Fallout

We couldn’t risk hitting Teddy with the ball. Why Can’t You Be Like Johnny? left second base and sat down on Ronnie’s lawn, and the rest of us followed. We stared across the street at Paula and Teddy. Paula stared back.

“Want to throw rocks at her?” suggested Puddin’ Belly. That was his standard solution to almost any problem.

Why Can’t You Be Like Johnny? shook his head. “Just wait.”

“You think if we don’t play, she’ll get bored and go?” asked Freak O’ Nature.

“Don’t bet on it,” grumbled Ronnie. He and Paula had a strange relationship. They acted like they hated each other but at the same time couldn’t stay away from one another.

So we looked at Paula, and she looked at us. Finally Why Can’t You Be Like Johnny? went home. Then Freak O’ Nature and Puddin’ Belly decided to go, too. That left Ronnie and me. I didn’t want to go home. Lately Mom was acting really moody, and I never knew what to expect. One minute, she’d yell at you for the littlest thing, and the next, she’d act like she didn’t care what you did.

“Sneak into your mom’s room yet?” Ronnie asked in a low voice.

“No.”

“What about your father’s Playboys?”

“What do you care?”

Ronnie glanced across the street at Paula, then whispered, “Just hate to think of you dying without ever seeing —”

“I’m not gonna die, remember? I’m the one with the bomb shelter, and I’ll be in there for weeks with my mom and get to see everything.”

“You might not,” Ronnie said. “Might be pretty dark. It’s not like you’ll have electricity.”

Like a dog on the other end of a stick, he wouldn’t let go.

“And moms don’t really count because you can’t do anything with them,” he said. “Wouldn’t you like to see some you could do something with?”

“Do what?”

“You don’t know?” Ronnie asked in that tone that always made me feel like I was stupid.

“Go to hell.”

“Keep it down,” Ronnie mumbled, and glanced across the street again. “If you could see any pair of breasts in the whole world, whose would you want to see?”

“How would I know?”

“Paula’s, right?” he whispered.

The thought had never occurred to me. Paula might have had breasts, but she was also our neighbor and the annoying teacher’s pet who always raised her hand in class.

“No,” I said.

“Yes, you do.”

“No… I… don’t.”

Ronnie studied me. “You a homo?”

“A what?”

“A homo. A queer.”

“No.”

“Sure you are. Any guy who doesn’t care about breasts has to be queer.”

“No, you don’t,” I said. “What do breasts have to do with it?”

Across the street, Paula got up and started to push Teddy back home. Maybe she’d decided there was no point in being there if we weren’t going to pay attention to her. “You don’t even know what queer is,” Ronnie sneered.

“Yes, I do.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Do, too.”

“Oh, yeah? Then what is it?”

“It’s… it’s you know, when you’re, you know, kind of strange and different.”

Ronnie’s grin grew broader. “You don’t know what queer means,” he sang, like it was a line from a song.

“That’s what it means,” I insisted.

“No, it doesn’t,” Ronnie said. “It means you like other guys.”

I studied him uncertainly. I liked my friends — most of the time, at least — and they were guys. What was queer about that?

Ronnie saw the confusion on my face. “Queers are guys who have sex with other guys. They’re called homos because they’re homosexuals.”

I smiled. There was no way Ronnie was going to get away with this one. “Guys can’t have sex with guys. It’s not even possible, stupid.”

But Ronnie smiled back. “What rock have you been hiding under?”

It didn’t make sense. Men and women had body parts that fit together. Men couldn’t have sex with men because they had the same body parts and therefore wouldn’t fit.

“So how do they do it?” I asked.

Ronnie shook his head like he knew the answer and didn’t want to tell.

“Come on, if you’re so smart, let’s hear it,” I said.

“I would, but if your parents found out, they’d be really mad.”

“I swear to God I won’t tell them.”

“How do I know you’ll keep your promise?”

I held out my right pinkie, and Ronnie stopped smiling. A pinkie swear was the most inviolate swear there was. If you broke a pinkie swear, you were branded for life. No one would ever trust you again.

“Come on.” I beckoned with my outstretched pinkie.

Ronnie didn’t take it.

“See?” I said. “You’re such a liar.”

39

“I’m hungry.” Sparky crosses his arms over his stomach and bends forward like he’s in agony. Even before this, he was skinny and bony, but now his ribs poke out, especially where the concave curve of his stomach begins.

“There, there.” Janet puts her arm around his shoulders and tries to soothe him. He sits with her almost all the time now.

“Give him something,” Mrs. Shaw says to Dad.

“What about my child?” asks Mr. McGovern.

Hunger has turned my stomach into a knot, too, and my own ribs feel tight against my skin, but I don’t want to say anything that will make it worse for Dad, who goes over to the shelf. “Sardines?”

Sparky shakes his head.

“Tuna?”

“Okay.”

“Why does he get to choose when the rest of us don’t?” Mr. McGovern asks.