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hand-painting
retarted
on a sign next to a busy highway, but also stupid enough to misspell it. No, probably not a master criminal, but this was the suburbs, so it could be just about anyone.
    That’s why I left it to Thrash. He never said too much, but he was always thinking, figuring things out. I’d never been sure why he was always so pensive. But there was a lot going on inside that little green body of his that I didn’t understand, and when I thought about it, I probably didn’t want to.
When my first
counselor gave him to me a couple of months into third grade, my sessions were still voluntary, and she said it was to help me actualize, because I was too alone and locked up inside myself. I didn’t have a single friend, and she said that not being able to actualize or express what I was feeling to anyone was probably what was causing me to go all ballistic from time to time. So she handed me this dorky-looking frog and told me to take him home and try to relate to him in the way that came most naturally. I took it as the insult and attempt to baby me that it was, so I beat the shit out of him. After two days, mom had to Krazy Glue one of his eyes back on. When I saw my counselor the following week, she could tell I’d been wailing on him, but she didn’t mention it right off. Instead, she asked me if I’d given him a name. I said, Yeah, Thrash, because that’s what I did to him; it was the way of relating that seemed most appropriate. She let that slide, too, but pointed out that
thrash
was a verb, and that I had this tendency to name things after verbs, which was a symptom of my deeper problem with actualization.
    That was the first time I’d thought she wasn’t just dropping butt-bombs on me, because I used to wonder if there was a connection between the way my brain worked and what I said, or what I didn’t say, because I didn’t say much. Shit, I barely talked at all, except for when I was already too far gone and laying into somebody. But my mind was always running; it was like my thoughts kept racing and spinning but they couldn’t figure out where to go or what to do. So I started listening to her a bit more after that, and when she said Thrash might be good for something other than an excuse for violence, I decided to give him a try.
    I had to give it to her; she was right on that, too. Thrash and I hit it off, and I started telling him things, about what I was thinking or feeling, or how I was so sick with rage all the time, and pretty soon he started answering me back. Okay, I knew he wasn’t actually answering me back; he couldn’t, he was a stuffed animal you could buy at a toy store for less than ten bucks. But when I told him things, Istarted to hear all these new ideas inside my head, and they came to me in a voice different from my own—kind of slow and croaky, like that kid made in
The Shining
, only deeper—so I gave Thrash credit for them. I didn’t know where he got his ideas or why I was the only one who could hear them or why almost everything he said was so fucking twisted. Then again, I didn’t really care, because after I got used to talking to him, I realized that having him around settled me down some and helped me to think.
    And one of the first things I thought was that people were making a grave mistake by underestimating him or mocking the shit out of us the way they did. Behind his wide plastic eyes, surprised expression, open-mouthed grin, and the goofy pink tongue hanging out, there lurked a cunning, almost evil intelligence that knew neither failure nor fear. Thrash had a predator’s planning and patience, a frightening temper, and a long memory, so he wasn’t the sort you wanted to cross. I’d never had to sweat him, though; we were a team, and I was cool with that because he was the baddest and meanest partner any detective ever had. Made Watson look like a bitch.
    Thrash didn’t care much for football, though, and since I was on my way to the second round of