Milk and Cookies

  Milk and Cookies

  Rob Thurman

  Rob Thurman is the author of several books making up the Cal Leandros series: Nightlife, Moonshine, Madhouse, and Deathwish (to be released in the spring of 2009); and of a second series (as yet untitled) to debut in the fall of 2009. Rob lives in Indiana, land of many cows, demanding deer, and wild turkey as savage as any wolf, Were or otherwise. Protecting the author’s house and home is a hundred-pound rescue husky with ice blue eyes, teeth straight out of a Godzilla movie, and the ferocious habit of crawling under the kitchen table and peeing on himself when visitors arrive. Reach the author at www.robthurman.net.

  Christmas sucked.

  The display windows covered in velvet ribbons and tinsel. The tinkle of ringing bells around every corner. The snow, the presents, the frigging good cheer.

  Yeah, it sucked all right. Sure, it was only once a year, but that was one time too many. Carolers, months of Christmas music, candy canes, and all but Cindy Lou Who skipping down the sidewalk.

  It was too much. Too damn much.

  I was seven when I knew there wasn’t a Santa anymore. I was thirteen when my sister started the whole “Is there really a Santa?” thing and “The kids at school say . . .” The usual stuff. And that she was seven, the same age I’d been, only made it worse.

  So I lied. Sure there was a Santa. And when Mom told me to take her to see store Santa, I hadn’t bitched too much. She and Dad both had to work. They worked hard. We weren’t poor, but we sure weren’t rich either. Dad was a good hunter and that put food on the table, but it didn’t pay the electric or the mortgage.

  Plus I remembered what it was like, how knowing had taken the magic out of Christmas. I didn’t want to admit it. I was tougher than that. I didn’t want to admit that even six years later I missed waiting to hear hoofbeats on the roof, the jingle of bells, the thump of boots hitting the bottom of our big, old fireplace.

  Yeah, I didn’t want to fess up to it, but it was true. Now Christmas was just another day. I wasn’t into Jesus or church, mangers or angels. You got presents and, sure, that was cool, but the excited knot in your stomach, the blankets clenched in your fists, the listening for all you were worth that Christmas Eve night.

  Gone.

  It was stupid to miss it. I was way too old for that shit. You could ask anybody. If the kids at school found out, they’d laugh me out of class. If the teachers found out, they wouldn’t know what to think. Probably send me to the counselor for soft words, ink blots, and a note for my parents. But they didn’t know, and every teacher would tell you: I wasn’t a dreamer. No way. I was a smart-ass kid. My dad told me so, my teachers, the principal . . . who spent more time lecturing me than my teachers ever did. He told me at thirteen I was too young to get into trouble, too young to be cynical. And definitely too young to have such a foul mouth.

  He didn’t get out of the office much.

  Smart-assed and foul-mouthed, you’d think there was no way I’d get glum every Christmas, but I did. Every single one. And no matter what had happened that one particular Christmas when I was seven—throughout the Christmas I’d first lost the spirit, I’d never get it back. I’d never get a do-over. No matter how much I wanted to.

  Jackass, I said to my reflection in the display glass of the store. Suck it up. Get over it. You’re not seven anymore. You’re not a little kid. There are no do-overs in life.

  I pushed the door open to the department store, the only one we had in Connor’s Way, a town so small we had two stores, three restaurants, and one stoplight. It had been home since August now. It was one of those towns where everyone knew everyone and everything you did got around if you weren’t careful. I was thirteen . . . there were plenty of things I did I didn’t want getting around.

  Tessa slid her hand into mine and I grimaced. Little sisters, what a pain in the ass. Big eyes the same brown as mine looked up at me and she smiled at me with that big-brother-worshipping smile. I sighed, squeezed her hand, and tugged her along. “Come on. Before the line gets too long.” She was a pain, but she was my pain and family’s what counts. Dad said that over and over again. People are people, but it’s family that counts.

  Along with the brown eyes she looked like me. Slightly dark skin, curly black hair. We were related all right. You could see that a mile away. Dead-on our dad.

  “What kind of cookies should I make Santa?” Tessa chattered. “Chocolate chip? Peanut butter? Oooh, Snickerdoodles. Everybody loves Snickerdoodles. Right? You like Snickerdoodles, don’t you?”

  I rolled my eyes and was thankful the line wasn’t that long. Santa was pretty much what I expected: fat enough to strain his big black belt and with a beard so fake and bushy that rats could’ve nested in it. He had glasses perched on the end of his red-veined nose and his lap was full of a sobbing, kicking-and-screaming two-year-old with a load in his training pants that had to weigh more than he did.

  “Eww,” Tessa said, tugging at my hand. “I don’t want to sit there.”

  “Then just stand beside him and tell him what you want for Christmas,” I said impatiently. “His balls could probably use the break.” Hundreds of kids slamming down on them day after day, no way I’d want his job.

  “Balls?” She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t see any balls. Snowballs?”

  Jesus. I was in for it now. “Hey, it’s your turn,” I said with relief, letting go of her hand and giving her a light shove. “Remember to hold still for the picture or Mom’ll kill me.”

  She moved up beside and tiptoed up to whisper in his ear. The camera flashed, and even though it was a little early, it did make a cute picture. Then Tessa leaned back and bounced happily in shiny patent leather shoes that went with her best red velvet dress.

  The fake Santa blinked at her, twitched a forced smile, and hurried her off with a candy cane. As we waited for the picture to pop out, I asked, “What’d you ask for?”

  I let her take my hand again as she said solemnly, “You know.”

  We all wanted something we weren’t going to get. This was Tessa’s year for disappointment. The one thing she wanted and the one thing she’d never get. Feeling more guilty than I wanted to, I said, “You want to get a milk shake before we go home?”

  Of course she did, and we went to the drugstore. They had an old-fashioned malt shop there. I didn’t much know or care what an old-fashioned malt shop, like the sign said, was, but they served milk shakes and that was enough for me. I had chocolate, she had strawberry, and things were fine until Jed walked in. His parents had named him Jedidiah and he had a punch for anyone who called him that. It was supposed to be biblical. I guessed it didn’t take.

  I slid him a careful sideways look. Cold blue eyes stared back, then he gave a half snarl, half hateful grin. Jed was fourteen, big, and a bully. Christmas might suck, but so did bullies.

  And Jed was of the worst kind. The worst in the school, that’s for sure. He picked on kids who were smaller and younger. He thought that made him a badass. It didn’t. It just made him a coward. He hadn’t messed with me yet, but it was only a matter of time. I was close to his size, but not close enough for him to pass over me. Not by a good three inches. I was husky for my age, but a little short. Yeah, he was working his way up to me. He was a coward, but he was stupid, too. It wouldn’t be long before he’d get over being careful of someone almost as heavy as him if not as tall. Between mean and stupid, stupid wins every time.

  Tessa and I slurped up the last of our shakes and we left. She used both hands to try and peel the plastic off her candy cane. “You’re smart,” she announced.

  “Oh yeah? What makes you think that?” The sidewalk was clear of snow, shoveled clean.

  “That mean guy doesn’t bother you.” She popped the top loop of
the cane in her mouth. “Wi-ly.” She’d just learned the word when I’d been practicing for my spelling test and loved using it although half the time she didn’t know what it meant.

  Wily? Nah. I was about as wily as a Pop-Tart. This was just luck. And luck?

  It only lasts so long.

  “Nicky, are you paying attention or are you shooting for extra home-work?”

  I looked up from the history book I was only pretending to read. I was hungry. I didn’t concentrate so well when I was hungry. My stomach growled as I lied, “Yes, Mrs. Gibbs, I’m paying attention.”

  She didn’t believe me, but the bell rang, saving me and my stomach. I bolted for the cafeteria. It was burger day. Most of the kids were all about pizza day, but not me. I liked burgers and I paid for three meals to get three of them. When Mom had handed me my lunch money for the week, she’d ruffled my hair and said I was a growing boy. I might be three inches short of Jed, but I had shot up two inches in the past month. The boys in my family might hit their growth spurts late, but when we hit them, we hit them.

  I was thinking that when he slammed his tray across from mine on the cafeteria table, his shaggy silver blond hair hanging in his eyes. “I hear you’re in the Russian Club, geek.”

  I was, not that I cared much about it, but Dad insisted. Our grandparents had come from Russia. Roots and all that crap. Nicky was short for Nikolai, and I made damn sure no one in school knew that.

  “Yeah, so?” I started on my first burger.

  “That makes you a geek. A loser.” Those eyes, pale as a snow-filled sky, stared at me. They were like the eyes of a husky, a wild one used to living on its own. Catching its own food. Killing because it could. Jed was twisted inside, wrong. The teachers didn’t see it. They just saw parents who didn’t care, maybe some sort of learning disorder, they didn’t see what he really was, because they didn’t want to. But I saw.

  He was a monster. He was just a kid now maybe, but you could bet he was some kind of serial killer waiting to grow up. But wouldn’t that be a lot of paperwork for the guidance counselor? Why not pass him on? Let him be someone else’s problem.

  “I don’t like geeks.” He leaned forward and bared teeth too big for his mouth. “And I definitely don’t like losers.” He reached over and took one of my burgers, daring me to do something about it.

  But I didn’t. Not there. Dad had taught me to fight, because everyone needed to be able to take care of himself. But he’d also taught me never to do it in public where you can get in trouble and never to hit first, at least not anyone smaller. It wouldn’t be fair and it wouldn’t be honorable. My dad believed in honor, pounded it into me from the time I could crawl. You can protect yourself, you can fight—that’s the way the world was—but only the ones bigger than you.

  Honor was a pain in the ass sometimes, but Jed was bigger than I was. I wasn’t forgetting that. Still, there was the whole not getting into trouble thing . . .

  Taking my burger back and smacking the son of a bitch over the head with his tray would definitely get me in trouble. So I ate my second burger and ignored him. He couldn’t start anything either. Not at school. And I knew ways home to avoid him. I’d gotten to know the woods that stretched behind the school pretty good. Gotten detention for skipping class to explore them more than once. I deserved a lot more punishment than that, but Principal Johnson took it easy on me, no matter what he thought about my smart-ass ways and foul mouth.

  Jed kept glaring at me while ripping into my burger with those snaggled teeth. Man, was that an orthodontist’s dream. That was a car payment and a lap dance, right there.

  How’d I know about lap dances? I had a cousin back East who had a friend and, boy, could she tell some stories. I was thinking of one of them and wishing twenty-one wasn’t so far away when Sammy made the really bad choice of sitting next to me. He couldn’t have been paying attention. Nobody sat at the same table as Jed on purpose. Sammy wasn’t a bad guy. Not too smart and called Dog Boy by most of the kids at school, but he was okay. He had four dogs, big, shaggy mutts, who followed him to and from school. I liked dogs. Jed hated them and the feeling was mutual. One look of his freaky pale blue eyes and the dogs would bark until foam flew from their muzzles before eventually turning and fleeing with tails between their legs.

  You know you’re a shit when even dogs didn’t like you. I kept hoping one would hump his leg or better yet piss on it, but it never happened. Probably for the best. I didn’t want to think what Jed would do if he ever caught one of those dogs.

  “Hey, Dog Boy,” Jed sneered. “You think I want to eat my lunch smelling you? You stink like those damn mutts of yours. Get the hell out of here.”

  Sammy’s eyes widened as he realized who was sitting with me and scrambled away, his tray shaking hard enough to spill his juice. He did smell a little like dog, but hey, we all have something. Jed was psycho and Sammy was a little doggy. I’d take a fur-covered pair of jeans over crazy any day. But today was a day crazy didn’t seem to want to leave me alone. I’d started on my second burger, so Jed couldn’t take that, but he did take my Jell-O. Cherry. It looked like fresh blood on his teeth as he wolfed it down. He narrowed his eyes at me as he licked a streak of red from his bottom lip. “You’re not afraid of me, are you, asshole?”

  I took another bite and chewed it. Bullies only heard what they wanted to hear. I wasn’t going to waste my time.

  He leaned in, his breath hot and smelling of meat and cherry. “I’ll make you afraid. You got that? I’ll make you so goddamn afraid you’ll piss your pants.” He snatched up his tray and stalked away.

  Trouble, he was big trouble. Maybe the first trouble I couldn’t get around. Crazy is crazy, and crazy never learns. He’d keep coming and coming until he caught me or backed me in a corner. I didn’t want to be looking over my shoulder every minute. I didn’t want him watching me. I stabbed my fork in my french fries. I was going to have to do something. That something being not letting Jed beat the shit out of me and stay out of trouble.

  There was a trick.

  “Hey, Nicky, you hanging out with Jaws?” Isaac sat across from me, chin propped in his hand.

  Jed definitely had the teeth for the nickname, but no one had ever called him that to his face. “Nah, just my turn on his list.” Isaac frowned. His parents had come over from Mexico and he’d already had his turn over that with Jed.

  “Oh shit,” he said, wincing. “Whatcha going to do?”

  “Don’t know yet.” I dropped my fork. “Guess I’ll have to think about it. Sneak through the woods home until he figures that out.”

  After the last class, I bolted into the woods. They were thick and deep, full of poison ivy and tangles of blackberry bushes that would tear you to pieces if you tried to push through. I managed. Scratches were scratches. They’d fade quick enough. And I’d avoided Jed.

  This time.

  The next afternoon I was at the store looking for a present for Tessa. I scowled at the Santa ringing the bell by the door. One more reminder . . . everywhere you looked. Skinny or with sagging beards and worn black boots or faded red pants. Fakes. It made the whole season fake.

  But there were only two more days until Christmas Eve and I couldn’t put off shopping anymore. I couldn’t get Tessa what she really wanted, so I wandered up and down the doll aisle. It was amazing. They had dolls that walked and talked, crawled and cried, ate and pooped. Why would anyone want a toy that threw up on you while you changed its diaper? That was crazy. But Mom sent me out with a list and one of these nasty things was on it. I picked up the nearest one. It only talked and waved its arms, no puking involved. That was the one.

  “Playing with dollies now,” Jed purred from behind me. “Why not? You run like a goddamn girl. You might as well play like one, too.” His hand circled my arm above my elbow so hard it cut the blood off. I felt the tingle in my fingers.

  Jed had been behind me in the woods yesterday afternoon, but he didn’t know them like I did. He’d come close
r than I’d have thought, though. He just didn’t care. Pain was nothing to him. Diving through blackberry bushes, sliding down ravines. He was one scratched, bruised mess now, and wasn’t that too bad? I might try and stay out of trouble but there was no way I was sorry about that.

  I ignored him, yanked my arm away, and took the doll to the checkout counter. He followed me every step of the way. “You can’t run forever, Nicky,” he whispered. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck ruffle in the god-awful stench of his breath. “No one’s ever gotten away. And when I’m done with you and you hide like a little bitch every time you see me, I’ll make your little sister sorry, too. Her and her dolly.”

  And that was that.

  I’d put it off. I’d tried to stay out of trouble. I’d tried not to piss off Mom and Dad. But you couldn’t let the assholes win, even crazy ones like Jed. I sat in a plastic chair by the door, eyes on the floor, until Jed gave up and left. And I never said a word to him.

  There were kids that hated Jed. Lots of kids. If I could get all of them to join together and stand up to him, Jed might not be as tough as he thought he was. I could give it a try, but the thing about being beaten down . . . it’s hard to get back up. I’d been to four schools now, Dad’s job kept us traveling, and each school had a bully. Sometimes the bully would get caught and punished, but half the time it didn’t matter. In weeks he would go back to doing what he did. The kids wouldn’t stand up for themselves and hardly any of them would tell. They just took the bullying, sure the teachers couldn’t help them. They were right. If the principal kicked the bully out of school, then he’d simply wait outside it.

  My dad said in life there were sheep and wolves, and most of the time they couldn’t cross over.

  I sighed. Jed damn sure seemed like he thought he was a wolf. He was nuts as they came. He’d keep coming after me, going after the others, start messing with Tess. I folded the top of the bag the doll was in and got up. Nope, it probably wouldn’t work, no matter how many kids Jed had given reason to hate him, but I’d give it a shot. There had to be some that’d band together against Jed. Hell, it always worked in the movies.