Chapter Two

Mack is eleven-years-old, and man, does he wear his heart in his eyes. I’m wary of that look, part spark, part deep disconnection. He’s rough along all of his edges and won’t open the door even though I’ve used several modes of knocking. Belinda, his fifth grade teacher who wears a cross across her throat, is extra gentle with him. She speaks softly when she points out his math mistakes, and when he asks her why she wears it, she puts her fingers against the cross and explains that she’s a Christian. She’s not like the others, the ones who say it but like to stroke the dark with their hands. Belinda is all light, and Mack can sense it in her face.

Another time, Mack tries out for the fifth grade basketball team, and Jeremy Liotta is the coach. Mack is absolutely terrible at basketball but doesn’t seem to truly understand this. Jeremy spies the kid with the dirty fingernails and hair in his eyes. He sees his younger self in Mack’s beat up expression because Jeremy was left for dead when he was three. His parents were barely survivors of the Depression, and when they moved states, they left Jeremy behind in their dismal rental.

Mack didn’t make the team, but Jeremy did try to reach out to Rochelle to see if he could take him to lunch some time. Dennis answered the door.

“No, sir. The kid’s just fine. I’ll be sure to spend more time with him,” Dennis said as he roughly closed the door in Jeremy’s face.

One night, Rochelle is asked out for drinks after work. The whole team’s going, even Glenn Augustus, lead DA at Augustus, Norton, and Davies. He asks Rochelle personally, and she just can’t say no even though it’s Friday game night with Mack and Dennis.

“You understand right?” She’s flipping the curlers out of her hair, brushing it hard against her head. She slips on her heels and grabs her bag, her lips landing on their usual target on Mack’s forehead. Her scent is too frank, like syrup.

“Sure,” Mack says, single syllables being his favorite kind of response these days.

“We’ll be just fine,” Dennis says, putting his arm around Mack. Mack tells his brain to relax his face. When Rochelle leaves, he shoulders Dennis off him.

“Big man? That the game we’re playing tonight?” Dennis turns off the TV, and the room goes silent. He’s still between Mack and the front door Rochelle’s just closed. Dennis believes no one is watching, and Mack is asking where I’ve run to. Here, Mack. Right here, I say. He presses his fist against his breastbone and takes a deep breath.

“No,” Mack says. Dennis nods and bumps him as he heads to the kitchen.

“It’s a macaroni kind of night,” he sings out, head stuffed in a cabinet.

“It always is,” Mack says.

#

ROY MCGRUFFIN SITS high on a wooden shelf above Mack’s window. His room faces out to the street. Mack plants his face against it, watches kids from his class, from his school playing out in the middle of it. He doesn’t bother with them because they don’t understand him. But there is one kid who got kicked out of ninth grade and goes to the school across town now. His name is Leonard, and Leonard is so alone on the inside that he laughs extra loud and makes people think he’s funny. Mack doesn’t see the appeal, but he does see the appeal in what Leonard brings him.

Leonard is on the sidewalk and looks like a sharp shard of glass in the sea of children. Everyone instinctually gives him breathing room.

Mack nods at him which is Leonard’s signal to come in.  They’re the same size, Leonard and Mack, even though Leonard is three years older. His mother drank during the pregnancy and barely ate. Her head is a demonic cloud of mis-thoughts so that when she looks in the mirror, all she can see is her own ugliness. When she looks at Leonard, she doesn’t see much better.

“Creeper here?” Leonard asks, nodding at Dennis’s bedroom.

“Nah.” Mack shuts the black curtains he asked Rochelle to buy to help him sleep. His room is shaded in dark except for a slit of light that slices the wood floor. Leonard takes the bean bag chair in the corner. He takes out his tin with the papers and lighter and a baggie full of weed out of his jeans pocket. He rolls a joint and lights it.

“Your turn,” he barely eeks out as he passes it to Mack. He thinks he must seem like a god in Mack’s eyes, but Mack only feels deeply sorry for him.

When Mack breathes in the dirty air, his muscles relax. His brain is insignificant, and he can’t feel his heartbeat. He’s belly down on his bed, and he tries to ignore Roy McGruffin glaring down at him.

They smoke for a little while longer, listening to Free Bird on his Fisher Price record player. He should be embarrassed about that, about Roy who hovers above them, but Mack doesn’t feel anything. It’s why he lets Leonard dance with him.

They dance slow, and he knows Leonard will try to kiss him. He sees the scene in his head because they’ve played it over and over every Saturday evening, when dusk is still outside his curtain and his uncle’s at work, his mother’s at Glenn’s place, spending the night. He should say no. He should say and do a lot of things.

But Mack is only human. Something he tries so hard to forget.