Short People by Joshua Furst

over the kitchen, there’s greasy stuff all over the bathroom sink—”
    “Hand goop,” Shawn says before he can stop himself.
    “—And look at this, Shawn, you destroyed your cross. I’m thinking, what’s going on?” His father’s face goes slack, waiting for an answer. “Shawn?” His head wobbles back and forth. “I can’t even—Shawn, what happened here?”
    “I . . .”
    His father studies a cluster of matches. “I can’t hear you, Shawn.”
    Shawn slumps his shoulders. He shrugs.
    “Is this the game we’re playing? You think if you don’t say anything then everything will be okay? You going to wait us out and maybe it’ll go away?”
    “Chad, it’s just a little matchstick cross.”
    This is wrong, too, to let her defend him.
    “I’m not angry. I’m not—look, we’re having a conversation. About responsibility and grown-up things like that. It’s not like I’m going to . . . we’re just talking. Right, Shawn?”
    Shawn combusts. His body is on fire. The water has fled and he’s grown dry and brittle. Now he’s in flames, his every cell bursting. His skin cracks and crackles. His sinews shrink in the heat. He speaks and it’s as if the words are all one long syllable popping out in a sparkle of red coal.
    “I didn’t do it on purpose I was trying to make it clean and it broke and it doesn’t matter cause I don’t care cause it doesn’t matter.” The words catch and tangle on top of each other; for a moment, they squeeze into gibberish, guttural sounds that feel like they’re springing from Shawn’s pores, not his mouth. “It’s cause you’re drug addicts.”
    “What?”
    “Don’t pretend.”
    “Shawn, what? We’re
drug
addicts?”
    “What’s that, then? That’s drugs. You’re drug addicts.”
    “Shawn, we’re . . . this is catnip.”
    “See? You’re lying now. I knew you were going to lie, cause you’re liars and drug addicts and liars and you’re bad. You’re just bad and you made me bad, too.” He’s gutted now. Everything has been burned out.
    “It’s catnip. Look. You put it in the little mouse and the cat plays with it.”
    “Then what about the bottle? That’s not catnip. What about that, then?”
    “That’s for his worms.”
    “Izzy doesn’t have worms.”
    “Not anymore, because this stuff got rid of them. Look at it . . . See? Don’t you remember? We had to hold his mouth open and take the dropper and push the medicine down his throat.” Shawn’s mother holds the bottle up for his inspection, but he turns his head away. He won’t be lied to.
    “Okay, Shawn? Is that all that’s wrong?”
    Is that all that’s wrong.
    “Well, then, how come . . . then, how come it’s all hidden like drugs?”
    “It’s just hidden from the cat.”
    “But, then . . . then . . .” Suddenly, exhausted, he falls onto his back and covers his eyes. Tension spikes through his jaw, into his chest. Behind his eyelids, splotches of color flicker and ghost and then disappear. His pulse pounds in his neck. They’re lying and he knows it. Otherwise, Jesus would talk to him—no, that’s not true, he knows better than that. The truth is that his mother’s telling the truth, and this disturbs Shawn more than anything—to have gone through all he’s gone through tonight and discover it was for naught. His faith has left him and in its place there’s just wind.
    Without looking, he feels his parents lingering. Its like he’s a sensor and they’re infrared; heat patterns on either side of him. Or sentries from someone else’s religion, guarding his cold body against the night. They make no noise as they shift on their haunches. He surmises that they’re communicating with each other in a parent language made up of hand signs and grimaces. One of them places a thumb to his forehead; the lightness of touch, the tenderness with which the thumb trails toward his brow before it’s whisked away, tells him it’s his mother. He wants to reach up and be held by