The Guardians

them.

Looking back, I'm almost convinced it was someone else occupying my skin in the celar that night. Someone else whispering in my head, encouraging, taunting.

Teling me that it was okay, that none of this counted anyway.

You've come this far already, the boy said but didn't say . You don't want to miss all the fun, do you?

For the first hour or so, the coach didn't answer any of our questions. He just repeated a question of his own.

'How do you think this is going to end?'

We had no reply to this, only more questions. Like why he brought Miss Langham here. How she ended up dead.

'Maybe it was some kind of accident,' Randy suggested.

'You're some kind of accident.'

'I'm trying to help.'

'Help? I need Handy Randy's help?' He turned to Carl. 'Please. Shoot me now.'

'We're looking for an explanation, that's al.'

'Why do you think I owe you that? I mean, look at yourselves.'

And we did. For the first time since we'd filed down the celar stairs and made the coach stand with his back to the wal, we let our gaze move off him and to each other. We looked at least five years younger than we pictured ourselves. Carl especialy. The biggest one of us reduced to a child who needed both hands to aim the revolver an inch higher than the toes of his boots.

'How do you think this is going to end?' the coach asked again.

I think now that if Ben hadn't taken a step away at that point, if he hadn't made us focus on his scuffling movement instead of lingering on the shrunken, stiled outlines of ourselves in the dark, we might stil have avoided the worst yet to come. Argued a defence based on the stupidity of teenage boys (at least we hadn't kiled ourselves by driving drunk into a tree, the more common end for the worst sort of Perth County misadventure). It was the conclusion of our grim, exhilarating ride. And now, facing the coach's question, we found we had run out of ways to fil the next moment, and this gap had let the awakening light of absurdity in.

But Ben plugged the hole up again by moving. By rustling through some orange crates piled up around the worktable and returning to stand within range of Carl's flashlight beam. A length of frayed extension cord in his hand.

'We can use this to tie him up,' he said.

We puled the parka hood over the coach's head and swaddled him with rank blankets discovered in the main hal closet. (Carl wondered if we should gag him as wel, but the coach told us nobody could hear him down there no matter how loudly he screamed. 'And how are you so sure of that?' Ben asked.) Then we made our way up to the kitchen.

After closing the celar door we felt the house seal shut, the air silty and stil. For a time we waited there, as though there was something more to be done but we'd forgotten what it was. Standing on individual squares of the checkered linoleum like chess pieces.

'We can't leave him down there forever,' Randy said.

'It's up to him.' Ben started toward the back door and pushed it open an inch. 'We'l take turns visiting him tomorrow. I'l come first, and we can decide on a rotation at school. When he makes a statement we can use, he can go.'

'What if he doesn't?'

'He has to,' Ben said, and started out.

Randy folowed. I wanted nothing more than to be with them. Outside, breathing the cold-hardened air, sure of where I was. But I stayed. Not out of hesitation over leaving the coach behind. I stayed because the house wanted me to. It liked our being here, was warmed by the mischief being performed within it. I could feel the plaster ceilings and paneled wals closing toward me in a suffocating embrace, the too-long hug of a creepy uncle at the end of Thanksgiving dinner.

'Wait.'

I spun around, expecting to see the unimaginable behind me. The boy.

'Fuck, man,' I gasped. 'We gotta go.'

' Wait,' Carl said.

He focused on me. A combined expression of fear and insane amusement, as though he was as likely to run crying into the night as stick his dad's gun into my mouth just to watch how my brains would slide down the wal.

'Can't you hear it?' he said, stepping closer.

'Hear what?'

' Don't lie.'

And then he did raise the gun.

'Sure. I can hear it too.'

'What is it?'