Chapter 16

Saturday afternoon, I found myself at Susie Simpson’s house, together with Kim. Susie was helping Kim and me with our Halloween costumes, then taking our pictures for her drama class assignment. It was a good deal for all of us. I sat and watched as Susie turned Kim into a zombie. I thought Susie was pretty good at it and Kim looked ghoulish, right until she smiled. Zombies don’t smile. It ruins the effect. When it was my turn, Susie went for extra gruesome.

“You look like you just ate someone’s brains,” Kim said. “I like it.” We admired ourselves in the mirror for a few minutes and then, Kim said, “We need to eat before we go to the party. We should have done that first.”

“Let’s find someone smart to feast on,” I said with my best dead-zombie voice.

“Nice. How about burgers?”

Twenty minutes later, we feasted on double-brain burgers with cheese and a couple of large fries. Everybody at Burger King was dressed up, too. When I asked for extra packets of blood for my fries, they didn’t bat an eye. Just handed me some more ketchup.

When we finished, it was still too early to go to the party so we went to Kim’s house, then walked the street scaring little kids. It was all fun and games until some little kid started crying. I wanted to hug the little guy and tell him it was okay, but that wasn’t going to happen. He was afraid I would eat him. Oh, well! You can’t fault a zombie for trying. Zombies like us are generally misunderstood.

Kim drove us out to John’s Island to a friend of a friend’s house. The street was already full of cars and we could hear music as soon as we got out of the truck. “Who do you know that’s going to this party?” I asked.

“Mary Underwood, Stacy Fields, and maybe Jan and Marty.”

“Ah. There’s the connection,” I said. “I’ve never been to a Halloween party before.”

“I think you might have mentioned that,” she said. I’d probably mentioned it twenty or thirty times.

As we walked toward the house, I started to slow down and since we were holding hands, Kim did, too. Something about it didn’t feel right to me. Kim waited for me without saying anything. I gave her my best Han Solo voice and said, “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

“I think a lot of the people at this party are older than us.”

“The empties on the front lawn are a bit of an indicator, I guess.”

“What do you want to do?” Kim asked.

I thought about it for a minute. “Everything could be fine. I don’t want to get all dressed up and not go. But I don’t want to stick around if this looks like trouble.”

“I’m good with that. Let’s see if we can find anyone we know first. We can ask them.”

“Remember when we crashed Bishop England’s prom? I felt a lot better about that than I do about this.” We walked a few more steps toward the house and before we went in, I told Kim, “Stay close, okay? At least at first.” She squeezed my hand and we went in. There was a sort of sweet, smoky odor in the air and I thought it was marijuana. I was pretty sure. I was probably the only one there that didn’t know for certain. I didn’t think Kim would, either. We had never talked about it.

Brand New Cadillac was playing so loud that conversation was impossible. I thought it was by The Clash but I wasn’t sure. It was dark but there was a strobe somewhere that flashed at irregular intervals. We walked through the house, trying not to bump into people but that was almost impossible. Some people were moving as though they were dancing but I thought it was a pretty sorry excuse for dancing. I guess there wasn’t enough room for a tango. I laughed out loud at that thought but I know no one heard it.

We made our way through the house to the backyard. As soon as we stepped out, someone tried to hand me a joint but I held my hand up and thanked him for the offer. What was proper doper etiquette? I had no idea. No one had ever offered me a joint before. Huh. At least it confirmed my smell guess from earlier.

“Let’s see if we can find Jan and Marty,” Kim said and I agreed. They weren’t in the backyard so we went back in. Kim got close and hollered in my ear, “Should we split up to look?”

“No. Definitely not. Everybody’s wearing some sort of costume. Would we even recognize them if we saw them?” She made a motion about their height differences and I nodded. We could at least narrow the field that way.

I led Kim in one side of the kitchen and out the other into a formal dining room. Two guys were hunched over a board, playing a game of Go. I’d played it once. It took hours and I couldn’t imagine trying to play with all that noise. They seemed oblivious.

We went room by room until we were in a hallway. All the doors were closed. I opened one and we stepped in. There were three couples already inside. Two couples were on a king-sized bed and another were sitting together on the floor. Everyone still had their clothes on but I couldn’t see any hands. None of them paid any attention to us. We didn’t see Jan or Marty but we could at least hear each other.

“This is pointless,” I said. “We won’t find them in here and I don’t really want to go opening other doors.”

“Yeah. I don’t either. Let’s go out front and look for one of their cars.”

We stepped outside to see a large circle of people on the lawn. The two guys in the middle of the circle looked like they were ready to fight. Actually, one of them looked ready to fight and the other looked like he was ready to get his ass kicked. We scanned the crowd and didn’t see any of our friends.

“Jack, that guy is going to get killed,” Kim said.

“Probably. You never know,” I said, scanning the crowd of bat people, lizards, monsters, and a Richard Nixon.

“It doesn’t look like anyone is going to stop it.”

“Probably not. Half of them are drunk or stoned and a fight is just going to be entertainment for them.”

“Shouldn’t we do something?” She asked.

“What? There’s thirty people out here. Maybe forty, and they all want to see a fight.”

“I know.” The big guy shoved the little one but the little guy stayed on his feet. He was trying to puff himself up and make himself look bigger. We stepped closer and I asked someone what the fight was about.

“Who knows? Crank always does this. One drink and he’s ready to fight the world.”

“Crank?” I asked and he nodded.

Crank shoved the little guy again and the crowd caught him and pushed him back toward the middle. Everybody was hollering and egging them on.

“I don’t know how to stop it, Baby. I would if I could but there’s too many people and they all want a fight.”

“I know. I just hate this,” she said.

I had a thought but it was probably a stupid one. I asked what the little guy’s name was. It was PJ and hardly anyone knew him, at least according to my new source of information.

“Why don’t you go to the car, Baby? I’m going to try to rescue PJ before he ends up in the hospital.”

“I don’t know, Jack. You could end up in the hospital.”

“I’m going to try. We might need to give him a ride. Are you okay with that?” She didn’t look too sure of it but I could see her heart and she didn’t want him to get clobbered.

Take away his reason to fight. That’s what Sifu Chen said. That’s what I would try to do. I pushed through the circle to the edge of it and sort of popped out across from the little guy.

“PJ,” I hollered. “We need to leave. There’s been an accident. We need to go to the hospital.” I have no idea why I thought that would work. PJ didn’t recognize me. There hadn’t been an accident and no one had any reason to think it was true. On the other hand, no one had any reason to think it wasn’t. Except PJ. He didn’t know me. I saw the light go on as he realized I’d given him a way out.

“Let’s go, PJ. We need to leave, NOW,” I said, walking toward him. “This will have to wait.”

PJ acted like he was worried and started moving toward me. The big guy kept hollering at him but he wasn’t trying to get a fight started with PJ anymore and everyone else seemed to buy it. He decided he wanted to start a fight with me. I tried to push PJ through the crowd toward the truck but it was tough going.

Crank had a firm grip on my shoulder and tried to turn me around. I’m pretty big, but Crank was a lot bigger. “Next time, Crank. I don’t have time now, but I’ll fight you next time,” I said and he hollered at me about how he was going to kill me because I was taking PJ away. Finally, a path started to clear. I grabbed PJ by the shoulders and steered him through it. We made our way out of the circle and started picking up speed. Kim was in her truck and the engine was running.

Crank had decided to follow us. I opened the door and almost pushed PJ inside. “I could have taken him,” he said. Uh-huh. PJ kept talking a mile a minute. We let him talk. I thought he probably had adrenaline running through his system and he needed to burn it off. He smelled like beer and grass but it wasn’t overpowering. After a few minutes, Kim asked, “Where to, PJ?”

He had to stop and think and it caught him completely off guard. He stopped talking and looked at us, pivoting from me to Kim and back again. “Who are you guys?” Kim laughed.

“We’re the guys that saved your bacon from certain destruction,” I said. “Where to?”

“Oh, man. You don’t think I could have taken him, do you?”

“No. Where to, PJ? We’ll take you where you want to go.”

“Man, I want to be at that party. Do you think Crank is still there?”

“Yes. PJ, we’ve done our good deed. You’re alive and you’re not at the hospital. Give us some help, here. Where to? Give us an address or an intersection or something or we’re going to drop you off at the bus terminal and put you on a bus for Indiana.”

“You wouldn’t. I don’t know anyone in Indiana.”

“PJ,” I said, raising my voice. “Where to?”

“Oh, yeah. Right. If you get me to St. John’s High School, I can walk from there. He probably would have kicked my ass. I screwed up. Who are you guys anyway? Thanks, though, whoever you are. He would have kicked my ass, for sure. Crank doesn’t need a reason. What an asshole. Don’t tell him I said that. Man, oh, man. You guys look like fucking zombies.”

Kim turned toward St. John’s and PJ kept talking. It had dawned on him that he was a lot safer at home and he had dodged a bullet. We turned right on Bohicket Road and PJ recognized where we were. He hadn’t stopped talking the whole time.

“Is this your girlfriend? Man, I bet you’d be hot if you weren’t a zombie. You’re still pretty hot for a zombie.”

“Careful, PJ. She eats brains,” I said.

He shut up for a minute. “You’re pretty safe, though, PJ,” Kim said and I laughed, partly because it was funny and partly because PJ didn’t get it, which made it even funnier.

Kim pulled into the St. John’s High School parking lot and stopped. I slid out so that PJ could get out of the truck. He did and then stood there for a minute as I climbed back in.

“Thanks. Really. Thanks. I didn’t even say it before but you guys saved my bacon. Crank would have kicked my ass. I saw him do it to a bigger guy than me.”

“PJ, I think you need to find some new friends,” Kim said. “You don’t even know us. Where were your friends tonight? You should probably think that over. Are you sure this is okay?”

“Yeah, yeah. I can walk through the back to get to my house. You’re right. Thanks again,” he said and we drove off.

“Do you hear that?” I asked.

“What? Peace and quiet?”

“Exactly. We need a new plan.”

“What’s a zombie to do on Halloween? I’m really sorry. No one we knew was there and that was just a disaster,” Kim said.

“It’s okay. There’s no way you could have known.”

“Whatever you write down in your journal about lessons learned, I want to read it,” she said.

“I’m not sure I’d know where to start. The whole thing was sensory overload and it seemed like everyone there thought it was normal.”

“That was pretty good thinking, you know, about the plot twist. Acting like you knew that guy and everything. Where did that come from?”

“Sifu Chen said I should try to take away someone’s reason for fighting. I didn’t see a way to give Crank what he wanted, which was a fight. I didn’t want to fight him. He’s big and seems mean and even if he’s a crappy fighter, people get lucky, you know?”

“Well, I thought it was pretty slick, Aquaman. I’m proud of you.”

“Thanks. I don’t need to fight somebody to impress you?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

“Are you kidding? I’ve seen Annie punch you in the gut with everything she had and you didn’t even flinch.”

“Tough to top that, I guess,” I said and we both laughed.

We went to Piggly Wiggly and bought a couple of big bags of candy bars, then drove to her house. After checking in with her folks, us zombies walked the street, scaring little kids, then giving candy to those brave enough to take it from us. After they took the candy, we’d pretend to chase them, making appropriate zombie noises. It’s probably good for little kids to have a healthy fear of zombies. It was a lot more fun than the party we’d left.

When our candy was about out, we walked back to Kim’s house. Mrs. McTighe had just turned out the porch light. They were out of candy.

“Oh, lord. You two are a mess,” Mrs. McTighe said, looking at our makeup. “I thought you were going to a party. Are you hungry? Do you want a snack?”

“Do you have any brains?” Kim asked as we stepped into the sunroom.

“Better check with your mother on that one,” Mr. McTighe said.

Kim told them about our evening and Mr. McTighe stopped what he was doing to listen. He was really interested in what was going on at the party. They both were. They seemed relieved when Kim said we had decided to leave. Then, when she told about getting PJ out of a jam, I saw them exchange glances a couple of times.

Mr. McTighe listened to the whole thing then looked at me and asked. “Is that about the way you remember it?”

“Yes, sir. Kim has a pretty good eye for details. We would have left right away but we were concerned for our friends.”

“Uh-huh. I’m satisfied you did the right thing. Tell me about your intervention with the young man, PJ. What prompted that approach?”

“Well, sir, my kung fu instructor, Sifu Chen, said I should try to take away someone’s reason for fighting. I always thought he meant capitulate or compromise but I’ve been reading about Chamberlain and Hitler and I didn’t think that was it. Anyway, I didn’t really see a way to give the big kid, Crank, what he wanted so I thought maybe I could take away his opportunity to get it. I guess it worked.”

“That was pretty quick thinking. Let me see if I can help you with Sifu Chen’s instruction. Crank needed three things for a fight to happen. He needed an opportunity to fight. He had that. He needed an ability to fight. He had that. And, he needed the intention to fight. He had that. You took away the opportunity be removing PJ. If you take away any of the three, opportunity, ability, or intent, you stop the fight.”

I had to think about that for a minute. “You said I took away the opportunity. How could I have taken away his ability or intent?”

“Either one of those would have been more difficult. Let’s say you had a gun and pointed at him, saying, ‘If you throw a punch, I’ll shoot you.’ That would have probably changed his intent.”

“Deterrence.”

“Exactly. On the other hand, if you’d simply shot him so that he couldn’t fight, that would be destroying his ability. Neither of those were an option for you so you took away the opportunity.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“No. It was intuitive. You seem to have pretty fair intuition.”

“I could have fought him instead of letting PJ fight him,” I said.

“And there might be an occasion where that’s the only approach. Removing his opportunity worked just fine and it didn’t put you at much risk. If he’d tried to fight anyway, and you tried to intervene, you might have found yourself fighting a mob instead of just the big kid.”

“I guess I got lucky.”

“I wouldn’t call it luck. I think you did just fine. Now that you know the three elements of any action, you’ll be better prepared. You know the fire triangle they taught you in second grade.”

“Sure. Fuel, oxygen, and heat.”

“If you take away any of the three, you extinguish a fire. Opportunity, ability, and intent are just like that.”

“Nice to have options,” I said.

“It is nice. The distinction between them is not always clear. For example, if I put a good deadbolt on my front door, then a would-be thief tries to get in and decides it isn’t worth the effort, have I taken away his ability or his intent?”

“Maybe both?” I said, not really sure.

“Good. Sometimes you can take away more than one at a time. Is that helpful to you?”

“Yes, sir. Very helpful.”

“Kim says you have a journal of lessons learned,” Mrs. McTighe said, changing the subject.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“She says you have several volumes.”

“Yes, ma’am. I think I have eight.”

“Do you ever go back and read those lessons?”

I had to think about it. “No, ma’am. Sometimes, I guess. Not very often, at any rate.” She waited. “I think just writing lessons learned down sort of locks them in.”

She nodded. “That may be but don’t throw them away. When you get to be my age, your memory won’t be so sharp and you just might need to re-read them.”

“Oh, Baby, you’re going to need to put a table of contents in the front of each one,” Kim said and we all laughed. We talked about the kids on the street for a while and I walked home, suddenly, very tired. I passed a few people on the way. They didn’t give me a second glance. ‘We see zombies walking around every night,’ I thought and laughed to myself. I wondered if they did this in Mexico. Would Hector’s crews be celebrating Halloween with their kids? I’d ask him next time I saw him.

When I got home there was a big bowl of candy next to the door and the porch light was still on. It didn’t look like Mom had given any out. I found her and Dane in the kitchen.

“Nice,” Dane said, seeing my zombie makeup.

“Hungry?” Mom asked. That was the second time.

“Got any brains?” I asked, trying Kim’s joke. They pointed at each other and I laughed. It was about the same response.

“You should wash that makeup off before it gets on something.” I went to the kitchen sink and used dishwashing soap to get rid of most of it. “We had three kids all evening.”

“No one comes to our neighborhood because the houses are big and far apart. It’s easier to go where the houses are closer together,” I said.

“How was your party?”

I rehashed the evening’s events, sort of downplaying how bad the party was. They were both glad we’d left. I was suddenly tired and hit the sack.

Bobby picked me up early Sunday morning and we went to Porter-Gaud to swim. We thought it was early but Coach Miller was just finishing up. We watched him knock out a fast hundred butterfly. I’d never thought about it before but I’d bet he could beat any of us in a race of our choosing. I thought about it for a minute and dismissed the idea.

“Good afternoon, cupcakes. Glad to see someone is hungry for more,” he said, climbing out. Good afternoon? It was nine.

“Hey, Coach. We thought we’d get in a light workout.”

“Why don’t you grab a seat for a minute,” he said, drying his hair. “Be right back.” He went into the locker room and was out a minute later with his notebook. “I thought you might want to know where you stood as far as times go.” He flipped through his notes. “Claire, unless there are some surprises this week, you would qualify for one-hundred backstroke, one-hundred free, and two-hundred IM. I want you to swim two-hundred free, and one hundred breaststroke against Bishop England this week. Five hundred free if you want. Your times in practice would qualify you but you obviously need to do it in competition.”

“That’s five events, Coach,” Bobby said, meaning that he would qualify to swim more events at regionals than you could swim at a meet.

“It is. Doesn’t mean you have to swim them all at regionals but it would be nice to have options. I know you two want to make it to state in IM, and you’d be crazy not to want to get back to state for back. I think you can be competitive in free and maybe breaststroke. It’s up to you.

“Pierce, you’d qualify for one and two hundred free, two hundred IM, and one hundred fly. You’re on the cusp for five hundred free and I think, the way you’ve improved, you might make it in one hundred back. That’s kind of a long shot but you never know. I want you to swim back for the medley relay and then individual back. That would give you two chances to come up with a good enough time. If either of you want to try the fifty free, you’re welcome to it. I think either of you would have a decent shot.”

“That would be six events. Six for each of us,” I said, thinking about recovery time between events.

“It would. The toughest stretch would be one hundred fly, then one hundred free, followed by five hundred free. That’s a pretty tough stretch.”

“I think I’ll skip the fifty free. That would be too much too soon, I think. That’s if I even qualified.”

“I’ll tell you what, tomorrow afternoon, I’ll time you for the events I think you could qualify for and I’ll try to match the timing you’d have at regionals. That way, you can see just what the recovery feels like. Race pace. Just do your best tomorrow and you can decide what you want to do.”

“Sounds good to me,” Bobby said. “I don’t want to bite off more than I can chew.”

“I think you can both do it, but racing like that tomorrow would be a confidence builder.”

“You did this when you were in high school, didn’t you, Coach?” I asked.

“Something like it. My butterfly sucked.”

“It looked pretty good a couple of minutes ago.”

“High school was a couple of years ago. I’ve had a few weeks to practice.” I was pretty sure Coach was about forty. He’d been swimming longer than I’d been alive.

“Thanks, Coach,” Bobby said. “If we swim those races against Bishop England, is it going to mess up our chances to beat them? I don’t want to do that.”

“We have a lock on conference, but I don’t think BE will be too difficult for us. For god’s sake, don’t tell anyone I said that. Their coach knows us. I just can’t wait to see his face when Pierce starts the medley relay.” We laughed about that since Bobby was the obvious choice.

Coach left, having given us both plenty to think about and plenty to work on. He’d given us tips about transitions and he wouldn’t give us anything else until we’d successfully tackled those issues. Coach always said it took a minimum of three thousand repetitions to get a new mechanical process ingrained. That translated to fifty miles of swimming. That was a couple of weeks we didn’t have.

“Maybe new mechanics won’t be ingrained by Thursday but we can both be better,” Bobby said.

“All we have to do is lay down times in the events we aren’t already qualified for. By the time we get to regionals we can be close.” I saw Bobby doing the math in his head.

“We’re going to be doing more than just practicing our IM. Maybe we’ll be close by the time we get to state.”

“If we get to state,” I said.

“We will. The only question is, which events.”

“Backstroke for you is a given. I think I can get there on at least the two hundred free and maybe the one hundred. The IM is the deal, though,” I said.

“The IM is the deal. If we go one, two in the IM at state, then Porter-Gaud will be on everyone’s radar after that.”

“That’s the goal, then. Let’s put a giant bullseye on our back for next year.” We got to work.

We’d knocked out a couple of miles when I saw Bobby climb out and go into the locker room. He came back five minutes later with two pairs of swim fins. I’d never used them before. He sat on the edge of the pool and pulled a pair of them on.

“What’s the deal?” I asked.

“Put on a pair and grab a kickboard.” I did. It took a few laps to get used to the extra resistance of the fins but once I got the hang of it, it was a lot of fun. We just did a dozen laps and called it a day. Walking to the locker room, my calves were screaming at me.

I slowed down and looked at Bobby who was grinning ear-to-ear. “You’re a butt,” I said and he laughed. “It’s a good thing it’s Sunday. I won’t be good for anything else for the rest of the day.” He laughed some more.

He dropped me off at home, I ate some lunch and called Kim. I grabbed my school work, she picked me up, and we set up shop in her kitchen. We had both her and her mom’s typewriter on the table with books and notes spread out everywhere. With our showdown against Bishop England on Thursday being my last chance to register qualifying times for regionals, I wouldn’t have a lot of extra time for academics. Kim had her cheer competition coming up on Saturday and she’d be just as busy as me. Our teachers all knew our schedules and had given us a week’s worth of homework up front so we could be in charge of our own pacing.

We were both able to stay on track until dinner. I guess I hadn’t realized how popular Kim was until I noticed her mom running phone interference for her. She got a lot of calls. I watched once as her mom answered, took a short note, and hung up. She was used to it. After a while, it stopped being a distraction. What became a distraction was the smell of food as Mrs. McTighe cooked dinner. We took a break and enjoyed her spaghetti and meatballs with garlic bread. Perfect.

About an hour after dinner, I was done. I’d done all I could do to get ahead. I packed up my stuff and waited for Kim. She was working on geology and there wasn’t much I could do to help her. When she closed that book, she reached for her Spanish.

“I have to conjugate a bunch of verbs,” she said.

“Lo lamento. No puedo ayudarte,” I said.

“You can too, help me. Butt.”

I helped her. She knocked it out in about thirty minutes and we were done. She offered to drive me home but I was in the mood to walk. We stepped out onto the front porch.

“It’s going to be a busy week,” I said as we held each other’s shoulders at arm’s length.

“Definitely. Is your meet Thursday here or at Bishop?”

“Here. Last chance to qualify for regionals.”

“You’ve already got two events in the bag, right?”

“Four. Coach says I should have four nailed down and I’m going to try to add two more.”

“That’s a lot. Right? Trying to swim six events in one day is a lot,” she said.

“Yeah. There’s a bigger break between events at regionals than a regular meet so I’d have more time to recover. We’re going to do a dry run tomorrow afternoon. It will be a long practice but Coach is going to run practice at the same pace as regionals and see how Bobby and I do. I think Gil and a couple other guys might be in the running, too.”

“That’s smart. Coach Miller doesn’t miss much, does he?”

“Nope. You’re beautiful, you know. I think I’d like to kiss you. Would that be okay?”

She smiled, showing me her beautiful white teeth and glorious dimples. “That would be okay.”

We kissed, softly at first. Then we kissed as though second base might be in our future. “You’re soft,” I said.

“Why, Mr. Pierce, do you really think so?”

I moved my hand up to cover her breast. I squeezed, gently and she moaned a little. “Why, yes, I do, Miss McTighe. I think you’re soft in all the right places.”

“Mr. Pierce, you are on the edge of starting something you can’t finish.”

“I’m pretty sure I could finish,” I said, smiling.

“Not on the front porch, you horny young man.”

“Let’s turn off the porch light and find out.”

“That’s not going to happen. Soon. Are you sure you don’t want a ride home?”

I slid my hand down to her belly and past, and said, “I think I want a bubble bath with you.”

“Oh, that’s a good idea. Let me ask Mom if she has any. Go home, you goofball, before you get us both worked up.”

“Fine. I’ll just walk home all stinky, dirty.”

“You’re impossible,” she said and pushed me away, laughing. “Bubble bath. Where do you get this stuff?” she said as I started the long walk home. It was a good question. Bubble bath.

Bobby picked me up at the usual time and we went to the pool. We agreed to do a light workout and save ourselves for the afternoon. We both worked on transitions for our individual medleys then I worked on backstroke while Bobby worked on breaststroke. When it came to IM, I wanted nothing more than for Bobby to beat everyone at state. Everyone but me. The thought that we could go one, two, was a big motivator. The thought that our friend could win, was another big motivator.

At lunch, Kim and I discovered that each of her friends had been to the same Halloween party and they had all left before we got there. Jan apologized for having suggested it. We all agreed it wasn’t her fault.