Hidebehind

Thirteen

A few weeks passed by, and I started eating lunch in the cafeteria. It wasn't so bad, really. I sat at the end of the eighth grade table by a couple of other boys who were in my grade but who never talked to anybody. One of them ate paper; I'd seen him do it during math. The other one was okay, but he only wanted to talk about building things with Legos and K'Nex. I might have thought about eating lunch with the sixth graders if I'd ever seen Jay around, but he said he was always kept in because of talking too much or to catch up on some work.

I didn't talk much to the other kids in my class. They all knew each other. It was hard to even tell what I could talk about. None of them seemed very interested in me and hearing about my secret fort or my bike stunt course back home, or the tree I planted in the yard of our old house. None of them cared about that. We didn't have anything in common.

After lunch, we always had recess. Usually, Jay found me, and we sneaked around the building, trying to find more clues about the graffiti. We were always unsuccessful, though, because it had been cleaned off the wall, and no more of it appeared. We both knew we weren't going to find anything, but it was a game we made up, and both of us were pretty content pretending we were going to solve the mystery of the graffiti artist. That was the only part of the school day that I liked. The rest of it was just pointless, seeing as I would be going back home soon, and learning anything at Oxcart Elementary would just waste the brain energy I needed to save for when I got back to my real life.

Since we'd gone to see Luther's house, Grandpa had been himself most of the time. In fact, I almost forgot that he was partially crazy, except for some occasions when he'd put things in the wrong place or only half-dress himself.

Penny and I were playing checkers with him one night when he told us something strange.

"You have to king us, Rob," Penny was saying (she and Grandpa were on a team).

I was in no mood to king them; they'd cheated and done a half-backward double jump. I just didn't think that was fair. But Grandpa didn't seem to see anything wrong with it, and the moment I was about to protest, the cat jumped on my lap and started rubbing all over my shoulder, so I got distracted and kinged them anyhow.

"Now we'll get you!" Penny exclaimed.

I puffed up my cheeks and let the air out, sounding like a puttering boat engine. "Whatever."

"Robert," Grandpa interjected, "you've still got a shot."

Penny gasped. "Don't help him, Grandpa! We're winning!"

"I know, I know. I just don't want him to give up before it's done, that's all."

"I wasn't going to," I insisted, although the thought had actually crept into my mind.

"Sore losers get eaten by monsters," Penny stated matter-of-factly, flinging a strand of dark hair over her shoulder.

I pondered my next move, ignoring her. It seemed to me that my only option was to move another guy out of my back row. Any other move would get my guy jumped again. And I was tired of being jumped. "No such thing as monsters," I returned, sliding one of my checkers out of the back.

"Course there are," Grandpa retorted, jumping one of my pieces I hadn't realized was in harm's way.

I grumbled under my breath, not really hearing what he'd said.

Penny sniffed. "Really, Grandpa? Mama always said there weren't any."

"There aren't," I asserted.

"Are," Grandpa pressed.

I looked up at him. What was he trying to do, anyhow? Keep my sister up all night? He wasn't the one that had to share a room with her.

"Grandpa, don't scare Penny."
"I'm not scared! Go on, did you ever see one?"

"No, I never saw one . . ."

"See?" I was triumphant.

"But that's because," Grandpa continued, ignoring my interruption, "the worst kind are the ones that hide but that you know are there."

I looked at Penny nervously, but she seemed fascinated, not terrified.

"If you didn't see it," she asked, "then how do you know it was there, Grandpa?"

"I know because it got my friend."

Something glittered in my mind. Maybe he'd talk about Jay's story. "What friend?"

"Yeah, Grandpa, what friend?"

"A long time ago, when I was just about your age, Robert, I was real good friends with a boy name of James." He sat back against the couch, remembering. "He and I ran around this farm like we owned it. Fishing, swimming where we shouldn't have been swimming, messing with the farm animals, scaring chickens, camping . . . causing general trouble. Pretty normal stuff for a couple of boys. We were known around town as a couple of troublemakers, but it was all in good fun.

"Well, there was one night the two of us packed our bags, decided to head out to the woods to a spot where we camped many a time. We never spent the whole night out in those woods, always getting scared about halfway through and running on home to sneak some food in the middle of the night, then pass out on the couches. We weren't nearly as adventurous as we thought we were. In any case, just happened that . . . well, I don't know exactly what happened to be honest with you. We just got a little out of hand one night, stayed out a little too late, told ourselves stories that were a little too scary. Somehow, I started hearing noises, and every breath of wind scared us a little too much. I guess somehow we wandered a little ways off where we should have been, didn't really know where to go, cause it was dark and a little unfamiliar. We swore something was after us. I don't know. Somehow, through the night, I lost track of it all, and by morning, well . . . James wasn't with me. We searched those woods days. Entire town went out searching. Looking for him. We didn't know what we'd find, dead body or otherwise. Those woods aren't that thick, so it was surprising nothing ever was found. Some speculated he ran away, but I doubted that. Sent out posters, made phone calls all the way up to the next several towns just in case. Some thought maybe a wild animal got him, but there aren't any. Not much in that woods save for the one river, and it's pretty far away from here. Still, it was dragged up and down. After several weeks, a couple months, people just kind of gave up. But I know. I know it was a monster that got him."

Grandpa looked out of his memories and at us. He started fiddling with the checker in his hand.

Penny gasped. I saw her open her mouth through the corners of my eyes, realized I looked much the same, felt silly, and snapped my mouth shut. "But how do you know it was a monster?"

"I just do," he said, picking up a checker again. "Nobody believed me, but I knew what had happened. I knew."

He wouldn't say more than that, though Penny and I prodded. After about ten minutes, he just got real quiet and didn't seem to even want to finish the game. He just held a couple checkers and rubbed them around in his hand, staring at who-knew-what. At last, my sister decided to go into the fancy room and play with her paper dolls, and I retreated into the bedroom to dig some homework out of my backpack. It was a boring day when I willingly worked on schoolwork.