Hush, Now

I grunted and looked away from the window, fanning my chest with my shirt.

"Better crack a window. It's baking in here." Baking. The windows act like magnifying glasses. I used to burn ants. That's nothing: I used to electrocute grasshoppers. Cats fear me. You bastard; you would kill a cat. We chattered and the squirrels outside in the trees shut up and the sun went down. I stole another look out the window. The face was gone, but my imagination tried to reconstruct it anyway, giving it two eyes and a scrub of whiskers on the chin and the one cheek tilted toward us. I made it look familiar.

"Hey, look at that," I joked. Aron saw a tidal wave, Gary saw a pair of legs, and Benj sneezed. It was eight o'clock; time for my little brother's favorite show. I said so, and that got us on about how crappy the stations were these days, how America doesn't make more than glorified static, and not just in its television, oh no, but also in its politics and school and anywhere a figurehead is erected. Aron was saying the F-word a lot, now that his Mom couldn't hear. He still glanced over his shoulder every time, unconsciously -- I could tell because his eyes barely moved -- as though looking for hidden cameras or a face.

When the sun finally let up its last hold on the horizon, I had to pee. There was no indoor plumbing; I had to go to the camp's restrooms, a hundred yards over cheap gravel. Benj had to go, too, so we crunched alongside one another, eyes flicking between our sandaled feet and the orange phosphor lamp blazing above the door of the men's. He said a couple things, and I kept saying, "What?" because our feet were too loud. So we started walking syncopated, setting up a rhythm and counter, embellishing and starting to hum right when we hit the dull concrete and went to our business.

We didn't talk. Only women talk in bathrooms.

By the time we were done and heading back, my imagination was starting to beat in my heart. The small of my back itched with the feeling of a phantom watching me. I saw the face when I blinked. I quickened my pace and Benj did a little dance to keep up. I knew he was thinking the same things as I was because he said as much, working his fingers into the crack in the silence and wiggling them. We laughed; we wouldn't tell Gary and Aron who were probably holding it in so they wouldn't have to make the trip, holding it in until their bladders burst.

"You know that gangsters used to kill people by getting them drunk and" then I opened the door and felt as though ice had been dumped on my tongue. My voice froze. My eyes let go. Gary was leaning against the dark window, his forehead and hair leaving greasy streaks across the pane. He was massaging his throat. Aron was kicking the wall. The air felt thick, like instead of displacing when I came in, I merely compressed what was already there. My gut started churning. I opened my mouth to ask him what was going on but there was the ice again on my tongue and on my thoughts, sharper, like a sickle. Why was there a photograph all of this was as though in a photograph I had never seen before, frozen, frozen things can breathe, but slowly in and out once each change of season, once each change of expression. Cold and silent.