The last box dropped into the bed of the pickup truck. Dad turned to look down at Will and over at Tom, who thanks to a growth spurt was almost the same height as his father. "I'm sorry about this, boys," he said.
"Can't you stay?" Will asked.
"I'm afraid not, champ. But I won't be too far away and you guys will see me on the weekend."
"Why?"
"Your mother and I are going through some difficult times right now. We need to spend a little time apart to figure things out."
"Then you're going to get back together?"
"I don't know about that. We'll see."
Tom said nothing throughout this exchange. He finally said, "So who are you doing behind mom's back?"
The way Dad's face turned red, Will thought his father might slap Tom. He didn't, saying instead, "It's not like that, Tom. No one's cheating on anyone."
"That's what happened to Jessie's mom. Her father started shacking up with some girl."
"No one's shacking up with anyone."
"What do you mean by 'shacking up?'" Will asked.
"I'll tell you later, dummy."
"Don't worry about it, Will. This is just a separation." Dad looked over their heads, back to the front of the house. Will turned to see his mother standing there, arms folded. The way she glared at her husband didn't give Will much hope for reconciliation. "I think I better get going, kids."
Dad knelt down to hug Will. Tom, too old now for hugs, stuck out his hand for his father to shake. "You two behave yourselves. I'll see you this weekend."
The separation became final six months later. There was no fanfare for this, just a simple announcement from their mother. "Your father is not coming back. You'll still get to see him on weekends," she said over dinner that night.
Will ran back to his bedroom, slamming the door. He dropped onto his bed next to Spot. "It's not fair," he said to the stuffed dog. "Don't they care about what's going to happen to us?"
The dog's plastic eyes stared back at Will, his sewn-on smile remaining fixed. Will hadn't really expected an answer in any case. He already knew his parents had stopped caring about him and Tom. They had put their own selfish needs ahead of those of their children. All they cared about was their own happiness.
In his mind, he tried to determine how things had gotten this way. Looking down at Spot, he wondered if that disastrous vacation to Florida had done it. Maybe if he hadn't lost the original Spot, if he had enjoyed himself more, his parents would have had more fun. Maybe then none of this would have happened. It sounded like a long shot, but at this point nothing made sense. One moment everything had been fine and seemingly happy and the next Dad was loading all his clothes into the back of a truck.
#
The next major shock came a few days later. With Spot tucked under his arm, he went over to Jessie's house. She sat in the backyard in a lawn chair, flipping through a magazine. "Hey," he said. "Where's Whiskers?"
"What? Oh, that. I'm not going to play anymore."
"Why not?"
Jessie lowered the magazine. "That's a baby's game. I'm twelve years old now. That's too old to be playing." Before he could say anything, she added, "Tom feels the same way. Go ask him about it."
Will did ask his brother about it and got the same answer. "That's for babies. We're too old for that shit."
"But—"
"You can keep playing if you want. I got other things to do."
What those other things turned out to be, Will had no idea. He knew only that his brother didn't come home after school, sometimes not returning home until after midnight. Mom tried grounding him, but she was usually too busy working at the hospital to make sure Tom stuck to the grounding. Dad might have been able to bring him into line, if Dad had been around, which he wasn't anymore.
Jessie wasn't staying out all night, but she was just as inaccessible anymore. She had taken to inviting a new group of friends—all of them girls—to her house after school. Watching the girls giggling and gossiping, Will knew he wasn't welcome there.
All of the sudden his life had been turned completely upside-down. His parents lived in different houses, his brother rarely came home, and his best friend wouldn't speak to him. On top of it, the Bloc of Planetary States had become a game for babies, Buster, Whiskers, and most of the others residing in a closet. He was alone now.
For a little while he held out on the Bloc, trying to keep the game alive at least for himself. It wasn't the same without Tom and Jessie and with them Buster, Whiskers, and a host of other characters. He finally went to the kitchen for a trash bag to stuff his Mutts and Raccoons into it. He saved Spot for last, staring sadly at the dog's plastic eyes. "I'm sorry about this, boy," he said and then closed the bag.
#
What happened to Tom had two interpretations. The first was Tom's interpretation, which he had told to Will, his parents, and the police. In his version of events he was a mere passenger in the car with his new friends. They stopped at a convenience store and went inside, presumably for snacks. Not until JJ, the leader of the group, pulled a stocking over his face and a pistol from his pocket, did Tom realize what his friends had in mind. He had stood by, doing nothing until JJ barked at him to grab the money from the register. "What was I supposed to do?" Tom said. "He had a gun."
The version compiled by the police, thanks to testimony from some of Tom's former friends, and presented by the prosecutor was that Tom had masterminded the event. He had planned the entire operation from start to finish. JJ and the others were merely the muscle behind it. They said Tom went into the convenience store with the intention of robbing it, as evidenced by him taking the money from the register.
"If I was the mastermind, why didn't I put a stocking over my head? If I was some genius criminal, wouldn't I have known there'd be a video camera?" Tom said to his family from across a pane of glass.
Will didn't know who to believe. As much a s he wanted to believe his brother, Tom had been acting strangely ever since his parents' divorce, if not before then. He had become secretive and aloof, not to mention he spent most of his waking hours away from home. This made it hard for Will to believe Tom's innocent explanation.
What led credence to Tom's story was what happened after the robbery. Will had been watching Space Empire on tape in the living room most of the night. His mother wasn't due to get off her shift until midnight and Tom as usual was nowhere to be found; Will to his later dismay had long since stopped worrying about this. He turned out the lights in the house and then went to his bedroom. As he reached for the switch, Tom's voice hissed, "Don't turn it on."
"Tom? What's going on?"
"They're coming for me. You've got to hide me."
"Who's coming for you?"
"The cops. They're going to look at the tapes and they're going to see me."
"Tapes of what?"
Tom leapt forward like an animal, putting a hand over Will's mouth. His eyes were also like those of an animal, a wild animal backed into a corner. "Look, when they come here you have to get rid of them. You tell them you haven't seen me. Got it?"
Will nodded. Tom took the hand away from his mouth. "What's going on?"
"Don't worry about it. You just worry about getting rid of the cops."
As it turned out, Will didn't have to get rid of the cops. His mother came home by the time the police showed up at the front door. Will sat on his bed with Tom hiding in the closet. Will knew who was at the door the moment he heard his mother shout, "He did what?"
He heard his mother's footsteps marching down the hall, followed by the heavier ones of the police officers. She didn't bother knocking on the door; she just threw it open and turned on the light. "Where's your brother?" she asked.
"I don't know."
"William Earnest Denton, if you're lying to me, I swear—" She didn't elaborate on this threat with the police standing behind her. "Hasn't he been here?"
"I didn't see him."
He never knew if it was a subconscious tell or some matronly ESP that prompted his mother to throw open the closet door. Unlike Roger in searching Jessie's closet, his mother was thorough. She flung back shirts and suits, revealing where Tom had curled himself up against the wall. With unbelievable strength, she ripped him from out of the closet. Will could do nothing but watch as the officers slapped the cuffs on and then hauled his brother away.
The jury needed only an hour to reach its verdict. They convicted Tom of not only the robbery, but planning the robbery as well. The judge glared down at Tom as she said, "For a boy of your age to not only commit such a heinous crime but to plan it as well, tells me you have an extremely high criminal IQ. Therefore I feel compelled to deal with you in the harshest possible manner. I sentence you to five years at Stratford juvenile correction facility."
Mom wept at the verdict, Dad curled his hands into fists, and even Jessie gasped. Will could only stare straight ahead, watching his brother be taken away by the sheriff's deputies. Before he was removed from the courtroom, Tom's eyes met Will's. In them, Will saw all the proof he needed of his brother's innocence. But there was nothing he could do.
As the final injustice, his brother's "friends" all received only two years in less secure facilities and then another two years of probation. They served only one year of this sentence before being released on "good behavior." When Will read this in the paper, he couldn't help thinking of the Bloc, with its infallible justice system, where the guilty never went free. Then he reminded himself that was only a silly game, not the real world.
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