Later that afternoon, when I was back at the Henrys’, their phone began to ring. It started slowly and then rang more and more, faster and faster, until it seemed to be ringing nonstop. Strangers, reporters, maniacs, guys Mr. had gone to junior high school with, lawyers offering to consider the case for a fee, someone from a TV show in New York City.
“You really should call the TV people back,” Henry said to his parents.
“Stay away from it,” Mrs. Henry said when the ringing started again. She held her arms down and out like airplane wings. “Don’t touch.”
“Are you going to work tomorrow?” Mrs. asked Mr.
“I don’t know.”
“Have you spoken to your office?”
“No,” he said.
“You don’t have to be afraid. Accidents happen,” Mrs. said.
“You shouldn’t say that,” Mr. said.
Mrs. pointed her finger at Mr. “You have to stop acting like a guilty man,” she said. “Did you wake up that morning and say to yourself, ‘I’m going to kill a little boy today’?”
“I have blood on my shoes,” Mr. shouted, “I feel like my feet are dripping in blood.”
“It’s your imagination,” Mrs. said.
“I killed someone,” he said, pushing his face close into Mrs.’s.
She pushed him away. “Stop acting insane.”
Henry sat on baby June’s swing set in the backyard, waiting for time to pass, for everything to return to normal, but Thomas Stanton III was ahead of Henry, six months ahead. He was already across the border of thirteen when he died, and he stayed there like a roadblock, a ton-o’-bricks, like all the weight in the world. Without seeming to know what he was doing, Henry started combing his hair that same certain way that Stanton’s was in the newspaper photo. He started wearing clothes a gifted and talented type would wear: button-down shirts with a plastic pen protector in the pocket, pants a size too small. He started trying to look like a genius and ended up looking like a clown, like someone permanently dressed up for Halloween.
“Henry,” I said, sitting facing him on the double horse swing. “It has to stop. You don’t know what you’re doing.”
He brushed his hair back with a whole new gesture, just the way the dead kid would do it.
“Henry, you’re making me hate you.”
“Go home. Get your own life. Leave me alone,” he said.
And so, with nothing else to do, with no other options, I did exactly that. I went to the pool alone.
Without Henry I was too intimidated to step over the pool of muck by the door. I dipped my feet in, and in a split second the milky white wash cauterized the summer’s worth of cuts and scratches and I was sanitized for sure.
I unrolled my towel down on a lounger just at the edge of the tetherball court and next to a group of kids my own age. I watched a boy smack the ball so hard I could feel the stinging in my palms. The ball spun fast, its rope winding quick and high over the head of the other boy. I saw the smacker jump up and hit it again. The ball spun harder, faster, in tighter circles, until all the rope was wound and the stem of the ball itself smacked the pole, froze a second, and then slowly started to unwind.
“Thomas was my boyfriend,” I overheard a skinny girl with blond hair hanging down the sides of her face like wet noodles say. “No one was supposed to know, but since he died, the secret came out. It was the single most horrifying experience of my life.” She adjusted and readjusted the empty pink-and-white top of her bikini, pulling on the bottoms where they would have latched onto her butt if she’d had a butt. “The car stopped only after Thomas was sucked under and came out the other side, with grease smears down his body.” She took a breath. “My mother tried to hold me back, but I touched him. ‘Thomas,’ I said. ‘Thomas, can you hear me?’ He lifted himself off the street and walked himself over to the grass, then crumpled like when you pull the middle out of a stack of things and it all falls down. He opened his mouth and a brown nutty thing they said later was his tongue fell out. ‘Thomas,’ my mother said. ‘Thomas, everything is going to be all right. You’ve been in a little accident. These things can happen to anyone.’”
“What about the guy who did it?” the girl she was talking to asked.
“He sat in his car until the police came, and then jumped out and started to run. They chased after him and dragged him back so we could identify him.”
“I don’t think so,” I said, interrupting, without even knowing what I was doing.
“What does that mean?” the girl asked.