Milk and Cookies Read online

  Right?

  Wrong.

  Isaac peered through black bangs at me in disbelief. “The guy’s not human, okay? When he stomps you, it’s like he’s never gonna stop. He could take on Frankenstein, the Mummy, and the Werewolf all at once and go out for pizza after.” Isaac was a huge fan of horror movies. He’d seen ones made before I was born, before my parents were born. The inside of his locker door was covered with pictures of monsters. Snarling, crouching, flying, sucking blood. They papered every square inch. I liked Isaac but he was a little weird.

  “Come on.” I stood at his locker and snorted, “He’s not all that.”

  “Yeah, Nicky, he is all that. He caught me in the woods and he broke my arm, okay? And he said if I told anyone how it happened, he’d break the other one. I believed him because he meant it.” He slammed the locker shut. “No way. Leave me out of it. He’s crazy, and if you had any sense, you’d be watching behind you every minute.” With that he hurried down the hall.

  I gave up on Isaac and went on to Dog Boy . . . Sammy, I meant. Sammy. Five words out of my mouth and he was gone, fast as any of his dogs. It went that way all day. I’d expected it, but I’d hoped it’d be different.

  Isaac had said Jed had caught him in the woods, the same ones Jed had chased me in. Jed didn’t do his fighting on campus. That’d get him expelled and he knew it. Yeah, it would get him expelled—him, not me.

  He didn’t have the little in that I had with Principal Johnson. Good old Principal Johnson, not the brightest man to choke on chalk dust.

  So I went to Plan B. That day when Jed, who was dependable as Cs in math, sat down opposite me in the cafeteria and took my slice of pizza, I picked up my tray, dumped the food off of it, and whacked him hard on the side of the head with it.

  It knocked him sideways, almost off the seat, but he caught himself with one hand on the table. His eyes were ice, his teeth bared, and violence shivered under his skin. “Who’s the bitch now?” I asked quietly. “You gonna roll over and take it? Or you gonna stand up and do something about it?” He’d been barely smart enough not to fight in school before, but this was a whole lot of different.

  As plans went, it wasn’t as idiotic as it seemed. There were teachers already moving toward us. They’d pull him off me before he got me too bad. And then out he’d go. Maybe it’d only be outside the school itself but that was something.

  He shook with black anger, but as crazy as he was, he wasn’t as stupid as I thought. I might not get expelled if there was a fight, but he knew he would. And I had a feeling his daddy would be a whole lot more disappointed than mine. I had a feeling Jed was a chip off the old block.

  He stood and hissed, “Dead. You’re dead.”

  He left the cafeteria and I sighed. Another plan shot to hell. Glumly I sat back down and waited for a teacher to come drag me off to Principal Johnson for a few weeks of detention.

  It was actually two months.

  After a lot of clutching at his comb-over of black hair and warnings on how he couldn’t cover up things like this—he simply couldn’t—he did. Like I knew he would. I was going to have to call Mom to go fetch Tessa from the bus stop and she wasn’t going to be happy at the reason why. Understanding maybe, but not happy.

  The same day, after two hours of detention, as I slid through the woods, I heard Jed behind me. This time was the first time I actually heard him howling with fury as he chased me. I might’ve been chunky and short, but I was quick. I had hit that gym door running. Jed hadn’t been as fast.

  “You son of a bitch! You son of a bitch! Where are you?” All that was followed by screams of rage. Incoherent animal sounds. Isaac was right. Jed did sound like a monster . . . a movie monster anyway. I slid under a thick overhang of dead blackberry vines and thought how I definitely hadn’t made things any better. Not to say whacking him with a tray hadn’t felt good, but it hadn’t gotten me out of the trouble I thought it would.

  Although, it really, really had felt good.

  Finally I climbed a tree, my brown jacket blending in with the bark, and held still as he passed like a rabid Doberman beneath me. Swear to God, there was foam flying from his mouth as he screamed for me.

  You skip a few Ritalin and things just go to hell.

  Right. Like you could blame that kind of nuts on a little ADHD. I hugged the tree, rested my head against it, and stayed there for an hour. It was cold, but I didn’t mind the cold. And it got dark, but I didn’t mind that either. As far as monsters went, Jed’s night vision must not have been too hot. He didn’t hang around. I heard his last howl nearly a half mile away and then nothing again.

  I finally climbed down and went home to face two things a lot worse than Jed: Mom and Dad. Dad ripped me a new one over detention. It didn’t matter why I got it. Skorazys didn’t make waves, didn’t get noticed. Our grandparents and their grandparents had learned that over in Russia. Keep your head down or lose it altogether.

  After the yelling was over, the worst came. Mom wanted me to help her and Tessa make Christmas cookies for Santa. When I wandered into the kitchen, Tess turned out to be making her “Merry Christmas, Santa” note in her room, all tongue and crooked crayon writing, as Mom roped me in. “You’ll have a good time, Nicky,” she said, smiling. She was a great mom, a pretty one, too, even with flour streaked across one cheek. Dark blond hair worn in a braid just past her shoulders, violet eyes, and a scar that bisected one eyebrow that only made her look curious all the time. I loved my mom. I know I was thirteen and not supposed to think things like that, but I did.

  But she wanted me to make cookies for Santa? “You know there’s no Santa, Mom,” I grumped. “This whole Christmas thing”—I opened a bag of chocolate chips—“it’s a waste of time.”

  A spoon smacked my hand. “The holiday spirit is in your heart. It’s not about presents and shiny paper. Christmas is in you.” She poked a finger in my chest. “And Santa is everywhere you look. If only you would look.” She shook her head, smiled again, and dabbed my nose with cookie batter. I rolled my eyes and wiped it off with a finger, which I licked clean. “Now,” she said firmly, “make your sister happy and help with the cookies. She’ll be out here any minute.”

  And it wasn’t so bad. I didn’t believe in any of it anymore, but Mom and Tess laughed. Dad came in and we ended up having a cookie batter fight. It might’ve not been the real thing, but it was as close as you could get.

  Right then, that was good enough.

  The next day was the day before Christmas Eve, our last day of school before break. And my last day, I had a feeling, to figure things out with Jed. But first Mary Francesca tried to figure out things with me.

  I’d seen her around, Mary Francesca . . . never just Mary or Fran . . . Mary Francesca. She was in some of my classes. She seemed nice, funny. She had red hair that fell in a mass of curls past her shoulders, bright red freckles, even brighter blue eyes, and she was smart. Definitely smarter than I was. No Cs in math for her.

  She cornered me outside English, smiling. Her teeth were so bright I swore I could see my reflection. “Hey, Nick.”

  Nick. Not Nicky. I liked that.

  “Hey,” I said back. That was about it for me, conversation-wise. I mean, a pretty girl. What do you say?

  She didn’t have any problem. “I was wondering . . .” She leaned a little closer and I could smell strawberries and cream shampoo. “I was wondering if maybe you’d want to go to the Christmas dance with me?” I felt crushing disappointment and utter relief all at the same time. On the one hand, I wouldn’t have to worry about clothes and flowers and talking and dancing. I’d seen what they did on MTV. No way I could do that and not get a boner right on the floor.

  On the other hand, I liked Mary Francesca.

  Not that it mattered how funny or smart she was or that she smelled like strawberries. There was no way my parents would go for it. It went back to the bad old days when persecution was everywhere. You couldn’t trust strangers, secret police were aro
und every corner, and you never knew who might turn you in. It was a lesson no one in the family had forgotten. We were Orthodox all the way and we didn’t date outsiders. Which was going to make finding a prom date pretty damn hard. There were lots of us in Russia, not too many here. But those were the rules.

  I added that to Christmas and bullies in the whole sucking category.

  “Sorry.” I shifted my backpack from one side to another, and I really was sorry. “I have detention for two months. My parents won’t let me go anywhere. I’m grounded, damn, forever.”

  She frowned in disappointment—real disappointment, which made me again think how rules sucked. “Well, okay, I get that.” Sighing, she unhooked a pin from her sweater and pinned it on mine. “Maybe by Spring Fling then.” She looked around quickly, then leaned in to give me the quickest of kisses.

  I was wrong. It wasn’t her hair that smelled like strawberries; it was her lip gloss. I was still tasting it as she disappeared down the hall and around the corner. Then I looked down at the pin. Santa grinned up at me, mittened hand waving automatically.

  Ho frigging ho.

  Every class dragged minute by minute. No one stared at me like I was going to die, so no one knew this was the day Jed was coming after me. It didn’t matter. I knew. I passed him once in the hall and his eyes had never been paler. He didn’t grin, he didn’t smirk. He just stared, flecks of spit at the corner of his mouth. That was it. Jed had gone off the edge and there was no coming back for him. Did a teacher notice? No. Did big men in white coats come drag him off to a big looming building with the baby eaters and mailman killers? No. No one wanted to know.

  No one ever wanted to know.

  A Plan C would be good now. Really good.

  Jed was a year older, but he’d been left behind. He tripped me in math class on my way up to the board, his almost white eyes daring me to say something about it. I went on, did the calculation, and circled back another way to sit down.

  When I ate lunch, he ate at a table next to mine and watched me. Watched my every move, my every bite. Half-chewed food fell from his mouth as he kept his eyes on me, but he didn’t notice. Or care. I’d thought he’d grow up to be a serial killer, but I was wrong. He was already there and he had me marked as victim numero uno.

  What do you do then? Go out kicking and screaming? Not me. I so did not plan on that.

  Next time I passed him in the hall, I murmured, “Tomorrow. Northeast edge of the woods. By the bridge.” I didn’t wait on an answer. For all I knew, he’d chewed his tongue off already and wasn’t going to give me one anyway. Then I went straight to the nurse’s office, faked a stomach cramp and a little dry heaving, and had my mom picking me up in twenty minutes. Today was taken care of. Jed wasn’t going to jump me early. And tomorrow . . .

  A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.

  A guy on an old Western had said that once. He was right. I wasn’t a man, but it still counted for me, too. I spent the night in my room thinking. I took off that silly Santa pin Mary Francesca had given me and almost tossed it, but at the last minute I laid it on my desk. The mitten continued to wave at me and I wondered how long until the battery ran out.

  I went out once to the garage after the folks were asleep then came back and watched the stars and sliver of moon through my window. The cold air made them brighter, closer, until you could see the teeth in the moon’s sly grin and the cold patience behind the stars’ eyes.

  After an hour of that, I went back in and stared at my closet. My last real Christmas was in there. It made me sad, proud, and had me pining all at the same time. Finally I put on my boxers and T-shirt and went to bed. I dreamed of cookies, presents, and a thousand lighted trees, and behind each tree was a Santa. He was laughing, cheeks red, stomach bouncing. A thousand Santas wherever you looked.

  When I woke up in the morning, I had one of those things . . . oh shit, what is it? . . . an epiphany. A big word for a big idea. I knew what to do, how to do it, and if I did things just right, just so, it would turn out even better than I thought yesterday. It would be better than okay. It would.

  It had to.

  I ate lunch with Mom, Dad, and Tess. Let Jed freeze his ass off in the woods waiting for me. I was in no hurry. Afterward I grabbed my coat and backpack and said I’d be back. Grounding was grounding, but my dad thought that roaming in the woods was good for kids. Taught them things. Toughened them up.

  I set off down our gravel road. The sky was white and gray and blue. Might be snow, might clear up. That was the fun thing about winter: it was always a surprise. I wore faded jeans and my rattiest sneakers. You never knew what was going to happen to them, not with someone like Jed. I liked the sneakers. We’d got them in San Antonio . . . they were orange with the black outline of a coyote howling at the moon. It was the same kind of moon we’d had last night. Narrow and hungry.

  I hefted the backpack and tried not to think about that. I had to do what I had to do. Thinking about things like that—it wasn’t good. It wasn’t good for the plan or for Tess or for me. I kept on walking, new snow crunching under my rubber soles. We’d had lots of snow lately, at least a few feet of it. Blue Water Creek was the size of a small river now. You could toss a stick in that and it would be gone before your eyes could follow it.

  Thirty minutes later I reached where I’d told Jed to meet me. He was there. Like he wouldn’t be. If I was stupid enough to walk right up to him, he wasn’t going to turn me down. He looked up from the struggling bundle of fur he had at his feet. The grin he gave me was colder than the snow under my feet. “Brought you a present, shithead.”

  Tied to a tree he had a dog. From the smell of the wet fur, it was soaked in paint thinner and Jed was trying to get a lighter to spark. He was trying to catch a dog on fire . . . on fire, just to piss me off before he finished me. That was the kind of sick asshole he was.

  “I like dogs a lot,” I said flatly. “I don’t like you at all.”

  Jed had parked his bike on the edge of the swollen Blue Water Creek. I turned and kicked it into the flood. The bike was carried away instantly. That was why the adults told us to stay away from the creek: it was over the banks, it was icy cold, and it could drown you in an instant.

  “Whoops,” I said cheerfully. “You should’ve listened when they said stay away from the water.”

  He growled, “You goddamn son of a bitch. You don’t know who you’re dealing with, asshole. I’m going to make you wish you were dead. Hell, I’m going to make you dead.” The pale eyes glowed with hatred as he shoved the lighter in his pocket. He picked up a baseball bat that had been hidden in the brush and rushed me, Louisville Slugger swinging. I caught it before it landed, ripped it out of his hands, whirled, and swung for the bleachers. He went down like Ms. Finkelstein on Principal Johnson.

  Hard and fast.

  Like I said, I got sent to the principal a lot, and he didn’t always lock the door. Grown-ups could be stupid, too. Which was why skipping class and zero tolerance for violence were a little less zero for me. Principal Johnson was good with the excuses for the school board, and Ms. Finkelstein, the secretary, handed candy out to me like she was trying to make me diabetic.

  I was hungry and getting hungrier—one lunch was never enough for me. My family . . . we liked to eat. I pulled one of Ms. Finkelstein’s Tootsie Rolls out of my pocket and chewed on it while I nudged Jed with my sneaker. He was still breathing. That was good. He mumbled and started to twitch, his arms moving and hands digging at the dirt. I smacked him again with the bat at the base of the skull. A tap this time . . . just enough to do the job. Then I untied the dog. It had tags that said it lived and was loved only about five blocks from the woods. It knew its way home. First it dropped and bared a submissive stomach. I rubbed it lightly, washed off the paint thinner with snow, then let it jump up. I smiled as it bounded off homeward. I did like dogs . . . yapping, jumping, leg humping. It didn’t matter. All dogs were good dogs.

  I duct taped Jed’s ankles,
wrists, and mouth before waiting until long after dark to carry him through the woods. I didn’t want to leave drag marks, and I scuffed my feet and doubled back enough times that no one could’ve made heads or tails of our trail. Jed was easy enough to haul even though he weighed more than me. Really easy. Shit floats. I guess assholes did, too. He woke up again. I was almost home, so I let him stay awake. He moaned, snarled, and tried to yell under the tape. That was Jed for you. A complainer. Bitch, bitch, bitch.

  And dumb as a box of rocks. I’d given him every chance and he’d never taken one of them.

  Our house was only a mile or two from the woods at the end of our long gravel lane. The nearest neighbor was half a mile away. It was nice. Quiet. Private.

  Really private.

  “They’ll find your bike in the creek,” I said to the struggling Jed. “They’ll think you drowned. Think your body got wedged under somewhere. Who knows? Maybe it took you all the way to the river. Everyone will pretend to be sad.” I looked back at him and smiled. “But no one will be.”

  Christmas Eve. I pulled Jed through the door into the blinking lights of the Christmas tree, the stockings on the mantel, the milk and cookies sat oh so carefully on the table. Tessa had left out milk and cookies for three years now. Third time’s the charm.

  Mom and Dad sat waiting on the couch for me. It was almost eleven—close to Christmas. Close enough. Tess would’ve long gone to bed. “That’s where you’ve been.” Mom shook her head affectionately. Boys will be boys.

  “Anyone see you?” Dad demanded bluntly. “Any trouble?”

  “Come on, Dad, you taught me better than that.” I dumped Jed at the bottom of the fireplace before going to my room. I opened my closet door and rummaged through softball mitts, balls, games I’d outgrown but never thrown away until I found it buried in a corner: the polished skull. It had been pretty stinky for quite a while, but it wasn’t the kind of stink my kind minded. I pulled the dusty red cap with the pom-pom off of it and shook it out, trying not to sneeze. These were the only things left. The reindeer venison was long gone. Around the base of the skull were handfuls of white hair, once curly and soft, now wiry and sparse. It didn’t matter. It’d work. I also picked up a tattered white trimmed red jacket. At the last I grabbed the glue from my desk and went back to the living room.