SATURDAY 6:18 P.M.
Their motel room was decorated like a six-year-old boy’s bedroom. Athletes doing their thing illustrated the wallpaper, bedspreads, hand towels, shower curtain. The bedside lamp was a cartoon-faced baseball player, whose bat held up the bulb and shade. A throw rug between the beds was supposed to look like a giant basketball, but time and lots of feet had worn it into something more like a squashed pumpkin.
“Who do they think stays here?” Xander said, noticing someone had painted red stitching on the globe of the ceiling light in an effort to make it resemble a baseball. When he pointed it out to David, his brother thought it was supposed to be a bloodshot eye. They were sitting on the bed that, unbelievably, they would have to share until his parents arranged for something more permanent. Xander was going to make darned sure no one fed the kid beans before then.
“The décor is . . . interesting,” Mrs. King said. Usually she found something charming or at least educational about everything. That she didn’t this time validated Xander’s suspicion that the motel owners were totally clueless.
“I like the soccer players,” David said.
“No, really?” Xander pushed him hard enough to send him flying off the bed and onto the road-kill pumpkin.
One thing Xander appreciated about David was his determination to stand up for himself. Instead of crying for Mommy every time Xander did something he didn’t like, he either turned a cold shoulder or fought back. This time he fought back. Smiling, he sprung off the floor and tackled Xander back onto the bed.
Xander rolled, so he was sitting on his brother. He grabbed David’s wrists and tried to pin him. David jerked his arms free and landed a blow to Xander’s stomach. Xander jabbed David in the ribs and got a solid grip on his wrists. He pinned his hands to the bed, one next to each of David’s ears. He made a noise in his throat that implied the gathering of something worth spitting onto his brother’s face. David began to squirm, tighten his face, and thrash his head from side to side.
“Boys!” Mom said.
“Ah, let ’em be,” Dad told her. “They just spent nine hours in the car.”
David heaved his legs up behind Xander and drove a knee into his back.
“Ahh!” Xander yelled.
David pulled an arm free, reached up, and grabbed a handful of Xander’s hair.
Xander squeezed his eyes shut. “David . . . let go!”
“Get off me.”
“Let go.”
Somewhere in the room, Mom pleaded to Dad. “Ed?”
“G, they’re fine.”
It hadn’t been until Xander was in kindergarten, when the other kids had laughed, that he realized G—as in “gee whiz”— was a funny name for a mom . . . for anybody. His mother had explained that she simply did not feel like a Gertrude, and even at that young age, Xander had agreed that G was much better. In fact, the family had developed a saying whenever Mom did something bold or crazy—like getting in the face of the linebacker-sized neighbor who’d yelled at David to get off his yard or parasailing behind a speedboat in Baja: definitely not a Gertrude.
“Okay, okay,” Xander said. Slowly, he slid off his brother. David held on until Xander had shifted his entire weight from David’s belly to the bed. David pulled his knees up to his chest, preventing Xander from jumping on again. Then he cautiously released his grip on Xander’s hair. Before David could spin away, Xander spat, nailing his brother’s cheek.
Xander howled in laughter and bolted for the door. He yanked it open and darted into the parking lot.
“Alexander!” his mother yelled after him. “You get back here right now!”
But Dad called to them, “Not too far, guys!” giving him permission to continue on.
The door slammed. Heading for a big field beyond the parking lot, Xander looked back to see David sprinting after him. He was still wiping his face.