The Deathday Letter

by Shaun David Hutchinson

  But she’s insistent. “Emma was pretty aggressive. Didn’t talk much, just sort of led the way, like sex was some mountain she wanted to climb. Anyway, she was doing some stuff I’d rather not explain when something with more legs than any creature should have goes crawling across my chest. I screamed as loud as I’ve ever screamed in my entire life and then sort of sat up and leaned forward. Okay, I don’t really know exactly how it happened, but our skulls collided and before I knew it there was blood running down my face.”

  Hurricane’s trying hard, for the second time, to stifle a laugh. “I’m sorry, it’s just so funny.”

  “I ended up with nine stitches. Right up by my hair.” I pull back my mop and show her the thin white scar.

  “Ouch,” she says, and traces it with her finger. My hair stands up on end.

  “And I guess I don’t need to tell you that Emma wasn’t all that enthused about finishing what she started with a dude gushing blood.”

  “So you’re going to die a virgin?”

  I nod. “It looks about like that.”

  “That’s . . . sad.”

  I start to get up because I don’t need some girl’s pity, but Hurricane pushes me back to the bed and straddles me. “What?”

  Hurricane leans over me. Her hair is a blond canopy. “If you could do anything, anything at all, what would you do?”

  “Well, I’d go to Spain because I’ve really always wanted to run with the bulls, and then I’d go to stuntman school because—”

  “With a girl,” says Hurricane, putting her finger to my lips. “If you could do anything with a girl, what would it be?”

  My breath catches in my throat and I swear I’m not sure I’m ever gonna be able to breathe again. This might be what kills me. All the blood my body needs to survive is making a beeline for the Wang Expressway and there isn’t enough left for anything else.

  “I have a list,” I manage to squeak out.

  “I bet you do,” she says, and before I know it, Hurricane pounces. She mashes her face into mine and tries to suck the life out of me like a B-movie alien, except not as cool, but I go with it anyway. Her nose-breath steams my upper lip as she shoves her tongue into my mouth. It tastes worse than it smells and reminds me of the time my mom tried to make me eat liver. I try to use my own tongue to shove hers back into her mouth, but that only makes her try harder. It’s like I’m trying to use a wet noodle to plug a hole in a leaky ship.

  I haven’t got the heart to tell her that if she thinks this is kissing, she’s been doing it all wrong. It’s wetter than my old friend Joey Henderson’s bulldog.

  But suddenly none of that matters; she could be eating my face instead of bathing it and it wouldn’t matter ’cause she’s got her hands at my pants, and she ain’t shy.

  “Did you forget something this morning?”

  “Deodorant?”

  “Underwear.”

  I shake my head. “I’m living crazy today.”

  “Makes my job easier.” Hurricane grabs my shirt, pulls it over my head, and kisses me even wetter than before. Her hands start doing things that Ronnie’s hands never did. And Ronnie definitely never used her teeth.

  I can’t believe I’m thinking about Ronnie while I’m here with Hurricane. With Hurricane. In the biblical and/or pornographic sense of the word. Ronnie thoughts can’t be here. But they are. Her face and her lips and how they felt when we were together.

  “Stop!”

  Hurricane tosses her hair back and looks at me, but I pull her back down. “I didn’t mean you.”

  Why should I feel guilty that Hurricane’s here and she’s doing . . . holy crap! I can’t believe she’s doing that. But Ronnie just won’t go away. It’s like I can smell her coconut shampoo and even hear her voice going, “Oliver Travers!” but it’s not her.

  Except it is.

  “Oliver Travers, what the hell are you doing?”

  Hurricane rolls off of me, which I think makes everything worse. Ronnie stands in the doorway, which is conveniently open, with her arms crossed over her chest, looking very red.

  “We were just talking!”

  “Oh, I forgot that you usually talk with your shirt off and a perfect stranger’s tongue in your mouth.” She says it with an iciness that scares the bejesus out of me. Seriously, the General doesn’t just retreat, he surrenders.

  I grab for my shirt but half of it is under Hurricane and it won’t come out. Finally I give up and stand. My shorts try to fall, but I grab and hold them with one hand.

  “Okay, Ronnie, you win. This is exactly what you think it is.”

  “All you ever care about is where you can stick your Wiimote!” Ronnie yells, and just stands there. I can see her brain working, the wheels spinning like crazy, trying to think of the next thing to say, but there isn’t a next thing.

  “Ronnie,” I say, but can you believe she doesn’t even give me a chance to say something stupid before stomping out of the room? I mean, come on! “Dammit!”

  Hurricane touches my back, but I shrug her off. “Why won’t she just listen to me?”

  “Because she’s upset.”

  “But she dumped me. She almost kissed me on the bridge. What the hell does she want from me?”

  Hurricane grabs my hand and turns me around. “You love her?” I nod. “Does she know?” I shrug. “Well if she does and she caught you in here with me, she’s got a reason to be mad.”

  “But she brok—”

  “I didn’t say it was a rational reason.” Hurricane shoves my shirt at me and looks like she’s waiting for me to do something “You should go after her.”

  But I can’t.

  13:43

  Ollie,” says Hurricane. “You’ve got to go after her. This is the part in the movie where the screen splits and the boy and the girl both regret the things they said and that they didn’t work it out right then. Do you really want to spend the rest of your day staring out a window into the rain listening to Peter Gabriel’s ‘In Your Eyes’?”

  I button up my shorts and pull on my shirt. “You talk too much. But thanks for . . .” I look back at the bed. “That.”

  The truth is that I’m still not sure if she was gonna have sex with me or maul me. In a small way I’m grateful I don’t have to find out. If she boinked the way she kissed, it’s possible I could have drowned.

  That’s not what’s important, though. Ronnie is what’s important. But I’m torn. I didn’t want to bring Ronnie along today. And then I did, and then I really did. On top of that, I feel guilty but I’m not sure what I feel guilty about. The fact that I was about to naked tango with Hurricane or the fact that Ronnie saw us? If I go after her I could make things worse but if I don’t I could make them worser.

  I know the longer I let Ronnie stew, the angrier she’s gonna get, so I man up and march out of the room, leaving Hurricane on the bed. I stop at the door and turn around. “Later,” I say. Then I go back to the living room.

  “Lippenstift.” Klaus points at me and laughs his way around the biggest BLT I’ve ever seen. “Lippenstift!”

  “Where’s Ronnie?” I ask. It’s just Dru and Pete and Klaus, and none of them look like they could buy a clue with a map and a million dollars. Okay, so it’s not like I’m doing too much better. My head still feels like it’s stuffed with Silly Putty, but I know I don’t look as bad as them.

  I snap my fingers in front of them a few times. “Hello? Ronnie? Girl-shaped? Came here with me?”

  “She left with Nariko,” says GP from behind me. He brushes by me and flops on the floor next to Dru. “You got a little . . .” GP motions at his lips.

  “Lippenstift,” says Klaus again, though this time his mouth is so full of lettuce that it sounds more like, “Eppethbbbt.”

  “What do you mean, she left with Nariko?”

  Pete motions with his hands like he’s signing. “She left house. With Nariko. In a car. Forever. Away.”

  “We’re better off without her,” says Shane. I don’t k
now when he showed up, but I’m glad he’s here.

  “Shane, about earlier—”

  Shane shrugs and looks at his feet. “It’s cool. Don’t worry about it.”

  No matter what Shane’s not telling me, I can’t stay mad at the kid.

  “So, Ronnie left?”

  Shane nods. “She didn’t talk to me or anything. Nariko came into the kitchen while I was talking to GP and said she was taking Ronnie home.”

  “Then that’s where we should go.”

  “I know I don’t know you really well,” says GP as he packs the hookah again. “But I think you need to remember something: This day isn’t all about you.”

  I turn a little to face him directly but I get headrush and nearly fall over. “I’m the one who got a letter,” I say.

  “Sure, but Ronnie, Shane, your other friends, and your family, they’re the ones who have to go on living. Yeah, you’ll die, but they’re still going to be here. You might want to cut your people a little slack is all I’m saying.”

  “Got it,” I say, but his words go in and right back out. “Shane? Can we?”

  “Okay.”

  I look around the room again, feeling slightly nostalgic. This is where I got high and almost had sex. But the house feels so small now. It can’t contain me.

  “Thanks for everything, guys.”

  Dru jumps up, steadies herself on the wall, runs at me, and throws her arms around me. I fall back hard but Shane’s there to catch us both.

  “You’re a pretty okay kid,” she says. “I kind of wish you weren’t going to die.”

  “Kind of ?”

  “You didn’t see Ronnie’s face after she saw you and Hurricane.”

  I pat her back. “Well then I’m glad only a small part of you wants me dead.” Dru lets go of me and stumbles back to the couch.

  “Auf Wiedersehen!”

  “You’re a dick, kid,” says Pete. “Ronnie could do better.”

  “Good talking to you, Shane,” says GP.

  Shane grabs my sleeve and drags me out the door.

  I’m not really sure how long we were in the CUDDLE house, but the sun is still high and so am I. The heat is pretty overwhelming and I’m already sweating. I can see why those guys stay in the house so much. The world outside is so harsh. The light, the heat, the sounds of random lawnmowers. For a nanosecond, I actually consider going back in the house and sparking up Medusa again. There are worse ways I can imagine spending my last day.

  Shane stops in front of Miss Piggy and leans against my door. “How you feeling?”

  Duh! “Great, Shane.”

  “What happened?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “All I know is that Ronnie hates your guts and just wanted to go home.”

  I shove my hands in my pockets and lean next to Shane. “I was busy being annoyed at you and Ronnie. Hurricane came in. We talked about . . . well, that part’s not important. Hurricane started kissing me—”

  “Whoa!”

  “More like, ‘waugh,’ but it was still cool.” In hindsight I start to think that maybe Hurricane wasn’t as bad a kisser as I remember, but yeah, she was. Seriously, she was like a car wash. “She started doing other stuff.”

  “Define ‘other stuff.’”

  I shrug. I used to always be able to tell Shane almost everything, but knowing he’s hiding something from me makes me hesitate. “Let’s just say that when Ronnie walked in on us, I was shirtless and Hurricane’s hand was in my pants.”

  Shane makes a silent O with his lips that looks like an inner tube. “Well it makes sense that she’s angry,” he says when the shock wears off. “But I still think we’re better off without her.”

  I want to tell Shane that I wouldn’t have hooked up with Hurricane, and Ronnie wouldn’t have left if he’d just told me what’s going on, but I can’t. I want Shane to want to tell me. After all, we’ve been friends since before birth. He should trust me. The same way that I trust him.

  “I once beat off to scrambled gay porn but I didn’t know it was gay at the time because the sound was down and it was scrambled and there were nipples and I didn’t know and then I turned up the sound and it was all dudes all the time and I shut it off right away but I was still scared to tell you but now you know. So there.”

  Shane stares at me. He’s gone beyond Whoa! His face is starting to resemble a Halloween mask I wore one year that was a combination of Quasimodo and the Toxic Avenger.

  “Shane? Say something.”

  Finally Shane regains his ability to form words into mostly coherent sentences. And he says something I totally don’t expect. “Do you want to drive?”

  “Drive?”

  “Yes. Drive.” It’s like he’s decided to ignore the hugely embarrassing and reputation-destroying secret I just spilled on the sidewalk, which might actually be for the best.

  “You want me to drive Miss Piggy?”

  Shane digs the keys out of his pocket and tosses them at me. “I want you to stop thinking about Ronnie. This feels like the best way to do that.”

  “Okay.” Afraid he’s going to change his mind, I run around to the driver’s side, open the door with a screeee! and jump inside. “It feels weird being on this side.”

  “Ditto that,” says Shane as he climbs in.

  I jam the key into the ignition and start to turn it but Shane reaches over and pulls the keys out. “Don’t jump the gun there, dude.”

  “I’ve taken driver’s ed. This isn’t my first time behind the wheel of a car.”

  Shane dangles the keys in front of my nose and says, “But it’s your first time behind the wheel of my car.”

  “Fine,” I say. I pull out my phone and pretend to be checking the time. Shane gives me a sideways look and I say, “Oh? Sorry. I was just checking to make sure I had enough time left in my life to learn to drive the Shane Grimsley way.”

  “Funny. Just put on your seat belt.” I comply superfast to avoid the wrath of Shane and then give him puppy dog eyes for my next set of instructions. “Ugh,” he says, and shoves his keys back at me. “Just drive. And don’t forget to clutch.”

  Like I told Shane, I’ve driven a car before. But that was only with Mr. Valetti, and he had a problem with sweat. And the driver’s ed practice car didn’t have AC. There was no way to look cool in a Ford Taurus with no AC and a passenger who reeked of stale cigarettes and mold and constantly directed me to “Ease ’er on. Ease ’er on now.” Not exactly the stuff dreams are made of.

  Shane’s car ain’t much better, what with its salmon exterior and crap-colored interior. But it has AC, even if it’s crap. Plus, Shane’s car has one thing the driver’s ed car never had: Shane.

  “Now, you grab the stick and kind of jam it into first. My stick’s a little different. It sticks a little more than others, so you just have to be firm with it and give it a good shove.” Pause. “Are you laughing at me?”

  I wipe the tears out of my eyes and say, “Are we still talking about driving?”

  Shane reaches for the keys again but I slap his hand away. “Then pay attention,” he says.

  “Scout’s honor.”

  “You didn’t last two days in the Scouts.”

  “How about I swear on my life?”

  Shane rolls his eyes. “Because that’s worth a lot. Just drive.”

  I don’t know which annoys Shane more: me stalling over and over again or me laughing like a maniac every time I do. It takes me ten minutes to get Miss Piggy out of first gear and another ten to get into third.

  “Now you’ve got it,” says Shane as I fight the stick into gear and pull onto an empty road.

  “I don’t think stick shifts are supposed to be this hard,” I say. “You should get this looked at.”

  “Twenty minutes driving and you’re an expert? Just drive, douche.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Not that I’m not grateful to Shane for letting me drive, but driving thirty miles an hour down neighborhood streets alongside
bikes that sometimes go faster isn’t what I had in mind for my first real drive. Of course, I can’t really tell Shane that ’cause the fact that he’s letting me drive at all is like my second miracle of the day.

  I’m totally a candidate for sainthood. Saint Ollie. I like the sound of that.

  In some ways Shane’s worse than Mr. Valetti. He doesn’t sweat but the first time I pull up to a red light on a hill he freaks out. There aren’t really any hills in Florida, so it’s more like an incline. That Nana could jog up. Seriously, I’ve seen steeper handicap ramps.

  “It’s okay,” says Shane. “Just ease off the clutch and the car will roll back a little. Accelerate and you’ll be fine.” Only Shane doesn’t look fine. He looks like he’s gonna hyperventilate. Or puke. Or both. Then the shit really hits the fan when another car pulls up behind us.

  “The nerve,” mutters Shane. “Do they need to be that close?”

  “It’s okay, Shane. Really.”

  “And what do they need a Hummer for anyway?” Shane rolls down his window, sticks his head out, and says, “Do you live in a war zone? Are you transporting soldiers? Then you don’t need a giant Hummer!”

  “Everyone needs a giant hummer,” I say, but Shane’s not paying attention to me.

  Before I can stop him, Shane jumps out of the car. “Back up! Give the guy some room.”

  “Shane,” I call. “Light’s green. Shane?”

  “—act like you own the road because you drive a giant gas-guzzling, earth-killing tank! BACK UP!”

  We almost miss the green light but that nice young lady in the Hummer does back up for me. Not that I need it. I try to mouth I’m sorry in the rearview but the woman’s looking at her phone and not at me. I get us out of there fast, unsure whether she’s telling her friends about the crazy, bug-eyed geek screaming at her in the middle of the road, or calling the cops.

  “I think you’re ready for something a little faster,” says Shane. Frankly, I’m surprised as hell but I don’t argue. “Head over to Military.”

  Military is a long stretch of road with only a couple of lights. It’s the closest I’m gonna get to being on the freeway without actually getting on the freeway. Shane’s really putting a lot of trust in me and I hope I don’t let him—oops, was that a stop sign?