by Quan Barry
Nicky Higgins was doing her best not to stare at the two police officers who were slurping away on their snow cones like five-year-olds. Instead, she nodded solemnly at Abby’s answers. Nicky was a plucky sophomore who, suffering from a long-standing childhood crush on football captain Log Winters, had volunteered to work the fall sports beat, though six weeks into the season, Log didn’t have much to say about the team’s 0-6 record nor had he asked her to bear his children. On the other hand, field hockey was proving to be more fruitful at garnering front-page stories. All throughout the interview with Abby, Nicky did her best to look engaged, a deep V between her eyes à la Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes. Thankfully, gotcha questions were never her thing. Instead, Nicky’s headline screamed “Ball Bounces in Danvers’ Favor.” There was even a photo of Little Smitty charging up the field like the Tasmanian Devil, everything about her a blur, so that you could almost hear the sound effect that usually accompanied the vortexing cartoon character just by looking at Little Smitty’s picture, the sound like a blender liquefying spaghetti.
Nicky Higgins may have had a nose for news, but unfortunately, she also had a lantern for a jaw. It was actually something of a medical issue. Her underbite was so pronounced, doctors said if it remained uncorrected, eventually her teeth might not meet when she bit down. Consequently it had been decided that a medical intervention to fix it would have to wait until her jaw stopped growing.
In the meantime, Nicky and the Chin (which Sue Yoon claimed sounded like a detective show) were local celebrities around the high school, the two often conducting lunchtime interviews to find out what the word was on the street. If we hadn’t been fixated on the Chin half of the duo, we would’ve noticed that Nicky was a serious person who, once on the case, wouldn’t give up. Nicky and the Chin had done their homework, noting how we’d gone from 2-8 the year before to riding atop the conference rankings. Like a truffle pig, the two smelled a story sprouting from the lime-lined field next to the tennis courts. As we began racking up wins, Nicky pitched her idea to Charlie Houlihan, the Fire managing editor, for a weekly series titled “Lady Falcons Turn It Around” about a ragtag group of plucky girls who pull together and discover a taste for victory, a tale of underdogs who finally make good. If done right, “Lady Falcons” might even win Nicky a Flamie, Danvers High’s top prize for reporting. Heck, if she played her cards right, come junior year maybe she’d be sitting in Charlie Houlihan’s chair, the red pencil tucked tight behind her ear.
Yeah, the possibilities were endless. Each day Nicky and the Chin rose to the mission, the thought of a Flamie never far from their mind. Mornings Nicky would grab her reporter’s notebook, then hit the proverbial pavement and track the eleven of us down wherever we were—there was Nicky and the Chin popping up by the tampon machine in the girls’ bathroom, just the Chin hovering in the tater tot line in the cafeteria, Nicky tapping on the Panic Mobile’s passenger-side window as Sue Yoon sucked down a Parliament before practice. In time, Nicky Higgins would come to realize the story was bigger and darker than she’d ever imagined, her own private Pentagon Papers. As she would come to tell a skeptical Charlie Houlihan, you know, just in case anything unexpected should happen to her and the Chin, “Lady Falcons Turn It Around” was a once-in-a-lifetime story, one maybe even big enough to catch the eye of the Danvers Herald, the town’s weekly paper. And if the Herald ever came a-knockin’, she, Nicky Higgins, would be ready to hand over her already written and proofed copy. It’d be sweet to see her story in print in newspapers across Danvers, her name on the masthead. Yeah, “Lady Falcons” would take Nicky and the Chin places they’d never dreamed of. It also resulted in their sleeping with a Bic lighter and a can of VO5 on the nightstand just in case.
But that Thursday after trouncing Beverly, what could we say that the 8-0 score didn’t already convey? Against the Panthers, the ball had bounced our way. We truly couldn’t help it. Jen Fiorenza had made it 4-0 off a penalty shot after Beverly’s #22 got called for high sticking, and it wasn’t even halftime. We looked to the sidelines. Coach Butler nodded and tapped her heart three times with her index finger. It was the signal for us to show a little compassion, put it on autopilot, relax. But Little Smitty didn’t get the memo. Actually, she did get the memo and then proceeded to run the memo through a paper shredder with extreme prejudice.
Little Smitty played the rest of the game like a baby bull in a china shop smashing up all the gravy boats. It was as if “Unsportsmanly” was her middle name. She was a centerback, a position that normally was a little bit defense, a little bit offense, a little bit rock ’n’ roll. After halftime, she scored three goals in fifteen minutes, running the ball straight upfield, a mini Sherman marching to the sea. And each time after she scored, she put both hands on her stick and windmilled it around in the air, like a samurai with a centuries-old Japanese katana. The third time she went full Bruce Lee, the ref finally threw a yellow card for unbecoming sportsmanship plus endangering anyone in the general vicinity.
Goal number eight was an accident. The ball deflected off one of Beverly’s defenders and careened into the net. Abby Putnam was more upset about it than Beverly. Later at Girl Cory’s house where a few of us were hanging out, we rewound the VHS tape her stepdad had shot of the game. We slowed the tape down so we could watch Abby’s face incrementally contort as she slow-motion-screamed, “Noooooo!” Then we cheered as frame by frame the ball ricocheted in.
We chalked up our big win to the fact that after the tie against Lynn Classical, we’d all upped our deviousness quotient. Heather Houston replaced the major chemicals in the chem lab with water. Little Smitty hid an open can of sardines in the teachers’ lounge. Jen Fiorenza made out with the boyfriends of two different girls. Julie Minh put bleach in the spray bottles Home Ec students used when ironing. The mark on Mel Boucher’s neck looked like it should start paying rent. As for the rest of us, let’s just say et cetera. Each week we dutifully turned in our written reports to Heather Houston, who, without reading them and subsequently correcting our grammar, collated and stapled the pages into Emilio, who was growing fatter by the week. In short, Danvers High was going to hell in a handbasket thanks to us. As for us, we were soaring.
We didn’t find out what the real source of our dark energy was until the car wash on Friday. It was there we learned from Log Winters that Danvers High was on metaphorical fire. Some anonymous tipster had blown the place up real good. Log was sitting behind the wheel of his midnight-blue Charger, unbeknownst to him the side of his newly washed car streaked with mud. “What, you guys didn’t hear?” he said. He was wearing a pair of mirrored aviator glasses that gave him that southern sheriff look.
“Hear what?” asked Jen Fiorenza. The Claw sat atop her head, a one-pronged trident. Jen was also wearing a pair of mirrored sunglasses. Between her and Log, their reflections bounced back and forth infinite times, the two of them a hall of mirrors.
“Today just after third period Coach Mullins got escorted out of the building.”
“No. Way,” said Abby Putnam. She was holding a banana in one hand, a carrot in the other.
“Yes. Way,” said Log.
Julie Minh thought it over. It meant no more big bushy beard in Senior Privilege, no more free peep shows while standing in the bathroom door. Since that first time on the day of the pep rally, she’d flashed him two more times, once even snagging her sports bra in the process and full on exposing her left boob, which secretly she suspected she enjoyed more than Coach Mullins did. The guy never made a sound. Maybe he was nearsighted. Or maybe he couldn’t see because the hair on his cheeks was starting to encroach on his field of vision. Or maybe he loved it so much he was speechless.
“Well, technically Bert and Ernie didn’t arrest him,” explained Log. There were a million tiny Logs floating in each of Jen’s mirrored lenses. “Let’s just say he was walked out of the building with a police escort.”
“What’s the di
fference?” asked Abby.
“No handcuffs, no fingerprints,” replied Log. “But it’s probably just a matter of time before they throw him in the slammer. If I were you guys, I’d get my stories straight,” he added. “Just in case you get lie detectored.”
“Why would we?” asked Girl Cory.
“Because someone left a note in the main office saying Coach Mullins was banging a senior girl,” said Log. He revved his engine. “Any ideas who said bangee might be?”
In unison, we all turned and looked over at Becca Bjelica. She was holding the hose, the front of her white T-shirt sopping wet as if she herself had gone through a car wash, her nipples visible and big as coasters. “What?” she said. “Is there a bee on me?” When we didn’t answer, she started to panic, turning the hose on herself and bouncing up and down.
Log rolled up his window and gunned it. Someone had written in soap on his driver’s side door LOSER ON BOARD. From atop Jen’s head the Claw smiled innocently, a shepherdess just tending her lambs.
Dear Mr. Dark,
Friday we’re gonna throw a car wash. Probably it’s the last car wash of the season. The plan is to do a shitty job on everyone’s cars, maybe be bad at making change, spray people who don’t wanna get sprayed, just a little light mayhem involving water. Jen wants us all to wear white T shirts and put on a show, make the old guys horny in front of their wives. Should be easy. That’s the story of my life.
Živeli!
Becca
P.S. I’m bleeding again. What gives?
* * *
—
Thursday after demolishing Beverly, we decided to pull the car wash together last minute. Thankfully, the weather cooperated. True, we could’ve made more money on Saturday, but money wasn’t the object. It was Friday the 13th. How could we not capitalize on that? Thematically we even used the day in our signage.
FRIDAY THE 13TH
CAR WASH
1–5 PM
COME GET HOSED!
Thanks to teacher training, it was a half day at school. Each year there were at least seven days of teacher training as mandated by the state. Secretly we all imagined teacher training as a day for teachers to drink margaritas and don sombreros, maybe play a rousing game of strip Twister. After all, folks like Mrs. Mannon the Latin teacher had been making students memorize the opening to Caesar’s Gallic War since the days of Caesar. Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres, Gaul is a whole divided into three parts—what else could there possibly be to train about?
Lucky for us, in October, Friday the 13th, 1989, turned out to be the last really decent day of the year. It was the kind of day where you didn’t mind getting wet and being outside. The parking lot where we’d be having the car wash was downtown across from the fire station. It was the designated spot where any community group could sign up to wash cars and raise money. Mostly it was just high-school groups that used it, and mostly just sports teams at that, though once the League of Women Voters threw a car wash but quickly shut it down when one of their members tripped on a hose and broke her arm, but even before that the ladies had a backup going a mile long and absolutely zero sense of how to wash a car in under thirty minutes.
As was standard protocol, we brought our own buckets and sponges plus soap. The firemen would lend us your regular garden-variety hoses and turn the water on for us. It was a service they provided, same as dipping your Christmas tree in fire-retardant goop or passing a giant rubber boot around in traffic on Labor Day. Right after school let out, we met up in the field house and caravanned downtown. Once we got set up, Jen Fiorenza laid out all our various strategies like a butcher arranging cuts of meat. There was so much to choose from! According to Jen, you could use too little water and make a paste of the dust on someone’s car, just smearing it around. You could use the Windex Julie Minh had added a little corn syrup to from the Home Ec kitchen, spraying it on glass surfaces and making things all bleary. We were told the buckets should never be filled with clean soapy water but mostly with mud. Little Smitty advised us not to wash the whole car. “Just wash it here and there,” she said, “plus write some bad words in the grime. Hose it all down so they can’t tell at first, but later when it dries it’ll look nasty.”
“And above all else,” concluded Jen Fiorenza, “flirt early, flirt often.” Boy Cory felt his face grow red. What was he supposed to do? Act all Chippendale-ish and gyrate at the housewives in their minivans filled with screaming kids? He decided just to handle one of the two hoses, but soon he proved to be a little too efficient at it, using too much water. Faster than you could say, hey, I gave you a ten and I want my change, Jen demoted him to making sure our snacks didn’t get wet, which was actually a pretty important job seeing as how nobody likes soggy original-flavor Goldfish.
The first hour was slow. It was Friday afternoon. Most people were still at work. A few burnouts from school drifted through in their souped-up muscle cars. We gave them a real wash because we didn’t want to get on their bad side, as some of them bought us alcohol when we were in a bind. Then things got unintentionally interesting.
“Shamu at two o’clock,” growled Little Smitty. We looked to see who she was glaring at. The black-and-white cruiser rolled into view. Already Little Smitty had the hose aimed on the rolled-down window of Bert and Ernie’s squad car.
Abby put a hand on Little Smitty’s arm. “Be cool,” she said.
“Ladies,” said Bert as he inched the car up into position. We tried not to look at his unibrow, the hair black and wiry like steel wool, but it was too late. The thing was a Bermuda Triangle of facial hair. Once your gaze landed on it, there was no getting out.
“Officers,” said Jen Fiorenza in reply. For the moment, the Claw looked practically virginal. “How about a complimentary wash for Danvers’ finest?” We wondered who was talking. This free-car-wash-offering pod person didn’t sound anything like the Jen Fiorenza we knew and put up with.
Ernie handed us a twenty but waited for his change. “Everything okay with you girls?” he asked. Thanks to Log Winters and his spotless aviators, we knew the question was really about Coach Mullins. AJ was doubly glad she had typed the note and not handwritten it. Still, were her prints all over the typewriter? Would they be able to figure out it was her based on which keys she’d touched?
“We’re good,” said Abby Putnam.
Ernie and Bert nodded in unison. “You know we’re always around if you ever want to talk,” said Bert.
“Unfortunately,” whispered Little Smitty, but Jen hit her with water from our second hose the same way you would a house cat to get it off the sofa.
After we washed their car to a glossy shine, we stood waving them off like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting, each of us trying our best to look wholesome and innocent. Once they were out of sight, Jen sent Becca Bjelica and her mighty assets out onto Locust Street to hold the sign.
“Work your moneymaker, sister,” Jen told her, “we need the cash,” and just like that, things picked up.
The local dentist drove through, his back molars visible thanks to his unapologetic slobbering. Really, the guy should have been wearing a bib. By four o’clock Becca had attracted a long line. To be honest, the cars didn’t look that bad when we were done with them. It was hard to do a really terrible job. There was water, there were sponges, there was soap. Things ended up looking pretty clean regardless of our intentions.
“People, this sucks,” said Jen. “We are not here to be helpful.”
A silver Mercedes convertible rolled in, its windows tinted a dark black like peering head-on into midnight. Girl Cory took the money proffered by two slim fingers slipped through the window, which the driver immediately rolled back up. She handed the money to Jen Fiorenza, who held the bill up to her face, poring over every inch of it as if she’d forgotten her loupe. We crowded around, eager to find out what the
deal was. On the front of the bill was some guy we’d never seen before, the guy with a beard and a ragged peninsula of hair projecting out into what would be the water of his face.
“Ulysses S.,” said Heather Houston. “Our eighteenth president.” As always, she was right on the money, pun intended. It was a fifty-dollar bill. Then we realized there were two of them.
“Tabarouette!” Mel Boucher made the sign of the cross. The splotch on her neck glowed like the neon dollar sign outside the Golden Banana strip club on Route 1.
Girl Cory took the bills back from Jen and tossed them in the tin, then we all got to work on what now appeared to us as the most beautiful car we’d ever seen, the thing so stately you could bury the pope in it.
When we were almost done, Girl Cory slipped her own car keys out of her pocket. It was insane how breezily she did what she did. She might have been humming “Moon River” in her head; she might have been lazing by the ocean under a parasol in an Impressionist painting—she looked so cool and collected. Blithely she proceeded to walk the length of the Mercedes. With one hand she pointed at something out in the road as if whatever was out there had her full and undivided attention, but with her other hand, she slowly scraped her Fiero key down the length of the car’s flank.
My huckleberry friend,
moon river and me…
“What are you doing?” hissed AJ Johnson. The scratch was like drawing a Frankenstein scar on the Mona Lisa. Even Jen Fiorenza looked shocked, her Claw with Its mouth hanging open.
There was no more aura of gamine Audrey Hepburn crooning in a tenement window. Now she called to mind that head-banging guy dressed up in a schoolboy uniform in AC/DC, smashing up his guitar just for the hell of it. “I thought we were being bad for Emilio,” said Girl Cory.
“Yeah, but not that bad,” said Abby Putnam.