Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend (9 page)

Then I hear two more bangs. Then the sound of glass breaking. A window, I think. A window is broken. Max’s bedroom window is broken. I don’t know how I know it, but I do. Max’s mom and dad are already on the second floor. I can hear them running down the hall toward Max’s room.

I’m still sitting in the cushy chair. I’m stuck for a second, too. Not like Max, but the screams and the bangs and the breaking of glass have me stuck in place. I don’t know what to do.

Max says that a good soldier is
good under pressure
. I am not good under pressure. I am bad under pressure. I don’t know what to do.

Then I do.

I get up and go to the front door. I pass through the door and step out onto the front porch. I catch a glimpse of a boy just as he disappears behind the house across the street. It’s the Tylers’ house. Mr and Mrs Tyler are old people. They don’t have little boys, so I know this boy is just using their backyard to escape. I think about chasing him for a second, but I don’t need to.

I know who it is.

Even if I caught up to him, there is nothing that I could do.

I turn and look at the house. I expect to see holes in the house. Maybe sparks and fire. But it’s just eggs. Eggshells and yolk are running down the frame around Max’s bed-room window. And his window is broken. The glass on part of the window is gone.

I don’t hear Max screaming anymore.

He’s stuck.

There is no screaming when he is stuck.

When Max gets stuck, there’s nothing anyone can do for him. His mom will rub his arm or stroke the hair on his head, but I think that this only helps his mom feel better. I don’t think Max even notices. Max eventually gets unstuck on his own. And even though Max’s mom is worried that this will be
the worst episode that Max has ever had
, Max never gets more stuck or less stuck. He just gets stuck. The only thing that changes is how long he gets stuck. Since Max has never had his bedroom window break and glass land on his bed while he was sleeping, I think he’s going to be stuck for a while this time.

When Max gets stuck, he sits with his knees pulled really tight into his chest and he rocks back and forth and makes a whining sound. His eyes are open, but it’s like they can’t see anything. He really can’t hear anything either. Max once told me that when he’s stuck, he can hear the people around him, but it sounds like they are coming from a television in the neighbors’ house – fake and far away.

Kind of like how Graham sounded before she disappeared.

So there’s nothing I can say or do to help.

That’s why I’m going to the gas station. I’m not being mean. I’m just not needed here.

I waited for the police to show up and ask Max’s mom and dad a bunch of questions. The police officer, who was much shorter and skinnier than the police officers on television, took some pictures of the house and the window and Max’s room, and wrote everything down in a little notepad. He asked Max’s parents if they knew why someone might egg our house and they said no.

‘It’s Halloween,’ Max’s dad said. ‘Don’t lots of people get egged?’

‘They don’t have their windows broken with rocks,’ the little police officer said. ‘And it looks as if the person throwing the eggs was aiming specifically at your son’s window.’

‘How would they know it was Max’s window?’ his mom asked.

‘You told me that the window was full of
Star Wars
decals,’ the little police officer said. ‘Right?’

‘Oh. Yes.’

Even I knew the answer to that one.

‘Is Max having trouble with anyone at school?’ the police officer asked.

‘No,’ Max’s dad said, talking so fast that Max’s mom didn’t have a chance to speak. Like he was afraid to give her a chance to speak. ‘Max does well in school. No problems at all.’

Unless you count pooping on a bully’s head.

CHAPTER 14

The gas station is at the end of the street and six blocks over. It’s open all the time. It never closes like the grocery store and the other gas station down the street, and that’s why I like it so much. I can go out in the middle of the night and still find people who are awake. If I made a list of my favorite places in the whole wide world, I think Mrs Gosk’s classroom would win, but I think the gas station would be second.

When I walk through the door tonight, Sally and Dee are on duty. Sally is usually a girl’s name, but this Sally is a boy.

For a second, I think of Graham, my girl friend with a boy’s name.

I once asked Max if Budo is usually a boy’s name and he said yes, but he crinkled his eyebrows when he said it, so I don’t think that he was sure.

Sally is even skinnier and even shorter than the police officer who visited the house tonight. He is practically tiny. I don’t think that his real name is Sally. I think that people call him Sally because he’s smaller than most girls.

Dee is standing in the candy bar and Twinkie aisle, putting more candy bars and Twinkies out for people to buy. Twinkies are little yellow cakes that everyone makes fun of but everyone eats, so Dee is always filling up the Twinkie shelf. Her hair is always wrapped up in tight curls and she is chewing gum. She is always chewing gum. She chews gum like she is chewing with her whole body. Everything moves when she chews. Dee is always happy and angry at the same time. She gets mad at lots of little things but always smiles while she is yelling about them. She loves to yell and to complain, but I think the yelling and complaining make her happy.

I just think that she is funny. I love her. If I made a list of all the human persons except for Max who I would like to talk to, I think Mrs Gosk would win, but I think Dee would win, too.

Sally is behind the counter, holding a clipboard and pretending to count the boxes of cigarettes that hang in a plastic case over his head. He is actually watching the small television on the back counter. He does this all the time. I don’t recognize the show, but it has police officers in it, like most of the shows on television.

There’s one customer in the store. An older man who is wandering in the back of the store near the coolers, peeking through the glass for the right bottle of juice or soda. He is not a regular. A regular is someone who comes to the gas station all the time.

Every day for some of them.

Dee and Sally don’t mind the regulars, but Dorothy, who sometimes works overnights, too, hates the regulars. She says, ‘Of all the places these deadbeats can be spending their time, why would they want to hang out in a godforsaken gas station?’

I guess I’m a regular here, too. Out of all the places that I could spend my time, I come here, too.

I don’t care what Dorothy thinks. I love this place. This was the first place where I felt safe when I started leaving Max at night.

It was Dee who made me feel safe.

I’m standing over by Dee when she notices that Sally isn’t working. ‘Hey, Sally! You gonna stop playing with yourself and finish inventory?’

Sally holds his hand up and points at Dee with his middle finger. He does this a lot. I used to think that he was raising his hand to ask a question, like Max does when he wants to ask Mrs Gosk a question or like Meghan was doing when I saw Graham for the last time. But I think it means more than that because Sally never seems to have a question to ask. Sometimes Dee points her middle finger back at him, and when she does it, she sometimes adds the phrase
Fuck you
, which I know is inappropriate because Cissy Lamont once got caught saying it to Jane Feber in the cafeteria and got in a lot of trouble for it. It’s almost like Sally and Dee are high-fiving each other without touching. But I think it’s supposed to be a way of acting rude, like sticking your tongue out at a person when you don’t like them, because Sally does this only when Dee is being mean to him. But Sally never does it when a customer is being mean and I’ve seen customers be ten times meaner than Dee. So I’m still not sure.

I can’t ask Max, because he doesn’t know that I come here.

Actually, Sally and Dee like each other a lot. But whenever a customer is inside the store, they pretend to fight. Nothing too bad. Max’s mom would call it bickering, which means fighting without the danger of hating each other at the end of the fight. That’s what Sally and Dee do. They bicker. But as soon as the customer leaves, they go back to being nice to each other. When someone is watching, I think they like to put on a show.

Max would never understand this. He has a hard time understanding that you have to act differently in different situations.

Last year Joey came over to the house for a play date and Max’s mom said, ‘Do you boys want to play with Max’s video games?’

‘I can’t play video games until after dinner,’ Max said.

‘Oh no. It’s okay, Max. Joey is here. You can play.’

‘I’m not allowed to play video games until after dinner, and for only thirty minutes.’

‘It’s okay, Max,’ his mom said. ‘You have a friend over. It’s different today.’

‘I can’t play video games before dinner.’

Max and his mom went back and forth until Joey finally said, ‘It’s okay. Let’s go play catch outside.’

That was Max’s last play date.

The customer leaves and Sally and Dee switch back to nice.

‘How’s your ma?’ Sally asks. He’s back to counting cigarettes, but probably because there’s a commercial on the television.

‘She’s okay,’ Dee says. ‘But my uncle had his foot amputated when he had diabetes, and I’m worried that they might have to do that to my mom, too.’

‘Why would they do that?’ Sally asks. His eyes are wide.

‘Bad circulation. She’s already got it a little bit. The foot sort of dies, and they’ve got to chop it off.’

‘Damn,’ Sally says in that way that means he’s still thinking about what Dee just said and still can’t believe it.

I can’t believe it, either.

This is why I love hanging out at the gas station. Before I came into the store, I didn’t know that a foot could die and get chopped off. I thought if one part of a human person dies, everything dies.

I’ll have to ask Max what bad circulation means, and I have to make sure he doesn’t catch it. And I want to know who
they
are.

The foot-chopping people.

As they talk more about Dee’s mom, Pauley walks in the door. Pauley is a man who works at Walmart and likes to buy scratch tickets. I love scratch tickets, and I love when Pauley comes in to buy them, because he always scratches them right here on the counter, and if he wins, he hands the money right back to Dee or Sally or Dorothy for more scratch tickets.

Scratch tickets are like tiny television shows, even shorter than commercials but a whole lot better. Every scratch ticket is like a story. Pay one dollar and try to win a million dollars, which is a lot of money. Pauley’s whole life could change with just one scratch. In one second he could become rich, which would mean he wouldn’t have to work at Walmart anymore and could spend more time here. And when I’m here, I get to watch him scratch. I stand right over his shoulder and watch those little shavings get pushed off the card by his lucky quarter.

Pauley has never won more than five hundred dollars, but even that made him very happy. He tried to pretend like nothing big happened, but his cheeks turned bright red and he could barely stand still. He shuffled his feet and rubbed his hands, like a kindergartener who has to pee real bad.

Someday I think Pauley is going to win
the big prize
. He buys so many scratch tickets that he has to win eventually.

I worry that he’s going to win when I’m not here, and I’ll only hear about it later from Dee or Sally.

Pauley says that when he hits it big, we won’t ever see him again, but I don’t believe him. I don’t think Pauley has a better place to be than the gas station. Why else would he come every night, buy scratch tickets and a coffee and stay for an hour? I think Sally and Dee and even Dorothy are Pauley’s friends, even if Sally and Dee and Dorothy don’t know it.

But I think Dee knows it. I can just tell by the way she talks to Pauley. I don’t think she wants to be Pauley’s friend, but she needs to be Pauley’s friend. For Pauley.

That’s why Dee is my favorite person in the world except for Max and his mom and his dad. And maybe Mrs Gosk.

I watch Pauley scratch ten tickets. He doesn’t win anything and now he has no more money.

‘Tomorrow is payday,’ he says. ‘I’m a little low on funds.’

This is how Pauley asks for free coffee. Dee tells him to take a cup. Pauley drinks his coffee slowly, standing near the counter and watching the television with Sally, who isn’t even pretending to count cigarettes anymore. It’s 10.51, which means that the show must be near the end, and that’s the worst time to miss something on a TV show. You can skip the first ten minutes if you want, but you can’t miss the last ten minutes, because that’s where all the good stuff happens.

‘I swear that if you don’t turn off that goddam TV, I’m going to tell Bill to throw it away,’ Dee says.

‘Five minutes!’ Sally says, not taking his eyes off the screen. ‘Then I’ll turn it off. I promise.’

‘Have a heart,’ Pauley says.

When the show ends (a smart policeman catches a thinks-he’s-so-smart bad guy), Sally goes back to counting, Pauley finishes his coffee, waits for two more customers to leave, and then says goodbye. He gives a big wave, stands at the door for a moment as if he doesn’t want to leave (and I don’t think he ever does), and then tells us that he’ll be back tomorrow.

Someday I should follow Pauley. See where he lives.

It’s still Halloween, and even though it’s late and most kids are in their beds, I’m not surprised when the man walks in wearing the mask. It’s a devil mask. Red with two plastic horns on top. Dee is stocking the shelf on the far side of the store with Band-Aids and aspirin and tiny tubes of toothpaste. She is down on one knee, so she doesn’t see the man in the devil mask come in. Sally is counting scratch tickets now. The man in the devil mask comes in the door closest to Sally and walks up to the counter.