Everybody Sees the Ants (10 page)

Aunt
Jodi is vacuuming the living room for what seems like forever. Even after I emerge from the guest room and sit at the table, she vacuums. She keeps ramming it into the couch legs, which means she’s probably looking at me instead of what she’s supposed to be doing.

Aunt Jodi has arranged the breakfast cereal boxes from large to small on the table. The ants are lined in front of them, in the same big-to-small order, arms crossed, looking tough. I look at them and they wave.
Good morning, Lucky Linderman. How did you sleep? Still using those pink plastic weights?

I wonder if the ants will ever go away. I remember wondering if my dreams would ever go away, too. Of course, they didn’t. Maybe the ants are the second step toward complete Linderman insanity.

I pick out the Cheerios and pour them into the bowl at the only place setting left on the table. I fetch milk from the fridge, and on my way back I see Jodi just standing there watching me, with the vacuum on, but at a standstill, sucking the carpet right off the carpet.

When I sit down, I notice the pill.

The minute I notice it, I ignore it.

The minute I ignore it, Jodi turns off the high-pitched whir of the vacuum.

“How’d you sleep?” Jodi asks.

I nod to acknowledge her question. “I expected more traffic,” I say, and cram some Cheerios into my mouth. Each bite makes my scab itch more. I chew in a way that makes me look crazy—moving my scabbed cheek in grandiose motions to scratch without scratching.

“Yep. It’s quiet,” she says. “Safe, too. Dave and I sometimes take night walks and we never see any funny business.”

Funny business
. It’s like she wants to be old or something.

“You should try it,” she says.

I nod. “I’ll take one tonight—maybe Mom will come with me.”

“I mean
that
,” she says, pointing to the pill.

“I don’t take pills.”

“Maybe it would help,” she says.

I get up, take my cereal bowl to the sink and rinse it. “Maybe it wouldn’t.”

As I move to put my bowl in the dishwasher, she stops me. “I’ll do that.”

She opens the top rack, and I see that her dishes are also arranged in some sort of dishwasher feng shui.

Swimming is the only way to cope with being outside during the day here, even though chlorine is only going to dry out my scab. Staying inside for Jodi’s morning TV routine is out of the question.

The pool is short, and I can only get in about five strokes of freestyle before I have to turn. Towels are unnecessary because the sun bakes you dry in about fifteen seconds… and then you have to jump into the pool again so you don’t fry on the spot. How do people live like this?

The pill is still at my plate during lunch, but this time Mom sees it first.

“That’s Jodi’s seat, Luck,” she says, and motions for me to move over.

“No. He’s right,” Jodi says as she walks from the kitchen, balancing an array of oven-warmed, odd-smelling food. She puts the greasy chicken nuggets in front of me proudly and adds, “What do you dip with?”

I don’t eat chicken nuggets, but I know I can’t be rude. “I’ll take honey, please.”

My mother is staring at the pill.

“Honey? Ugh! All that sugar is bad for you!”

I nod because I do not have the energy to educate Aunt Jodi on how if she’s feeding me chicken freaking nuggets, most likely made out of the disgusting sphincter parts of
hormone-injected, badly treated factory chickens, then a few tablespoons of honey are the least of our worries.

“What’s that?” Mom finally asks.

I say, “A pill.”

She gives me the look. The look says:
I know it’s a pill, Lucky. I wasn’t asking you
.

Jodi throws of couple of sheets of fake-looking “roast beef” on a piece of bread with some kind of white cheese product on top and warms it in the microwave. She tops it with ready-made gravy straight from a jar. Just watching turns my guts.

“Jodi?” Mom says, and Aunt Jodi looks up. “What’s that?” She’s pointing at the pill.

“That?”

Mom leans over, picks up the pill and holds it up between her index finger and thumb. “This.”

“Just something to make him feel better.”

“I feel fine,” I say.

Mom is staring at Jodi, and Jodi is staring hard at the open-faced sandwich as she saws through it, puts half on a plate for Mom and sits down. She picks up her half, slops it through the blob of congealing gravy and shoves it into her mouth and takes a bite. While she’s chewing, she finally looks up and acknowledges Mom.

“He’s fifteen,” Mom says, stone-faced. “Keep your pills away from him.”

“I was only trying to help.” While Jodi’s talking, a bit of food escapes her mouth and lands on my plate, next to the
lukewarm, nasty chicken nuggets that I am not eating. “It’s just Prozac.”

“He doesn’t need Prozac.”

Jodi puts her hand out toward Mom. “Give it here.” And when Mom does, Jodi pops it into her mouth and swallows it.

Mom leaves her lunch on the table and goes back to her laps.

A few minutes after she’s gone, Jodi says, “Does she always swim this much?”

“Yeah. It’s her thing.”

“Huh. You’d think she’d get sick of it.”

“Not yet,” I say.

“Weird,” she says, gobbling the last of her sandwich and washing it down with a Diet Coke.

“Not for our family,” I say. This makes Jodi laugh, and when she gets up to clear the rest of the table, she musses my hair a little with her free hand.

At midafternoon I take a break from my book and go to the guest room to use the bathroom, and I find Mom on her bed, gorging on a bag of granola, and I’m starving, so I eat some, too.

Between crunchy mouthfuls, Mom says, “I don’t think you need pills. I mean—I’m worried about you, but not that much.”

“I know.”

“It wasn’t her place to do that to you,” she says. “She just doesn’t think.”

“Don’t worry. I wouldn’t have taken it.”

“Good. But I want you to know I didn’t tell her to do that.”

“Well, yeah.”

“I mean—I’m worried about you, but not that worried.”

“You just said that,” I say. The ants say:
Hey! Don’t be a smart-ass
.

“I want you to get it. Do you get it?” she asks.

“Yeah.”

“Good.”

Then she looks at me, her eyebrows raised. “You’re sure? I shouldn’t be
worried
worried, right?”

“Right. Nothing to worry about. I’m fine.”

Now
. I’m fine
now
.

When Dave gets home, I lift weights with him. We do different muscle groups again so I don’t hurt myself. When I sweat, it stings Ohio, but I don’t care.

“You’re digging this, aren’t you?” Dave asks.

“I am.”

“Only three days and you’re already feeling great, am I right?”

“Yep.”

It feels really good to release the built-up bad energy from the last eight years of my life. And it feels really good to spend time with a cool guy. He’s not scared of what I might say. He’s not afraid to give me advice. Already I feel something good coming from this. I find myself wondering what it would be like if I could trade Dad for Dave.

The ants say:
Be careful what you wish for
.

About ten minutes before we’re done lifting, Dave goes
over to the tool bench by the door and clicks off the radio. Then the door squeaks open, and Aunt Jodi pokes her head in.

“Five minutes.”

“ ’Kay.”

“Don’t come in all sweaty.”

“ ’Kay.”

As we shut down the garage for the night, Dave calls me over to the corner to show me a scorpion hiding behind a bag of pebbles. It’s really small.

“Is it a baby?” I ask.

“Nope. That’s full grown.”

“Something that small can kill me?”

“Well, it can hurt you really bad, but it probably won’t kill you. We have black widow spiders and rattlesnakes here, too, though.
They
could kill you.”

“Huh.”

I think of those microscopic things that killed so many soldiers in Southeast Asia. The parasites and bacteria and malaria. I decide if I was going to go, I’d want to be eaten by a tiger or something. At least I would know it was coming.

Ten minutes later, as I stare at a plate of so-called lasagna that once had freezer burn so bad that the top layer of noodles is still brittle and covered in a white film, I decide to share my I-just-saw-my-first-scorpion story, and though Dave told me it couldn’t kill me, I say, “Seriously. I’d rather be eaten by a tiger than killed by something so small.”

“See?” Aunt Jodi says to Mom. “You need to take him to see someone.”

“I’m sitting right here,” I say. “I can hear you.”

“Good. Maybe you’ll stop scaring your mother with talk of suicide.”

I laugh. I laugh because what else is there to do? I can’t keep up with Aunt Jodi’s freaky mood swings. I don’t know when I’m allowed to joke or be sarcastic. Okay, well, no. I know today I am not allowed. To joke. About being eaten by a tiger.

Too late.

Jodi looks horrified that I’m laughing.

“Lucky, stop laughing,” Mom says, monotone.

I stop laughing and go back to frowning. I reach up and press on my scab where it itches the most. The urge to pick it is like nothing I’ve ever experienced. Mom tells me that I will probably have a scar anyway but that if I pick, half of my face will look blotchy, and I decide I’m weird enough already without being blotchy.

“I thought it was a funny joke, Luck,” Uncle Dave says.

Jodi shoots him a look.

“What? A kid can’t joke? One minute you tell him to be happy, and the minute he does, you say it’s a sign that he’s nuts? Sheesh. Make up your mind,” he says. The ants form a rotating halo above his head. They sing that high-pitched note that angels sing.

I take my first Arizona night walk after dinner. The temperature is bearable. I couldn’t convince Mom to come with me, but I’m glad. She was happy enough reading her book, and I need time alone after that dinner conversation from hell.

Everything street-side in this development is well lit. The only shadows exist close to homes, under cars and around the occasional tree or cactus display. I walk until I feel I’ve gone around too many corners, then turn back so I won’t get lost, and then explore a different direction. I do this until I have walked three cul-de-sacs, and decide that I am too boring to live. The ants say:
You really are a mama’s boy, Linderman
. I check my watch, and it’s only been fifteen minutes.

I decide to be more exciting, and I walk without caring if I get lost. After another fifteen minutes, I am back on the road behind Jodi and Dave’s house.

That’s where I see the ninja.

She’s nearly invisible, all in black, moving through the pebbled back-lawn areas parallel to me, from one little shadow to another, stopping occasionally to look behind her to check if she’s being followed. When she turns her head, hair—so long and straight that it touches the asphalt when she’s crouched down—flares out like a skirt would if she were spinning.

I slow my pace so I can see her next move. She darts from behind a parked SUV to the corner of the next house and then disappears behind it.

I slow more. I stop. I wait for her to appear again on the other side of the house, but she is gone.

I am in the dark jungle, hiding behind a tree. I have a dozen burning-hot, greasy chicken nuggets in my pockets. I can feel
the grease burning my thighs. Granddad is sitting under a small lean-to inside the camp perimeter. The gate is open.

After I’ve been there a few minutes, Granddad whispers, “You can come out now, Lucky. Frankie is sleeping.”

I sit on the muddy ground with him and offer him the nuggets. I don’t tell him that they are probably made out of chicken’s assholes. I watch him eat them slowly—not at all like you’d think a starving man would eat. I put one in my mouth and chew it about a hundred times before my throat opens enough to swallow it.

In the jungle outside this little camp, there is movement. There always is. Birds moving at night. Snakes. Rats. Predators. Prey.

“Don’t worry about them,” he says. “They’re probably running food or water or ammo. Probably digging tunnels right here under us. They’re like ninjas.”

Doesn’t he know the war is over?

I hand him another chicken nugget and he eats it. “I hope you’re eating better than this at home, Luck.”

I want to tell him about how Nader beat me up again. I want to tell him about how Aunt Jodi thinks I should take Prozac. I want to tell him about the ants because I know he’d understand. He’s got Frankie. I’ve got Nader. Maybe he even sees ants, too.