The Last Hunter - Descent - Jeremy Robinson [5]
But it will be a long time before that can happen. I doubt my parents will let me go until I’m eighteen and they can’t stop me. Of course, I do understand some of the reasons I’m not yet able to go. I might be smarter than most adults, but I’m also smart enough to know I have the emotional fortitude of an eight year old. Happens with smart kids, I’ve read. Understanding how awful the world can be is hard for someone without emotional defenses. I should be more concerned with the outcome of the daily ant battles waged on our sidewalk than the starving children in Ethiopia. I stopped watching the news a year ago. The images tended to fuel my imagination, which was not a good thing.
I’m painfully shy, especially around girls. I’m quick to cry, especially if someone is angry with me. And, though no one knows it, I’m afraid of the dark. Not just afraid, I’m terrified of the dark. It’s not a fear of what might lurk in the shadows, closets or under the bed. I’m afraid of my own thoughts. When my imagination is freed from the coils of intentional thought, it drifts to places far darker than deepest black. The horrors of school, of starving kids on TV, and of my parents’ mortality are passing thoughts by comparison.
I sometimes wonder if the dark thoughts are a true reflection of what lies within. Of my soul.
The words of the music finally sink in. “What’s a brick house?” I ask.
Justin shrugs as he places a volcano-shaped cardboard cone onto a sheet of plastic.
“Thirty six, twenty four, thirty six. Are those measurements? Is this a song about construction? Why wouldn’t your mother—”
“They're measurements all right,” my friend says with a fiendish grin, then holds his hands in front of his chest like he’s gripping two baseballs. “For boobs.”
My immediate embarrassment is multiplied tenfold when I hear mother clear her throat. I spin toward the door, mortified.
“Forty-five minutes,” she says with a grimace. She closes the door behind her as she leaves.
“Thanks a lot,” putting as much anger into my whisper as I can manage.
Justin, who is unfazed by these events, tugs open the pre-moistened bag of quick drying clay. “Just for the record, your mom is a brick house.”
I rub my socks on the rug.
“Ok, ok!” Justin says. “Just help me put this together. We have forty-five minutes to blow it up.”
I sit down next to him and look at the materials. There’s enough here to make three mediocre eruptions. All for—I look at the box—thirty bucks. There has to be a way to make sure my parents get their money’s worth out of this thing. I smile as the idea comes to me.
* * * * *
We finish forty minutes later. The quick dry clay is solid and authentic looking if you ignore the embedded action figures. Nice knowing you, Snake Eyes. But there are a few invisible modifications. First we expanded the internal cylinder that holds the red-dyed baking soda. Instead of three small eruptions, we will now have one large one. And to make things really exciting, we sealed the top of the volcano. This eruption will be as genuine as I can make it.
We both hold syringes pilfered from a chemistry set. Each contains six ounces of vinegar. “On the count of three,” I say. “One.”
“Is this going to explode?” Justin asks.
“Two.”
“Should we wear safety goggles?” He grins before touching his sports glasses. “Oh wait.”
“Three!”
We plunge the needles into the volcano and inject the vinegar.
The bedroom door opens. “Ok, boys. Time to—”
“Mom, get back!” I shout. But a loud hiss behind me signifies it’s too late. I turn around in time to see the entire volcano, which neither I nor Justin had thought to attach to something solid, erupt—from beneath. The entire cone launches off the floor, spraying red-dyed lava as it spins in the air like one of DaVinci’s airships. The cone tilts, shoots forward, slams into the poster of Antarctica, and explodes. Red gore splashes against the poster and the wall. It reminds me of the Greatest