The Liberator, fiction by Brandon Barrows
W e were hanging out in Kelvin Dander’s basement—me, Kelvin, and Dan Roque—drinking stolen Coors and playing Call of Duty on co-op. It was kind of half-assed, each of us taking a turn on the controller, not really caring if we helped the guy online or not. It was just something to kill time. There was a burst of gunfire from the television and then the rando whose game we’d joined was screaming at us through the headset. “A/D/S, you idiot! A/D/S! You’re never gonna—“ I pulled the headset off. Kid sounded about twelve years old. I tossed the headset and the controller onto the couch. Dan reached for them but the outside door to the basement opened, spilling sunlight across the room, washing out the TV screen. Caleb Meyer was standing at the top of the three steps that led to the Danders’ side yard. He hopped down to the concrete floor, not bothering to shut the door. Backlit like that, it made it hard to look at Caleb head-on and he probably knew it. I was pretty sure he t...