Empire Falls

to Grandma, anyhow.”
    Tick hesitates, then decides to ask. “Is your mother dead?”
    “That’s a possibility,” he says, as if it were a matter of scientific curiosity only.
    Tick tries to puzzle this out. She likes to understand things, hates to admit when she doesn’t, especially if she suspects she’s missing something obvious. Another leading question just might result in ridicule, however, so she waits until it becomes clear that John Voss has said all he intends to say on this subject. “I don’t get it,” she finally admits.
    “ You don’t get it,” he snorts, the contemptuous kind of response that keeps people from even bothering.
    Angry now, Tick takes the bit in her teeth and says, “No. I don’t get it.”
    Finally the boy says, “My dad left first. Then my mom remarried, and they left. After that I came here to live with my grandmother. Now do you get it?”
    He’s finished his lunch by now, the smell of it still thick in the air between them. When his eyes pause again on Tick’s half-eaten sandwich, she says, “I can’t finish this. You can have it if you’re still hungry.”
    “I’m full,” he says, but he doesn’t look even remotely full, so Tick watches his Adam’s apple, expecting to see it bob. The boy has a long, thin neck and an Adam’s apple that juts out from beneath his pale skin like the edge of something foreign and jagged. Tick can tell from the rash on his neck that he’s recently begun to shave and doesn’t really have the knack yet. He can handle his upper lip and his chin, but not the less regular topography of his pimply neck, where the hair is tougher and grows at unpredictable angles. There are individual hairs he’s apparently been missing for weeks, because they have begun to curl.
    When the boy’s eyes flicker at something over her shoulder, Tick glances at the cafeteria door, where Zack Minty’s face is framed, motionless, in one of the small rectangular windows. She nearly flinches, since something about the stillness of the face in the tiny window suggests that it’s been there for a long time, observing them. She’s just about to tell her companion not to worry, that the cafeteria door is always locked after fifth period, when Zack flings it open and saunters inside. Some people, Tick thinks, should never be entrusted with keys, and Mr. Meyer is one of them. Having unlocked the door to let John in, he’s forgotten to lock it back up again, this after lecturing Tick at the beginning of their solitary lunch arrangement that this door must remain locked, that she wasn’t to open it for any of her friends.
    As the door clangs shut, Zack Minty pauses dramatically, as if to give both his former girlfriend and Empire High School’s favorite object of derision time to consider the absurdity of imagining that he of all people could ever be kept out of anyplace he wanted into. In no apparent hurry to join them, he wanders over to the bank of vending machines, hitting each button on the soda machine with the heel of his palm and waiting for something to drop. When nothing does, he places a hand on each side of the machine and leans on it, as if the effort of having made so many simple requests and the disappointment of having been refused have been too much for him. He rests his forehead against its smooth surface for a long beat, then begins to rock the whole thing back and forth until it slams into the wall and there’s the sound of breaking glass inside. Letting the machine fall back into place, he waits. Still nothing.
    Tick watches this entire exhibition with more fascination than fear. Meanwhile, John Voss seems to have slipped back into his coma. When Zack gives up on the machine and comes over, pulling out a chair next to Tick, she digs three quarters out of her pocket and slides them in front of him. Zack hasn’t looked at her yet, but is staring at John Voss as if searching in vain for a reason for this kid’s existence. Eventually he notices the quarters, though he can’t seem to compute a reason for them either.
    “What’s this?”
    “I thought you wanted a soda,” Tick says.
    “Nooooo,” he replies, fingering one of the coins and walking it across his knuckles. He once tried to teach Tick this trick, and she knows how proud it makes him. Sitting so close, it’s clear that he’s grown a couple inches over the summer, but more than that, he’s bulked up, causing Tick to wonder if he’s on steroids. He’s definitely dumb