Messing Around

“Truth or dare?” said Jamie.

         Three boys sat on the black carpet of Aaron’s room. The floor was covered with old things: Lego, stuffed animals, and picture books. There were new things too, like the baseball glove his parents just bought him, some scattered posters on the walls, the silver trophy on his bureau. Aaron leaned back against his unmade bed and watched Charles try to decide.

         “Come on, Chuck, it’s not that hard.” Jaime had shaggy hair, a thin freckled face, and dimples when he smirked. “There’s only two choices.”

         “Truth,” Charles said.

“Pussy,” said Jaime. “Truth’s are boring.”

Charles stared at a teddy bear that lay in a pile of junk between the other two boys. He had combed hair and glasses, and a pressed navy polo. “Whatever, I don’t really care,” he said. “I’ll do a dare.”

“You said truth,” said Aaron. “He said truth, Jaime. Ask him a question.”

         “I’m just messing. Alright, um… what’s the most badass thing you’ve ever done?”

         Charles looked out one of the windows. The railing of the deck that wrapped around Aaron’s house was barely visible in the moonlight.          

         “C’mon Chuck, you must have done something. Borrow your teacher’s stapler without permission?” Jamie laughed at his own joke, and Aaron couldn’t help a snicker.

         “I stole ten dollars.”

         Aaron and Jamie looked at each other. “From who?” said Aaron.

         “From Molly. She left her purse on the table when she was getting food in the cafeteria.” Charles glanced at Aaron and Aaron knew he was lying.

         “Huh, you’re the man,” Jaime said sarcastically, but he looked impressed. “Well who’s next?”

         “I am,” said Charles. “Aaron, truth or dare?”

         “Truth.”

         Charles looked up at Aaron, then back at the floor. “If you could make out with any girl in our school, who would it be?”

         Aaron looked at Jaime with a smile, his eyebrows raised. “That’s a good one.”

         Jaime didn’t say anything.

         Aaron picked up his baseball glove and worked it onto his hand. “Any girl in the school, huh?” He and Charles were in sixth grade and Jaime was in fifth. He knew neither of them had kissed a girl before; only he had. Her name was Elisha, and she’d asked him to go see Pirates of the Caribbean at the end of last year. Aaron didn’t remember much about the movie because they’d made out in the back of the theater for most of it. For a few weeks they kept getting together to make out, until Elisha decided she was bored and they broke up. “Probably… Joanna,” said Aaron.

         “She’s in our grade,” said Charles. “You wouldn’t choose an eighth grader?”

         Aaron slowly shook his head, picking up a baseball and tossing it into his glove with a smack. “Trust me, guys. Joanna Caswell.”

         “But what about Rebecca?” said Charles. “She’s the hottest girl in our school.”

         Jaime laughed. “He wants to get with Rebecca. What makes you think an eighth grader would go for you, Chuck? Especially Rebecca.”

         Charles reddened, his eyes wide behind the thick glasses. “I didn’t say that. It was part of Aaron’s truth. And don’t call me Chuck. My name’s Charles, stop calling me Chuck.”

         “You want to kiss Rebecca.” Jaime turned to Aaron. “He wants to kiss Rebecca. Chuck, she’d never go for you. Neither would any eighth grader, or any girl at all. No girl would go for you, except maybe some really ugly chick.”

         Aaron could hear the peepers through the open window. For awhile he didn’t think Charles was going to say anything. When he finally spoke, he looked at the floor. “Who are you to talk? You’ve never kissed a girl either.”

         Jaime stared at Charles, and he had that look in his eyes, that mad look. It was the same expression he had that day when he attacked an older kid in school. The kid had made fun of his mom and Jaime had knocked him to the ground and started punching him in the face. He was suspended from school for a long time after that.

         “Ok guys,” said Aaron. “Ok, it’s my turn. Truth or dare, Jaime?” Aaron slowly pulled the baseball glove off his hand. “Jaime, truth or dare?”

         Charles’s eyes flickered back and forth between Aaron and Jaime. Jaime turned away from him, and the mad look was gone. “Dare,” he said. “I’m not some pussy truth-bitch.”

         Aaron laughed. Pussy truth-bitch, that was hilarious. Charles laughed a little too.

         “Ok, let’s see,” said Aaron. He thought about who lived in his neighborhood. A couple kids from school but they were far away… Suddenly he had it. “Ding-dong-ditch Mrs. Thompson’s house.”

         “Now we’re talking,” said Jaime, standing up. The other two followed suit.

         “Where does she live again?” said Charles. “That red house down the road, right?”

         Aaron nodded. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of this before.” He led the way to his bedroom door, stepping over heaps of clothes and toys. “Ok guys, my parents are in bed, so be quiet.”

         The living room was almost dark; only a night-light shone from a socket by the woodstove. Everything in the room cast a familiar shadow, like the arched door to the kitchen, which made a hooded figure against the wall. Aaron used to be afraid of the shadows. When his family first moved in, he had stupidly claimed the ground-floor bedroom because it had a television. His older brother and sister got the nicer rooms upstairs, the previous owners moved their TV out, and he was left with the room of nightmares. Not only was it far away from his parents; he couldn’t go to the bathroom during the night without seeing Mr. Grim Reaper. Usually he held it in. That was when Aaron was younger. He wasn’t afraid during the nights anymore.

         “What’s that?” Jaime whispered as they crept through the living room. He was pointing to the floor, where an overturned mixing bowl was propped up with a stick.

         “It’s a mousetrap,” Aaron replied. “My mom sets them up. There’s a little peanut butter at the top of the stick, and when a mouse or chipmunk or whatever tries to get it, the bowl falls down.”

         Jaime grinned and shook his head.

         Outside, the night was warm, humid, and bright. Thousands of stars speckled the sky, and a near-full moon whitened the dark pines behind the house and beyond the road. They walked down the black steps of the porch and set off across the dew-covered grass, not bothering with the long, stony driveway. The shrill chirp of the peepers surrounded them.

         “I can’t wait to get Mrs. Thompson,” said Jaime. “She’s so annoying, I hate her.”

         “She’s not even smart,” said Charles. “She’d misspell words on the board all the time last year and then get mad if I corrected her.”

         They climbed over the waist-high stone wall and onto the dirt road. Aaron’s dad had told him that the stone walls around here were built before the United States was a country, when the land was used for farming. But since then, Americans had found better places to farm than rocky New Hampshire.

“She doesn’t know anything about history either,” said Aaron. “I never learned anything from her. Don’t worry, dude, you’ll have Mr. Baldwin next year. He’s the man.”

“I don’t care about learning anything,” said Jaime. “I just hope he’s easy and lets you talk in class. Mrs. Thompson always sends me to the principal’s office just for talking.”

They reached the bottom of Aaron’s hill, where the swamp by the road sometimes flooded over when it rained a lot. Tonight the swamp looked like a mirror, reflecting the towering trees and pearl moon on its motionless surface. Frogs croaked their deep, intermittent belches, at peace with night.

Charles said, “Remember when we used to have class wars?”

Aaron remembered. Unlike Charles and Jaime, he would usually play kick-ball or soccer during recess, but occasionally a class war would heat up so much that he couldn’t resist. The conflicts were often between two grades and started over resources, usually boards for building forts. Sometimes they started over nothing at all. People generally fought for their class, although a team would often split into multiple factions, with plenty of spies and double-agents.

“Yeah, that last one we had in fourth grade was awesome,” said Aaron. “It went on for weeks.”

“Too bad Ben had to be a bitch and ruin it,” said Jaime.

“Yeah, I know,” said Charles. “What a tattle-tale.”

The wars were fought with sticks, acorns, and pinecones. The scenarios varied: sometimes they were medieval nights with swords, sometimes they were Jedi and Sith wielding lightsabers. That was Charles’s favorite; he loved Star Wars, and always used to talk to Aaron about it. Aaron had never seen the movies, and when Charles told him about Darth Vadar, he had stayed awake late into the night, imagining an African man with heavy breaths crouching outside his window.

The rules of warfare were always the same; if you got hit with a pinecone or acorn, or tapped with a stick in close combat, you were dead for thirty seconds. Someone hit Ben a little too hard with a stick last time, and he went crying to the teacher. That was the last war they ever had.

“I miss the class wars,” said Charles. “They were fun.”

“Get over it, Chuck.” Jaime’s face was stony.  “We’re too old for that kind of shit now.”

The swamp went out of sight behind the thick trees as they started up Mrs. Thompson’s hill. Only slivers of moonlight shone through the holes in the blanket of leaves overhead. Aaron thought about Jaime. He had been perhaps the most vigorous participant in the wars, often betraying his own grade and working with Aaron and Charles. But now it seemed like he wanted to forget about it. There were probably many things he wanted to forget about, like how he used to pull down his pants in front of crowds of kids, just to get laughs. Or that recurring dream he had told Aaron about, of a beautiful red-headed woman torturing men, pinning them up against a wall with knives. Aaron would never mention these things to Jaime again.

“Look, there’s her house!” said Aaron.

The line of trees ended on their right, where a stone wall stood between them and Mrs. Thompson’s front yard. The driveway snaked down the sloping lawn to her small house, which was dark except for an outside light over the front door. Aaron knew she lived by herself.

“She must be in bed,” Charles whispered, as if Mrs. Thompson might be able to hear him. “We’ll wait and watch from here.” He and Aaron ducked down by the wall.

“Give the doorbell a good long ring,” said Aaron, his heart beating faster. “And then run back.”

Jaime shuddered with excitement, his lips twisting in an impish smile. “Ok, here I go.”

He clambered over the wall and jogged lightly down through the grass. Charles winced at the crunch of his footsteps on the driveway. Jaime passed Mrs. Thompson’s parked car, the green Subaru that the bus sometimes got stuck behind on the way to school. Aaron and Charles held their breath as he stepped to the door and reached up for the button. He turned back in their direction.

“Do it!” Aaron whispered. “Do it, Jaime!”

Jaime pressed his finger on the doorbell. Aaron counted three seconds. Jaime jumped down the steps and ran.

“He did it!” Charles clenched the slab of rock in front of him. “He did it!”

Jaime raced up the hill and jumped over the wall, crouching down with them. All three were shaking with muffled laughter.

“Nice, Jaime!”

“Shh!” Aaron hushed them. “Let’s see what she does!”

“She’s going to freak out!” Jaime panted.

“Do you think she’ll call the police?” said Charles.

“Quiet, guys, quiet!” Aaron hissed. “She’s coming out!”

The front door of the house edged open a few inches. Long seconds passed. Jaime started to say something but Aaron elbowed him in the ribs. The door opened a little wider and Mrs. Thompson leaned out. She was wearing a purple night-gown and her usual square glasses. She turned her wispy grey head from side to side, scanning her front yard and the edge of the trees.

The boys struggled to contain their laughter.

“She’s so confused,” Charles whispered. “It’s just like class!”

Aaron snorted.

Mrs. Thompson stepped out of the doorway, staring up towards the road. She might have been looking in their direction.

“I think she heard us,” whispered Charles.

“Nah, I don’t think so,” Jaime replied. “Look at her. Stupid bitch.”

Aaron couldn’t read Mrs. Thompson’s expression, but he knew she was scared. Her rigid body revealed more than just confusion. Aaron thought about when he used to have to go to the bathroom during the night when he was younger, when he had to face the shadows.

Mrs. Thompson remained almost motionless, occasionally turning her head to look into the woods on either side of the yard. The boys’ laughter died out as the minutes passed.

“Ok, let’s go,” said Aaron.

“She’s just standing there,” said Charles.

“I want to scare her more,” said Jaime. “Let’s do something.”

“No, I think we should go.” Aaron crawled along the edge of the road toward the cover of the trees. “Come on, let’s go!”

Charles followed. “Come on, Jaime. What if she calls the police?”

Jaime snickered. Aaron and Charles stood up once they reached the trees, and they watched Jaime. He just stayed crouched by the wall, staring down at Mrs. Thompson.

“Come on, Jaime!” Aaron breathed.

Finally, Jaime crawled over to the other two and stood up. They could still see Mrs. Thompson through spaces in the trees, standing and watching the road. Aaron found himself wanting to call to her, to tell her they were just kids messing around, that there was nothing to be afraid of.

Jaime smiled at them and opened his mouth.

Aaron tried to stop him. “No, Jaime!”

A piercing scream. Like a bloody knife, it cut through the night.

Mrs. Thompson yelped and ran inside, slamming the door.

“Jaime!” Charles shook his head. “Now she’s going to call the police. Shit, shit, shit!”

Jaime buckled over, howling with laughter. He didn’t even try to contain it. “Did you see her? Did you see how she ran?”

Aaron turned and walked towards home. Charles stumbled after him.

“Did you see her?” Jaime laughed, running up beside them. He punched Aaron lightly on the shoulder. “Did you see—“

“Yeah, I saw her Jaime.”

They walked in silence.

“Do you think she’ll call the—“

“She’s not going to call the fucking police, Chuck.”

A frog croaked from the swamp. It seemed like the peepers had gotten quieter.

“Aaron?”

“What, Charles.”

“What’s it like to kiss a girl?”

Aaron sighed. “It’s fine. You’ll find out when you do.”

They walked through the web of moonlight up Aaron’s hill, sweating in the sticky air.

Jaime said, “Hey Aaron, does that mousetrap your mom sets up ever catch anything?”

“Yeah, sometimes.”

“Well, if there’s anything in it now, want to try lighting it on fire?”

Charles looked at Aaron, his eyes wide, afraid.

Aaron shook his head. “No.”

“Why not? It would be fun. Don’t you want to see what kind of noises it makes?”

“No, Jaime.”

Aaron’s bedroom light was still on. The three boys reached the driveway and began walking up. Up towards the square of shining yellow at the back of the dark, quiet house.