The Fixes

by Owen Matthews

  “Givenchy high-tops,” Haley says. “Star Tysons. I snatched them right out of some dude’s hands as he was trying them on.” She laughs. “You guys should have seen the look on his face.”

  They’re a hot pair of shoes, Eric has to admit—

  (though he was kind of feeling good about winning his first Fix).

  “How much?” he asks Haley.

  “Retails for nine hundred and ninety-five dollars,” Haley tells him. “On sale at The Room for just nine hundred and ninety-five dollars.”

  She grins at them again.

  “Beat you by twenty bucks, E,” she says. “Eat it.”

  104.

  Haley wins the Fix.

  (Consolation prize: Those Givenchy high-tops are a size ten.

  Eric’s a size ten.

  “Congratulations,” Haley says, handing him the box.

  “Looks like you kinda won anyway, huh?”)

  105.

  They admire their misbegotten goods for a while. Then they go outside, array themselves around Jordan’s pool.

  The afternoon wanes into evening, and Jordan turns the pool lights on, and the water glows multicolored. They change into swimsuits and jump in—

  (and the water’s, like, perfect)

  (and the lights are psychedelic)

  (and Jordan’s six-pack looks amazing)

  (even if he is still making out with Haley).

  They towel off again, refreshed. Lie down on the deck chairs and watch the sunset. They don’t say anything, just watch the sun dip down behind the islands to the far west, and they lie there and enjoy the Moment.

  Eric gets wasted and thinks about his dad and shit. Thinks about how he should be home. Doing problem sets. Planning. Living up to EXPECTATIONS.

  He thinks about how this is better.

  How much he’d rather be here.

  (He looks at the others, and he can tell they’re thinking similarly. He watches the sunset reflect in their eyes.)

  Jordan catches him looking. Jordan sidles up beside him, puts his arm around Eric’s shoulders. “I knew you were my kind of guy, E,” he says. “Welcome to the Suicide Pack.”

  106.

  Eric wakes up disoriented. It’s only when he sits up and sees the others that he remembers where he is.

  Jordan’s mansion. In the theater room. A bunch of couches and comfortable chairs facing a huge projection screen.

  They celebrated last night, Palm Bays and pizza and a half-ounce of weed. Crashed on the couches and had a movie marathon.

  Now it’s Monday morning, and someone’s phone is buzzing. The title menu for the Bling Ring Blu-ray is playing on repeat on the screen. Beside Eric, Paige groans and rolls over. Eric has a vague recollection of them sharing the couch, while Jordan was fooling around on the other couch with Haley.

  (Eric tried to ignore it. Tried not to feel, like, jealous. Tried to hold on to the way Jordan looked at him at Callum’s party—

  (You’re sweet, and you’re smoking hot, too.)

  Eric’s still holding out hope, like a loser.)

  Haley mutters something and slaps at her phone. The buzzing continues. Eric looks around for the source. It’s under his couch. It’s his phone. It’s Ann.

  Shit.

  The call goes to voice mail. Three new messages. Three missed calls. It’s eleven forty-five, and Eric should be at work.

  Eric stands up too fast. “Shit,” he says. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  A sleepy-eyed Jordan pokes his head up from the other couch. “Something wrong?”

  “I’m supposed to be at the office,” Eric tells him. “They said if I missed one more day I’m freaking fired.”

  Jordan checks his watch—

  (a gold Jaeger-LeCoultre).

  “I’d say you’re fucked, E,” he says. “It’s almost noon.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” Eric says, quickly fixing his hair. “Am I calling a cab or can you give me a ride?”

  Jordan yawns. “How about neither?”

  Eric stares at him. “What?”

  “How about you accept that you’re probably fired and forget about it,” Jordan says. “Sit back down, smoke a bowl, and put on another movie. I’ll order some food and we’ll spend the day by the pool.”

  Eric looks around for his shoes.

  “Just relax, E,” Jordan says. “You and I both know you would rather be here.”

  107.

  Well, of course he would.

  (But that’s not the point.)

  “My dad’s going to kill me,” Eric says. “He called in so many favors to get me that job.”

  “Your dad will get over it,” Paige says. “It’s not like your life’s over just because you got canned from a shitty internship.”

  “I need that reference letter, though,” Eric tells her.

  “Your dad is fucking Donovan Connelly,” Haley says. “Any law school on the West Coast is going to lose its shit when it finds out his son’s applying to their precious program. You’re going to be fine, dude.”

  “Anyway, what do you care?” Jordan says. “It’s not like you’re a freaking juvenile delinquent. We got more accomplished in The Room yesterday than you’ll get done pushing paper all summer. And it’s not like your dad can be pissed at you anyway, not anymore.”

  Eric thinks about it.

  Roger Dodger.

  (They make a good point.)

  His phone starts buzzing again.

  108.

  This time, Eric answers.

  “Eric.” Ann sounds exasperated. “Young man, what did I tell you the last time? You’d better have a good reason you’re not at your desk.”

  “Not really,” Eric tells her. “I kind of slept in. Late night last night.”

  Ann sputters. Now she sounds mad. “You slept in? And you think that’s a valid excuse?”

  “It’s not an excuse. It’s the truth.”

  “Your attitude is completely unacceptable,” Ann says. “You’ve been a bad egg since day one, young man. Don’t bother coming in to work again.”

  Eric yawns. “I wasn’t going to, but thanks anyway.”

  Ann sputters something else.

  “Have a good day,” Eric tells her.

  He ends the call. Looks around the room.

  “So, that happened,” he says. “Which way is the pool?”

  On their respective couches, Haley and Paige and Jordan break into spontaneous applause.

  109.

  They go cliff-jumping instead.

  You have to drive up the coast a little bit to get there. Then you park at a train crossing and walk down the tracks for half a mile or so, past a big No Trespassing sign and into the forest.

  The tracks cut through the mountain, high, steep rock walls on either side. There isn’t much clearance.

  If a train comes, Eric thinks, we’re all screwed.

  But no trains come. The tracks curve toward the water, and they can see the sun shimmering on the ocean through the trees. They reach a little trail into the woods, and climb up and over some boulders, and then they’re at the cliffs, forty feet high and nothing but blue water beyond.

  Eric’s only been here once. He didn’t jump off the high cliff. He was nervous. Cautious. It didn’t seem safe.

  (What if there’s a log below the surface?)

  (What if you land on a rock?)

  Eric made the smart play.

  He regretted it all the way home.

  110.

  Look, you’re smart. You can see the metaphor I’m going for here, with the cliffs and the jumping and the making of the smart choices. I’m not going to belabor the point.

  Suffice it to say, Eric jumps off the high cliff today. He hems and haws at the top for a long time, in typical Eric fashion, but then, ultimately, he takes the leap.

  And whether it’s his own little act of rebellion against his dad, or the need to prove something to the others—

  (or even just the way Jordan’s looking at him)<
br />
  —I’ll let you decide.

  Whatever suits your concept of the narrative so far.

  The point is, Eric jumps.

  But that’s not entirely the reason I brought you here.

  111.

  They all jump. They scream as they’re falling and they hit the water hard, and the water is shockingly cold and exhilarating, and they come up to the surface laughing and hollering, and then they swim over to the rocks and climb back up to the top of the cliffs and they do it again, all afternoon.

  (And Jordan is the craziest of them all; he does backflips and gainers and long, graceful swan dives, climbs up to the high high cliff, the seventy-footer, and yells out like Tarzan as he leaps off the edge.)

  They drink Palm Bays at the top of the cliffs, watching the sun shimmer on the water, and when they’re all good and high and just, like, mellow, Eric asks the question he’s been wanting to ask since the start.

  “So, like, why?” he asks the others. “Why are you guys so determined to do this stuff, anyway?”

  112.

  Why?

  I mean, what could possibly incite a bunch of beautiful rich kids to this kind of rebellion?

  Why would they risk it?

  Capilano’s pretty much their personal playground, right?

  113.

  “I told you, E,” Jordan says. “We’re sick of the hypocrisy and the bullshit in this place.”

  “This town’s a bunch of assholes,” Haley says.

  “As soon as my dad’s face showed up in the paper it was like I didn’t exist at Cap High anymore.” Paige pauses. “I suddenly had zero friends. And none of my so-called ‘BFFs’ will even text me back.”

  It’s more than that, though. It has to be, doesn’t it?

  “This place is rotten, E,” Jordan says. “It’s as bad as L.A., maybe worse. As soon as I got here, I figured it out: everyone here, all our parents, the teachers, even the other kids, every last one of them is full. Of. Shit.

  “This town needs fixing,” Jordan tells Eric. “And we’re the only people who can see it.”

  114.

  CITY POLICE SEARCHING FOR THE ROOM SNATCH-AND-GRAB GANG

  City police don’t have any suspects yet in the brazen snatch-and-grab robbery that shocked staff and shoppers alike at the city’s most exclusive department store. The four gang members, who appeared to be teens or young adults, struck Sunday afternoon in a coordinated assault on The Room at Pacific Center mall.

  The attack lasted only minutes, but a store spokesman confirmed the thieves were able to escape with nearly four thousand dollars’ worth of merchandise. All of the gang members evaded capture.

  A police sketch artist who spoke to witnesses produced these pictures of the suspects:

  [Pictures follow. They’re laughably bad. E’s makes him look vaguely Mediterranean. Jordan might have Down syndrome, and Paige looks like a man. Haley looks kind of like Haley, but not enough to be worried. Nobody’s tracing those pictures to the Pack.]

  KIK -- CAPILANO HIGH PRIVATE MESSAGE GROUP – 07/12/16 – 10:24 PM

  USERNAME: ThaINfamous

  MESSAGE: Wooo that new Suicide Pack Vine is SICK. Anyone know who they are? My dad wants to preempt the movie rights.

  115.

  “I don’t get it,” Eric says, reading Jordan’s Kik post on his phone. “Why do you want people to try and figure out who we are?”

  “I’m just trying to build us some buzz, E,” Jordan replies.

  “Okay, but why do we really need buzz? Isn’t the point just to fix things?”

  “Well, sure,” Jordan says. Then he grins. Wraps his arm around Eric’s shoulders and pulls him close—

  (real close)

  (like, more-than-friends close)

  —“but we have to keep the fans happy too,” Jordan says.

  (And he smiles even wider.)

  116.

  He’s right. Within the Capilano social sphere, the Suicide Pack are superstars.

  Jordan posts the department store Vine to the Cap High Kik group the day after the Fix. The Vine blows up huge.

  It’s a sexy little clip. The GoPros picked up crazy footage, the whole store in chaos, like a totally bonkers shopping spree the morning of Black Friday.

  There’s footage of the spikes outside The Room’s front doors, too. A title card overlaid:

  SELFISH CAPITALISTS—FIX YOURSELVES OR WE’LL DO IT FOR YOU.

  Then the Suicide Pack logo.

  The laughing girl.

  Fin.

  117.

  Cap High goes wild.

  Balls out!!

  Amazing.

  ☺ ☺ ☺ ☺

  So fkn rad.

  Can’t wait to see what they do next.

  Who are these guys?

  Anyone know who did this?

  Who the eff is the Suicide Pack?

  And how do I get in on all this cool shit?

  118.

  “Ann called me this afternoon,” Eric’s dad says. “I was in a meeting, but I took the call, because my professional relationship with Ann is important. And do you know what she told me?”

  (Eric and his dad are standing—

  (off)

  —in the kitchen.)

  Eric shrugs. “I guess she told you I slept in the other day. And then she probably told you she fired me.”

  “She told me you were rude,” Eric’s dad says. “She told me you were flippant and disrespectful and completely out of line.”

  “I mean,” Eric says, “I think that’s a slight exaggeration.”

  “I pulled a lot of favors to get you that posting.” Eric’s dad’s brow is creased into canyons. “And you pissed all over it, and the Connelly name in the process.”

  “I think the Connelly name will be fine,” Eric tells him.

  (It survived you committing a hate crime, Eric thinks.)

  (But he keeps his mouth shut.)

  “It’s not just, like, a summer job. It’s another STEPPING STONE on the PATH to YOUR FUTURE.”

  (Ah yes. Right.)

  “Ann’s word could have opened a lot of doors for you. Now you’re starting from scratch again.” Eric’s dad glares at him. “And if you think you’re spending your summer lazing about, you have another think coming, Eric. If you want to live under my roof, you’re going to start taking YOUR FUTURE seriously.”

  Eric sighs. “Look, I’ll get a new internship, okay? I’m sorry I messed things up with Ann, but I just wasn’t feeling that job. I want to do something, you know, meaningful.”

  “Well, you’re going to have to do something,” Eric’s dad says. “And don’t think I didn’t notice that you snuck out last night.” Eric’s dad doesn’t move from the stairs. Doesn’t let Eric by. “Wherever you spent the night, it won’t happen again. You’re grounded until I say otherwise.”

  “Grounded?” Eric nearly laughs in his face. “I’m almost eighteen. And how am I supposed to find an internship if I can’t even leave the house?”

  “You’d better find a way, Eric. We don’t give free rides in this household.”

  Yeah, right, Eric thinks. From what I’ve heard, free rides are a Connelly tradition.

  But he doesn’t say this part, either.

  Not yet.

  119.

  Grounded, Eric tells Jordan. And I’m supposed to find a new job. Except I can’t leave the house, so . . .

  Grounded? Jordan texts back. LOL. UR 18.

  That’s what I said. It didn’t help. Anyway, it’s the middle of July. Everybody’s internships are all mostly filled up.

  What are you going to do? Jordan asks.

  I have no idea. Eric sighs. But I need to get out of here. I’m going insane in this house.

  120.

  Eric languishes for a couple of days. Makes a lot of cold calls to, like, Legal Aid and such. Emails his résumé around—

  (avoids mentioning Ann in his cover letter).

  It’s slow going. It’s soul-crushing. He’d rather
be at the beach. Jordan’s pool. Out on Jordan’s boat.

  (Hell, he’d rather be anywhere, but no dice. His mom and dad have him on lockdown.)

  Then Jordan calls one day, early evening. “What are you doing?” he asks Eric. “I have a hookup for you. An internship opportunity.”

  Eric’s locked in his room in the basement, wondering whether to send a résumé to the Capilano Police Department—

  (wondering if that would be totally crazy).

  “Great,” he says, reaching for a pen and some scrap paper. “Where? What’s the deal?”

  “I’ll be there in five minutes,” Jordan says. “Be ready to go.”

  121.

  Luckily, Eric’s dad is at his office.

  “I’m just going to check out a volunteering thing,” Eric tells his mom as he ties his shoes. “I know I’m supposed to be grounded, but I have a good feeling about this one.”

  “You are grounded,” his mom replies. Then she sighs. “But I told your dad I don’t see how you’re supposed to find a job if he won’t let you out of the house.”

  Eric stands. “That’s what I’m saying.”

  “Come straight home,” Eric’s mom says. Then she kisses him. “And good luck, sweetie.”

  (Shit. Eric almost feels guilty.)

  (Then he walks out the door and sees Jordan’s BMW parked at the curb, and the guilt more or less disappears.)

  Jordan leans over and pushes the passenger door open as Eric walks up. “Your dad give you any trouble?”

  Eric shakes his head. “Working. I told my mom I had a lead on a job.”

  “Perfect.” Jordan shifts into gear. “So let’s get the hell out of here.”

  The BMW seems empty without the girls in the backseat. “What’s Haley doing tonight?” Eric asks.