by Lorenz Font
When she finished, Sweeney looked pleased and called for the next student. Shannon walked along the rows of seats and grinned at me just before she sat down.
“Thanks,” she whispered.
“I didn’t do much. It seems like someone actually did their homework,” I whispered back, glancing at Sweeney.
“I had a chance to do a little reading before, you know … ”
I knew what she meant and nodded. After third period, I didn’t see Shannon again until I ran into her in the hallway before the last period. Kevin had her cornered by the lockers, so I picked up my pace and ran in their direction.
Kevin had his back to me and didn’t hear my approach. I caught a bit of what he was saying. “How can you be so stupid? You dumped me for that freak-boy?”
Shannon’s eyes blazed with anger. “First of all, I’m not stupid. It was smart to break up with you. And it’s none of your business who I hang out with.” She tried to move, but Kevin’s arms wrapped around her waist.
“Don’t you miss this, babe?” He brought down his mouth onto hers in a punishing kiss. She tried to push him away, but he didn’t budge.
“Stop it. You’re disgusting.” Shannon slapped him across the cheek.
My rage now blinded me. I seized Kevin’s shoulders and yanked him back. He released Shannon and turned around, and his earlier grimace was replaced by a wicked grin. “Freak-boy wants another bitch-slap, I see.” He cracked his knuckles and stepped forward.
“Stop it, Kevin!” Shannon tried to step in between us, but I pulled her aside.
“You’re way out of line, Masters,” I said, holding my ground and squaring my shoulders.
He stopped a few inches away and looked down at me. Yep, I had no way of getting out of this one without bruises, a broken bone, or a black-eye.
“Why don’t you just tic your way out of here, and I’ll forget I ever saw your face today?” Kevin snapped his teeth together.
“Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?”
Okay. I didn’t have to turn to see who had spoken. I’d recognize that arrogant, lazy drawl anywhere.
Kevin pivoted to face Carionis. “Well, well. Who do we have here?” He sized up this new contender. “So, the new guy is freak-boy’s babysitter. Ooh, I’m terrified!” Kevin pretended to shudder. Several kids who had gathered around us snickered.
“The name’s Car, and I’m going to make you cry for your mama.” Carionis hooked his thumbs on his pockets and smacked his chewing gum loudly,
Kevin smirked and covered the distance between them in two giant steps. “So you have a big mouth, too.” He threw a punch, but Carionis sidestepped and countered with a sharp jab to Kevin’s stomach.
Kevin staggered backward and yelped. Some students clapped and cheered while I moved in Shannon’s direction.
“Are you okay?” I inspected her face.
“I’m fine.”
Carionis took Kevin’s shirt in his fist. “If you want a rematch, I’ll be around.” Then he dragged the wheezing boy to the principal’s office.
It was unheard of that someone would volunteer to go the principal’s office, but then, Carionis wasn’t a normal character.
I took Shannon’s hand. “Let me walk you to your next class.”
Shannon didn’t move, pulling me back. “I saw him at Dad’s funeral. Mother told me he’s related to you. Is that true?”
Okay, now the bastard was family. I guess someone forgot to send me the memo. “Yeah, he’s a cousin from out of state. He arrived right before the funeral, so I brought him with me. He’s a bit odd, as you can see.”
Shannon was silent for a moment. Just when I thought she wasn’t going to buy my feeble cover-up, she nodded her head. “Does he live with you?”
Hell no! I shook my head. “His parents got him a place somewhere nearby.” My lies were piling up by the minute.
The bell rang, saving me. I walked Shannon to her class before running to mine. Jesus, this whole thing was snowballing into one large mess. I wonder how difficult it would be to get in touch with Matro. We needed a little talk.
I came home exhausted. After I dropped my backpack on the chair, I headed to the fridge to hunt for leftovers. There was a container with pot roast. My mom had sliced it up already, so I popped some bread in the toaster and waited. I made myself a sandwich and brought it into the family room. Before I flopped down on the sofa, I doubled back to snag a drink, too.
After I’d downed my meal, I felt a little better. I closed my eyes. I had no idea why I was so tired. This whole Aarmark thing was zapping all of my energy.
I must’ve fallen asleep. When I woke up, hours later, I heard my mother talking animatedly in the kitchen. Then came Carionis’ voice and Mark and Darryl’s answering laughter. What? What the hell did I miss? I shot out of the sofa and into the kitchen. They all looked up at my abrupt appearance.
“Hi, baby-boy!” Mom smiled. She was wearing her ‘I’m the boss in the kitchen’ apron and had a spatula in her hand. “Your friends are here. I invited them for dinner. Your dad’s running late, as usual.” She rolled her eyes.
“Oh, great.” I went over to the counter, where they were all seated on the barstools. I threw Mark and Darryl a questioning look, but they shrugged their shoulders in response. When I locked eyes with Carionis, he shrugged, too. He looked strange without his usual dark denim, black shirt, and piercings.
If not for the mohawk, I wouldn’t have recognized him. I guess he wanted to make a good impression. Way to go, shit-face!
“I heard Car is a new student in your school. How exciting,” Mom said while dishing out hefty portions of pasta. “Did you know that his father is a doctor, too? He runs the OB-GYN department at Cedars.”
“Oh, yeah?” I feigned interest. So Carionis had been weaving his story already.
“Take your plates and eat while it’s hot.” She waved us to the dining room. We picked up a plate each and went to sit at the table. All of us were poised to dig in when my mom signaled us to stop.
“We’ll say grace first.”
I rolled my eyes when she took my hand and prodded me to take Mark’s. Once we were all holding hands, she began to enumerate the things we should be thankful for.
We all muttered amen when she was done and started our race to see who would finish first. It had been a contest for the three us for a long time. The rule was that whoever finished last would help with the dishes. Like pigs that hadn’t eaten for days, we devoured dinner as fast as we could.
Unsuspecting, Carionis took his time and finished last. We all laughed when he found himself letting Mom teach him how to load the dishwasher. This gave me a little time to talk to my friends, so we headed upstairs. Once we got to my room, I closed the door.
“What the hell is he doing here?” I asked, giving my buddies a venomous glare.
“Bro, we all got here at the same time. I was going to ask you the same thing,” Mark answered, turning on the television and PS4.
“He’s cool.” Darryl pressed the remote to pick his character.
“Whatever.” Maybe Carionis was cool, but he was also arrogant. I refused to trust him completely.
“What are you so worked up about? I heard Car saved your ass from another beating from Kevin.” Mark chuckled.
“There’s nothing funny about it.” Great. Now everyone thought I was incapable of fighting my own battles.
“It’s better than looking at you with a big lump on your face,” Darryl said.
The intro music of Call of Duty started playing. “True. It’s just that he thinks he’s all that,” I retorted.
There was a rap on the door before it opened. Carionis was standing outside, my mother next to him. “Here you are. You boys have fun,” Mom said and patted him on the arm.
“Thank you, Mrs. Morrison,” Carionis answered.
As soon as the door closed, we all burst into laughter. When Carionis joined in, it helped to alleviate my earlier irritation somehow.
“Carionis, what the hell happened after you took Kevin to the principal’s office?” I asked, scooting over to give him some space to sit.
“Just call me Car, okay? Carionis is for Aarmark biz only.”
I nodded.
“I told the principal what happened.”
Darryl had lost interest in the game. “But I heard that you threw the first punch!”
“That’s true, but it was in self-defense. He would’ve clobbered me if I hadn’t acted first.” Car laughed. “He deserved it. But since I’m a nice guy, I suggested to the principal that Kevin didn’t deserve a suspension. He already got what was coming to him. So he put us both on warning.”
“Unbelievable,” Mark said, shaking his head. “You talked the old fart into giving Kevin a warning?”
Car laughed again. I was slowly learning that this was his way of saying yes. He was one weird guy, and I would know.
“It takes one to know one,” Car said.
“I hate when you do that,” I said, flustered.
“I’m special.” He laughed again. “Do you guys have an extra controller?”
Just like that, the Three Stooges became the Super Friends.
Corpse Flower
We got to the end of the week without any further school drama, or embarrassing tic attacks. To say it was a relief would have been an understatement. It was difficult to impress a girl when I had to spend so much time worrying about my next phonic attack, although I had to admit, Shannon had been a trooper. She rarely jumped when I blurted my F-bombs. Regardless, I still hated not being able to know when the big one would come.
After my morning run, I jumped in the shower for my ‘date’ with Shannon and the corpse flower. I chose a freshly laundered plaid shirt that didn’t have any ink stains on the pocket and fixed my hair to the best of my ability. When I inspected the finished product in the mirror, I didn’t look half bad.
“Looking good, Morrison.” I did my favorite Captain Underpants pose and chuckled. Then I gathered up my keys and a tube of sunblock and hurried out the door. Sure enough, the sun was beating down, and the temperature was pushing into the high eighties.
Over the course of the last two days in school, Carionis had been quite visible, but he’d stayed out of our way. He would say hello in passing, but otherwise, he kept to himself. If Shannon had qualms about his presence, she didn’t say anything, although I’d seen her glance Car’s way a few times. So far, he’d kept his distance, which suited me just fine.
I parked my car in front of Shannon’s house and texted her to come out. There was a large moving truck in front of their garage. This reminded me that Detherina had mentioned her plan to purchase our neighbors’ house. I wondered if the sale had been finalized.
Shannon came bursting out of the front door, lugging her camera, a tote bag, and a wide-brimmed straw hat. She was wearing one of those ruffled sleeveless blouses over very short shorts. I tried not to stare, but who could ignore such a vision?
“Hi, Brian!” she said the moment she got in the car.
“Hey.” I tried to sound cool, but my voice squeaked. A total fail.
Shannon didn’t seem to notice. “Are you excited to get your picture taken?” She eyed my plaid shirt before her gaze slid down to my khaki shorts. Her face colored, and she looked away.
Did Shannon McKesson just blush because of me?
“Ecstatic,” I said in a dry voice.
She laughed at my effort to sound sullen. Once we got on the freeway, I decided it was a good time to ask about the truck.
“Is someone moving?” I tried to sound nonchalant.
“Oh, that. I forgot to mention it to you, but Mother thinks the house will remind us too much of my dad, so she decided to move to a smaller place.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yes. She found a house in the Los Feliz area.” Shannon sound excited and my heart did a couple of happy flips. “In fact, we did a walk through last night, and guess what?”
“What?” I answered too quickly, but I bet she didn’t even notice.
“You and I are going to be next door neighbors! Isn’t that amazing?”
She sounded happy, and my heart did a quick celebratory moonwalk. Shannon and I would be living next to each other. It was the coolest thing to happen since the Lakers won the NBA championship.
I pumped my fist and hooted. “That’s awesome! We can ride together to school every day. When’s the big move?”
“We’re moving some of our stuff already. I guess the sellers were in a bit of a hurry to leave. We should be all moved in by next weekend.”
Then an idea struck me. Did her presence last night in my neighborhood have anything to do with the appearance of the Ergans? That would explain Car’s presence, too. As much as I wanted to think that he was watching over me, he had mentioned that his main responsibility, first and foremost, was Shannon. I was fuming, but I tried to keep a straight face for Shannon’s sake. Good thing she seemed caught up in her own happy bubble.
We found a parking spot right away and followed the pebbled path on foot to the admission booth. The crowds were already building, despite the heat. After we paid for our tickets, we walked around a bit, looking at plants, flowers, and some of the other oddities the botanical garden housed. We covered most of the displays, including the corpse flower, which was the foulest smelling thing I’d ever encountered. The stench was like being in an enclosed space surrounded by a thousand rotting cheeses. Yeah, it was bad.
After our experience with the flower, we stopped under the shade of a tree. I held Shannon’s camera bag while she used her camera’s viewfinder to search for an ideal spot to begin my torture.
She pointed her camera in every direction imaginable. When she let out an excited squeal, I realized she’d found her perfect picture location.
“I brought a blanket,” Shannon announced, slinging the camera strap around her neck. She spread it down in a grassy area next to a trellis with funky-looking vines everywhere. It was perfect all right, considering a small tree there provided shade from the sun’s harsh rays.
“I brought sun block, just in case you forgot,” I pulled out the tube from my pocket with a flourish like I was performing a magic trick.
“Good call. I forgot all about that,” Shannon said, settling next to me. “Do you mind putting some on the back of my shoulders?” She lifted her shoulder length hair and whipped it up into a ponytail.
Good Lord! I stared at the expanse of her back. It was the most beautiful thing I’d seen in my life. “Um … of course.” Again, I tried to play it cool. I squirted some lotion in my hands.
I ran my palms along her shoulders and at the base of her neck, covering the entire exposed area. When the lotion sank into her skin, I noticed a weird reddened area and leaned closer to study it. It wasn’t a rash, but a mark of some sort. The longer I studied it, the clearer it became. It was circular shape and had an eye in the middle and four spokes radiating from the center.
Crap! Was this something I should mention to her? As I wrestled with the question, involuntary garbage slipped out of my mouth. “Fuck,” I blurted before I could stop myself.
Shannon laughed and looked over her shoulder at me. “Are you okay? Do I make you nervous?” Her pale cheeks showed a nice pink glow from the sun.
I stifled a jerk rolling on my shoulder, and I stiffened. “Yes and no.” I continued applying sunscreen on her skin until I’d covered everything well. The marking was much more pronounced by now. “There … you’re now ready to take on the sun.” I felt like I should say something about the mark, but I bit my tongue. Maybe Matro would be kind enough to enlighten me about what it meant.
“Thanks.” She released her hair, and I caught a whiff of her glorious scent.
Pretending to busy myself with recapping the tube, I moved away a bit. I didn’t want her see how much she affected me.
“Here’s what I want you to do.” She lifted the camera to her face. “Lie down, use my
tote bag as a pillow, and pretend that you’re reading a book. Cross your legs at the knee and relax.”
Did she say relax? I was wound up so tight that I could hardly breathe, but I did as I was told, arranging the bag and spreading myself out on the blanket. It took me several tries to cross my legs before it felt natural and comfortable.
I opened the book in the middle and breathed deep. Shannon didn’t say anything while she moved around on her knees, circling me. Before long, she was snapping picture after picture from different angles. Since I didn’t have to look straight at the camera, I began to relax, and my shoulders loosened up.
“Brian?” Shannon asked after a few minutes.
I looked up from the book. “Yeah?”
I heard a swift click, click, click and realized she had stolen a few head-on shots. Although I covered my face with my arms and tried to block the lens, she continued her assault with the camera.
“You think you’re sneaky, huh?” I said once the clicking had stopped.
“I have an unwilling model, so I had to get creative.” She laughed. “Why don’t you sit up cross-legged this time?”
“You’re not done yet? You must have enough to fill a whole yearbook.”
“Not quite. I want a lot of pictures to work with.” She aimed the camera at me again without waiting for me to rearrange myself.
“I have a better idea.” I tried to take the camera from her, but I’d forgotten that the camera’s strap was around her neck. Shannon fell forward, our bodies pressed together for a brief moment. Despite an urge to kiss her, I recalled my promise not to kiss her until she asked me. I pushed her back instead.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to pull so hard.” I let go of the strap.
“What is your brilliant idea?” she asked, her voice sounding a bit shaky.
My heart was stuck in my throat, but I managed to say, “Let’s take a picture together.”
“How do you intend to do that?” she asked, although she handed me the camera without hesitation. “Do you want me to ask someone?”
“No, I can do it. You just have to move closer.”
Shannon hesitated but then scooted closer until our shoulders touched. “Like this?” she asked.