Words We Don't Say

by K. J. Reilly

  “Quick! You are in the right-hand lane of a four-lane highway with no median strip between the two sides to separate you from oncoming traffic and there’s a police car with the lights on and its siren blaring barreling down on you from behind and a lady is walking on the shoulder of the highway with a dog, so you can’t pull over and there’s a tractor trailer in the left lane, so you can’t switch lanes. Do you:

  A. Hit the lady in order to pull over for the cop, or

  B. Hit the tractor trailer to let the cop car through and save the lady?”

  Alex B. Renner said, “Definitely B,” and a really tall sophomore on the track team named Ralph something said, “What the fuck, man? That means you would sideswipe the tractor trailer and end up dead.” Then Alex B. Renner said, “Yeah, but I would never have to answer one of Kutchner’s Driver’s Ed what-ifs again.”

  Then some kid who I didn’t even recognize who must have been a freshman who just moved here asked, “What does the lady walking on the side of the road look like?” and Benj said, “What difference does that make?” And the kid said, “If she was hot I wouldn’t want to run her over, that’s all.”

  Then Ron Henley chimed in and said, “Assume she looks like me.”

  Which was funny ’cause he was basically a fur factory and looked like a Neanderthal man had a baby with Bigfoot.

  Then Charlie Watson, who was the fastest kid in the school, said, “Then I’d hit the lady.”

  Then Henley punched him on his shoulder. Not hard, but still.

  Then another kid asked, “What kind of dog is it?” and someone else said, “Assume that it’s a Rottweiler,” and Alex B. Renner said, “If you just wait a few seconds until you pass the lady walking you could then pull to the side safely.”

  And Benj said, “Assume she’s a fast walker.”

  “As in, she can walk fifty-five miles per hour?”

  “Yes, she can walk really fast. Don’t ruin the game.”

  Then Alex B. Renner said, “Well, then, if the car I was in and the tractor trailer and the lady and the Rottweiler were all moving at fifty-five miles per hour and I accelerated to sixty-five miles per hour I would be forty-four feet in front of the dog-walking lady and the tractor trailer in three seconds and I would have my choice of either crossing safely into the left lane in front of the truck or pulling into the breakdown lane in front of the lady who looks like Ron Henley and letting the police car by without colliding with the truck or hitting the hideous-looking lady who together with her dog can walk faster than anyone on earth.”

  Benj said, “Fuck, man, you ruined my story.”

  Then I said, “I would slam the car into reverse, plow ass-first into the cop car, do a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn and then speed in the opposite direction into oncoming traffic.”

  And Alex B. Renner said, “Who the hell would that help?”

  And I said, “Nobody. I just wanted to make Benj happy.”

  But none of us, not Benj Kutchner, not the entire track team, not Joel Higgins, and not even Alex B. Renner were listening anymore on account of the fact that Olivia Beaumont and Cynthia Jackson just walked by in tight tank tops and itty-bitty track shorts and every last one of us forgot how to think.

  Then I said, “Socks, Benj.”

  And he said, “Okay, Joel,” and then he sat down to take his shoes off.

  Then Alex B. Renner looked down at Benj on the sidewalk and said, “What the fuck?”

  Then Eli showed up and she was looking at her phone and she blurted out, “In Alabama it’s illegal to drive while blindfolded,” then she burst out laughing. The track kids had all headed down to the field for practice and we were still standing outside on the sidewalk waiting for Mr. Stanley to pull up in the Driver’s Ed car and he was now really late and Eli was still looking at her phone googling more weird driving laws and making one of her lists.

  “No, it’s not,” I said. “You made that up.”

  “Did not.”

  I reached for her phone.

  She stepped backward with her eyes glued to the screen.

  “In Alaska it’s illegal to tether a dog to the roof of a car and drive.”

  “Is not.” I lunged left but she outstepped me.

  “Of course it is, Joel. It can’t be legal to tie a dog to the roof of a car.”

  “But it can’t be an actual law that it’s illegal either,” I said as I almost got her hand. “Laws are not that specific or that stupid.”

  Reached and missed again.

  “Yes, they are! In Arkansas it’s against the law to honk a horn where cold drinks or sandwiches are served after nine p.m.”

  She was still staggering backward and I was still grabbing at her phone and Benj and Alex B. Renner were watching to see what was going to happen next because in about three minutes she was going to be trapped in the corner of the building.

  “You better learn this stuff, Joel, in case it’s on the driving test.”

  “There is no written driving test after you get your permit, Eli. You just take a driving test, as in a road test.”

  “The guy giving you the road test might ask you some of these questions in case you are ever driving in Kansas or California, so listen.”

  I grabbed. She sidestepped, retreated, and put the phone behind her back.

  “In some towns in California it’s illegal to plant rutabagas in roadways or jump from a car at sixty-five miles per hour…”

  I reached again and missed.

  “…or spill margaritas on the street. And in Oklahoma you can’t read comic books while driving….”

  Eli was almost all the way to the brick wall by the north entrance of the high school and I said, still grabbing at her phone, “I don’t believe you. Let me see it. Just for one minute.”

  Then Benj was at my side with his phone.

  “In Topeka, Kansas, it’s illegal to transport dead chickens.”

  And Eli said, “See?”

  Then Benj said, “Joel, you have your own fucking phone. Google this stuff yourself.”

  And I said, “I can’t, asshole. I left my phone in my locker,” which wasn’t true.

  Then Mr. Stanley pulled up and beeped the horn. All the phones were put away and we climbed into the car, and Eli kept slapping at my hands as I was still making moves to grab her phone, which was now in the back pocket of her jeans, and it was just about the most fun I had had in my entire life.

  We climbed into the back seat with me on the left and Eli in the middle and Alex B. Renner on the right because according to Mr. Stanley’s clipboard it was Benj’s turn to get behind the wheel. When we were all seat-belted in the car I was still grabbing at Eli’s phone and she was still giggling and Alex B. Renner kept saying, “Cut it out,” and Benj turned to Mr. Stanley and said, “In Massachusetts it’s illegal to drive with a gorilla in the back seat.”

  Mr. Stanley just looked at him blankly, his left eye twitching in its typical nervous fashion di-di-dit dah-dah-dah di-di-dit, and I was thinking that we each had our own unique way of racking his nerves and Mr. Stanley probably couldn’t figure out which one of us upset him more. Benj had some kind of communication problem what with the fact that he blurted out weird stuff all the time and I couldn’t drive for shit and Alex B. Renner drove so badly that Mr. Stanley had basically given up trying to correct him and Eli drove so slowly that there were times when I wanted to get out and push the goddamned car and Mr. Stanley had to keep saying, “Eli, if you don’t go faster we are going to get rear-ended.” Him looking over his shoulder to see the traffic piling up behind us with his eye going di-di-dit dah-dah-dah di-di-dit, and me sitting in the back thinking that they should have given the Driver’s Ed teacher a gas pedal to go along with the brake pedal for students like Eli, who needed a little coaxing to go faster, but somewhere someone screwed up on that one. Then Benj got all nervous because Mr. Stanley didn’t even laugh when he said the gorilla thing, so he added another dose of idiocy to sweeten the pot by blurting out, “In B
lairstown, New Jersey, it’s illegal to plant trees in the middle of the road,” and Mr. Stanley said, “Get out of the driver’s seat, Mr. Kutchner, and let Joel drive.”

  I got in the front seat on the driver’s side and Benj got in the back with Eli and Alex B. Renner. I didn’t bother to go through Mr. Stanley’s preflight checklist of adjusting the mirrors and shit like that that is normally required before we launch this rocket ship, but instead chose to immediately put the car into R for reverse when we were supposed to be going straight ahead in D for drive and then I slammed my foot down hard on the accelerator and we flew backward at high speed. En route, I maneuvered around the Dumpster that was directly behind us, fishtailed, swerved, slammed on the brakes, and then parallel parked perfectly between the janitor’s truck and a van from food service without scratching the paint, nicking the side view mirror, or damaging the Dumpster. Then I turned the engine off and said, “Ooops. Maybe Eli should drive.”

  Kutchner said, “Holy shit,” Alex B. Renner had gone pale, and Mr. Stanley said, “I need a minute to collect myself,” followed by, “Joel isn’t allowed to drive until further notice,” and then he took the car keys from me and told me to put on the emergency brake and then he got out of the car and stood all by himself on the side of the parking lot while we waited till he calmed down.

  Which, as you might expect, took some time.

  While we waited, Benj did one of his what-ifs, asking Eli, “What if you were driving down the highway at twenty-two miles per hour and the rest of the traffic was speeding by you at seventy-five miles per hour? Who would be more likely to get in a crash or get a ticket? One of them or you?” And Eli said, “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

  Which I thought was hysterical because it was basically the good-church-girl way of saying, “Fuck you, Benj.”

  And Benj said, “Where does she get this shit?”

  And Alex B. Renner, who was staring out the car window probably wondering why he was stuck on this planet with us, said, “The Bible. Isaiah 55:9.”

  Then I said, “Leave her alone.”

  And Benj said, “I didn’t mean nothing by it, I was just wondering….”

  Then I asked, “Do you guys think Mr. Stanley is okay?” and all three of them said, “No.”

  And then Eli got out of the car and went to try to calm him down.

  Alex B. Renner said, “I’ve never seen anyone try so hard or care so much.”

  I said, “I know, she’s like a church.”

  “What do you think she’s saying to him?” Benj asked as he stared out the car window at them.

  “Probably giving him a cake recipe,” I said. “Or maybe she’s just telling him everything on her happy list.”

  “Eli has a happy list?”

  “Yeah, she adds to it every day at lunch.”

  “I wish I had a happy list,” Benj said.

  “Me too,” I said.

  “So fucking make one,” Alex B. Renner chimed in.

  As I looked out the window I was thinking that I wasn’t trying to upset anyone, it was just that it got real boring at times and I hated the driving part of Driver’s Ed and sometimes you had to make your own fun and maybe I was just trying to make Eli feel better, who the fuck knows, but nothing was making any sense to me anymore. Not at school, not at the soup kitchen, not with Rooster, not with Eli, not with Mr. Stanley and his goddamned nerves, and not with anything. I had a gun in my garage and Andy wasn’t with me in Driver’s Ed like we planned and I had to remember to feed the Harry Potter mouse and there was a line of hungry people longer than I could see on most Wednesday nights in the greatest country on earth where sometimes people died from friendly fire and that meant that other people couldn’t get jobs because home didn’t feel like home and everyone else was worried about using a comma wrong or who was gay or how to do better on the SATs or how to parallel park and end up less than twelve inches from the curb. And when I started to think about all that I felt my left eye start to twitch di-di-dit dah-dah-dah di-di-dit and I rubbed it hard ’cause I didn’t want to end up like old Mr. Stanley, who worried about all the stuff like me and Benj that you can’t change anyway. The only good thing that happened was that when Eli came back she asked me to go with her to her church to make peanut butter sandwiches the next day after school.

  I asked, “Will Becky be there?”

  And Eli said, “Probably.”

  “And the guy who sings off-key?”

  She nodded her head.

  “What about the extraterrestrial with the pale blue eyes and the tentacle hands who sucks the ungodly marrow out of you?”

  “What?”

  “Never mind. But no jelly, right?”

  “No jelly.”

  “Has anyone googled the nutritional value of white bread? Or if peanut butter has trans fats?”

  Eli looked genuinely scared.

  Then I said that I might still need help in the spreading department and she said that was fine, we could work on it together.

  to Jace’s school play with Jackson and Jesus, Mary and it sucked but the good thing was that Jacey didn’t wet his pants, which was basically the only thing that I was worried about even though he never wet his pants at school, but still.

  After the play we went for an ice-cream cone and Jacey basically made a huge mess but nobody cared.

  He was a tree in the play.

  A tree with leaves.

  Jesus, Mary took lots of pictures and cried.

  Jackson said, “Jesus, Mary, it’s just a play.”

  When we got home I sent—didn’t send—fourteen text messages to Eli, six to Andy, and three to Principal Redman. The ones to Eli were all about my feelings. The ones to Andy were basically about video games and food in the school cafeteria and the best custom features of Harleys and the ones to Principal Redman were about why juniors should have their own cars (okay, motorcycles) and why I would not be taking the SATs again. Then I told Principal Redman that Mini Coopers were cool and so were pickup trucks, too, if motorcycles were too dangerous or something. I said that they were all excellent options and then I went to Jace’s room to read to him. I got to the chapter in Winnie-the-Pooh where Eeyore has a birthday party and gets two presents and Jace fell asleep before I even finished but I kept reading anyway because I wanted to see what happened. Jesus, Mary stopped and stood in the doorway and watched me read for a few minutes and she was holding a bunch of folded laundry and had a look on her face that I had never seen before, like she had waited her whole life for this moment, and had wished that I would read a book to Jace just like I was doing now and if I had known how much it meant to her I would have done it sooner.

  When I was finished reading out loud to myself with Jacey asleep next to me I got up and went downstairs and told Jesus, Mary that I was going out, and she said, “Where?” and I said, “Just to walk Lacey,” and she looked at me funny ’cause Lacey basically didn’t walk anywhere with anyone. When we put her out she normally didn’t get too much beyond the front mat unless you gave her a nudge with your foot, but I put the leash on her anyway and took her out, which basically meant that I was walking backward and pulling her forward with me wondering why she couldn’t be a more normal dog. Eventually I just tied her leash to the garage door and went inside to check on the gun and maybe text Eli for real or write another desperate, sappy text and then delete it or save it to draft like I had been doing all year. It was like here I was in eleventh grade and the world had gone to shit and I had no real friends and an imaginary girlfriend who I wrote these pathetic text messages to and then didn’t send because I always came to my senses.

  Sometimes I worried about what would happen if I sent one of the texts by mistake, meaning I typed some stupid, convoluted love text and then went to hit delete or save to draft and then accidentally hit send and then panicked when I heard the bluuuuuurp sound as my hideous words of love were speeding up to a sat
ellite and then back down to Eli’s phone and then I would have to run to her house and break in and hope she was home and demand that she turn over her phone and not look at text messages from Joel and then delete the message myself before she could read it. And then there was the very likely chance that Eli would have been looking right at her phone when I accidently hit send and she would have seen the pathetic text message that would shock her like a zap from a stun gun since she had no idea how I felt about her and then after she recovered from the electric shock she would read it over and over again and then she might tell everyone at school or post it online or start a viral social media post with the hashtag HilariousLoveTextMessagesFromGuysYouHate, so basically I tried not to think about that.

  Instead I started thinking about how heavy the gun was as I turned it over in my hands and about how it was loaded and that if I pulled the trigger it would change everything and then I remembered that at the soup kitchen this week I noticed Rooster looking at me looking at Eli and I caught his eye and it looked like he almost smiled but maybe not. Then I remembered how Spindini had jumped because there was a loud crash from the kitchen and then he told us about soldiers who have post-traumatic stress disorder—PTSD for short—and he said it could be triggered by a loud noise or a feeling or nothing at all and it was like being scared of monsters that were real once but are no longer there. He basically said, imagine that you’re driving in your car or riding on a bus right here in this town maybe up on West Main or Kennedy Boulevard near the senior center and the Boys & Girls Club of America and all of a sudden you have a flashback and you think that you are back in Afghanistan or Iraq in Kandahar or Mosul getting ready to mount up and move out on a Hell Train mission and then just like that with no warning the sat phones are down and enemy soldiers are firing at you and it is as real as when it was real and you can’t differentiate between being at war and being here on a bus or driving in your car and it’s like now there’s a virtual-reality war game playing in your head that turns on all by itself like a TV you have no control over or a video game that is way realer than any game you have ever played. He said that it starts at level six-to-the-tenth power and plays over and over again and won’t stop and in this game you would see your best friend get shot in the chest over and over again and you would see his face knowing that this is it, and then you would try again and again to save him and you think that this time you won’t stop trying to stop the bleeding just like you didn’t stop trying to stop the bleeding in Kandahar or Fallujah or Mosul or Baghdad but then you can’t get it to stop now just like you couldn’t get it to stop then because sometimes the holes that bullets put in people are so big that you just can’t stop all the bleeding no matter how hard you try.