The Bodies Left Behind

dominated by a large flat-screen monitor. He’d put his knit hat back on, like a rapper. He was apparently instant-messaging with a friend. A webcam was involved. Graham didn’t like it that the friend could see him, see the room.
    “How’s the homework coming?”
    “Finished.” He typed away, not looking at the keyboard. Or at Graham.
    On the wall was a series of still pictures from the Gus Van Sant movie Paranoid Park, about skateboarders in Portland. Joey must have printed them out. It was a good movie—for adults. Graham had protested about their taking the boy. But Joey had become obsessed with the movie and sulked until Brynn had acquiesced. As it turned out, though, they’d fled the theater after one particularly horrific scene. Graham had dodged theincident that a told-you-so would have bought, though he came real close to telling his wife that next time she should listen to him.
    “Who’s that?” Graham asked, glancing at the screen.
    “Who?”
    “You’re IM’ing?”
    “Just some guy.”
    “Joey.”
    “Tony.” The boy continued to stare at the screen. Graham’s secretary could type 120 words a minute. Joey seemed to be going faster.
    Worried it might be an adult, Graham asked, “Tony who?”
    “In my, you know, class. Tony Metzer.” His tone suggested that Graham had met him, though he knew he hadn’t. “We’re, like, into Turbo Planet. He can’t get past level six. I can get to eight. I’m helping him.”
    “Well, it’s late. That’s enough IM’ing for tonight.”
    Joey continued typing and Graham wondered if he was being defiant or just saying good-bye. Would this become a fight? The man’s palms sweated. He’d fired employees for theft, he’d faced down a burglar who’d broken into the office, he’d stopped knife fights among his workers. None of those incidents had made him as nervous as this.
    After some fast keystrokes the computer screen went back to the desktop. The boy looked up pleasantly. Asking, What now?
    “How’s the arm?”
    “Good.”
    The boy picked up his game controller. Pushed buttons so fast his fingers were a blur. Joey had dozens of electronic gadgets—MP3 players, iPod, cell phone, computer. He seemed to have plenty of friends but he communicated more with his fingers than with words spoken face-to-face.
    “You want some aspirin?”
    “Naw, it’s okay.”
    The boy concentrated on the game but his stepfather could see he’d grown wary.
    Graham’s first thought was to trick the boy into confessing about the ’phalting but that seemed to go against the instinct that Anna had told him to rely on. He thought back to his dishpan reflections: dialogue, not confrontation.
    The boy was silent. The only noise was the click of the controller and the electronic bass beat of the sound track of the game, as a cartoon character strolled along a fantastical road.
    Okay, get to it.
    “Joey, can I ask you why you skip school?”
    “Skip school?”
    “Why? Are there problems with teachers? Maybe with some other students?”
    “I don’t skip.”
    “I heard from the school. You skipped today.”
    “No, I didn’t.” He kept playing on the computer.
    “I think you did.”
    “No,” the boy said credibly. “I didn’t.”
    Graham saw a major flaw with the dialogue approach. “You’ve never skipped?”
    “I don’t know. Like, once I got sick on the way to school and I came home. Mom was at work and I couldn’t get her.”
    “You can always call me. My company’s five minutes from here and fifteen minutes from school. I can be there in no time.”
    “But you can’t sign me out.”
    “Yes, I can. I’m on the list. Your mother put me on the list.” Didn’t the boy know that? “Tell you what, Joey, shut that off.”
    “Shut it off?”
    “Yeah. Shut it off.”
    “I’m nearly to—”
    “No. Come on. Shut it off.”
    He continued to play.
    “Or I’ll unplug it.” Graham rose and reached for the cord.
    Joey stared at him. “No! That’ll dump the memory. Don’t. I’ll save it.”
    He continued to play for a moment—a dense twenty seconds—and then hit some buttons, and with a deflating computer-generated sound the screen froze.
    Graham sat down on the bed, near the boy.
    “I know you and your mother talked about your accident today. Did you tell her you skipped school?” Graham was wondering if Brynn knew and hadn’t told him.
    “I didn’t skip school.”
    “I talked to Mr. Raditzky. He says you forged the note from your