Unlocked by Ryan G. Van Cleave Read Free Book Online

ASKING
----
    Some kids, my father
just didn’t trust.
He swore he had
a special radar about
troublemakers,
and he was usually right.
    He knew Jorge
was “bad news,”
and that was before
the smoke bomb
put the girls’ bathroom
out of commission for three days.
    He wasn’t surprised
when the Murray twins
got expelled for punching out
a seventh grader from the Montessori school
across the street, or when Nicholas
swiped three rolls of quarters
from the cafeteria cash register
and got caught the same day
with two ounces of pot.
    My father put down
the mop one afternoon
and knelt to look me
right in the eyes,
the type of piercing gaze
that might allow him
to scrutinize my actual thoughts.
    The air reeked
of piney disinfectant,
which then made me
think of snakes
writhing inside
the murk of my locker,
the dark beneath my bed,
the tunnels of my stomach.
    He asked me
what was wrong
with Blake.
He knew now
about Blake’s father
from Mr. Green,
who was concerned
about Blake, but not
as much as he was about
the Murray twins, Aaron,
and others who had volcanic
outbursts instead of Blake’s
slow, slow burn.
    My father was asking me
something else entirely.
    He knew it.
    I knew it.
    I thought
of the gun,
the 9mm Beretta,
oil black and thick
in the handle.
    I thought of how afraid
Blake looked
when I passed the gun
back to him, like he was
about to be devoured
by a rabies-mad grizzly.
    I thought of what it meant
that he trusted me enough
to show me the Beretta,
that we hung out at McDonald’s,
that he texted me daily—
usually it was nothing important,
but sometimes
what he wrote
felt storm-cloud dark.
    I thought of how many months
I’d wasted slugging away
at computer games and trying
to crack the code my father used
to filter out Internet porn.
    I thought of how Sue
had a new song for me now,
one that rhymed
fool
with
tool
.
    I thought of how Aaron had run
Blake’s latest new pair
of gym clothes up the school flagpole.
    I thought of the tough-guy attitude
I wished I’d had but knew—
just
knew
—that I didn’t.
    I thought of how long
I’d longed to see that gun,
and how it was the key
to a door still shut before me.
    I said,
Nothing
.

THE OTHER JANITOR, PETE
----
    was
fired, let
go one day.
“Disciplinary
reasons.” Just
given two weeks’
notice, which drove
my dad batty, since this
year’s budget, already so
far in the red, wouldn’t allow
a replacement until next year. The
workload, though, wouldn’t let up, which
meant he had even more to do himself. He
didn’t complain. He didn’t punch locker doors.
He just did what he had to do. Silently. Reluctantly.
And so I remained Blake’s only friend. Silently. Happily.
Wishing my father—for one damn second—would be proud of me.

FRING IT
----
    The old lot
where the Winn-Dixie
once stood
was perfect.
    It wasn’t yet dusk,
but the clouds
made it seem so.
    Not two miles from
Fairmont Heights,
where I lived,
we lined Coke cans
on the old metal
guardrail, gouged
and bent from
so many run-ins
with mishandled carts.
    Ammo clinked
in his pocket
like nails spilling
down stairs.
    He said it’d be fun.
He aimed and those cans
danced. Some exploded.
    Sometimes he missed,
and the ground way
back against the hill
ruptured as if a ghost
were slamming a fist
into the hard earth.
    A crow lazed
overhead toward
a dead streetlight.
Blake aimed
and yelled,
POW!
POW! KA-BLAM!
    He didn’t shoot,
though. He didn’t
actually fire
at the bird, which
eventually vanished
into the cluster
of shadows by the dump.
    When he offered me a try
with the gun, I held it,
thinking about everything
and nothing all at once.
    Without firing,
I gave it back,
my breath held tight
in my chest.
    He reloaded.
I sat and watched,
afraid to get up,
as if I might
slide and crack
my skull open
on some imperceptible ice,
even though it was
only mid-November
here in Florida.

THE GUN
----
    Was it wrong
to squeeze my eyes