The Deathday Letter

by Shaun David Hutchinson

  “Bullshit,” I say. “You two have been bickering all day. And you think I haven’t noticed, but I have. So tell me what’s up. Now.” Listen. I don’t recommend using this tactic on your friends. Sometimes you have to treat a best friend like a yellow jacket you’ve got cupped in your hands. Give them time to figure shit out on their own. Of course, time is the one thing I don’t have, so I know I’m pretty much begging to be stung.

  “Just tell him,” says Ronnie.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Tell me.”

  “Shut up, Ronnie. Just shut the hell up.”

  “Why don’t you all just calm down; you’re killing my buzz.” Pete tries to stand up but he weebles and he wobbles and he falls flat on his ass.

  “This isn’t any of your business,” I say.

  “It’s kind of our house,” says Dru.

  I stand up. I rise to my full height and I’m a giant towering over my friends, over everyone. It doesn’t matter that this isn’t our house or that we’ve pretty much commandeered the CUDDLE living room to have a linguistic slap fight. I just don’t care.

  “Now you both listen to me.” I point at Shane and Ronnie with my index finger, shaking it like every teacher I’ve ever pissed off. “I want the truth.”

  “You can’t handle—”

  “GP,” interrupts Hurricane. “So not the time.”

  “Sorry.”

  Shane crosses his arms over his chest. He’s shut down. I’ve seen it before. I’ll never get anything out of him now. “That’s one thing you’re not going to get. I don’t care if you are dying.”

  Damn. That stings.

  “Dude.”

  “Shane,” says Ronnie, trying to touch him.

  Shane pulls away. He fumbles for words before giving up and storming off to the kitchen. The beaded curtains rattle in his wake.

  “I feel like I’m in a very special episode of Gossip Girl,” says Dru. “The one where Blair smokes pot and acts like a dick to all her friends.”

  Nariko starts to push herself up, but GP grabs her wrist and says, “I got this one.”

  Hurricane tries to press one of Medusa’s snakes into my fist, but I brush her off. “He’s my best friend, Ronnie. You have to tell me what’s up.”

  Ronnie shakes her head. “No, I don’t.”

  “But you do know.” It’s not a question.

  “It’s Shane’s secret to tell, not mine. I’ll tell you anything else.”

  “Forget it. Don’t do me any favors.”

  14:16

  Well, I’m hungry,” says Pete. I wait for him to move because it’s the only way I’m going to break this stupid standoff. I wish Ronnie would just cry already instead of looking at me like I stabbed her in the heart with a pencil.

  Seconds drag by and no one’s moving. Things aren’t just awkward, they’re painful. I finally look at Pete and say, “I thought you were gonna get some food?”

  Pete rubs his belly and says, “I did. I went to the kitchen, made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and eated it. Then I came back and sat down. It was so fast you never saw it.”

  Hurricane high-fives him and says, “I wish I could move that fast.” They’ve totally lost their stoner minds. They’re absolute imbeciles—a bunch of stupid freaking asshats! And I’m trapped here with them in the most uncomfortable situation since the atomic wedgie incident of ’03.

  Ronnie scans the room like she’s taking stock and trying to figure out how her day has gone so wrong. “I’m just going to go.” She sounds so pathetic.

  Dru has the nerve to look at me like I’m the Antichrist. In fact, everyone’s looking at me like I just strangled a puppy and made it into a cap.

  “Forget it,” I say. “I’ll go!”

  The real problem here is that I don’t know where to go. Shane went off into one room and I definitely don’t wanna run into him right now, so I go through the only beaded door available to me. I think hippies like those beaded curtains instead of doors because no matter how mad you are, you can’t slam them to make them sound angry.

  The rest of the CUDDLE house is cluttered. The badly lit hallway is stacked with newspapers and magazines, and there isn’t a single surface that isn’t decorated with thrift store crap.

  I go into the first bedroom with an open door. It looks like it was lifted straight out of a seventies porno (don’t ask). The walls are wood paneled and the carpet is this puke green. There ain’t much in the way of furniture: a faux wood dresser, a futon, a bookshelf. And the walls are plastered with posters of faraway places. Places I’ll never get to see.

  The futon’s more comfortable than it looks. So comfortable that for a second, while I watch the dusty ceiling fan shimmy, I forget that I’m supposed to be mad at Ronnie and Shane.

  I let my eyes go unfocused on a poster of a giant church in Budapest. I can almost imagine running fast enough to get there before I die. I feel the sun on my arms and the people bumping into me, cursing me in a language I don’t know and haven’t bothered to learn. In front of me is a crazy-ass church with spires that I think can almost reach heaven. If heaven really exists.

  And I don’t know if it does. I mean, what if it doesn’t? What if tomorrow morning I die and that’s it? No more Ollie. Ever. Everything I was ever gonna be is wasted. Every class I took, every book I read. I may as well have spent the last fifteen and nine-tenths years doodling my noodle and playing Halo. In the end it’ll all amount to the same thing, right?

  All this, this whole day, is pointless. Bridge-jumping and Ronnie and getting high. It’s not gonna keep me from getting flushed.

  “Hey.”

  Hurricane peeks her head into the room.

  “Can you just leave? I wanna be alone.”

  Hurricane walks straight in like she owns the place. “This is my room, noob.”

  I look around the room again. “Really? I expected something more . . .”

  “Girly?”

  “I guess.”

  “I don’t do girly.” Hurricane goes over to her dresser and pulls something out of the top drawer. “I do do nunchucks, though.”

  She said doo-doo. I laugh even though I’m doing my best to stay pouty and depressed. “Cool.”

  Hurricane tosses the nunchucks on the bed and sits down beside me. “They’ll forgive you, you know.”

  Sitting up on one elbow, I swear and say, “Forgive me? I’m not the one who needs to be forgiven. They’re the ones keeping secrets from me.”

  “And you’ve never kept any secrets from your friends?”

  “They’re not my friends,” I say, to avoid answering the question. I also try to avoid looking at Hurricane. Her blond hair is wavier, her blue eyes more blue. She looks so far away, but I can see every molecule. They look like doughnuts and I just want to eat her. That didn’t come out right. Or did it? Damn pot. I can’t tell if I’m hungry or horny or both.

  Hurricane nods. “Really? Because if they weren’t your friends, they probably would have given up on you after your first temper tantrum.” She looks at me and scrunches her lips. “Oh, yeah, I’m assuming this is not your first episode.”

  “If they’re really my friends, then they’d tell me what’s going on.”

  “They are your friends, and your head must be really far up your ass to not know that.”

  “Then why won’t they tell me what they’re whispering about,” I whine. Yeah, I whined. I think I’m allowed to indulge a little today. “Friends shouldn’t keep secrets from one another.”

  Hurricane rolls her eyes and pushes me over. I fall to the side without trying to stop myself and then sit back up. “That’s a load of hot donkey crap,” says Hurricane. “And you know it.”

  “No it’s not.”

  “Please. I’m sure you have things you’ve never told anyone. Not even your best buddy, Shane.”

  “No,” I say. My jaw’s getting sore from clenching it so hard, but every time I think about Shane and Ronnie whispering in the corner it makes me insane.

 
; “You can’t lie to me.” Hurricane points to her eyes and then mine. “I see everything. I’ve got a little psychic in me.”

  “I don’t care if you’ve got a whole psychic hotline in you. I’m not lying. Shane and I tell each other everything.”

  Hurricane scoots closer. “So what do you think this big secret is that they’re keeping from you?”

  I’ve been trying not to think about it. I tell myself it’s because I’m too busy trying to have a crazy and wild Deathday, but the truth is that I’m afraid I already know.

  “I think Shane’s . . . that he’s . . . I think Shane’s been hooking up with Ronnie behind my back.”

  Hurricane snorts so loud I’m afraid she’s going to choke on her tongue. “Wrong. That girl loves you. And Shane’s your best friend. He’d never do that to you.”

  “Then why won’t he tell me what’s going on?”

  “Come on, Oliver. Isn’t there anything you’ve never told Shane?” Hurricane arches one eyebrow perfectly and stares down her crooked nose at me. It feels like she’s looking at me through a fishbowl.

  I sigh and slump my shoulders in defeat. “There may be one thing.”

  “See.”

  “But it’s only ’cause it’s really embarrassing. Like so embarrassing that if anyone ever finds out, I might spontaneously implode.”

  “Tell me.”

  I laugh. “If I’ve never told Shane, what makes you think I’m gonna tell you?”

  “It might be cathartic.”

  “Who?”

  “Telling me your secret might make you feel better.”

  “I’m mad at my friends, not overburdened by secrets.”

  Hurricane licks her lips in slo-mo like in a bad eighties rock

  video. All she needs is a motorcycle, a leather jacket, and a

  lollipop.

  “What have you got to lose?” she says. “You’ll be dead tomorrow. It’s time to start living today.”

  That’s the kind of saying that would normally make me roll my eyes and think of a cheesy greeting card. But the weed worming around my veins and arteries somehow makes it less lame.

  “Fine. But I’m only telling you so that you’ll leave me the heck alone. Or not leave me alone, ’cause I don’t want you to leave. I just want you to stop bugging me.”

  Hurricane leans in closer. Private Willy leaps to ATTEN-SHUN! Her face is almost touching mine. It’s so close I can taste the sweet ambrosia of sour cream and onion chips, and chocolate-chip cookies.

  “Confess your secrets to me.”

  For a second, I think she’s gonna kiss me. I want her to kiss me. So I close my eyes and wait. And wait.

  And wait.

  When I open my eyes, Hurricane is staring at me. I’m not exactly sure how red I am, but I’m guessing somewhere between bloodred and violet.

  “Must’ve fallen asleep,” I say, and try to put the broom back in the closet.

  “Right,” Hurricane says with the straightest face I’ve ever seen.

  “So, my deep dark secret,” I say.

  “Sure.” Hurricane looks like she’s barely holding it together. Like any second a miniature, less chubby version of herself is going to split her stomach, crawl out, and cackle like a psychotic Halloween witch.

  “So, it’s not a huge deal. I just never told Shane ’cause he’d go telling everyone and well, you’ll understand once I tell you.”

  “Then tell me.”

  I shake my head like a bobblehead doll. “Anyway. Late one night I was zipper surfing.”

  Hurricane sighs and looks up at the ceiling. “Oh my God. Does everything with you boys have something to do with your johnsons?”

  Jeez. It’s like she just asked if the sky’s blue. And the look I’m giving her says that the answer is unequivocally yes. “You know,” I say, “the fact that I’m stoned out of my mind is the only reason I’m talking to you about this.”

  “Sorry,” she says. Hurricane runs her hands through my hair and I swear on a Bible that her hands are electrified.

  “Cool. So I’m abusing the usual suspect but I’m just not that into it.” I can’t take the chance that she misunderstood, so I say, “Don’t get me wrong, I’m always into it, I just wasn’t digging the entertainment.”

  “Which was?”

  “My mom’s Victoria’s Secret catalogs.”

  “You know there are naked girls on the Internet, right?”

  “Duh,” I say. The funny thing is how utterly easy it is to talk to Hurricane. Nana’s the only other person I’ve ever been able to talk to about this stuff, but those conversations were never like this. “My parents keep the computer in the family room, and I’m not too keen on having an audience that consists of my little sisters, my parents, or my grandmother.”

  “Got it.”

  “So I flipped on my TV and muted it, hoping to find something stimulating, when I came across some scrambled porn.”

  Hurricane looks at me like I’m maybe the most pathetic thing in the world. Like I’m one of those puppies about to be euthanized. “That’s so sad,” is all she says.

  “I was like thirteen. And it’s not sad, it’s resourceful.”

  “No,” she says. “It’s sad.”

  “Whatever. So I was like, there’s a nipple, there’s a nipple, is that a lap flounder? It did matter ’cause Erhard von Schlongstein had become Erhard von Longschlongstein and I took him to town.”

  “I’m not sure who this is more embarrassing for,” says Hurricane, laughing.

  She’s right. I should be embarrassed. I should be frothing at the mouth, hiding under the futon, embarrassed, but I’m not, and that’s ten tons of cool. “Things were looking up, and Moses was getting pretty close to the promised land, but I needed something more to push me over the edge. So I turned up the volume.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “Don’t interrupt. I inched up the volume and got back to the game, but something was off. I turned up the volume a little more and I heard a dude. Well, that’s not a big deal ’cause, unless you hit the lesbian lottery, there’s always a dude involved. But I looked a little closer and realized that the nipples were a little smaller than normal. A little closer and I realized they were also a little hairier than usual. I turned up the volume a touch more, still sitting there gripping Ivan the Terrible, and I realized that there wasn’t just one dude talking, but two.”

  Hurricane laughs so hard she leans backward and almost falls off the futon. “You were whacking off to scrambled gay porn and you didn’t even know it?”

  “Well it’s not like I finished. I mean, of course I finished, but I turned off the TV the second I realized what I was watching. Okay, well not right that second. There was that whole moment of horror where I had to think back and make sure I didn’t actually enjoy it. Then I turned it off and finished.”

  “And you never told Shane?” asks Hurricane, though her words are more laughter than actual words. Still, I know what she means.

  I shrug like she should already know the answer. “I don’t want him thinking I’m gay.”

  “Would that be the worst thing in the world?”

  “Being gay or Shane thinking I’m gay?”

  Hurricane gets a hold of herself and leans back. It looks like it’s maybe the most comfortable position in the world, so I join her. “Listen, I got nothing against the gays, but high school is a war zone. Every day’s a battle to not be the guy everyone else makes fun of. Being gay or people even thinking I were gay would be like loading the other guy’s guns and painting a bull’s-eye right on my ass.”

  “I get why you wouldn’t tell anyone, then. Even your best friend.”

  “Yeah. It would be the end of my high school career. Well, now it doesn’t matter, but you get it. And I’m not saying I am, by the way. Gay I mean. ’Cause I’m not. I heart boobs.”

  Hurricane strokes my thigh. Shivers run through my body like all her electricity is being drawn to my lightning rod.

  “Tell me about the g
irls you’ve been with, Ollie.”

  I gulp. “Not a whole lot to tell. Well, I mean, there’s stuff. It’s not like I’ve never been with a girl before, ’cause I’ve been with loads of girls. Boatloads. Whole shipping yards full. But if you’re asking if I’ve ever, like, been with a girl, then I’ve only kind of been with one. Like half of one.”

  “Half of a girl?” asks Hurricane. “Which half ?”

  “I don’t mean like that.” I’m stammering like I’ve got a mouthful of Novocain. My lips are just mud flaps on a truck heading nowhere. “There was this girl at camp and we almost sort of . . . you know.” How lame am I? I just admitted to jerkin’ it to a gay scrambler, but I can’t say the word sex.

  Hurricane teases my ear with her finger and she scoots her body so close that we’re practically Siamese twins. “Tell me.”

  “It’s kind of embarrassing.”

  “More embarrassing than masturbating to gay porn?”

  “Good point.” I clear my throat and try to arrange myself so my Eiffel Tower isn’t so obvious. “Like I said, it was at camp. There was this girl named Emma. Emma Frotz. It was two years ago. Usually Shane and I went to camp together, but that year his parents took him to Switzerland for some smart people convention, so I had to go alone. Emma was at the neighboring girls’ camp.”

  “Get to the good stuff, Oliver.”

  I nod. “Yeah. Getting there.” I lose my train of thought and stare into Hurricane’s blue eyes. They’re so calm and deep and, and, and . . . “Right. Story. Emma and I, we flirted back and forth whenever we could. I didn’t think anything of it. Let’s just say that I’m kind of shy when it comes to girls.

  “On the last night, she sneaked to my bunk and asked me if I wanted to go skinny-dipping with her and some of the others. I was like, ‘Duh!’ so we went. It turned into a giant sausagefest. More boys than girls.”

  Hurricane snickers. “Usually is.”

  “So Emma and I sneaked off to this clearing and started fooling around. It was, um, intense.”

  “What happened?”

  I cough and rub my eyes to cover the fact that I really ain’t all that comfortable talking about this with her. I mean, I guess it’s one thing to tell a not-hot hot girl about the time I jacked my beanstalk to a couple of dudes playing hide the salami, but it’s another to tell her about my experience, or lack thereof, with other chicks.