Ziggy, Stardust and Me

by James Brandon

  “Goddamn, he’s like a squirmy squirrel,” a four-hundred-pound buffoon says. He lifts me up. This only makes the Apes grunt louder.

  My mind is paralyzed. I can’t think of a single superhero move or escape plan, so I play dead, freezing every nerve in my body, careful not to show an ounce of tremble as I stand in the middle.

  “Where’s your fucking girlfriend?” Scotty yells, inching closer to me.

  “Leave him alone,” I squeak out.

  “I didn’t hear you, FAGGOT.” He’s inches from my face now.

  I try talking to him telepathically, knowing what I really want to say could never be heard by the others: “We were friends once, remember? We hung out every day. We rode bikes to imaginary worlds. Remember?”

  I swear he hears me: A flash of sadness cyclones through his eyes. His shaggy bangs feather up when he puffs some air. “What’d you say, queer?”

  “Leave him alone,” I whisper. “Do whatever you want to me. Just leave him out of it.”

  A smile sweeps across his cheeks. “Well now, boys, ain’t that sweet? Wittle Jonathan says we can do whatever we want to him.”

  “HOOHOOHOO! AHAHAH!”

  “What d’ya say, boys? What d’ya think we should do?” His eyes creep all over my face, like he’s slowly burning his initials in me with an electric cattle prod.

  He’s so close his muscles push against my ribs. His body: a rippling mass of ripe sweat. “I’ve had about all I can take of you and Tonto,” he says so only I can hear. He slaps his hand on my cheek. “What the hell you thinking, hanging out with him, huh? Don’t you know better?”

  I push the tears back in my face.

  “Answer me!”

  “No,” I say.

  “No what?”

  “No. I don’t know any better.”

  He laughs and steps back to join the rest of the Apes, and the last bit of color drains from the world when he looks down.

  I follow his gaze to see it: the unmistakable, undeniable Boner of Baskerville.

  No.

  A thousand thoughtstrings cyclone out of me, not one of them making sense.

  “Holy shit, he really is a fag,” one of the Apes screams.

  “NO I’M NOT!” The words blast out with such force, Scotty falls back. I turn to run, then:

  “LEAVE HIM ALONE.”

  Everyone stops.

  I look up to see him: Web. And from my vantage, he’s suddenly twenty feet tall, standing on a bench.

  “What the hell—” Scotty says.

  “Leave. Him. Alone,” he says again.

  “Web, just go,” I say.

  “Listen to your girlfriend, Chief Sissy Spirit,” Scotty says, standing.

  “I don’t want to hurt you. Just let him go.” His body vibrates, fists clenched at his sides. I swear he’s holding fireballs.

  “Are you for real, man?” Scotty asks.

  “You heard me.”

  “Check out Injun Queer. Protecting his girlfriend.”

  The Apes grunt and holler.

  “Let him go, you white piece of shit.”

  “Get that faggot squaw!” Scotty yells.

  The Apes lunge for Web. His arms swing back. His hands shoot forward. KAPOW. A blast to Scotty’s jaw.

  Scotty falls, grabbing his cheek, blood spurting from the side of his mouth. He screams.

  The others jump. Web leaps higher. His arms lash left and right, clocking any Ape who even dares get near him. They fall and fumble back up, stunned but with even more fierce determination to kill.

  An Ape grabs Web’s hair. His eyes bulge, and he screams with such ferocity, I have to slap my hands over my ears. The Ape similarly stumbles and—BOOM!—is kicked in the nuts.

  Scotty struggles up, but before he can even take a few steps, POWPOWBLAM! Web left-right-left slugs him, knocking him out.

  A mountain of moans.

  Web: heaving, bleeding from the nose and mouth.

  Me: scrambling over the Ape pile to grab his hand.

  “Come on, let’s go,” I say.

  He doesn’t move.

  “Hey . . . HEY . . . Look at me.” He does, and wobbles his head as if seeing everything for the first time. “Hang on to me. Let’s go!”

  We fly, zigzagging through the locker room.

  When I push open the doors, the sun blinds us. Somehow life continues as if nothing’s happened. We morph into one body and become the Flash, running with breakneck speed to the fields. So fast, the grass under our feet barely bends. I don’t stop until I know we are safe and out of sight.

  The minute I do, I’m suddenly lost in a field of kryptonite: powerless, weak, fading. Like ten Incredible Rednecks are stomping my lungs. I fall to the ground, grabbing my chest. Crystal thought: I need PeterPaulandMary. A wildfire rages within. I try to focus. It’s stuck in my satchel, stuck in my locker. Won’t make it home.

  “Where is it?” he says.

  “Sa—tchel—”

  And he’s gone.

  My legs, my hands, my face goes numb. Everything becomes a yellowed, burning blur. Every inhale grips my lungs tighter, until I’m

  going,

  going—

  “HEY.” Web. “HEY. OPEN YOUR EYES.”

  I do. His are still pulsating. The left one: half-closed, swollen, and splotched purple.

  He pulls me up, holds my head, puts PeterPaulandMary in my hands. “Here.” Jesus. How did he get back so fast? Did I pass out?

  A few thousand poofs.

  I let myself swim in his eyes, let his voice bring me back. I want to wipe the blood from his lips, but my arms are lead.

  The sky, the clouds, the fields slowly hopscotch into focus.

  Short, quick breaths still dagger my lungs.

  But it’s a breath.

  I am breathing.

  “Okay,” he says. “Okay . . . okay . . . okay . . . you’re okay.”

  I’m not sure if he’s saying this to me, or himself.

  “You’re okay, right?” he asks.

  I nod.

  “Okay . . . good . . . good . . .” He springs up; I freeze. “It’s no one. It’s nothing. You’re safe here. I doubt they’ll ever come after you again, okay?”

  I can only nod; my chest still burns.

  He spits out the blood that’s pooled in his mouth. “I gotta go. Okay? You okay?”

  I nod again. He sprints off, disappearing in the fields.

  I sit, lost in a sea of waving grass.

  I throw myself down.

  Clouds shape-shift, taking me on a caravel ride in the winds. Far, far away. I wave my arms in half circles to make a grass angel.

  Rivers of tears fall and form little puddles,

  in the flattened wings.

  19.

  Friday, June 8, 1973

  MY BRAIN HURTS.

  I’m lying in Starla’s bed trying to decipher Einstein’s Relativity—the next book in my line of library-borrowed books. Might as well be trying to decipher ancient alien hieroglyphs. Or girls. Or boys for that matter. God.

  Starla’s packing. Sort of. More like frantically buzzing around her room, throwing this shirt in and that skirt out and this dress in and shaking all about. I’m just as nervous. It’s our last day together for three months . . .

  Oh, and those ten thousand thoughtstrings that tornadoed out of me in the locker room two days ago—How did Web know to find me? Is he hurt? Is he safe? Did he feel that moment in the presentation, too? That moment when he looked in my eyes and no one else in the universe existed, and we maybe actually did travel to the moon? And, oh yeah, that one time THE APES SAW ME WITH A TENT AND NEARLY KILLED ME—and on and on and on. Been trying to stuff them down a wormhole in my mind ever since. Nothing’s worked. They’re all still tangled in my head.
<
br />   Been hiding in my room since the Battle of the Apes, only to emerge in the thick of night to pick up Dad from the Blues Note. And waiting to see daylight once I was sure the streets were safe. Today, it happened. They left for some kind of retreat in the jungle or something. Baseball camp, I think. That’s what Starla said. Don’t know, don’t care, they’re gone. Even Scotty, who knows nothing about baseball and probably lugs his bat around like a caveman’s club yelling, “Ooga booga.” Asshole.

  Anyway. Two months of Ape-free living. Until it all cycles back again. “The present is the greatest present.” Another one of Dr. E’s annoying quotes. But she’s right, I guess, and it works, I guess, because right now is the first time since that day in the locker room my stomach hasn’t felt like it’s birthing a machete. Sort of. I also can’t stop thinking about my final treatments starting in a few days . . .

  Or maybe it’s because I’m finally with Starla. I don’t know. What with her rabid packing, and the frankincense burning in every corner because she’s gotta protect herself from the evildoers on her travels, I’m so dizzy and nauseous, I have to clap my book shut, grab the Lite-Brite from her closet, and start ker-plinching tiny pegs into the board to try and distract myself.

  “I don’t know, Momma doesn’t want me to bring so much, but I’m not wearing just anything. I mean, I know we’re only doing a few marches, but come on, aren’t you supposed to make a statement every time you’re out? This one or the red one?”

  She holds up two cotton miniskirts with her added embellishments of beads and rhinestones. Nearly identical. I have no clue.

  “Both,” I say. Always a safe answer. Ker-plinch, ker-plinch.

  “There now, see? You get it. You totally get it. Yeah, exactly. Both. They’re each different. Have their own value and look and feel and, yeahbabyyeah, both. Settled. Both it is.” Good Lord. She stuffs them in a duffel bag that keeps bobbing up and down on her waterbed. “Now for the accessories.” And she’s off again, rummaging through an empty closet.

  Ker-plinch ker-plinch, ker-plinch.

  “Oh, I have to take my sewing machine, of course, because my jeans are going to win that Levi’s contest, baby, you better believe, but there’s still so much work to do.” She runs from one corner of the room to the other, grabs a few sewing supplies, and—“OW!”—steps on a few plastic pegs before returning to her closet. “Killing me softtlllyyy . . . hm hm hmmm hmmm . . .”

  “Hey, are you going to take your record player?” I ask.

  “Hmm? What? This one or this one?” Two macramé belts.

  “Both.”

  “Right. Both. Now, what?”

  “Your record player? You taking it?” Ker-plinch, ker-plinch.

  “No. Why?”

  “I’d love to borrow this record while you’re away.” She sits on her waterbed, draped in a thousand belts. “And her First Take album. So, you know, I can have you close all the time.”

  “Oh, Jonny, of course you can.” Today she’s painted black lines underneath her eyes to “look like Cleopatra,” and her hair’s poofed out from a swirly hot pink headband. This, combined with her swirly hot pink dress, makes her look like a pop-art painting. Or a stick of cotton candy.

  I look back at the glowing pegs. “Also, can you believe Web’s never heard Roberta Flack? I mean who hasn’t heard Roberta Flack? Silly boy . . .” Ker-plinch, ker-plinch. I grate my wrists and rummage through the box. There aren’t enough greens for what I want to create, so I grab a few extra reds and purples and—

  When I look back up, she’s sitting cross-legged on the shag in front of me.

  “Done packing?” I push the Lite-Brite aside and sit up, relieved. Our knees touch. She holds my hands and twines our fingers.

  “I really like Web,” she says.

  “Oh. Me too . . .”

  “I’m glad you’ve been hanging out with him.”

  “Yeah . . . he’s . . . you know . . . a good guy . . .”

  “And I’m especially glad he was there for you the other day. I don’t know what I would’ve—” A few black streams suddenly wriggle down her face.

  “Starla . . .”

  “I’m sorry I haven’t been there for you—”

  “It’s okay—”

  “These past few weeks have been so—”

  “You don’t have to—”

  “I’ve been so consumed with school and leaving, and I was so happy seeing you working with Web, you know . . . I mean, he seems like a really sweet guy. And that presentation you did was just . . . outta sight, you know? So beautiful . . .”

  “Oh . . . thanks . . .” Did she see that moment between us, too? Did I not hide it like I thought I did? Did anyone else see? Maybe that’s why Scotty went ballistic. Maybe it was real. I should tell her everything now. Before she leaves. Maybe she’d know what to do, how to fix this mess I’m in.

  “I just want you to be happy, Jonny. And you seem different now . . . happier, I mean—” She wipes a tear from my cheek I didn’t even know was there. “Are you?”

  Am I? Is that what this is? I shrug.

  “And, you know . . . you can always tell me anything. Anything at all . . . You know that, right?”

  I knew it. She can telepathically hear me. Can’t you, Starla? Well, here’s the truth: Web is the dreamiest dreamboat I’ve ever met, a whambamthankyouma’am sucker punch to my heart. And when he held my hand, I thought I’d burst into stardust right there. And when he looks in my eyes, I feel . . . safe. How can that be? How can a feeling that’s so wrong feel so right, Starla? Huh? Help me, please.

  Instead, Roberta Flack sings in the background, filling the silence with my answer.

  “Anyway,” Starla says, “since I’m not going to be here, I want you to watch your back this summer. Okay? There’s a lot of assholes out there.”

  “I know.”

  “Promise me you won’t hide away in your room all summer and you’ll hang with some friends.”

  “Ha. Okay.”

  “Promise me you’ll spend more time with Web.”

  Oh. She did hear me. You heard me, didn’t you, Starla? Right. We’re just friends—which is about the greatest thing that’s happened to me since you came into my life—and when you’re gone, he can fill your shoes—not that your platforms could ever be filled, baby. You know what I mean. Yeah, that’s it, isn’t it? It’s the only way . . . Just. Friends.

  I nod.

  “Good,” she says, clapping our palms together. “Look, I get it, it’s not easy . . .”

  “What?”

  “All of it. Life. You know?” She leans in closer so I can smell the butterscotch on her breath. “It’s wild out there, Jonny. Everyone’s fighting for something these days. No one’s safe. Like, there’s no more rules anymore, you know? We’re all out there on our own. But . . . with the Lord’s help you’ll make it. You hear me?”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  “Let His love be all that matters and you’ll—”

  “Starla, I—”

  “I’m only trying to help.”

  “I know.” I place my hands on her cheeks, feel her tears against my palms. I want to osmose her freckles into my hands so I can always hold a piece of her.

  “I have something for you,” she says. “Close your eyes.”

  “What? You don’t have to—”

  “Close them.” I do.

  I feel a cold lump land in my palms. My eyes open. The cross she made when Mrs. Oliver took us to the Saint Louis Art Museum. She’d given us each a red ball of clay to “mold into an abstract definition of hope.” Starla, of course, shaped it into this cross and even carved a crooked little body on it. I threw mine out.

  “I can’t take this, it’s your favorite,” I say.

  “I want you to have it. Hold it when you feel lost or scared and He will be there. I will
be there. Just think of it as Ziggy on the Cross,” she says.

  “Ziggy on the Cross?”

  “Yeah.”

  We laugh. Kind of.

  “Okay, then, Ziggy on the Cross. Thank you.” I grab an envelope from my satchel. “And this is for you . . .”

  “What is it?”

  “Postcards. Already stamped and addressed. So you can take me with you and send me a piece of your adventure from time to time.”

  “Oh, I will, baby.” She folds her arms around me. “You’ll be with me everywhere I go . . .”

  “And now you have to promise me something,” I say, pulling back.

  “Anything.”

  “Forget about me.”

  “What? I could never—”

  “I’m going to be fine, Starla. And I’ll only be fine if I know you’re having the most fantastic time out there in the big, bad wild for both of us. Okay?”

  She wipes her eyes, streaking her face. “I promise.”

  “Good.”

  “You’re perfect, Jonathan Collins. Just the way you are. You hear me?” She pulls me in tighter.

  I wish I could believe you, Starla . . .

  She whispers, “To be continued.”

  And for some reason I think: This will be the last time we will ever hold each other again.

  20.

  Saturday, June 9, 1973

  MY EYES BURST OPEN. Saturday’s sun blazes through my curtains. And my flip-clock says 1:08. Whoa. I’ve never slept this—I’m late for church!

  I bound out of bed, then I realize: Wait. Church is canceled for the summer. I peek through my curtains to see Starla’s driveway, empty.

  She’s gone.

  I slip into the clothes I’d picked out last night, and before Dad wakes, I leave him a note taped to the fridge:

  AT LIBRARY ALL DAY. BE HOME LATER.

  Then I jump on Stingraymobile and head back to the lake.

  Zaps be damned! I can push through it, because we’re just friends. Nothing more.

  Promise to Starla: kept.

  * * *

  —

  A comforter of clouds hides the sun, but the afternoon air is already thick and steamy. Surefire sign of a stick-to-your-skin St. Louis summer to come. It’s happening already. Kids wiggle in front of Mr. Farley’s ice-cream truck, parked at the edge of the water, while their parents wait in air-conditioned cars. It’s the kind of day you don’t dare go outside.