Saturday, July 16, 1994

Saturday, July 16, 1994

12:32 a.m.

One.

Five.

Ten.

Russ Chen collapses onto the floor, his chest tight, his arms pulsing. A feeling he's grown to enjoy after his umpteenth set of push-ups for the day. He especially likes the way it clears his head. There's no anger when he does them. No sense of inferiority. Just the strain of forcing his body past a point of resistance.

Only after he's done do the bad thoughts trickle back in. Of Johnny. Of Russ's likely futile plan to become just like him. Of the way Ethan chooses Billy over him every time, even though Billy isn't worth it.

He now regrets the way he followed Billy around earlier in the day, pretending to like him because he thought it would make Ethan see him in a different light and decide that the three of them could become best friends.

Because it's still just Ethan and Billy, camping out in Ethan's backyard. Russ knows because they've been doing it every Friday that summer. Not once have they mentioned it to him, though. Not once has Ethan asked Russ if he'd also like to camp in the backyard.

Still lying on his bedroom floor, Russ realizes the angry thoughts are back in his head. No longer a trickle. A full-on wave. He does another set of push-ups (One…Five…Ten), but it's no use. Rather than calm him, the thump of his heart makes him antsy and irritable. He wonders if Ethan and Billy are still awake. If they're talking about him right now. Making fun of him.

Without quite thinking what he's doing, Russ leaves his bedroom. He creeps down the hallway, careful not to wake his parents, who sleep in separate rooms on opposite sides of the hall. An abnormality he'd be humiliated by if anyone found out. He pads down the stairs and out into the backyard, where he can see the top of Ethan's tent peeking above the hedge.

It's all so unfair that he wants nothing more than to march into that yard and rip apart the tent so that Ethan and Billy can never camp out without him again.

Which, he realizes, isn't such a bad idea.

A plan forms, unspooling in his brain like film through a reel. If he ruined Ethan's tent and convinced his parents to buy him one instead, then he could invite Ethan to camp out for the rest of the summer.

Russ knows that the more he thinks about it, the sooner his plan will fall apart. Already, doubts tiptoe in. Would he really be able to convince his parents to buy him a tent? Would his mother really let him sleep outside?

So he doesn't think any more.

He simply acts, marching back inside and pulling a knife from a kitchen drawer filled with them. Russ grabs what he thinks is the sharpest one. A knife with a black handle and a thin blade. Once it's in his hand, there's no stopping him. Those earlier doubts are a distant memory, replaced by the very real feeling of his fingers curled around the knife.

He returns to the yard and pushes through the hedge onto the Marsh property, which looks silvery in the moonlight, almost like it's Christmas and not the middle of July. In that wintry glow is the tent, now dark and silent.

Russ approaches it, cautiously circling it, checking for signs Ethan and Billy are still awake. He doesn't hear anything, so he creeps closer, now on the other side of it.

Doubt returns the moment Russ presses the knife tip to the side of the tent. A voice in his head—his mother's, of course—whispers things he already knows.

This is wrong.

You're a good boy, Russell. Not like your brother, who's bad, who failed, who let down the family in every way.

Russ tries to block it out as the knife's tip scratches against the tent. He's surprised by how flimsy it is. He'd expected something thicker, sturdier. Canvas. But this is as thin as that kite his auntie gave him for his birthday a few years back. The one his mother later threw in the trash because she said it was too cheap to take flight.

He thinks about that kite and how it was never used because his mother decided on a whim it was worthless, and wonders if she feels the same about him. Maybe the moment Russ was born, she had looked at him, compared him to his brother, and deemed him inadequate. And maybe Russ has known this his entire life and has lashed out whenever he's reminded that it's true.

He is inadequate.

In every possible way.

And will be for the rest of his life.

Russ closes his eyes and forces his mother's voice out of his head. He pushes away all of it. Every thought, every emotion, every memory. All of them banished until it's just him and the knife in his hand and the tent fabric straining at the blade's tip.

Then he gives the knife a shove and the blade pierces the fabric.