The Fixes

by Owen Matthews

  Haley considers this. It wouldn’t be the craziest thing she’s ever done. But then Haley catches the way E’s holding Jordan, cuddled in close. There’s conflict in the way he’s watching her—fear and jealousy and something darker, too—and Haley realizes this isn’t just a game to E; no, he’s actually, like, into Jordan, wrapped up in Jordan’s spell. And Haley can see that he’s not into sharing.

  So Haley shakes her head. “Thanks, but no thanks,” she tells Jordan—

  (and sees E visibly relax when she does).

  “Maybe another time.”

  Then she sinks down into the water again, does a mermaid turn and swims to the far end, the deep end, finds the ladder and climbs out and pads across the deck to the mansion, shivering in the cool night air. She slides the back door open and walks into the kitchen, thinking she’ll maybe brainstorm her next Fix before she goes to bed.

  And when she turns around to slide the door closed again, E and Jordan are making out in the shallow end of the pool, completely taken with one another, and it’s like they haven’t even noticed she’s gone.

  196.

  (E)

  E hears Haley close the door, and he knows he’s alone with Jordan again.

  (At last.)

  And then Jordan’s kissing him, and his skin is slick and wet, and his muscles are hard, and E can feel himself shivering, like literally shaking with excitement, as he kisses Jordan back.

  But even though E’s drunk and high and utterly fucked up on Jordan’s voodoo, some small part of him knows he should be proceeding with caution. He knows he should be worried about . . . something.

  (But who gives a shit about that, anyway?)

  E knows he should be thinking this through, examining what impact it will have on HIS FUTURE.

  Figuring out how it jives with everyone’s EXPECTATIONS.

  But as E follows Jordan out of the pool and into Jordan’s house and up the front stairs to his bedroom, he’s not really thinking about any of those things.

  He’s not BEING RESPONSIBLE.

  He’s not THINKING about HIS FUTURE.

  The only thing E’s thinking—

  (as he follows Jordan into his bedroom)

  —is how this is just as good as

  he always imagined

  it would

  be.

  197.

  It’s lunchtime. Eric and Paige are walking through the city, Hastings Street, the East Side, dodging stares from homeless people and junkies.

  Paige is PAing on ’s movie a few blocks away from the Railtown Health Center, so she texted E and asked if he wanted dim sum. And here they are.

  “I’m sorry.” E’s blushing. “I didn’t want you to hear it from anyone but me.”

  “I just feel bad.” Paige hands E her coffee cup. Fumbles with a package of Belmonts. “I’m not against the idea of you liking boys. I’m just . . . really surprised.”

  “Yeah,” E says. “I was too.”

  Paige walks for a little while without saying anything. “I guess I was kind of imagining that you and I would get back together, now that you’ve crawled out of your cave and you’re being social again. I never really understood why we broke up in the first place.”

  “My dad, mostly,” E says. “He didn’t think a Connelly Man should be spending time on a relationship when I could be BUILDING A FOUNDATION for my FUTURE.”

  “Right. And then there’s the whole ‘you like boys’ thing.”

  “Right.”

  “I turned you gay,” Paige says. “I always thought of myself as a pretty good girlfriend, but now I have to live with the fact that I turned you off women entirely.”

  “It wasn’t you,” E says quickly. “I just didn’t really know. And I mean, I wouldn’t say entirely. . . .”

  Paige gives him a smile. “I’m just messing with you.” They wait for a light to change. Paige doesn’t say anything until they’re on the other side. “I’m not going to pretend, though. I really liked what we had together. It hurt when you disappeared.”

  “I’m fucked up,” E tells her. He knows he’s an asshole for bailing on Paige without an explanation. For leaving Paige to put the pieces together alone.

  “I’m not mad. I just don’t want to lose you again.” Paige flicks her cigarette butt to the curb. “Not, like, as a boyfriend. Just as a friend.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “It’s just, I could use a friend lately,” Paige says. “My mom and dad are having freaking World War Three over this divorce, and I feel like my whole life is falling apart.”

  “That’s what the Pack is for, right?”

  She glances at him. “The Pack stuff is fun, yeah, but it’s like a Band-Aid. At the end of the day, my life’s still a shithole. It scares me sometimes, what we’re doing. Like, where does it end?”

  E shrugs. “It ends when we say it ends. When we get sick of fixing things.”

  “You think? You really believe we’re all just going to walk away from this one day?”

  E doesn’t know what to say. Joining the Pack was the best thing that ever happened to him. He doesn’t want to think about what happens when the Pack ends.

  “You’re really into Jordan, huh?” Paige asks, after a beat.

  “I mean, yeah,” E says.

  Paige doesn’t say anything. She just kind of frowns down at the sidewalk like she’s thinking. “Just promise me you’ll be careful,” she says. “You know?”

  E stops. “What’s that supposed to mean?” When Paige doesn’t answer, he continues. “Like, it’s all good when I’m robbing The Room, but hook up with Jordan and suddenly you’re concerned?”

  “Gah, I don’t know, Eric,” Paige says. “It’s just a lot of big changes. All at once. That’s all.”

  (Cue more awkward silence.)

  Then E checks his watch. “I gotta get back.”

  Paige exhales, relief, like the conversation has gone sideways and this is the out they’ve been looking for. “Me too,” she says. “ probably needs me.”

  They walk to the next intersection.

  Paige hugs him good-bye.

  KIK -- CAPILANO HIGH PRIVATE MESSAGE GROUP – 07/30/16 – 06:57 PM

  USERNAME: SuIcIdEpAcK

  MESSAGE: My new bikini is the bomb.

  198.

  It’s bathing suit season. For most kids in Capilano, this is cause for celebration.

  Not for Haley Keefer.

  (I already told you about Haley’s older sister, Tinsley. Tinsley is twenty-one. She’s an actress—a real actress. She moved down to L.A. and had a story arc on Grey’s Anatomy. Tinsley is what you would call “conventionally beautiful.”)

  Haley isn’t. At least that’s what her mom tells her—

  (“You’d be almost as pretty as Tinsley, sweetheart, if you could just lose a few pounds.”)

  Consequently, Haley spends a lot of time looking in the mirror. She spends a lot of time feeling like she’s ugly. Or fat. Or not good enough.

  She hears her mom chiding her every time she eats a French fry.

  (Haley doesn’t eat many French fries.)

  Haley starves herself, but it doesn’t solve the equation. Her mom just cocks her head and clucks at her, tells her she looks emaciated and should be working out more.

  Haley hates working out. It makes her feel fat and lazy.

  Everything makes her feel fat and lazy.

  Everything makes her feel not good enough.

  (Except the Suicide Pack.)

  199.

  School always came easy for Haley.

  (She’s smarter than Tinsley, not that that counts for anything. She’s probably the smartest of our four main characters—even E.)

  Haley’s mom and dad don’t really care about smarts, though. Her dad is a washed-up old rock star who dropped out of high school for his first world tour senior year. Her mom is her dad’s second wife, a former swimsuit model he met at the Viper Room in Los Angeles.

  (Haley’s mom is alwa
ys talking about how she could have been a supermodel if she hadn’t quit the game to follow Haley’s dad on tour.)

  (She’s probably wrong, but anyway, she had Tinsley and now the whole question is moot.)

  Haley’s mom didn’t get much of an education either. Now that her modeling days are behind her, she spends her time living vicariously through Tinsley and designing outrageously expensive bikinis to sell at Côte d’Azur, the boutique Haley’s dad bought her in downtown Capilano.

  Haley’s parents don’t really understand their youngest daughter. And the reverse is also pretty much true.

  200.

  How This All Ties In with Haley’s (Second) Fix:

  Short answer: It’s bathing suit season.

  Long answer: Tinsley is in Los Angeles shooting a speaking part in the new Sofia Coppola movie, and Haley’s mom needs someone to test-model this year’s line of outrageously cut and ridiculously priced bathing suits. She barges into Haley’s room, wakes Haley up from a nice, relaxing marijuana-and-Houellebecq-induced nap and drags her downstairs to her workshop. And that’s when the nagging begins.

  (“Your butt, sweetheart—have you thought about using the StairMaster more?”)

  (“Maybe if we got you a personal trainer, you could finally lose that little bit of baby fat around your tummy.”)

  (“For god’s sake, honey, why can’t you smile more? Like Tinsley?”)

  It’s when Haley’s mom mentions Tinsley that Haley’s had enough. She bolts, still trussed up in this hideous paisley print haute couture bodysuit her mom’s trying to get her to model. Makes it up to her room, her high all but freaking vanished, pulls on a pair of cutoffs and a tank top, steals the keys to her mom’s Porsche Boxster, and burns rubber for Jordan’s house.

  201.

  (She studies herself in the Porsche’s rearview mirror as she drives. Hates herself for doing it, but can’t stop. Picks out every flaw she can find as she waits at a stoplight.

  (She knows them all by heart, anyway.)

  Nose too big.

  Cheeks too chubby.

  Gap in her front teeth too wide.

  Hair a perennial disaster.

  And a pimple starting to show on her cheek.

  Haley knows her mom keeps a stack of Tinsley’s headshots in the glove box, just in case she needs to brag to the other Capilano moms. She pulls one out now and looks it over, and yep, Tinsley is still perfect, still so sunny and blond it’s unbearable. And even though Haley has seen enough of her sister to know where the picture is touched up, it doesn’t help.

  Tinsley is practically perfect.

  Haley is flawed.

  Those are the facts.)

  202.

  Jordan listens as Haley vents. Jordan calls Paige and E, and pretty soon they’re all listening.

  “I just want to fuck up my mom’s swimsuit store sometimes,” Haley tells them. “I want to trash the place, all of it, every last bodysuit and bikini bottom and picture-perfect poster of my picture-perfect sister.

  “I just want to burn that motherfucker to the ground,” Haley tells them. “Is that so wrong?”

  The others swap looks. Jordan and E exchange a mysterious glance.

  “I think we might be able to help you with that,” E says.

  And then he tells Haley and Paige about the bomb.

  203.

  “Wait a second,” Paige says. “You built a bomb?”

  Jordan’s smiling his shit-eating smile. “I mean, I built a crappy bomb. E perfected it.”

  Paige spins to look at E. “You?”

  E just shrugs. “Found instructions online.”

  “Where is it?”

  “My bedroom closet,” E says. “I hid it behind those Givenchy Tysons Haley swiped.” He pauses. “I mean, it’s not very big.”

  “But it would fuck up the Côte d’Azur,” Jordan says. “I can promise you that.”

  Haley thinks about it. “You guys would do that . . . for me?”

  She looks at E. “This is your Fix. Are you sure this is what you want to do with it?”

  E feels relief flooding his veins like he just took a pill.

  “Hell yes,” he says. “Let’s blow the joint. Suicide Pack sticks together, right?”

  “Damn right,” Jordan says.

  Haley mulls it over. She’s thinking about the poster that hangs in the window of her mom’s obnoxious boutique. Tinsley in a bikini, photo-shoot style. Tinsley’s stomach is better than flat. Her butt doesn’t sag. Her blond hair is flowing in the breeze.

  (No way in a million years will Haley look anywhere near that good.)

  Haley imagines that poster blown up to shreds. The whole fucking boutique in pieces.

  (Houellebecq is writing about terrorist bombs and sex resorts. Haley kind of digs the nihilistic vibe.)

  “Fuck it,” she tells the others. “Let’s do it.”

  204.

  The next few days are unbearable.

  “You have to go home,” Jordan tells Haley. “Make peace with your mom, succumb to her demands for a week or two. Be the perfect daughter for a while.”

  (Be Tinsley, Haley thinks.)

  “Then, when she thinks everything’s perfect, we hit her,” Jordan says. “Kablamo.”

  Kablamo.

  205.

  So Haley goes home. Walks through the front door and it’s like her mom didn’t even notice she was gone.

  “Hi, sweetheart,” she says, a big plastic smile on her face. “What are you doing today?” Then she frowns, leans in closer. “Your face looks dry. Have you been moisturizing like I showed you?”

  Haley sighs and puts down her bag. Remembers what Jordan said about being good. “I guess I haven’t been doing it right,” she tells her mom. “Can you show me again?”

  206.

  Haley endures.

  She endures her mom’s beauty suggestions. Her mom’s weight-loss tips. She tries hot yoga with her mom, and the StairMaster. She even tags along to the gym to see Johan, her mom’s lecherous twentysomething ’roid-monkey personal trainer.

  Johan spends the whole hour fondling Haley while pretending to show her how to “refine her technique.” Haley fends him off as best she can while maintaining a sunny disposition, for her mom’s sake.

  (“Don’t smile too wide, sweetheart. You’ll get laugh lines.”)

  As the week progresses, Haley begins to gain a deeper understanding of her mom’s life. She notices how desperately her mom clings to what remains of her beauty, how obsessively she works through her skincare routine morning and night, how she dresses to flatter, how she forces herself to smile small, avoid sunlight, eat smaller portions.

  Haley also sees how her dad ignores her mom when she’s talking. She sees how her mom tries to keep his attention, make him laugh, engage in conversation. How her dad barely looks up from his magazine, or his phone, when she’s speaking.

  Haley sees how her mom could feel, you know, marginalized. She’s lived her whole life in a world where beauty is her only currency, and now her fortune is slipping away.

  It’s sad.

  Pathetic, really.

  And it explains why Haley’s mom nags Haley so incessantly about her own looks. About her weight. About her appearance.

  Haley realizes that her mom isn’t a bad person. She means well. She’s like E’s dad, probably. She wants what’s best for her children. She’s just clearly incapable of imagining a world where beauty isn’t the only quality that matters. But that’s not her fault, is it?

  Eventually, Haley begins to feel sorry for her mom. She begins—amazingly—to feel empathy.

  She starts to feel like maybe . . . maybe she should think of a new Fix.

  Haley’s trying to figure out a way to inform the Pack she needs a little more time. Then her mom tells her she has a surprise.

  207.

  “No peeking!”

  Haley covers her eyes in the passenger seat of her mom’s Boxster. Resists the urge to sneak a look. She’s been hiding
her eyes ever since they drove over the bridge, trying to enjoy the moment, smiling despite herself—

  (just not too wide).

  (Haley hasn’t spent this much time alone with her mom since, like, ever.)

  So Haley sits in the passenger seat, a dumb grin on her face, feeling silly as she hides her eyes behind her hands, but feeling happily curious, too. Her mom hasn’t given any hints, just came into Haley’s room this morning with a huge smile on her face and announced they had a big day together. She’d practically dragged Haley out to the Boxster, the smile never wavering—

  (so much for the laugh lines)

  —and giggled like a little girl, all the way to the bridge. Now, Haley’s pretty well given up trying to guess where they’re going. She just sits there and listens to her mom sing along to the radio, feels the warmth of the sun on her skin and the wind in her hair and feels, you know, happy.

  Her mom drives for fifteen or twenty minutes. Stopping and starting, turning left and right, until Haley’s half convinced her mom’s taking detours just to confuse her. But then she feels the Porsche slow and turn into a driveway. Her mom kills the engine.

  “Okay, sweetheart,” she says. “You can open your eyes now.”

  Haley lowers her hands. Blinks in the sudden sunlight. They’re in a parking lot south of downtown, near the general hospital. They’re at a private medical clinic, Haley sees. Her heart sinks.

  DOCTOR RICCARDO MILANI, the sign out front reads. COSMETIC PLASTIC SURGERY.

  208.

  “She told me I could have whatever I wanted,” Haley tells the others. “A nose job. A boob job. Botox. Lip injections. Whatever I wanted, like I would finally be beautiful.”

  The others make general sounds of disgust. “She’s clearly insane,” Jordan says. “You’re smoking hot.”

  “You’re just, like, alternative,” Paige says. “I don’t see why that’s a bad thing.”

  “You definitely don’t need plastic surgery,” E says, awkward as ever.