The Monster Variations by Daniel Kraus

frenzied classrooms gave way to the quiet immensity of the town, the Monster was forgotten. But then came the hit-and-runs. The curfew-shortened days now had to be plotted carefully and spent judiciously, and the Monster was something concrete one could plan to see, go to see, then see.
    It was James who first proclaimed, “Let’s go see the Monster!” It was after they had stayed overnight at the school and finished off several other escapades, and Reggie was starting to look bored and impatient. This was a dangerous state of mind for Reggie to be in, and it made James nervous. He could see it in the angry line of Reggie’s lips, his sudden, short outbursts, the way he hurledrocks at things he shouldn’t. There was abuse coming, James could feel it, and so he suggested seeing the Monster merely as something to occupy Reggie’s mind. Once spoken, Reggie pounced on the idea and suggested tomorrow as being as good of a day as any, then turned to Willie for confirmation. James knew this trick. Willie would be flattered that he was consulted first and would agree to anything Reggie said. On cue Willie grinned and nodded and went on braiding dandelion stems. “See the Monster, see the Monster,” he sang to himself, as if it were nothing more than words.
    It was increasingly difficult for Willie to get permission to leave the house these days—once or twice a week there were rumors of a truck gunning its engine outside the schoolyard or across from the park—but the boys managed by promising to bring Willie back before lunch. The next day the three boys set off in the morning, taking turns lugging the backpack full of sandwiches they had assembled, poorly, in James’s kitchen without any help from Louise. Reggie ate his sandwich before they were even two blocks from home and ended up sputtering out much of it when Willie flung an acorn at a squirrel, lost his balance, and fell. Willie got up, patted himself off with his one hand, grinned self-consciously, and asked for his sandwich, too. James kneeled down to fish it from the backpack and glanced up to catch Willie touching his stump and wincing.
    At Buchanan Street they stopped to buy orange sodas and when they stepped back outside they threw theirhands over their eyes. The summer, unbelievably, was hotter.
    Tom lived at the end of a long dirt pathway that winded for so long the boys lost sight of it among the weeds. By the time the old farmhouse leapt into view their one wish was to hurry and rinse themselves in its cool shadow. Only when they were leaning beneath a kitchen window, sweat cooling on their legs and broken spiderwebs tickling their necks, did they see everyone standing alongside the old barn. There were teenagers, several loose groups of them, sitting on car hoods, checking their reflections in chrome, drumming their feet in time with the radio, kneeling to touch the matted fur on the back of a farm cat, slinging rocks up at the silo and dodging them as they returned. Beyond these groupings was still another one: three smokers, standing in a half-circle, shoulder to shoulder, staring down at something.
    James pushed himself through a web of gnats and heard the other two boys follow.
    Their arrival was greeted with indifference. They were ignored, given less respect than the cats. James kept walking, his eyes sweeping across the trail of cigarette butts. A high school-aged boy stepped away from the group and met them shortly before they reached the thing on the ground. He was short and stocky with black hair that grew like moss, almost joining his eyebrows and spilling over onto his cheekbones. There was a pink patch of pimples on his chin. His eyes, while soft, wereslightly crossed and slid from the sky to the boys to the dirt and back up again. This was Tom.
    “A dollar,” he said, but instead of holding out a hand he stuffed both fists into his pockets.
    James looked at him for a moment, then turned to Reggie, then Willie. A what? A dollar? What could