Jake rode his bike in loops around the police cars and ambulances. This was his routine whenever he saw police cars and ambulances because he knew police cars and ambulances meant something gross had happened. He wanted to see gross stuff.
Car wrecks were usually as gross as it got in Pineacres, but today was an exception. Paramedics wheeled a cart out of the house down the street, pushing a motionless, lumpy white blob. They did not seem to be in a hurry. Jake stopped circling to ask one of the cops what happened. Since Jake was a kid, cops always told him more than they should.
“Dead lady,” the cop said.
“Gross,” Jake said. “Can I see?”
“No.”
“OK.”
“There are all kinds of cats in here. Do you want a cat?”
“Joe said cats would murder us if they could,” Jake said. “He said even though humans tried, they couldn’t breed out a cat’s true nature.”
“Who’s Joe?”
“My brother,” Jake said. “He’s dead.”
“Sorry, kid.”
Jake shrugged. It had been a year. One day Joe was there, and one day he was not. Jake wasn’t the one to find Joe dead. His mom did that. If Jake had seen Joe dead, he thought, maybe the whole thing would make more sense. Some days, it still felt like Joe was around the corner waiting to play. Other days, it felt like he’d never been there at all.
The more gross stuff he saw, Jake figured, the less the other stuff would bother him. Like, if he kept seeing a whole bunch of bad stuff happen to other people, it wouldn’t bother him so much that Joe was gone. Joe being gone would just be another bad thing.
Sometimes, Jake even tried to make the gross stuff happen to himself. He got hurt on purpose, doing crazy moves like jumping his bike off curbs he knew he couldn’t handle. He was always scraped up and bleeding. One time, he even threw himself in front of the neighbor lady’s car.
Jake cut a few more circles around the scene, and when he was sure he wouldn’t see anything else gross, he headed home. He passed an old shed behind one of the houses that backed up to the Pineacres bike trail, the kind of shed people forgot about, dusty and crawling with weeds, tucked along a chain link fence. Jake wondered if the shed had gross stuff inside.
He thought the light was playing tricks with his head at first, trees casting shadows and whatnot. That’s what his mom always told him when he thought he saw Joe. Tricks with his head. But when he got closer, a figure came into focus on the back of the shed. Two thick black legs, limp caveman arms and a fat square head. Maybe it was an oil splotch, or black paint, or rust. It was probably rust. Rust in the shape of a man. A Rust Man.
“Hey,” Jake said, and rode past it four more times.
The next day, the Rust Man was bigger. He had acquired some kind of stick, maybe a rifle or a sword. Jake wondered why the Rust Man would have picked up a weapon since they last met. Maybe the Rust Man was afraid.
Jake didn’t understand what he was looking at, but then again, Jake didn’t understand a lot. No one wanted to explain things to kids, no one except for cops. He didn’t understand why his brother took drugs or even what drugs were. His mother had taken Jake to the doctor a couple times, and the doctor gave him drugs.
“I’m not supposed to have these,” he had said. “Joe takes these.”
“Not that kind,” Jake’s mom told him. “These drugs are fine. They will help you.”
Joe had not been coming home as much, and his mother was staying up late on the computer playing card games. She never slept and always looked worried. Sometimes when Joe did come home, he and his mom had fights. Other times, Joe just walked into his room. That was worse, Jake thought.
“You should have taken my drugs,” Jake told the Rust Man. “You shouldn’t have taken your drugs.”
Jake detected a faint movement from the Rust Man. Maybe his arm or his head twitching. He wasn’t sure, but something definitely moved.
The next morning, Jake didn’t go to school. That was easy. Sometimes he just didn’t show up and no one really noticed. His mom trusted him to get on the bus, which was nice, but maybe she shouldn’t have trusted him so much. That was on her.
He tried to do Minecraft on the PlayStation, but it felt boring. He had a hard time focusing on the game, which never used to happen when he played with Joe. He grabbed a bag of Doritos from the counter and pulled on his jean shorts. Jake didn’t wear shoes around the neighborhood and wasn’t sure why everyone else did. He hopped on his bike and steered it with no hands, eating the chips while doing figure eights in the street. He threw the empty bag on the ground, then remembered that Joe had told him not to litter. Joe said the chip bags would wash into Pineacres Creek and choke out all the little turtles and birds, and it would be all Jake’s fault that they choked to death. He swooped past the bag and picked it up, nearly skidding sideways. He caught himself right before falling. Then he did it again and let himself fall.
The Rust Man was even bigger now, his legs taking up half of the shed, face stretched into eyeball slits and a wide mouth. Now he held long objects in both hands. Maybe they were walking sticks, not weapons. Maybe the Rust Man wanted to go somewhere.
“I am in fourth grade,” Jake said, chipping at a rock with his pocketknife. “I was hoping to do the science fair this year, but I don’t think I have enough time to get supplies. Mom is real busy, so I don’t ask her.”
The Rust Man didn’t move.
“My project was going to be about paper towels. Which paper towels are more absorbent. I was going to use that blue water like in the commercials. It’s probably stupid.”
Jake threw a rock at the Rust Man and hit him in the head. He got on the bike and bounced it up and down.
“I asked you not to take bad drugs,” Jake said. “I don’t know if you heard me. It was real quiet one night. You were up late. I said it through the wall. I put a cup up to the wall to see if you would say something back, but I didn’t hear anything.”
Weeds rustled around the Rust Man’s feet.
“Do you want to hang out with me tomorrow? It’s the Fourth of July. I’m going to go down to the festival and eat snacks until I get sick. Do you like snacks?”
Jake was pretty sure he saw the Rust Man nod.
Jake’s mom had to work. She said he could ride to the water to watch the fireworks. His mom liked to give him permission to ride around, as if he didn’t ride around already. Jake figured it made her feel better, like she was doing something to keep an eye on him, even though he did whatever he wanted. She left him $20. She stuck a little note on it with a smiley face and a drawing of fireworks in black ink.
I love you, buddy.
Jake went to pick up the Rust Man, but he was already gone from the shed. He saw the chipped blue siding, the chain link fence, the weeds, and nothing else.
“Where are you?” Jake said. He felt like his chest was filling up with rippling gas. He took out his pocketknife and chipped the bark on a tree into a jagged bald spot. He knew he shouldn’t hurt the tree, but he couldn’t help it.
The sun went behind the clouds. Except it wasn’t clouds. It was an enormous shadow.
“About time,” Jake said. “Let’s go.”
Jake rode down the trail with the shadow following. He stood up on his pedals. He dragged his toes on the ground. He put his feet on the seat and crouched. He stopped to look at a dead squirrel surrounded by flies. He wondered if that’s how Joe looked when, well, you know.
Jake stopped at the Sugar Shack for a strawberry milkshake.
“You want anything?” he asked the shadow, and Jake saw it shake its head no.
They headed down to the pier where the Fourth of July celebration was happening. Kids and their parents hovered around, happy except for the ones who weren’t. Even the happiest kids cried for the stupidest reasons, like a bug getting in their ice cream. And the parents always seemed mad about something. Jake’s mom was better than the other parents since she never reacted. She didn’t say anything mean, at least. Jake was lucky.
He bought a bag of kettle corn. Everything cost so much.
He had $2 left. He sat on the pier throwing popcorn at the shadow, hoping some might land in its mouth, whatever that was. Songs with the words “firework” and “boom” and “America” played. A lady with big boobs wearing a stars and stripes visor posed on top of an antique car. A fat guy with a beard on his neck took pictures of her. A small orange dog in a flag sweater whimpered. It was too hot to put dogs in sweaters.
People were getting excited because they loved fireworks, or at least loved watching fireworks through their phones. Jake thought it made more sense to just look up, but then again, the adults probably knew something he didn’t. Anyway, he was more interested in seeing someone blow their fingers off.
That’s when Jake heard the biggest boom he’d ever heard, echoing in the air and shaking the pier. The fireworks weren’t supposed to go off until dark. Everyone was quiet at once, then started to talk. Babies cried. The dog in the sweater yelped.
The shadow scooped Jake up, and Jake was floating above everything, twisting through the streets of Pineacres. The wind passed between Jake’s bare toes and went up his jean shorts and through his hair, and the kettle corn flew away in puffy pieces behind the shadow.
They were at the Pineacres Mall now. The shadow was showing him. Jake had spent so much time there with Joe. When he was really little, like 4 or 5, Jake’s mom would drop Jake off while Joe finished his shift at Sports-A-Holic. After Joe finished, he would walk around the mall with Jake, even though he’d spent the whole day there and probably wanted to leave. He’d let Jake climb on the seashell playland and eat soft cinnamon pretzels. One time, Joe even let Jake have a turn on the giant trampoline. The trampoline guy didn’t let Jake do backflips in the harness, and the whole thing turned out to be disappointing. But Jake didn’t say anything to Joe because he knew the trampoline ride cost Joe, like, half his check.
“Did you have fun, my dude?” Joe had asked him. Jake nodded and looped his arm around Joe’s elbow.
The mall was on fire. Fireworks were shooting sideways out the top of the food court, bursting through the glass skylights that leaked rain near the pizza place. Joe used to take Jake to splash in the puddles. If the mall manager was nearby, he got upset because they were making a mess. “I’m trying to fix this,” the manager told them once. “Don’t make it worse.”
Blue and red streams crackled through the skylights and glass flew everywhere. The shadow tried to protect Jake, but it was a shadow, so pieces of glass hit Jake anyway, slicing his bare chest and compounding his collection of scars. There was smoke now, billowing out of the mall, and people were running through the parking lot screaming. He knew whatever was going on inside was probably pretty gross. But he didn’t want to see gross things anymore.
The shadow carried Jake back to the pier, and Jake felt tears stinging his face, winding down his dry cheeks in the wind. Jake grabbed his bike from a bunch of teenagers who had taken it but were now staring slack-jawed at the darkening sky. He heard people around him talking about an explosion at the mall. They all had news on their phones and were calling each other, asking if they were okay. No one asked Jake if he was okay.
Jake motioned for the shadow to follow, but it didn’t. The shadow hung there above the crowd, refusing to budge, casting gloom over the town. Jake pedaled down the trail, the smell and sound of fireworks mingling with the odor of the burning mall. Jake could taste fire. Police cars and ambulances raced through the streets. Jake went the other way.
He rode past the shed, and the Rust Man was gone. Jake wondered if he had done something to scare him off. If it was his fault. Jake hurled pebbles at the shed. He threw fistfuls of dirt and grass and sticks at the shed. He screamed at the shed, smoke singing his nostrils, but the Rust Man did not come back.
Jake pedaled home. He turned on the TV where news of the burning Pineacres Mall had taken over every local channel. He turned it off.
Jake tried to play Minecraft, but he kept losing. He took the last two dollars out of his pocket. He tried his best to spread out the sweaty bills, pressing them to the kitchen table, and he wrote his mom a note. On it, he drew a shadowy figure with a fat square head and black legs. He stuck it to the top of the change.
Love you, buddy.
He walked into his mom’s room, where piles of unwashed laundry circled the bed. He went into Joe’s room, which was exactly how Joe had left it when Joe left. Jake saw his school picture propped on Joe’s dresser. Jake remembered smiling a real smile for that photo because the photographer was making fart noises under his armpit.
He walked into his room littered with toys he never used anymore. He heard the sirens getting louder, and Jake thought maybe it was time to clean. He gathered up three old action figures, placemats from the Sugar Shack covered in games of hangman, rocks and dried leaves he thought were cool but couldn’t remember why. He found an old cinnamon sugar pretzel wrapper from the mall laced with rows of black ants. He threw it all in the trash.
He picked up a plastic toy horse the neighbor lady had given him after he threw himself in front of her car. She felt bad for hitting a kid with her car, he guessed, even though it had been his fault. Adults always felt guilty for things they didn’t do. He wondered if she might want the horse back. It was a gift, and Joe always said if someone gives you a gift, you owe them.
Jake walked to his neighbors’ house on the corner. They weren’t home. He wondered if they were down at the pier, or worse, at the mall. He leaned the horse against the stop sign.
Through the smoke, he thought he could see a vehicle. It was coming toward him fast, swerving, screeching across the blacktop, red and dented around the front headlight. He recognized it as his mother’s car, the one Joe used to borrow, the one Joe had messed up that night Jake talked to him through the wall. Jake thought the car might run him right over. Jake wondered if anyone was driving or if the car was being carried by the shadow.
The car slid to a stop. His mother poured out onto the street, her arms and legs soft and wobbly, her face twisted and strange. She ran to Jake and tackled him in a hug, sending them both to the ground. It hurt.
“Are you okay? Are you okay? Are you okay? Are you okay?”
Jake was flat on his back. He looked over his mother’s shoulder. He looked at the horse, which had fallen onto its side. He looked for the shadow one more time, then decided to stop looking. He noticed the sun had started to peek through the sooty skies. Jake began to giggle. So did his mother. And they stayed there on the grass of the neighbor’s yard, pressed together, laughing harder than they had in a long time.
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