A Troublesome Boy by Paul Vasey Page A

boomerang that doesn’t come back?”
    â€œBeats me,” said Klemski.
    â€œA stick.” Hatfield put himself in stitches.
    â€œJeezus, Hatfield,” said Campbell. “That is truly awful.”
    A couple of guys were playing cards. Some were reading. A few had their heads down on their desks, trying to get a little more sleep. Bro Joe came from wherever he’d been.
    â€œAll right, boys. Chapel’s over. Chow time.” We let out a little cheer and herded for the door.
    Same crappy food. I was looking forward to lunch — one of Freddy’s burnt bus-stop burgers and one of Rita’s shakes — so I just went with a couple of pieces of toast. The toast was cold and limp.
    Jeezus. You’d think they could at least get the toast right.
    â€œMind?” I said. I was standing beside Cooper, eyeing the chair beside his.
    â€œBe my guest.”
    I put my tray beside his and sat down.
    He was pushing his eggs around the plate with a fork. He’d chewed the corner off a piece of toast, had maybe a mouthful of eggs. That was it.
    â€œWhat’s up, Cooper?”
    He turned, one eye focused on me, the other one looking over my shoulder. He looked back down at his food. Started shoving the eggs around again.
    â€œI was thinking about my dad,” he said. “On my tenth birthday my dad was supposed to come and get me. We were going fishing. I was so excited I could hardly sleep. I kept getting up to check my tackle box. Open it up, move things around, close it up. I had the box and my rod by the door of my room for a week before my birthday. That morning I got up around six, got dressed, carried everything out to the front step.
    â€œI was still there at noon. My mother yelled at me to come in out of the sun before I fried my brains. ‘That useless piece of shit ain’t comin’, Timmy. Get your ass in here.’ She didn’t even wish me happy birthday. Probably didn’t even know it was my birthday. One day just drifted into the next for her, all a blur of drugs and booze and boyfriends. Then one day the cops came and took her and her loser friends away. That was it for home. It was foster homes after that, and then group homes, and then here.”
    â€œYour old man never came back?”
    â€œNever saw him again.”
    â€œYour mom?”
    â€œHaven’t seen her in maybe two years. She asked to see me one time. My worker took me over. Mom was flaked out on the couch. No shirt, no pants, just her panties. Bottles and pizza boxes all over the place. Some guy passed out buck naked on the floor. The worker got me out of there in a hurry, said, ‘That’s no place for you, honey.’”
    He dropped his fork on top of the eggs, shoved the plate away.
    â€œNo one’s gonna miss me when I’m gone,” he said, almost in a whisper.
    Sometimes when people say things like that they’re looking for sympathy, hoping you’ll say something dumb like, ‘Hey, that can’t be true.’ But the look on Cooper’s face left you with nothing to say because you just knew from the look of him that it was true.
    How come a nice kid like Cooper wound up with such assholes for parents?
    Cooper pushed his chair back and stood up. Didn’t even grunt goodbye.
    I finished my toast. Took my time. Cooper wouldn’t be too hard to find. Fifteen minutes later, there he was down on his haunches, ass about an inch above the pavement, back against the school wall, him and Wordsworth. He was scribbling something in the margin. Closed the book when I sat down beside him.
    I lit him a smoke and handed it over, lit one for myself.
    â€œYou’re welcome,” I said.
    â€œGo fuck yourself.”
    â€œDick the size of mine, that’s a bit tricky.”
    He smiled. “Thanks.” He drew on his cigarette. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m not in a very good mood.”
    â€œI noticed.”
    â€œI’ve