Two Roads from Here

by Teddy Steinkellner

  Allegra took a breath in. She let one out.

  “Yes.”

  I kept going.

  “Look, I don’t mean to pry. But you acted all crazy pills when I said you looked sad. Which means there’s definitely a reason you looked sad. And if you’re allowed to worry about me, I’m allowed to ask about you. So, like . . . what’s eating you?”

  I fully expected her to drop her head again, to go all la-la-la-I’m-not-listening, and to push me out of the car, to send me rolling down the hill like the snow-white avalanche that I am.

  But instead what she did was, well, it was awesome, actually.

  She told me stuff.

  “I’m not sure where to begin,” she said. “There’s really such a maelstrom of things right now. My mom just learned—my family has a lot on its plate at the moment. And I could leave them behind if I wanted, but I fear that’d be selfish. And Stanford, well, it’s an honor to get in, of course, but frankly, I’m not sure college is all it’s cracked up to be. And Wiley . . .”

  She trailed off.

  “Wiley . . .”

  She said his name with the flattest tone in her voice, the most distant look in her eye.

  “He’s . . . I don’t know. Ever since homecoming, he’s been acting so strange. . . .”

  Just then we came up on my house, which I pointed out to her. At that same moment, right as she was about to pull over, it hit me. I realized exactly what was going on.

  “Ohhhh. Dude. Say no more. I know what’s up.” I put my hand on her shoulder. I gave it a mini-squeeze. “So it’s tough, because like, Wiley’s your pal, but, like, secretly this whole time, he’s been trying to bone you.”

  WHAM.

  As soon as I said it, Allegra jammed on the brakes. She braked so hard I practically thumped my head on the dash. I mean I damn near got a second concussion, which would have legit turned me into—what’s the fattest vegetable there is?—like, a cabbage or something.

  “Get out.”

  “What?”

  Allegra kept her eyes fixed on the street, refusing to meet mine.

  “Look,” I said. “I’m sorry, but—”

  “Now.”

  Oof. That hurt. Like a helmet to the gut. I gulped. I nodded okay. I got ready to step out of the car. I glanced up at the rearview mirror, and—

  “Shit!”

  Allegra’s head snapped. “What?”

  “It’s him!”

  “What?”

  “He’s coming!”

  “Who is?”

  “Wiley!”

  She threw her hands above her head. She collapsed in her seat all duck-and-cover style. Her breathing stopped. It was like we had Navy SEALs surrounding the perimeter or something, just waiting for the order to burst in and open fire on us. The poor girl was so freaked out, so scared crapless at the consequences of being seen together with me. It was only after a full sixty seconds that she lifted her head from her knees and peered out through her fingers. That’s when she saw that I hadn’t moved, not at all.

  “Wha—why didn’t you—”

  My body gave it away before I could. My mouth corners twitched up against my will. My eyes practically filled with tears.

  “Heh-heh-heh . . . got you!”

  I died. I died laughing at the hilariousness of the situation. Allegra scowled, and at first I thought she was going to scream at me for being an asshole, or quietly insist that I go to my house and leave her life forever.

  Instead, though, what she did was, well, she surprised me all over again.

  “You’re right, aren’t you? You’re absolutely right.”

  “I am? About what?”

  She paused, letting the reality fully sink in. “He really does . . . want to . . . bone me.”

  I smiled with my mouth closed. “I shouldn’t have joked about it,” I said. “Especially after you told me all that sensitive stuff. That wasn’t kind of me. I’m sorry.”

  Allegra shook her head. “Dude,” she said.

  “What?” I said.

  “Dude.”

  “What?”

  “Dude.” She tilted her head up and beamed at me. “Stop apologizing. You sound like a crappy butler.”

  Without any sort of warning, Allegra sat high in her seat, leaned all the way toward me, placed both of her hands on my sides, and planted the biggest, warmest kiss on my cheek.

  “It’s been a pleasure meeting you, Brian. I’m not sorry it happened at all.”

  “Hell yeah,” I said.

  Hell yeah.

  The selfish bitch and the little bitch. Has a nice ring to it.

  * * *

  7. WILEY OTIS

  * * *

  You should have just played her the song, man,” Darius said. “Music is like the ultimate panty-dropper.”

  “Just ask Elvis,” Berger said.

  “Or Tupac,” Darius said.

  “Or famed concert cellist Yo-Yo Ma,” Woo chimed in. “That dude must go through, like, two dozen condoms a day.”

  I punched at the headrest of the front seat, where Woo was sitting.

  “Come on, guys,” I said. “Stop trying to make me feel better. It’s over. My chance was gone the second DeSean got crunched. Plus she’s with her Neanderthal now.”

  “You should never give up,” Berger said.

  “Yo-Yo Ma would never quit in pursuit of that ass,” Woo said.

  “It’s too late!” I shouted. “I can’t play Allegra the song because she chose someone else, okay? And I quit band anyway. I quit to hang with you clowns.”

  There was a short while when no one spoke. Woo looked at Darius. Darius looked at Berger. Berger looked at Woo. Smirks spread across each of their faces. They all looked at me.

  “Well . . . ,” Darius said. “What if . . . we were your band?”

  “What?”

  “We’ve already got the instruments,” Woo said. He reached inside the glove compartment and pulled out a small beanbag with a Jamaican flag pattern on it.

  “Check it out,” he said. “I play the Hacky Sack.”

  He shook the Hacky Sack in rhythm, like it was a maraca.

  “He plays the Sack, and I play the snacks!” Darius said, grabbing an empty Hot Cheetos bag from the car floor, which he crinkled and uncrinkled to the beanbag beat.

  “And I play . . . ,” Berger said, looking all around the car. “I play . . .”

  “I play the kazoo!”

  Berger stuck his hand deep in his pants pocket and pulled out a red plastic kazoo.

  “The hell?” I said. “You own a kazoo?”

  “Brah,” he said. “What sort of self-respecting G doesn’t own a kazoo?”

  The three of them played their “instruments” for several seconds. It gave me a headache, the guys making those same noises over and over. All they did was irritate me. All they did was make me think of Allegra more.

  “Dammit,” I said. “I need some of that shit you guys are on.”

  I took the weed pipe from Darius’s free hand.

  I lit the bowl. I took a big puff in.

  I tried to forget.

  • • •

  I’ve known Darius, Woo, and Berger since elementary school. Each of them used to be somebody else. Darius was a star track and fielder until sophomore year, when he tore his ACL and traded hurdles in for blunts. Woo was a premed prodigy until his parents burned him out and he began medicating in a different way. And Berger . . . well, Berger was always a stoner, but when the three of them joined forces, he went from Padawan to Jedi Master.

  I never thought I’d become friends with those guys. Back in the day, Allegra wouldn’t have let me. She frowned upon their antics. She used to see them across the halls and refer dismissively to their “smelly little world.”

  Then again, Allegra’s the same person who shut me out as soon as her mom got diagnosed. She stopped spending time after school with me. She never let me make her smile. She left me alone on my birthday. She forgot to text me on my birthday. An
d even after I was cool with all of that, even after I forgave her in my heart, she betrayed me. I’d been waiting to reveal my feelings. I wanted to wait until her family situation improved, until she was ready. I was trying to do the gentlemanly thing.

  But before I had the chance to confess my love, she went and freaking kissed someone else. And not just anybody, but that balding, brainless, plus-size ogre. That’s how much I meant to her. Ten years down the drain, just like that.

  So maybe I didn’t need her anymore. Maybe I needed to try some new smells.

  “Hey, guys,” I said to the trio on the first day back after winter break. I had walked up to their usual spot, in Darius’s car, in the very last row of the student parking lot.

  “I have a thing of Mother’s Iced Oatmeal cookies, some honey barbecue twisty Fritos, a buttload of Fruit Roll-Ups, and a book of optical illusions. Can I hang out with you?”

  “Wiley, my friend,” Woo said. “We always knew this day would come.”

  “You have impeccable taste in random shit,” Berger said.

  “Climb into the hotboxmobile, sire,” Darius said.

  Since that day, we’ve had the most memorable times ever, even if I can’t totally remember them. We’ve ditched school to smoke and play video games, and to smoke and climb trees, and to smoke and feed feral cats. We’ve snuck onto campus late at night and climbed to the very top of the big theater roof, where we’ve peed off the edge, and I always have the longest stream by far, so the guys all salute me and call me “Streammaster General,” and it makes me laugh so hard I have to steady myself, so I don’t join my pee in falling fifty feet off the roof.

  And then, immediately after I’m done laughing, right after I’ve zipped back up, my thoughts can’t help but turn to Allegra.

  Every time. Still.

  Her twisty Frito hair. Her licorice-red jacket. Her little gummy fingers. Her M&M eyes.

  I’ve got to lay off the munchies, don’t I?

  And I’ve got to forget about her. She’s out of my life. I have to have fun with the guys and that’s it. But it’s like, every time I’m with them, there comes a moment when I can’t stop thinking about my past, about what could have been my future. No matter what I do, my stupid, stubborn heart stays obsessed with her.

  All the time. Still.

  • • •

  “Come on,” Woo said, flinging the car door open. “Let’s practice Wiley’s song!”

  “Yeah!” Darius and Berger said, hopping into the parking lot with their pretend instruments. We’d been hotboxing for a while after school, like ninety minutes at least, so no other kids were around.

  “I don’t know,” I said, still in my seat. “I might not be up for it.”

  “We’re doing it for you,” Berger said. “If you say no, that’s like the Make-a-Wish kid who doesn’t show up for his own leukemia day at SeaWorld.”

  “But I don’t have an instrument.”

  “Wiley,” Darius said to me. He had a dead serious look in his eye.

  “You play the tuba. . . .” He put his hand on my shoulder. He paused for seemingly five minutes. “The anal tuba.”

  At that, the other guys burst into little-boy laughter. In that instant, I wanted to walk away, or say “piss off,” or text Allegra, Come get me, please. I’m sorry. Let’s at least be friends again. I’ll do anything. Please come and save me.

  Instead, I lifted the pipe to my mouth. I took another hit.

  One second later, in between coughs, I was laughing my ass off too.

  “Ladies and gentlemen!” Berger called out to the sea of empty parking spaces.

  “We welcome you tonight to our benefit concert, honoring a great cause, the Wiley Otis Foundation for Broken Hearts and Blue Balls—”

  “And now,” Woo said, grabbing the invisible mic, “we present to you, our number one hit single . . .‘Allegra Rey, I Hate You and You’re Fat!’ ”

  I made cheering crowd sounds as my three friends began playing their music. Woo shook his Hacky Sack. Darius crumpled and decrumpled his plastic bag. Berger went ham on his kazoo.

  “Allegra, you bitch,” Darius sang. “I hate your saggy bitch tits.”

  “Why were you such a bitch,” Woo joined in, “to Wiley and his twelve-inch dick?”

  “I hate you so much,” Berger sang. “Because you’re such a slut.”

  “And Wiley hates you too,” Woo added. “Just listen to his butt. . . .”

  “Tuba solo!”

  I toot-toot-tooted, and toot-toot-tooted some more, and just when it seemed like I was fresh out of ammo, I toot-toot-tooted all over again. Allegra hates how I can fart on command. She thinks it’s the most disgusting and least impressive skill in the world, but hey, we can’t all be college geniuses like her, and this is the only skill I’ve got. If she can’t appreciate that, then she can’t appreciate me, and so I kept farting, and the guys kept laughing and playing their instruments and cheering me on, and I’ve never had so much fun in all my life, fart, fart, fart, fart fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart—

  “Hey!

  “HEY!

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  In the awesomeness of our jam sesh, we never even noticed when the car pulled into the lot. It was a student driver car with a sophomore girl behind the wheel, but that wasn’t the bad part. The bad part was who was in the passenger’s seat. It was our school’s football coach-slash-driver’s ed teacher, Coach Dent. He looked goddamn psycho.

  “You! Stay where you are! You stay right where you are!”

  I don’t know how the other guys did it. They must just be way better than me at this whole doing sneaky stuff behind grown-ups’ backs thing. As soon as Coach Dent screamed, the three of them full-on booked it. Darius, Woo, and Berger raced off the lot, down the hill, and into the nearby neighborhoods. And since Coach doesn’t know who they even are, they pulled it off. They got away with getting away.

  As for me, I don’t know if it’s because I’d been so concentrated on playing my instrument, or because I’m newer to smoking so the effects of it hit me harder, or maybe because part of me still feels like I deserve this, like I’m supposed to get in trouble every time I do something bad. At any rate, by the time Coach walked up to me, I was still in my tuba solo spot. And at this point I thought I’d be fine, because it’s not like we’d been doing anything actually bad, like we were just messing around—making gross sounds, yeah, but that’s not a crime or whatever. We weren’t hurting anyone, so I had nothing to worry about, nothing at all.

  That’s when I remembered there was still a weed pipe in my hand.

  A fully lit, totally smellable, very much illegal weed pipe.

  Shaped like a naked lady, no less.

  So . . .

  Welcome back to detention, me.

  Welcome back to detention for a very, very long time.

  Hey there, Bear.

  Missed you, girl.

  * * *

  8. COLE MARTIN-HAMMER

  * * *

  Knock-knock-knock.

  “Cole baby? Can I come in?”

  “Not now, Wanda. I’m otherwise disposed.”

  “How much longer you gonna take?”

  “Could be all night. This is the most homework I’ve had all year.”

  “Okay, baby. Let me know if you want some food.”

  “Thank you, Wanda.”

  “Good luck with your assignments.”

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  Footsteps, footsteps, footsteps.

  All lies, of course.

  What homework? Screw homework. I finish most of that trash during the day, during my other classes. Sometimes I don’t do it at all. I mean, I’m a Stanford student now. I do what I want.

  No, nighttime is my time. It’s when I conduct my real work.

  It’s when I get in the lab and do some research.

  I began tonight’s mission in simple fashion, by hopping online and typing “DeSean Weems scandal.” Nothing came up, o
f course, but this was to be expected. Like any of the finest creative arts, a proper life-ruining takes time.

  My social-media deep dive didn’t reveal too much either. A recruiting-website rumor about D injecting himself with horse DNA. A locker-room pic in which he seems to be touching Scrotes in a slightly special way. A blog post he wrote about how his compound fracture has brought him closer to Jesus.

  In the grand scheme of things, approximately diddly.

  As I continued to come up empty, I must admit, I felt almost relieved. I mean, I’ve never had much against DeSean personally. I’ve always felt a kindred connection to the smattering of fellow black kids on campus. His mom and my mom are best hat-lady friends at church. And that jawline . . . How could one ever resent such perfection?

  And yet, the man is captain of the football team. The same football team that called me fag and cocksucker freshman year, and racial stuff when DeSean wasn’t looking. The same team that beat my ass in the locker room every afternoon after PE and told me that I liked it. The same team that, up until the moment I transferred into theater, had me seriously contemplating transferring from Dos Caminos, switching over to home school, dropping out of society altogether.

  The same team that broke my friend Brian.

  DeSean may not be as bad as the rest of them, but as their quarterback, as their leader, he damn well better pay for all of their sins, which—hoo boy, lucky me—means I get to play the role of a lifetime: that of the spiteful and vindictive Old Testament God.

  One biblical ass-whoopin’, coming right up. Big Mack, old pal, you’re welcome in advance.

  Knock-knock-knock.

  “Cole?” my mother called. “Can I come in now?”

  “No. I’m busy. Why?”

  “Something I need you to do.”

  “This is a bad time, Wanda.”

  “It’ll only take a few minutes.”

  “This is important. Go away.”

  Footsteps, footsteps, footsteps.

  All right, so if I couldn’t take DeSean down directly, I figured I’d take the more devious approach. In superhero flicks, the ingenious bad guy always puts the boring-sauce hero in his place not by going right after him, but by targeting those whom the hero loves. So what I had to do was find DeSean’s Aunt May, his Alfred the butler, his Lois Lane.