Read Online This Is Only a Test by B.J. Hollars - Free Book Online

become.Our thoughts remained on Randall as he snapped a towel or two our way (“Take that, suckers!”). We did. We took it. He would get his soon enough.
    A light flickered, a bug zapped, and I began reciting my line.
    â€œGuys,” I said rather unconvincingly. “I think I saw Buckethead out the window.”
    Refusing to look himself, Randall pretended to study the soap in his washcloth.
    â€œDid you?” asked Dennis, reaching for my arm.
    â€œAw, he didn’t see jack shit,” Randall said.
    â€œThen look,” someone pressed. “Why don’t you look?”
    Newly emboldened, Randall marched bare-assed toward the screen and peeked out.
    â€œSee? Nothing out there but . . .”
    We killed the lights as Paul pounded his plastic head against the shower house screen. His moans were louder than ours, more desperate, how I imagined a sheep might sound in the final thrusts of labor. I couldn’t see Paul’s face behind the bucket, but I thought of Bobby’s, what his might’ve looked like had his tragedy been true.
    Randall screamed—it was all we wanted from him—so we flicked on the lights and told Paul to remove his bucket.
    But what we saw with the lights on was far worse than what Randall had seen with them off:
    Dennis—our friend, our charge—curled naked on the mossy tiles.
    We’d underestimated the effect of confusion on a blind boy.
    â€œHey, Dennis, it was no one,” I said, hovering over him. “We were trying to teach a lesson.” The others gathered around him,touching his shoulder and his forehead to let him know they were there.
    Dennis kept shaking, and as we repeatedly asked if he was all right—if he’d pull through—he just kept shaking, not quite a yes or a no.
    Who can remember what happened on the walk back to the cabin that night? Randall shut his foul mouth for a change—I remember that much—and a pair of us may have threaded our arms through Dennis’s as we led him back through the woods.
    That night, for the first time, we went to bed without talking.
    â€œFinally tuckered you out,” our counselor said upon his return. “About time.”
    While the others slept, I became newly afraid of the dark. I’d never needed a nightlight before, though I needed one then—the sliver of moon refracting off the lake seemed suddenly insufficient. Still, I took comfort where I could, reminding myself that the bucket was back beneath my bunk, that for the moment it wasn’t hiding anyone’s flesh-eaten face.
    The box fan on the windowsill out-hummed the crickets, but I still knew they were out there, chirping as Buckethead’s sea-weeded shoes dragged along the overgrown trails. My imagination conjured him so clearly—a boy more scared than scary grasping in the dark, hoping for something to touch or to touch him.
    Across from me, Dennis lay in his bunk, his hands folded across his chest. I couldn’t tell if he was awake or not, if he was afraid or not, so I balanced on my elbow to have a look.
    â€œHey, you still up?” I whispered. He didn’t answer.
    But his eyes, like mine, were wide.

The Changing
    You are twenty-one and preparing to change your first diaper.
    This is not how you imagined it might go.
    You are a counselor at a summer camp in a midwestern state, and the boy in need of changing is not your son. Years later, when you have a son yourself, you will better understand the intricacies of the process—how half the trick to diaper changing is keeping the kid from squirming.
    But on this day, there will be no squirming. This boy could not squirm if he tried.
    During the flag lowering, a fellow counselor whispers,
The boy in the Med Shed requires assistance
.
    You nod. You believe you can handle it.
    Already this summer, you have surprised yourself by handling all sorts of things—driving a tractor, a pontoon, a pickuptruck. You have kept