Four
Imaginary friends often leave without warning. Lying across from him on the other pillow was the head of Nicholas Weller, and Jack Peter wanted to reach out and poke his friend’s cheek with his finger, but if that was really Nick, he might just get angry. Then again, even imaginary friends can lose their tempers. Take Red, for instance. He could be as mad as a jar of wasps. Good thing he was dead.
His mother first showed Jack Peter when he was five years old how to make a little boy out of red clay. First you get some dough and roll it into a cigar and then you pinch the bottom and separate it in two for the legs and two again for the arms and leave a bit at the top for the head. Each morning he would take Red out of the cardboard can and unfold his limbs. He put the clay boy on the shelf like a voodoo doll. As long as it was out of the can, the imaginary boy was alive, not Red at all, but a boy same as him, who was just his size and just his age. He would be there all day, someone to talk to, someone to play with, someone to tell his secrets, and Red would tell him things as well. Stories about what he did when Jack Peter was not around. Stories about his parents, about Nick and the other boys and girls, stories about the world beyond the front door. Jack Peter could make the boy, but once made, Red was beyond his control. Red lived his own life apart from their time together, going places Jack Peter could not go, seeing things Jack Peter never saw, thinking things unimaginable to his creator. Most of the time, Jack Peter was simply glad for the company and the chance to learn the secrets Red would tell. But sometimes Red would get mad at him, call him dummy, and threaten to share Jack Peter’s thoughts with Mommy and Daddy. And then Jack Peter wished he had never made the boy of clay and was so tired of him that he hoped Red would go away and never come back or maybe a giant could come and flatten him like a pancake.
And then one night, he forgot to put away the clay boy, and the next morning, it was all dried out and the boy crumbled to bits, and Red was dead and never came back anymore. Jack Peter thought he might make another boy, someone to be his friend, but he did not. Instead he went to school in the fall, to morning kindergarten, and the other children were there and if you be nice, they will be nice to you, and then Nick would come over to play sometimes after school or especially in the summertime, and then came first grade and a new class with a lot more children, and then summer again, and nearly dead beneath the waves. Better to stay away from the ocean. Best to stay inside.
Long time ago. Now Nick was here, the real Nick, for a whole week. A few more days and it would all be over. He wanted Nick to stay, but the monsters were already here. It had taken all day for his parents to stop talking about the bones in the hole. He could have told them where the rest of the skeleton went. He would have said dig deeper, but now it didn’t matter. The paper with the skeleton bones was in the fire.
They had stayed up late, the four of them, with hot cocoa and popcorn and a movie on TV, and over the hours, his parents’ worries melted away. His father laughed at some silliness on the show. His mother stopped fretting and was nodding by the fire before she declared universal bedtime and off they all went. The mood, if not festive, had certainly improved from the anxiety of the afternoon. The boys brushed their teeth and put on their pajamas and went to his big warm double bed. Mommy and Daddy’s old bed, first bed, and now his own. They were still awake when the adults finished getting ready and the lights went out all over the house.
In the dark, they whispered to each other.
“Do you miss them?”
Nick drew out a sigh. “My parents? No, I guess I don’t. Maybe later, but not now. Parents always think you are going to miss them, but they don’t know that sometimes you wish they would just leave you alone.”
“I wish my parents would go away,” Jack Peter said. “Instead of me.”
“You would miss them if they went away for good.”
“Like you miss the baby.”
Nick did not answer but rolled over to stare at him. How did Jack Peter know he had been thinking about Baby?
Kicking off the comforter, Jack Peter slid out of bed and walked to his desk and turned on the table lamp. The light seemed to scream against the darkness, but he sat quietly and began to draw. He worked quickly and with great purpose.
“What are you doing?” Nick called from the bed. “We’ll get in trouble if your parents see the light under the door.”
“I need to make something before I forget,” Jack Peter said. He dashed off the drawing in minutes and scampered back to bed. In the closeness of the room, they soon fell asleep as if drugged.