Dismember

latefees. Trevor didn’t know what latefees were exactly, but he knew they were bad and that they meant spending more money. In Trevor’s mind, latefees was almost a curse word, and he never said it out loud.

The Gohan action figure he’d gotten at the toy store had already been a good surprise, and now he’d gotten new clothes on top of it. He didn’t know for sure how much those sorts of things cost, but he did know it was something, and that something was more than nothing. He put on the new clothes with mixed feelings. While he was ashamed at what he’d done and felt more than just a little guilty about the spent money—even if he didn’t totally understand things like bug jets—he was also happy to be getting into a clean pair of shorts. Standing around half naked in a mall bathroom wasn’t exactly his idea of comfortable.

The new socks, like the undies, were simple white things without even a red stripe at the toe, but Trevor didn’t care too much. Socks were socks. They kept your shoes from getting extra stinky and the chiggers from biting your ankles in the summertime, but otherwise they were worthless.

His dad had done a pretty good job wiping the poop off the floor around the toilet, but the stall was still nowhere near clean. Trevor didn’t want to move around any more than he had to until he’d gotten his shoes on, didn’t want to get his new socks dirty whether they were worthless or not. He’d noticed a wad of yellowed toilet paper in the corner beside a spider’s web when he tried to clean himself earlier. It was still there, along with a sticky-looking puddle of goo that looked like part potty, part spit, part blood, and all gross.

He slipped into the sneakers, and although he was not yet an expert lacer, he managed to tie himself a nice pair of looping knots that he figured were far from failures. Daddy had held the shoes under the hand dryer for a long time and gotten them mostly dried out, but they still squished a little when Trevor moved. No big deal. At least he was cleaned up. Who cared if he walked around sounding like the Swamp Thing?

He turned the latch on the stall door and exited with his head hanging. When his mommy ran to him and cupped his chin, lifted his face to hers and gave him a slobbery kiss on the nose, he couldn’t help but smile. She hugged him so tight it hurt, but he didn’t push away or tell her to take it easy because it also felt good.

Only after she’d finally let go of him, looking happy but also a little wet eyed, did Trevor finger the sides of his new shorts and say, “What do you think?”

Daddy said, “Sharp.”

And Mommy said, “As a razor.”

Trevor didn’t get it, but the two of them shared a smile, which was good. There had been enough yelling between his mommy and daddy to last Trevor a lifetime. He was always glad for the smiles.

His t-shirt had a pocket on the front—a nerd pocket is what some of his friends at school would call it—but Trevor had always liked extra pockets. Batman had a whole belt full of pockets, and something neat inside each one, and nobody called him nerdy. Trevor reached into the pocket and pulled out the crumpled five-dollar bill his mom had given him earlier. The shirt pocket had been the first one Trevor found when he’d scrambled for someplace to stash the bill on his desperate dash to the bathrooms. He hadn’t forgotten about it. The five had been his money for the merry-go-round, which he’d been looking so forward to riding.

But he didn’t think his parents would still let him go on the ride, and he certainly wouldn’t ask. He smoothed the bill out the best he could and offered it to his mommy.

“What’s this?”

Trevor pushed the money closer to her, but she didn’t take it, didn’t reach for it at all.

“I shouldn’t have asked to ride the merry-go-round,” he said and waved the bill, desperate for her to take it from him. “You should use this for the new shorts you had to buy.”

Mommy’s mouth came open like she was going to say something, but at first she didn’t. Instead, she dropped to her knees and pulled him in for another long hug. “Oh, hon,” she said finally. “You don’t need to worry about that kind of stuff.” She ran a hand through his hair and gave the back of his neck a gentle squeeze. Daddy stood by and said nothing, looked down at him the same way he had when Trevor had brought home the report card with all S’s, which was the best you could get in kindergarten.

“I’m sorry I scared you.” He wrapped his arms around his mommy’s neck and kissed her hard on the cheek.

She smiled with half her mouth, the way he’d always liked, and then patted him softly on the chest. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s get out of here before the bathroom police catch me.”

“Kay.”

“And then,” she said, standing, “we’re all three of us going to ride the carousel together. How’s that sound?”

Trevor nodded. He moved between his mommy and daddy and held out a hand for each of them.

“Sounds good, Mommy,” he said. And it was.

TWELVE

The truck skidded to a stop, and Zach looked around apprehensively, part of him thinking they’d gotten to their final destination and another part believing this was the spot where he’d die. When the kidnapper got out of the pickup and circled to Zach’s door, Zach briefly considered letting himself out of the belt, scooting across the seat, and shooting through the driver’s side door. He could run again, like he had at home and back on the mountain road before the man had loaded him into the truck, but he didn’t think it would do any good. Last time, he hadn’t gotten more than a hundred feet. If he’d been a little faster maybe, or had longer legs, but it was useless, almost stupid. Tempting as it might have been, he wasn’t going to get himself out of this situation by running.

The man wrenched open the door, and Zach craned his neck around, looking for any signs of civilization.

Nothing.

Just more stinking trees. The road ahead crested and then disappeared, running downhill into whatever unseen territory lay beyond. The road behind was still half obscured by settling clouds of dust and the smoky gray exhaust from the pickup’s tailpipe.

Zach allowed the man to unwind the seatbelt, not doing anything to help, not leaning forward when the guy yanked the belt out from behind his back. The kidnapper formerly known as Davy finally got Zach free, grabbed him under the armpits, and pulled him from the cab.

“Can’t leave you here,” the Davy man said, answering a question Zach hadn’t asked. “I don’t know enough about you yet.”

You don’t know anything about me, you freak show, Zach wanted to say, but he stayed quiet. When Davy set him down, the sole of Zach’s sneaker bent underneath him and he almost went sprawling, probably would have if the guy hadn’t grabbed him by the back of his shirt and pulled him upright. The collar of his t-shirt dug into his neck a little, and Zach choked like a hanged man.

Davy let him go. Zach tugged down the front of his shirt until it was no longer strangling him and lifted his shoe so the sole could flip back up into its regular position.

Now that he was loose, he raised his hand to his head, not expecting blood, but touching the wound with the tips of his fingers and examining them just to be sure. No blood, as he’d guessed, but the pressure from his probing fingers had brought back the pain. He wiped his hand on the side of his shirt, though he had nothing to wipe off, and sighed.

Where were they heading? Would this guy tell him to get down on his knees and then shoot him in the back of the head like the gangsters in the television shows his mom didn’t want him watching? Or was there, somewhere in a dark grove, a shallow grave just long enough and deep enough for the man to bury Zach alive?

No. Zach wouldn’t let himself think that way, wouldn’t give in to panic.

He waited a moment to see what would happen. The man took off for the trees, and Zach followed without being asked, looking all the time for something he might use as a weapon or a hidey-hole into which he could crawl. Maybe a forest ranger would suddenly appear and whisk him off to safety, or maybe a pack of wolves would leap