What Happened to Lani Garver

by Carol Plum-Ucci

  "I'll be okay, thanks. Just ... let's destroy the evidence."

  I got stuck with most of the cleanup, because it was Scott's dad's boat, and this game of chicken sounded like it might actually happen. I stayed in there alone, cleaning stray drops of blood. I found a Bunny's Market plastic bag under the sink and shoved everything in. I went out into the warm wind and tossed it over the side. The wind meant the current would carry it far out to sea by sunrise.

  Scott had been sitting cross-armed on the stern, shaking his head. He pulled me up to him and said, "Hey, Claire needs to go home!"

  Since we just had this conversation about how I didn't want to go home yet, I took it he was trying to keep them from playing chicken.

  Tony's laughter rang out from above, where he straddled the hoist, swinging a beer up to the moon. "How long does a chicken round take, Dern? Don't be a flake. Krilley, we're doing sea chicken ... no girl's game."

  Tony jumped down off the hoist in front of Phil, sloshing beer. Scott flew up to them. "Uh-uh, nobody goes in the water. Warm air don't mean warm water. Look." He pointed at his dad's large, night-glow digital barometer. "Water temperature, fifty-two degrees. He'll go into fuckin' shock—"

  "He'll be toasty! Took those people on the Titanic twenty minutes to die, and the water was thirty-four degrees. We're talking about a couple minutes. Fine seaman you're going to make, Dern."

  I sympathized as Scott cracked a smile he couldn't control. It was hard to think of these people having two accidents in one night. Good luck. That's what these people have. They can dive off flybridges at low tide and not break their necks, and I can just be minding my own business and end up way sick. I shook off my pity party, despite a headache that made it hard to laugh with them. Then I heard what this chicken involved.

  "You jump in the fishing net, Krilley. We submerge you for three minutes. So you got three minutes to either get out of the net or hold your breath." Tony moved to the crank of one of the two huge fishing nets. "If you come up in the net, you're still chicken. You gotta come up first. And I don't need to tell you. The more you fight the net, the more tangled up you can get. You ready?"

  "Make it two minutes," Mike shouted. "Three is for those Olympic guys' lungs—"

  "We did three minutes at sea. None of us was chicken. Almost got fired, but—" He let out a high-pitched laugh at the moon, then turned to Phil. "You in, Krilley?"

  Phil grabbed Tony's beer can, downed the rest, squashed the can in one hand, and tossed it over the side. Then he took off his jacket and tossed it into Tony's gut. But you could hear hesitation in his nervous laugh.

  I looked at this dangling net and some feeling of doom shot through me ... the same feeling of doom as when a nurse came toward me with an IV. I stood frozen until I had to twist my shoulders to start breathing again. The net hung like an open jaw of a shark. Somebody could die in that net...

  I tried telling myself I was still in shock from cutting my head. We had yet to see somebody get hurt diving off a bridge or any of the other chickens these guys carried out. Yet I backed up and grabbed hold of the ladder as if there would be some need to run.

  "How are you gonna know if I'm drowning?" Phil asked.

  "We watch your bubbles." Tony shrugged. "If we don't see any, we know we gotta haul you up fast."

  "That sucks! I gotta, like, die before you see I'm in real trouble? This ain't no chicken. It's suicide. Three minutes?"

  They talked it over, hushing Macy every thirty seconds, because she hates these games of chicken. They got the time down to two-and-a-half minutes, but my stomach still felt uneasy. Two-and-a-half minutes, in the freezing water, in a tangled net ... I kept waiting for Tony to say he was joking, but he looked deadly serious.

  I turned my head as Phil finally dived into the net. His bulk brought the net down to only about two inches above the deck. I could still see the spotlit shadows of Vince and Tony, all distorted on the bridge, as they took turns getting underneath him and tossing his body, head over heels. When they finally stopped, he must have been three feet off the ground.

  He kept begging, "Don't go so crazy!"

  "I don't have to watch this." Macy spun on her heel and burst past me, climbing onto the dock. "G'night, Phil! Come on, Claire!"

  Myra, Eli, and Geneva were doing the screaming-and-covering-their-eyes routine that made these guys feel magnanimous, and they ignored Macy. It's not any boyfriend of theirs. Macy jammed her hands on her hips, watching me, and I climbed onto the dock.

  "They only do this stuff to hear the girls get off on it," she told me, pushing me in front of her. "If we wouldn't get all panicked, then they wouldn't have any fun! And this one is for my benefit. It's got nothing to do with Phil. It has to do with me. Except Phil agrees to be an asshole—"

  "What'd you do? Something while I was in the bathroom?"

  "Couldn't you hear me? I called Tony a psycho queen. You could hear me at the toll bridges."

  "Oh, well..." I stumbled, looking over my shoulder. They were about to drop her boyfriend into water so cold it made cramps in your feet if you stepped in it. "Sticks and stones, you know? So what?"

  "Stop looking at them!" She jerked me around, and at that point I realized she was basically running her mouth so she wouldn't give the guys any attention. "Do you know what Tony said back to me? He says, 'Maybe I'm a psycho, and maybe I'm proud of it. I ain't no queen. People could get killed for saying less.'"

  Despite her jabbering, my mind flashed to Lani. I felt glad I didn't get some giant brain flake to bring him along, try to make people like him. She pushed at me because I wasn't on her wavelength. "So, next thing you know, he's pulling a chicken on my boyfriend. He's getting even with me by using Phil."

  I said the only thing that came to mind that made total sense. It even made my feelings of doom go away. "These guys have been hanging out together since they were born. They're not going to drown each other. Phil would not have jumped in a fishing net if he thought they wouldn't pull him up in time."

  They have good luck. I have bad luck. We heard a slight splash, and I jumped around to see they had lowered the net enough so that Phil's shoulders and back hit the water. His cursing screeched through the air. Despite what Tony had said about Phil being "toasty," the truth is you'd rather walk naked into twenty-degree air than land fully clothed in fifty-two-degree water.

  She grabbed hold of both my arms, like she could squash them. "Tony's gotta pull this? Just because someone called him a queen? What's wrong with him?"

  "I don't know, Macy." I just listened as she kept babbling, knowing her two worst problems had backed into each other. She hated times when she wasn't in charge, and these chicken games were some honor thing with the guys that had nothing to do with her. Second, if she couldn't figure out somebody's behavior, then she couldn't control that, either. Not that Tony could ever be figured out. I didn't think he needed motives.

  "Macy, they're acting like a bunch of retards. But your boyfriend will not drown. You see those people down there? Their lives are perfect. You guys just don't have bad luck."

  I heard a much bigger splash over my shoulder. Macy started reciting curse after curse as I turned and saw the net had gone under. In the spotlight, the normally green surface of the water was a mass of white bubbles. I watched, trying to decide how they would tell which were Phil's air bubbles and which came from the net. One of Mrs. Whitehall's lectures backed up on me. She was the only mom of our crowd that gave lectures worth hearing ... You kids, you get hurt because you never think of the details! Eli, Myra, and Geneva were missing the details, screaming and throwing themselves on shoulders of guys who acted like they couldn't care less, but you knew differently.

  Macy ran for the boat. She couldn't take the suspense anymore, and this was a scary enough chicken to let Tony watch her scream. I walked toward Vince's car because I didn't need to watch their good luck. Phil would surface, while I, on the other hand...

  I slammed the back door of the Impala and t
hrew my aching head back, thinking the silence would have been great. But I hated my own pity party so much that I wished I had stayed down there. The types of questions I most hated started backing up on me.

  Can a trauma like falling out of a moving car bring on a relapse? If a relapse is already happening, can head trauma speed it up?

  I sat there with my eyes shut. Bad luck. I couldn't ignore how things had actually gone that night. Any girl in that car would have loved to be the one with her head out the window, getting all that attention. It just so happens, it's me. I end up with my scalp hanging open. They end up partying and laughing. Phil could get thrown into a tangled fishing net and not drown, then I'd be minding my own business and wind up sick.

  I searched my head for something not so self-pitying. The only thing to surface was a recent nightmare, and lyrics that started to form, almost out of nowhere.

  Tracy's staring at the mirror...

  Parts her hair with Daddy's razor...

  I thrashed forward, reaching for Vince's MP3 player, which sat on the dash. Empty. After feeling for the glove box and finding it locked, I flopped back again and thought to amuse myself by counting stars out the window. But the Hackett night fog had come on Indian-summer thick, and I couldn't see much of anything except twirling ghosts. I shut my eyes again. As much as I was horrified by the stuff I dreamed about and wrote about, I was also drawn to it ... drawn to the shock of what would fly through my head if I just let go.

  Parts her hair with Daddy's razor.

  Opens up a dark red river.

  Combing blond and blood together

  Never ceases to amaze her.

  "Claire, you are out to fucking lunch," I said. I laughed and wished I hadn't, because it sounded evil. "You deserve your bad luck."

  I heard shouting from the dock. Then footsteps with louder screams and shouts. I couldn't see them at first because of the fog. Nine people started coming clear almost all at once, about thirty feet from the car. I lurched up as I saw Macy being carried in somebody's arms. Her blond hair hung down, and drops of water were falling off of it.

  Message from God: Don't wish for good luck.

  I froze in terror, and some thought shot up to the heavens that I hadn't meant anyone should have bad luck just so I could have good luck.

  Before I could scream, the fog opened more and I saw only the top of the head on the person carrying Macy. It was even more wet and dripping drops down through her hair. I realized she was kissing the face underneath it.

  Tony Clementi was swatting her foot and saying, "Told ya nothin' would happen."

  8

  I trudged up to the bus terminal the next morning, trying not to limp from my bruised hipbone, but the pain made my eyes water. I was still very sure I would not go with Lani. But the bruise where I rolled with Tony was huge. My heart had fallen through the floor when I saw it that morning. Leukemia bruise. It scared me enough to make me go to the bus station, hoping for something to overcome my fears about going.

  It would have to be miraculous, because the whole concept of this trip was freaking me out. I was getting on my first bus and cutting school. My mom had gotten stuck next to a drunken horn-toad on a bus trip to the casinos once. She forbid me to ever get on a bus. If we got caught, I'd hear from all four of my mother's sisters, who would want to know what drugs I was on. Beyond that, Lani had talked about being able to get answers right away at a research clinic, and I was freaked by how fast my life could come crashing down.

  I saw him first thing when I came up to the Hackett bus terminal. It's just a huge tin roof on steel legs, with four benches underneath. He sat on a bench, staring off to the side at a Greyhound pulling out. Its sign read, NEW YORK CITY/ATLANTIC CITY.

  He looked funny to me again—hair of a girl; shoulders of a guy; hands of a girl, folded across the chest of a guy; crossed, skinny legs dangling army boots. It seemed strange that all these mismatched parts could be topped off with rosy, Indian-like skin and deep chocolate eyes. The sight stopped me cold, but I trudged on after a minute.

  Lani finally looked at me, and I could see his eyebrows shoot up. He shook his head, giving me a "dad" look, despite his dimples showing up.

  "Don't pass judgment." I eased myself down beside him.

  "Okay. But, uhm, your bangs are standing straight up in three spots. Looks like a crown."

  I could read amusement on his face as I tried to flatten them for the tenth time since last night. "It's a butterfly bandage that's caught in my bangs," I said, feeling humiliated.

  "Have some fun last night?"

  "I ... yeah. It was fun. Nothing happened. To anyone except me. I'm the bad-luck queen. I ... uhm..."

  I looked for the words to tell him I was too freaked out—I wanted to go home and crash out on my bed as soon as my mom left for work. He was staring at that Atlantic City bus for all he was worth. It pulled onto Hackett Boulevard. He let out a sigh, like he was relieved.

  "A few people on that bus just got off to use the soda machine, take a potty break. I saw some guy I hadn't seen in ... a lot of years."

  There was an urgency in his voice that made me stare. "Old friend?"

  "Not exactly. It was some guy from one of the schools I used to go to. He was, like, three years older than me. Can I ask you something? Did you know what oral sex was in eighth grade?"

  He leaned over and almost whispered the oral sex part. I could feel my eyebrows shooting up, scrunching my butterfly. His face turned kind of red, like he was embarrassed by the terminology.

  "Yeah. Didn't you?"

  He shook his head.

  I had to laugh in spite of myself. "Everyone knows that by eighth grade."

  Then I remembered him telling me how he avoided the street corners and locker rooms and spent more time in the library. I looked him up and down, thinking, How in hell could somebody understand the theory of relativity but not know about oral sex?

  "Anyway, the guy who told me what oral sex was just got off that bus for a minute. I really, really wish I hadn't seen him. He used to flip out on me in the school yard, you know, 'You're gay, you stupid faggot,' and then if he saw me alone, he'd try to get me to do stuff with him."

  "You mean like..." I wanted to say sex, but the story had me kind of rooted to the spot. I didn't have to say it.

  "Like yeah, like stuff." Lani took in the ceiling for a moment. "And he had all these words for it that I'd never heard of. I had never even heard of oral sex."

  "So ... the same guy who called you a faggot in public came on to you in private?" I tried not to sound too interested, but this was far juicier than anything Macy had ever come up with.

  Lani stood up, but I just froze in my seat, not wanting him to change the subject. He was filling in my junior high knowledge holes big-time.

  He nodded. "And, one day, all of a sudden, I heard a voice behind me. I never even turned around. But I knew his voice. And right there in the library he gives me this, this endless blow-by-blow description ... Sorry about the pun."

  I might have laughed, but this hypnotized me. "He did come on to you."

  "For sure. I was so ready to puke." He crossed his arms, rubbing them.

  "Did you say anything to him just now?"

  "He got off the bus with some girl. Our eyes locked, and you could tell he remembered me and was, like, ready to die. He was all scared I would do something in front of this girl to let on about his dirty little secrets. I just looked away again. I mean, I could have winked or smiled or something just to be a jerk—but what's the point? People create their own little hells. They don't need my help."

  He leaned back against the side of the bench, staring wide-eyed at the floor. "I walked out of the library, and two months later, I walked out of Shinoquin."

  "Shinoquin?"

  "The little town we were living in. Stuff like that happened all too often in Shinoquin. It's a lot like Hackett, only replace fishermen with coal miners. I'm really glad we're going to Philly today, Claire. I had forg
otten how little towns can make me feel so ... out there, and freakish and lonely. I need a break already. we're killing two birds with one stone here. Funny how things can work out, you know?"

  Lani started trudging toward the bus pulling in, without waiting for me to answer. I opened my mouth, but a muttered curse rolled out instead of an argument. What kind of a bitch would I be to back out now?

  He half turned to wait for me but looked lost in his own thought. "So, my looks make strange people feel like they want to proposition me. So what? If it gets on my nerves, too bad. I can always move on."

  "Yeah, but what is up with people who proposition you one minute and gay bash on you the next? That's too weird."

  "Yeah." He meandered slowly toward the bus and I fell in. He said, "But that's one thing I love about the cities. It's becoming almost taboo in the cities to gay bash. Because if some guy gay bashes, people there get suspicious that he is ... how can I say it ... a closet gay? Or ... a person who has those tendencies subconsciously? Something like that."

  The whole scenario was pretty juicy. So juicy that I missed the fact that he'd just hinted he could run away again. It went right over my head. I asked, "You've been propositioned more than once?"

  He snorted a laugh. "l forget how naive most people are. Stay that way, Claire. It's cool."

  "No, it's not cool. It's getting old. My friends always laugh at me." I shook my head, embarrassed by my curiosity but more embarrassed by how none of this made sense to me. "We're talking about a guy with a girl, who propositioned you once, and then called you a faggot. What is a person like that?"

  "Do you mean, is there a clinical name for someone like that?"

  "Well ... yeah."

  "Dunno. I think they call it 'hypocritical.'"

  He got on the bus, leaving me at the foot of the steps, entranced ... homophobic homo ... gay gay basher... It didn't bother him there was nothing to call a person like that. Yet, the way he told it, this thing happened to him more than once. I thought maybe I could get wonderfully caught up on my education if I got on this bus.