Chapter 1

His sister, Trina, is sitting in her plastic wading pool, bright blue with purple whales stamped on it. She looks like a butterball turkey, splashing around in her diapers and pink rubber pants, banging her plastic shovel, trying to get his mom's attention. His mom, as usual, is reading a book, furiously underlining with a yellow Magic Marker. After she graduates from college, she wants to go on to law school. She wants to go right away, but his stepdad—Teddy calls him Dan to distinguish him from his real dad—wants her to wait until Trina starts kindergarten, which won't be for three more years. Trina can walk, sort of, and babble enough to get what she wants—juice, chicken noodle soup, pick me up, put me down, that sort of thing. His mother sits with her lawn chair facing the pool to make sure Trina doesn't drown. Every so often she gets up and slathers more suntan lotion on the baby's pudgy skin or picks up the bright plastic toys that Trina keeps throwing out of the pool onto the weedy grass. She is a good-natured baby; everyone says so. Always smiling and clapping her hands like an appreciative audience at any dumb thing you do—funny faces, tickling, peekaboo. For some reason, she thinks he is especially hilarious. Even during her rare temper tantrums, he can always get her to forget she's angry and start to laugh.

It is the end of April. Back in Nebraska, where his dad still lives, there is two feet of snow on the ground, his dad told him on the phone the day before. His dad always tells him how lucky he is to live in year-round sunshine. But Teddy misses the snow, even though he barely remembers it. He was only four when they moved away, he and his mom.

It is a Sunday afternoon. He is standing in the Beemers' master bedroom, looking out the window at his own backyard while Eric stands on a hassock and rummages through the top drawer of his father's bureau. Eric's mother is down in the rec room, riding her Excercycle and listening to loud rock music. Eric's father is a pilot for United, and his mother worries about his being around all those pretty stewardesses all the time. Teddy overheard Mrs. Beemer telling his mother this and vowing to lose five pounds by their tenth anniversary, which they are going to spend on some beach in Mexico. Eric pulls a pair of balled white gym socks from the back of the drawer and extracts a small key. "Voila!" he says, like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat.

Teddy watches nervously out the open window, the ruffled curtains fluttering in the breeze, as Eric walks over and unlocks the nightstand drawer next to his mother's side of the bed. Teddy's own mother has her back to them, busy underlining something in her book. The Beemers' dog, Ninja, is busy digging a hole by the chain-link fence, panting, as if trying to make a mad dash for the water in the wading pool. Eric's father got the dog at the pound a few weeks ago after the house across the street was burglarized while the couple was at home asleep. He was worried because he was away from home a lot of nights. In addition to the dog, who hasn't really turned out to be such a hot watchdog, Mr. Beemer bought his wife a handgun. Even though she said she didn't want one.

"It's a .38 caliber," Eric announces as he slides the gun from the back of the drawer, where his mother hid it in a Kleenex box. The gun is silver and black, smaller even than a squirt gun. Eric whirls around, squatting and squinting, taking aim at various targets the way cops do on TV: the china figurine on the vanity table, his parents' wedding photograph on the wall, the dog digging in the yard. Teddy keeps glancing anxiously in his mother's direction. He knows she'd kill him if she saw him anywhere near a gun. He sees his sister toss her juice box onto the lawn. She points and grunts, but his mother doesn't pay any attention to her. Trina stands up and takes a wobbly step toward the side of the pool, toward her Juicy Juice box lying on the dead grass.

"Here." Eric hands him the gun just as the loud music from downstairs stops. They both freeze guiltily for an instant, and then it starts up again, a different tape.

Teddy's real dad in Nebraska is a hunter. Teddy likes to hear the stories about when his dad was a kid, like him, and would go hunting every fall with his father and older brothers. One of whom is dead (a car accident) and the other, Teddy's uncle Brice, doesn't like to hunt anymore. His dad keeps saying he will take Teddy hunting someday, but his mother says over her dead body. Teddy takes aim at a row of scraggly trees at the back of their yard pretending there is a big buck rustling in the leaves. He holds his breath; everything seems perfectly still. It is as if he can hear the deer's heart beating. Then suddenly the phone on the nightstand explodes, loud and shrill, startling him, and at the same time Eric grabs for the gun, panicked that his mother will come upstairs.

His sister splashes onto her butt in the water. At first Teddy thinks she has just lost her balance as usual. Then his mother screams. The dog starts barking. "Holy shit!" Eric whispers, touching a ragged hole in the window screen. Teddy's mom is standing in the pool, lifting his sister out of the shallow water. She looks around frantically, spots them standing frozen at the open window, and shouts to call 911. Her book is floating in the water. Eric runs downstairs to the rec room. The gun is lying on the thick beige carpet. Teddy picks it up and places it back inside the Kleenex box and slides the nightstand drawer shut, but he can't find the key. He hears Eric's mother on the telephone in the kitchen, giving the address, spelling out the name of their street, B-U-E-N-A V-I-S-T-A, as if the person on the other end is deaf or retarded.

Later, when he thinks about it, he can't remember what he was thinking. It was as if he were watching himself on television. He tosses Mr. Beemer's white gym socks under the bed. The china shepherdess on the vanity table has somehow fallen onto the floor. He picks it up and checks to make sure it isn't broken. Miraculously, the shepherdess's staff and little lamb are still intact. Relieved, he sets the figurine back on the mirrored tabletop, catching a glimpse of his reflection. From this weird angle he is all nostrils and teeth. Like a monster. He looks out the window. His mother is kneeling in the water, with her back toward him. He can't see Trina. He races downstairs and out the back door, across the yard. As soon as she sees him, his mother starts shouting, "What happened ? Did you see what happened, Teddy?"

He shakes his head.

His mother is sitting in the wading pool, cradling his little sister, saying her name over and over. The water is turning pink, like Easter egg dye. Eric's mother runs out onto the back porch and hollers that the paramedics are on their way. His sister's eyes are open, the eyelids trembling. He squats in the soggy grass next to the pool and starts making all the funny faces in his repertoire, sticking out his tongue and rolling his eyes into his head and stretching his lips, trying to make her laugh. Even though it is hot and bright out, he is shivering. His mother has the wadded-up beach towel pressed against Trina's chest, but you can still see the blood. The towel is white with red chili peppers. It is big enough to wrap around her two or three times. His stepdad calls Trina his little burrito." When he hears the siren in the distance, Teddy tries even harder—wiggling his fingers in his ears, leaping and chattering like a chimpanzee, shouting "Mookie, Mookie!" the name of his sister's favorite stuffed animal. He must look like some kind of lunatic. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Eric standing beside his mother at the edge of their lawn. Mrs. Beemer is sweating and panting in her black leotard and white sneakers. Eric, his best friend, is staring at him as if he were a total stranger, someone he has never seen before, an alien from another planet.