Scrambled
I.
Josh is talking to me but I’m not looking at him. I’m looking up at the loft, the light shining up there connected to the orange extension cord that I know snakes down to the electrical outlet on the side of the barn. Harry had wanted to keep the eggs (chicks, he called them, even though they weren’t hatched yet) in the house but Mom said absolutely not, they’ll do just as fine out here.
“If you do it, Hannah will do whatever you want,” Josh says. “Isn’t that right, Hannah?”
Josh turns to her, gives her a poke.
“Sure,” Hannah says. All casual. “As long as you don’t pussy out.”
She learned to talk like that from him. I’m positive. Mom says the word pussy not in reference to a feline animal is filthy and anyone who uses it deserves to have their mouth washed out with soap. I’ve had my mouth washed out a few times, but mostly just for cussing when I drop something heavy on my foot which happens a lot more often than I’d like to admit. But it’s baby stuff.
I don’t think Hannah deserves to have her mouth washed out. I like Hannah. I liked her better before Josh.
“What’s it to you?” I ask, finally.
Josh shrugs. “Just a little fun. You’re so boring it makes me want to throw up, eat it, and then throw up again.”
“Then you do it, if you want to ruin Harry’s science experiment so bad,” I tell him. “He’s just a kid.”
“I know,” Josh says.
“Know what?” Asshole, is what I’m thinking.
“Smash those eggs and you can have her. I won’t put my dick in her again. That’s really what you want, right?”
Hannah’s face is turning splotchy, the way it gets when she wants to cry but she’s imagining something else, something dumb, like a tomato wearing a sombrero, to keep the waterworks from flowing.
“Don’t talk about her like that.”
“Or you’ll do what?”
“Hannah,” I say, “You don’t have to let him.”
“She loves me,” Josh says. “You love me, don’t you, baby?”
“Sure I love you,” Hannah says.
“Don’t care. I’m not doing it,” I said.
“Jesus fuck,” Josh says. And disappears up the ladder.
He comes down, clinging to the ladder with one hand and the other grasping the cage with Harry’s unborn chicks. Harry’s made little name tags for them. There’s Harriet, and Thomas, and Hogarth. Billy, Bob, and Charlie— called that in honor of me.
“Okay,” I say. “Okay. Look, I’ll do it.”
Josh smiles and it’s like the light going out.
I get Charlie first. He’s warm.
“You leave Hannah alone,” I say. “That’s our deal.”
“Assholes, I’m standing right here,” Hannah says.
“That’s the deal,” Josh says. “On my honor as a gentleman.”
We shake.
I crack Charlie against the edge of the cage. The delicate shell splinters. I don’t smash it like I know Josh wants.
“Harry will be more upset this way,” I say. “He’ll think he did it. Handling them too rough or something. The light will get in and kill them off. Because they’ll be too hot.”
I don’t know that. I don’t know anything about Harry’s stupid experiment. Will too much light kill the little chicken baby?
“That’s fucking stupid,” Josh says, and wrenches Charlie away from me. He smashes Charlie with his bare hands, and what I guess must have been Charlie’s little guts just explode. Runny yellow mucus mixed with bits of white shell coat his fingers and he reaches inside the cage and does it again and again until they’re all just dripping and dead.
I don’t stop him. I don’t know if I can. I don’t look at Hannah, either, but I hear a weird noise and I think she must be crying a little.
“Go put it back,” Josh says. “Go put it back up there.”
I do it. I climb the ladder one handed and I put the cage with the smashed baby chicks back under the lamp.
I climb down, and Josh is sucking Hannah’s face like there’s no tomorrow. He’s got his eggy, hands in her hair and it’s really disgusting. I hate them a lot, in this particular moment.
II.
Just like she knows I’m thinking about her, Hannah appears, swinging her legs over my windowsill. I know her calves better than I know most people’s faces probably but that’s the kind of dumbshit thing I’d never tell anyone.
“Hi,” Hannah says. It’s late for her to be wandering around alone. It’s past midnight.
“It’s past midnight,” I say.
“I know what time it is,” she says. “Shove over.”
She crawls up the bed to lie down next to me, shoving me over against the wall.
“So.”
“So.”
“What do you want?” she asks.
“Nothing,” I say.
She’s quiet for a second, and then I feel her fingers slide under the waist of my pajama bottoms. I yelp, and bang my head against the wall. Harry, of course, bangs back. I grab her hand to stop her and shove the offending digits away.
“Not you too,” she says, “Because that’d be just fucking perfect.”
“Don’t say fuck.”
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” she says.
Then she rolls over on top of me and she’s kissing me. It’s the first real kiss I’ve ever had, if you don’t count Marcia McAbee at the big dance last year. I don’t. Count Marcia McAbee, that is, even though it’s pretty pathetic that I’m 17 and that peck on the lips was the best I’d done. This is much nicer. I don’t actually want you to drown in a vat of corn oil. Just Josh.
The last time Hannah kissed me was when we were seven and I rescued a bunch of tadpoles from a puddle at school and—her hand goes for my crotch again. I squirm away. Reflex move. She’s looking at me and she looks a little nuts.
“Josh can’t get it up, either,” she says, like we’re gonna have a god damn conversation about this.
“I can to…you know.” I’m turning red. I know it.
“I bet Harry saw him kissing somebody,” she continues. “There’s this place he goes, he doesn’t think I know—”
“He cheats on you?”
She sits up in a flurry of dark hair.
“Are you stupid?” she demands. “I’m surprised he hasn’t tried to kiss you.”
I’m burning. I can feel the tingle in the tips of my ears.
“Or maybe not,” she continues. “You’re skinny and weird looking. I don’t want to kiss you much either.”
She disappears as quickly as she came. I wish she’d come back. I wouldn’t stop her hand this time.
I think about sneaking out to the barn and doing something about all the dead chick bits but I don’t. Sleep comes up too fast and Mom has ears like an eaglehawk, anyway, I never make it out of the yard.
III.
I’m waiting for Harry to find his precious chicks all dead and stuff. I’m ready for the yelling and the crying. I keep waiting for the trouble but nothing comes, even two days later.
I check the loft after school and the smashed, dried up eggs are still up there in the cage, the light is still on and everything.
It smells like something rotten. Maybe Harry didn’t care so much about these things anyway and Josh is just a fucking idiot and probably also a homosexual.
That’s definitely what Hannah meant.
IV.
I wake up to some loud high-pitched shrieking. It’s goddamn early. And it’s Saturday.
Harry must have gone out to the barn.
I’m stumbling out of bed and towards my door and I’m all ready to explain the accident, I’ve got a really good speech about horsing around in the loft and—
But it’s not Harry screaming bloody murder. It’s Mom and she’s screeching at Harry like there’s no tomorrow, something about how she specifically told him NOT to bring those filthy things into the house and have they been in his closet THIS WHOLE TIME?
And JEEEESUS HARRY the bare bulb could have caught the clothes on fire and sent the whole house up in flames and then he’d be sorry.
I want to laugh but I can’t because there’s something wedged in my throat. Mom stomps off and gets the paddle and I hear it crack against Harry’s backside. He’s crying now but it’s okay because he’ll get over being paddled. What a genius. What a sneaky bastard genius kid.
I should feel relieved, but when I go back to bed, my stomach is still all clenched and knotted, like someone’s got my guts in their icy iron fist.
I yank the blankets up to better block the sunlight seeping in.
End.
Rec Writers Theme: “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” - Leonard Cohen
