peter’s shoulder. The hand was even colder than the mid-March air, and Peter shivered.
That was when he hit him. Not Roger, not Perry, not even Peter, much as he wanted to hit anyone. It was Franklyn who hit Wally Gray, all the way over there. He punched one of Wally’s shoulders against the wall, just to see if he could. Then came the blows against his chest, his face, his stomach. Teachers stood around, unsure of what to do. The students did not crowd the two like children do in movies, but stayed silent from whatever vantage point at which they happened to be rooted. Peter thought that they all thought that if they were all very still, they could preserve the moment just as well as silence after song.
Eventually, Wally put up his hands, and that was when a teacher came to stop it. It was Mrs. Poole. They couldn’t hear whatever she said, but it was both Wally and Franklyn who were sent away and to the office.
When she walked away, though, it was toward the four-square game, so Peter and Roger and Perry and all the rest could almost hear what she discussed with Mr. Collins.
“Why didn’t you just send…?”
Peter could not tell if he said “Wally” or “Franklyn.” It would have made sense to say the latter, but that wasn’t quite what Peter heard. Maybe Mr. Collins even said the name of some other third person, some bystanding observer. Maybe he said the name of Roger, or Rachel, or Rue.
Mrs. Poole snorted. “They were both misbehaving. I would have if I could have.”
The injustice made him want to die. Those things can’t both be true, Peter thought.
…………
Peter never hit his sister. He hit the world, and it was enough to know that his sister was part of that world. He hit the tissue box, the table, and the magazines. He hit his dresser, and his mildew-ridden plastic water bottle. He hit the cardboard boxes he dragged out of the garbage, and stabbed them with those scissors from the cupboard.
He had cardboard and scissors that night. He was in the bathroom, door open, shirt on the fake-tiled floor, so that he could hear his sister cry herself to sleep and stare at his own body in the mirror.
He tossed the scissors to the side and grabbed his toothbrush, and began using that to puncture through the side of the broken box, because that needed more force.
He looked up at himself and wondered, How did I get fat? He blamed his mother, of course. He stabbed the cardboard. Tell us to stop, Mother. Another stab. Tell it to us both! Stab. And Mrs.… Peter almost thought, Mrs. Poole, but changed his mind. And Mrs. Finch. I’m not too fat for him.
Then, in Peter’s damned periphery and in the mirror facing the hallway, the door to his sister’s room creaked open, and out she stepped. “What are you doing?” she asked.
Peter turned around to see her clearly. She was tired, but her face was dry. She might have looked defiant. She wasn’t crying now, and hadn’t been at all, but still the sobbing sounded all throughout the house’s thin cold walls.