“I’m fine,” I say. “So what’s the third kind of sprinkler on our list?”
“I actually don’t know what this means,” says Alistair. “It says we need to find a soaker hose. Have you ever heard of a soaker hose?”
“Yeah,” I say weakly. “Look, I even know where we can find one.”
“Oh yeah?” he says, perking up now that I am showing a minor sparkle of interest in this stupid contest for babies. “What is a soaker hose?”
“It looks just like a regular garden hose, except it’s black and rough all over, like Lava soap. Water just sort of seeps out of it.”
“That seems stupid,” says Alistair. “So it’s just a broken garden hose?”
“Yeah, but maybe you just want to water a flower bed without messing up the soil,” I say. “I don’t know.”
Alistair and I are Irish twins. Born within a year of each other. I am older, but he is bigger. He is smarter, but I am in charge. Someday this is going to result in sexualities for both of us that require the perpetual mediations of good therapists.
“The Bountys have a soaker hose,” I said. “They use it for the tomatoes in their back garden.”
The Bountys are annoying hippies who are intent on growing their own food in the middle of Brooklyn. They are always leaving baskets of anemic brown tomatoes and shitty malformed squash on people’s doorsteps with little notes. Everybody hates the Bountys. First of all, they actually seem happy together in their self-contained world, and second, no one can figure out why they won’t leave everyone else in the neighborhood alone or at least join us in prosperous despair. Of course, the Bountys love days like this when the whole neighborhood is out and about.
We cut across two yards and hop the chain-link fence on the side of their house, behind the large bushes meant to keep dogs from digging up their precious vegetables. Their house is one of several on the block that is all the way open for the hunt. I’m worried that the Bountys are waiting here somewhere, ready to corner children and read their auras and tell them all about the healing powers of yoga and high-fiber cereal.
Their garden shack is closed, which I think is kind of weird. There is definitely a sheet of construction paper duct-taped to the aluminum siding. Alistair and I look at each other and then I push open the door.
Bunny Applewhite and Pom-Pom Egan snap around in the darkness. Bunny is slightly taller than he is. They are holding hands. They both smile at us sheepishly, dropping their hands and blushing. Obviously, they have been making out.
“Hey, it’s the Nylos!” says Pom-Pom Egan. “You guys are the real threat. The power team. Nylo means fun!”
The worst part is the expression on Bunny Applewhite’s face. I know exactly how she must feel. It is how I want to feel. How I have been anticipating feeling ever since Pom-Pom Egan announced that he would be participating in Scavenger Hunt Day this year since he wasn’t spending the summer at computer camp.
“Sorry,” I say, shutting the door to the shed. “Didn’t know you guys were in here.”
It is hard to look at Alistair. He looks so full of sympathy and pain that I can’t meet his eyes. He looks at me, pursing his lips, worried as hell. Why does he look like he is about to cry? Doesn’t anything belong only to me? I am so tired of my family. Of how big and sprawling and needy it is.
“I have to use the bathroom,” I say. “I’ll be right back.”
“Where are you going?”
“Back to our house.”
“You can probably use the bathroom at the Bountys’,” he says.
“Nope,” I say, running away. “Go back to the shed and get that soaker hose. I bet nobody even knows it’s in there.”
I run as fast as I can down the street to our summer house, a gabled bright blue Victorian with a turret on top. These massive suburban houses are so different from the rest of Brooklyn, but they’re near the beach, and it’s usually nice to be around all these other kids, unlike the rest of the summer when we’re trapped in Nantucket.
There’s a loud noise just as I head up to the front door, a flat crack like a tree getting hit by lightning. Everyone stops what they’re doing up and down the street and looks at our house. It sounds like somebody slammed a door and broke it right off the hinges. Like they fucking destroyed it. I run up the porch stairs.
Even though I have lived in New York City my whole life, this is my very first gunshot, the very first data point on a dotted line. I don’t know to recognize or be afraid of gunshots yet.
Somebody shouts my name, but I don’t stop. I am going to cry my damn eyes out about Pom-Pom and I don’t want anybody to see. I fling open the front door.
I nearly slip and break my neck on the blood pooling in the foyer, soaking past the carpet. I see Mom in the living room, the room where we aren’t allowed to play on account of all the nice white furniture. She picked out the furniture and carpet herself. She calls it the White Room. White curtains, white carpet.
Now the white curtains and white carpet are covered in blood and brains. A mean, snub-nosed pistol is on the floor. The pistol is very far from her hand. Did her hand jerk when her brain was perforated?
Where is my father? He is supposed to be in the house. Is he still upstairs, coordinating the game with a bunch of walkie-talkies, waiting for the winners to return and claim their prizes? I begin screaming. I’m nearly knocked over as everyone in the neighborhood floods in behind me to see the carnage.
2
It is 2019. My office is on the top floor of the
