The Last Domino

WHEN I WENT TO DANIEL’S house on Sunday afternoon, Mr. Pulver answered the door. I’d never seen him before and if I’d met him on the street I never would’ve figured him for Daniel’s father. He had broad shoulders like my father but he wasn’t tall and there was little sign that any of his fat had ever been muscle. He didn’t look like a CEO but he sounded like one. “Craig Pulver. It’s good to meet you, young man,” he boomed.

His handshake hurt my fingers. “I know. My son thinks quite highly of you. And like me, he doesn’t impress easily.”

I looked at Craig Pulver’s face to try to figure out whether he was serious. I couldn’t tell until he broke into a broad smile, and even then I wasn’t sure. “Don’t you kids have a sense of humor anymore? Come on, let’s go find—”

“Don’t make too much noise up there,” Craig Pulver said. “I don’t want you to bother your mother.”

With his back to his father, Daniel rolled his eyes. I started to follow him, but froze when Craig’s heavy hand shot out, clamping tightly on Daniel’s shoulder. “I’m serious, Danny.”

“Oh, yeah, sick in the head. She’s really bad all of a sudden, can’t remember who anybody is. Even my mother’s saying it’d be better if she just died.”

He kept his voice low as we passed the closed door of his parents’ bedroom. In his room, I noticed that some of the cardboard boxes were gone. The walls weren’t totally bare anymore either. A poster from The Matrix was stuck to the wall above Daniel’s TV with black pushpins. Just like mine.

We put on The Matrix but kept the volume low. It was just as hard to focus on what I was watching as it had been the night before, only for different reasons. I kept replaying the scene with Koryn in the car again and again, like a mental DVD on an endless loop. I’d told Daniel about it on the phone earlier, and he’d said it wasn’t my fault. “She was just being a goddamn tease. There’s nothing you could’ve done. We’ll forget all about her.”

But I couldn’t forget about what had happened with her or with my father either. I hadn’t seen my parents until that morning. My father was so engrossed in his coffee and his newspaper that he didn’t say a word. Finally, my mother asked, “Did you have fun with your friends last night?” I’d told her I was going out with Ross and Moira.

“It was fine,” I said. My father grunted and announced that he had to go into work, even though it was Sunday, and he abruptly left the table.

But after breakfast, I found myself face to face with him in the hallway. He said, “I didn’t tell your mother about last night, and I don’t intend to. But you’d better watch what you say and do from now on. You understand me?”

Across the room, I saw that Daniel wasn’t watching the movie any more than I was. He was studying me. Once he had my attention, he crossed to the doorway. I followed him down the hall, a tingle of fear in my legs as he opened the door to his parents’ room. From downstairs, I heard his father’s voice. “No, I haven’t seen it in days, Mrs. Barker ... Sorry, haven’t seen him, of course ... Yes, I’ll ask my wife. Daniel too.”

“What’re you doing?” I hissed as Daniel glided into his parents’ room. His mother looked almost as faint as a mirage. Her shirt had pulled up a little, showing the pink elastic of her underwear. Daniel reached for the nightstand next to the bed, sliding out the top drawer. It sounded as loud as the screech of a car’s brakes, but his mother didn’t stir.

“Daniel,” I whispered, and his mother’s head twitched. I waited for her to jump up and cry, “What’re you doing in here?” but her cheek settled back on the pillow. Her breathing was steady as Daniel reached past her again, pulling out the box of bullets. He slid it into his pocket.

Edging for the door, I expected to see Daniel right behind me, but he was still by the bed. He raised the Beretta, putting the barrel into the wisps of blond hair that curled away from his mother’s head.

He put a finger to his lips like Principal McCarthy in the school library, only he didn’t make a sound.

I was terrified. Not just that his mother would wake up, but that Daniel would pull the trigger. The gun shouldn’t have been loaded, but what if it was?

He touched her face with his free hand, the gun still pointed at her. “It’s okay, Mom, go back to sleep.”

“Mmmm” was her response. I took an involuntary step to the door, the hall light hurting my eyes. Madeline drew one hand up near her face and laid it on the pillow, just missing the gun.

He closed the door behind us without a sound. From below, I heard his father again. “Yes, Mrs. Barker, I know you’re concerned,” Craig Pulver said. “But there’s nothing else I can do, I’m afraid. Good-bye.”

“Come on,” Daniel said, sliding the gun into the front of his jeans and covering it with his shirt. “Let’s go.”

Downstairs, Daniel’s father held the phone receiver at his side, tapping it against his thigh impatiently. “That was Mrs. Barker again,” he said. “She’s worried about her dog.”

“Of course not. It probably just started chasing a squirrel and ran off.” Craig scratched at his scalp, looking at Daniel from the corners of his eyes as if searching for something he couldn’t see head-on.

“All right.” Craig looked at me as he said it, as if my face might reveal something Daniel’s hadn’t. But I just nodded and smiled.

My sneakers crunched on dead leaves and fallen branches as we plowed through the still woods. I curled and uncurled my fingers to keep the blood moving, watching the silver slopes of the mountains disappear beyond the tree line. Next door to Daniel’s house, a wrinkled face peeked out the window, and then a hand slipped a pair of glasses into place on a jagged nose. It was the woman I’d seen out with her dog, Alfie, a few nights before.

“Mrs. Bonkers is more like it. She’s a regular fruit loop.” Daniel started walking a little faster, or maybe I was going slower, because he was soon half a dozen yards ahead. “Are you coming or what?”

I’d forgotten about Koryn, at least for a little while. But as I walked the memories came flooding back, along with the image of P.J.’s car and that perfect windshield.

“We’ll take care of it. Meet me at school early tomorrow, eight o’clock, and you won’t have any more problems with him. I promise.” Part of me wanted to know what he had in mind, but another part was so tired of worrying that I decided to trust him.

Instead of going straight up the incline again, Daniel veered off through the pine trees. In the distance, the tall stalks of a cornfield quivered. About fifty yards short of the cornfield, narrow lumps of raw earth were arranged like a series of speed bumps.

As we got closer, I saw that beyond the empty rows were dozens of pumpkins with long, ropy vines stringing them together. Some were nearly perfect, while others were bloated and misshapen.

We climbed around in the rows, until Daniel hefted a pumpkin about the size of a basketball. I found one that was as big as a Thanks-giving turkey. Its orange skin was even, the ridges of pumpkin flesh lightly crusted with dirt. The vine along the top pulled away easily, but when I rolled the pumpkin into my arms, I felt a mushy spot along the bottom.

I quickly settled on a couple of midsized pumpkins and carried them in my arms. When we arrived at the spot where we’d shot the cans, I almost didn’t recognize it, since we’d come from the opposite direction.

We lined up the four pumpkins on a mostly-flat boulder in descending size order. Daniel had the biggest and the smallest, and mine fit in between. I looked for the line Daniel had drawn in the dirt the other day, but I couldn’t find it. He used his heel to make another, then pulled the gun out of his waistband and loaded slugs into the magazine.

Although I was excited to shoot again, I kept thinking about Koryn. I knew that she hated me and she’d never talk to me and I was miserable. I wanted to curl up in the dirt and rot like one of those old pumpkins. Then again, I’d been waiting all week for the chance to go shooting again, and I wasn’t going to let anything ruin it, even her.

The weight of the gun felt just right this time, the metal cool against my palm. I ran two fingers along the barrel, and settled my sneakers so that my toes were half an inch behind the dirt line. Then I raised my arms and extended them like Daniel had showed me. I settled the sights on the largest pumpkin, which was caught in a wedge of sunlight.

But I lowered the gun and turned sideways, facing the mountains, where the sun had turned the silver peaks almost black.

I licked my lips and again thought of Koryn, her eyes and lips seething with anger and hurt.

I whirled in what was probably the most graceful motion I’d ever made, body spinning like a top, both arms coming up in a single fluid motion. The gun rose in my vision and the pumpkins were no more than three orange blurs, so I just squeezed the trigger once, twice, three times, my heart bobbing in my throat and my chest full of air, the sound of the shots crackling like thunder.

When I looked off to the side, Daniel’s mouth was open, his chest heaving. He must’ve been laughing, but my ears were ringing so bad I couldn’t hear. I hadn’t hit a single pumpkin.

Daniel started toward me, his hand extended for the gun, but I was so pissed that I turned away and snapped my arms back into position, elbows locked, gun straight out, and focused all my attention down the sights at the smallest pumpkin. I pulled the trigger. The explosion happened almost instantly, the orange skin erupting as though there were a firecracker in it.

I examined the ruins of the pumpkin. Pieces of rind and seeds had spread across the boulder. The biggest piece, a chunk the size and shape of a candy dish, lay on its side. I picked it up, touching the spongy softness within.

He started sideways and spun, but he couldn’t hit anything either. When I tried it that way a second time, I managed to nick the biggest pumpkin’s stem. After that, we gave up on the spin move and shot head-on, and then I blasted that pumpkin clean off the boulder. Daniel took care of one middle pumpkin, which left me the other. I was ready to nail it when Daniel said that he wanted to bring it home instead.

He held the pumpkin as I slipped the gun into my jacket pocket. I felt so happy that I was sure I could never be miserable again, so strong that I knew I could stand up to P.J. and anyone else who crossed me. The air was cooling and the sky was darkening but the woods felt brighter than before. I kept putting my hand in my pocket, finding the warm barrel, and I was so distracted that I almost didn’t see the shape through the woods.

It was low to the ground and grayish-black. Daniel kept going straight but I headed for the creature sprawled against the base of the tree.

As I got closer, I saw that the gray fur was matted with dried blood. A piece of rope circled its neck, the other end tied to the tree. There was also a blue collar with two gold tags in the shape of bones hanging from its neck. I didn’t need to read it to know that the name engraved there was Alfie.

The animal’s eyes were just empty holes, pinkish-gray matter showing through the deep caverns, and its mouth was pulled together like an old wound, teeth barely visible. The dog had been dead for a couple days, and the reek of its flesh was so strong that I spun away, puking into a pile of leaves.

“Sure is,” Daniel said. “It looks like someone tied it up out here and let it starve to death. Or maybe the animals got it first.”

I looked at him then as if I’d never quite seen him before. There was nothing unusual about him though. His eyes were bright, his hair hanging down into them, his hands shoved in the pockets of his coat.

“No,” Daniel said, as if insulted. “Would I waste my time with some stupid dog? Besides, that’s sick.”

“And I told you I didn’t do it. Whoever did though, they’d have to be pretty strong to drag that dog all the way out here. That mutt was pretty big, you know.”

He took a couple of steps forward and froze, staring at something about six feet from the dog’s body. I looked over at what he’d seen: blue cloth showing through some fallen leaves. But what was it? I picked the object up, turned it over in my hands. It was a well-worn Shadwell Sharks baseball cap.

“Not just someone.” Daniel took the cap from me and flung it back onto the ground as if it were diseased. “I think you know who it was. There’s only one person mean enough to do something like this, and that’s P.J.”

I glanced back at the dead animal and felt my gorge rising again. My arms broke out in goose bumps, and not just from the cold. I closed my fingers around the grip of the gun in a protective instinct. I knew P.J. was cruel, but I’d never imagined he was that cruel.

Suddenly I wasn’t just afraid of having my butt kicked over that broken windshield. I was afraid for my life.