I managed to jog the first mile, but the air was thicker than tree sap, and the pizza I’d eaten for lunch instead of the “BLT” squirmed in my stomach like a bottled-up squid. I tried to keep up my pace for the second mile, but I developed a stitch in my side, right under my ribs, and I was panting so hard, I thought I would faint. When everyone else had finished and gone to the locker room to change, I still had two laps to go, and Coach Raskin made sure I completed them.
The first bell had already rung, so the showers were empty, which I was grateful for. Showers after gym had been mandatory in middle school, and I’d spent years perfecting how to be naked for the least amount of time. The other boys seemed comfortable in their own skin; I felt like an alien. If I hadn’t been soaked with sweat and smelled like the inside of one of Charlie’s sneakers, I would have doubled up on deodorant and skipped the shower. But since I was already going to be late for last period, I decided it didn’t matter. Besides, I didn’t want to reek when Diego took me home.
Even though he’d clearly mentioned his ex-girlfriend—possibly to make sure I knew he wasn’t into me—I am more confused by him than ever. But I know what it means that I get excited when I see him and bummed when I don’t. I’m starting to like him, and that’s a losing scenario for everyone. Even if the world wasn’t coming to an end, Diego and I are an impossibility. Beyond all reason, he wants to be my friend but would never be interested in more.
Even if things were different—if the world weren’t ending and Diego were into me—I can’t take the chance that it was my fault Jesse hanged himself and that I might cause Diego to do the same. It might seem ludicrous to believe I caused Jesse’s suicide, but in the dearth of answers he left behind, it makes as much sense as anything else.
The warning bell rang, and I rushed to rinse the last of the shampoo from my hair and shut off the water. I retrieved my towel from the hook on the wall and tried to dry off in the humid air. The best I could hope to do was mitigate the disaster.
I was drying my hair, the towel draped over my head, and didn’t hear their footsteps.
They were on me before I knew what was happening. One on each arm, dressed in black, wearing alien masks. They weren’t my aliens. The oval eyes gave them away. There were no shadows, either, and sluggers wouldn’t have grabbed me and slapped a sweaty hand over my mouth to prevent me from screaming.
The three aliens wrestled me to the floor. They were stronger, but I kicked and bucked and tried to run, dignity be damned. My knee slammed into the tile floor, and my leg went numb. An alien stuffed a pair of boxers into my mouth, while another bound my wrists together with tape. My shoulders ached from struggling like they were going to pop out of their sockets. When they finished with my hands, they pulled my legs out from under me and secured my ankles, leaving me prone on the wet, mildewed floor. I sobbed and tried to breathe, but I snorted water up my nose instead.
This is how I die. In the midst of the chaos in my mind, that’s the thought that calmed me. This didn’t matter. Nothing they did to me was important. I’d been ready to let the world end, prepared to sit back and wait for the apocalypse. What did it matter if I died a few weeks early? What did I matter at all?
“Hurry up!”
“Where’s Coach?”
“Taking a dump.”
“Bring it, bring it!”
The tile was slippery, and I swung my legs around, trying to squirm away. The tallest alien kicked me in the testicles with his grass-stained sneaker. The pain was excruciating, and it clawed through my stomach and up my spine. I gagged, trying not to puke with the underwear in my mouth. My vision blurred around the edges, and I thought for a moment the sluggers had come to save me. But no one was coming to save me.
Everything hurt. It hurt to move and breathe. I wished they’d kill me and be done with it. I looked up; one of them stood over me with a five-gallon bucket. I swore I saw him grinning through his garish alien mask. “Now you can be an alien too, Space Boy.” He tilted the bucket and poured green paint on my chest and legs and arms. It was cold and spread across my stomach like pancake batter.
“Close your eyes, Space Boy.” I clenched my eyes shut and held my breath as he emptied the bucket over my head.
“Shit, guys, come on. Time’s up.”
I heard the empty thud when the bucket hit the floor.
“Hold on. One more thing.” I was too afraid to move when one of them pulled something down over my head. I blew paint out my nostrils and, when I breathed, it smelled like latex and cut grass.
I lay sprawled on the shower floor, waiting for the next kick, but it didn’t come.
Look at you. Look at what you’ve become without me. Jesse’s voice was muffled through the paint and whatever else covered my head. But it wasn’t him. Jesse was dead. I’d seen his body. His parents had insisted on an open-casket funeral, and I’d looked. Despite my brother’s warning not to, I’d looked. He was so dead, and that last image of Jesse was the one that remained with me. Dead was the way I saw him from that point forward. You’re a punch line, Henry. The butt of a cruel joke.
It wasn’t Jesse.