houses I know the address of.
It would take us a year to walk. Eric suggests we take the bus.
“He lives on Desert Wind Drive,” I say. “It’s over by the—”
“I know where it is,” Eric says.
I don’t ever take the bus. It’s not the city bus, it’s this little shuttle they added to our suburb a couple years ago, I guess to ferry around little old ladies and take kids who can’t drive yet to and from the movie theater. When it came out they had this big logo design contest. Tony DiAvalo submitted this winking cartoon bus he was sure was gonna win, but when it didn’t he told everybody the city should be glad they didn’t pick his design because the whole thing had been a goof and his cartoon was filled with hidden joints and subliminal gang symbols.
“Is your brother going to kick our ass?” Eric says as we wait for the shuttle.
“As long as we don’t get caught, they’ll probably just chalk it up to it being Halloween. Random prank.”
“What prank ARE we going to do?” Eric asks.
I don’t know and I tell him we’ll figure it out on the bus, which has just pulled up with the winning logo, a boxy little cartoon bird flying in the direction the bus is going, painted on the side. We climb up. It’s free so we don’t have to put in any money or anything.
When we’re climbing on, Eric says, “Hey, Eulalio.”
“What’s goin’ on, man?” says the bus driver, whom I guess is Eulalio.
“You know the bus driver?” I ask as we make our way to the back of the bus, past a couple girls our age dressed as sexy Native Americans, and an old man in jogging clothes.
“Yeah, I take the bus a lot,” Eric says.
We take seats at the back of the bus. I’m extra careful with the bag to make sure the can of wood stain doesn’t roll over and crush the eggs. The cheese and rope are a buffer. “I mean, besides just egging his house… what can we do?”
“I don’t know,” Eric says. “I’ve been thinking about it…. If we tied an egg to the rope…”
“Right…” I say.
“Or if we tied the can with some rope…”
“Okay…”
“And then the cheese… The flashlight could…”
“Hmm.”
“To be honest,” Eric says, “I’m just combining all the things we have in my head like some Rube Goldberg contraption.”
“Okay, well, the contraption you keep thinking of… what does it do?”
“Make omelets.”
“Shit.” It’s the eggs and the cheese. The effect of those two items together makes everything around them seem breakfast-y. And “start your day off right” is not the message we’re hoping this prank will send.
“We could stain the eggs brown,” Eric says. “When he goes to clean them up he’ll think he’s been egged with some weird sort of animal’s egg as opposed to just a regular chicken’s egg.”
“I don’t think he’s going to think that.”
“You’re right.”
We hate to settle for a conventional egging, even though winging eggs at the side of some dude’s house would be a first for both of us. Like, with
The bus makes a right into Alan’s subdivision, The Cliffs At Tapatillo Point. “I mean, if all else fails,” I say, “there’s no shame in just egging his house.”
“Right,” Eric says. “Or his car.”
Eric signals Eulalio and we get out on the corner of Mountain Terrace and Desert Wind Drive. It’s getting later so fewer little kids are out. Knots of older kids are up and down the street with trick-or-treat bags, not quite our age but close. They’re rowdier and pushier than the little kids and their costumes are shittier and they don’t have parents straggling along behind them. I feel like there’s a window after you get too old to trick-or-treat supervised by a parent where you can do it with your friends by yourselves and as long as you push and swear enough and don’t try too hard, you can keep getting free candy for a few years. I had a couple years like that in middle school with my friends Ethan and Chung Hoon. One year we were the Monty Python lumberjacks and the next year we were chess pieces. Chung Hoon moved away after that and Ethan went to a different high school. Actually, we did try pretty hard, but we definitely pushed one another and swore, too.
Alan’s house is at the end of the cul-de-sac. My brother’s car isn’t here but Alan’s is parked out front, covered in stickers from bands, newer stickers starting to cover old ones of bands Alan’s decided he doesn’t like anymore.
I get these knots in my stomach when there’s even the remote possibility of getting in trouble. I’ve gotten them since I was a kid. It’s not really a guilty feeling, it’s more a fear that I’m going to get caught and somebody’s going to tell my parents. I get them less since my mom moved away. I have one as we walk up to Alan’s house, but it doesn’t make me want to stop. It almost makes me want to keep going with whatever it is we’re going to do, which will almost certainly be stupid.
“Let’s go around back,” I say.
“Why?” Eric says.
I shrug. Eric nods. We go around back.
The pool light is on even though it’s October. All the lights in the house are off except for what I guess is Alan’s bedroom. I know it’s Alan’s bedroom because through the blinds I can see Alan lying on his bed and a girl is lying across him, going down on him. We were sneaky and quiet before but now we are frozen. The pool filter hums and Alan’s got some sort of music on, loud, not the kind of music I think I would put on but what the fuck do I know. Though he’s my brother’s friend and Eric’s tormentor I don’t think either of us has ever seen this sort of thing before. I definitely haven’t outside of the Internet and I don’t know that Eric has, ever. I don’t even know if he knows there is such a thing.
“Oh my God,” Eric whispers.
The girl is rubbing her boob up and down Alan’s cock.
The thing that’s weird about it, besides all the things that are obviously weird about it, is that it’s real: I know that sounds dumb or oversimple but it’s the fact that, like I said, up until this point the only time I’ve ever seen anything remotely resembling this is in porn, and this is most definitely not porn. Alan is sort of fat and the girl, who I actually think I might recognize, is almost too skinny and they’re more dressed than they are naked. Alan has this hoodie on that I recognize from when he forgot it at our house for like a week and it was draped over the chair by the front door, green with white lettering that reads THE WORLD’S BEST FUCKING SKATERS, and it’s real and if it’s happening right now it’s happening all over in the backs of normal-looking houses all the time while Eric and I sit indoors and draw. I mean, you hear rumors, even if you’re not friends with anyone named in the rumors, but I guess I always figured it was like fights: you know, people say they’re going to kick each other’s asses but all they really do is meet on the basketball court after school and push each other and call each other “bitch” enough so that nobody will be considered one when they both end up walking away and not actually fighting. Just like fighting is mostly just talk about fighting, I figured sex at our age was mostly just talking about sex. But it really happens. People born not long before me rub each other all over each other in their bedrooms with the music up.
“Let’s go around front,” Eric says.
It is a good five seconds before either of us moves.
Back around front we’re a couple of kids with rotten eggs on Halloween and even though we’re not dressed as Disney characters and saying “twick or tweat” with adorable speech impediments we might as well be. We’re standing on the curb. Eric takes the eggs out of the bag, opens the carton, and looks at them. I grab one and throw it at Alan’s house. I guess the driveway is longer than it looks or I am weaker than I already feel because it doesn’t even make it. It breaks in front of a red clay pot next to the front door. I am wondering if being so awful at being a
