The Children and the Wolves

by Adam Rapp

  When we came out of the stall Bounce said, Good little monkey-boys. Good.

  My fist hurt and my tongue was burning.

  Wiggins spit a tooth into his hand. It was the one next to the two in the front.

  And since the last week of school he’s been walking around looking like one of those homeless kids from the halfway house over on Anthony Avenue. They’re all either missing teeth or they got cigarette burns on their arms.

  Who won? I asked.

  It was a tie, Bounce said. Twenty-one to twenty-one.

  I told Wiggins I was sorry for knocking his tooth out.

  Fuck it, he said. It’s just a tooth.

  Bounce said, That’s your eyetooth. You look tough. Now hug.

  First I had to puke some blood in the sink and then we hugged.

  Wiggins hugged me harder than I hugged him cause he’s soft like that.

  You smell like shit, I told him. Why don’t you shower?

  I shower, he said.

  You both stink, Bounce said. Let’s get out of here.

  We snuck out in the cafeteria. The janitor sweeping the floor watched us walk through the tornado doors like it was nothing. His name is Barney and he used to be in prison for credit card scams but now he carries the Bible around in his back pocket and blesses everyone.

  Bless you, he said as we were leaving. I think he even made the sign of the cross. People find Jesus and they get stupid as shit.

  We walked over to Bounce’s crib in Golden Oaks where the houses are so big you can grow trees in them. Her parents ain’t never home. I’ve only seen them once. They both wear expensive clothes and they look like twins. It doesn’t seem like Bounce is their daughter. Once I asked her if she was adopted.

  I was like, Were you adopted?

  She said, I came from nowhere.

  I said, Are your parents really your parents?

  I actually gave birth to them, she answered. They ran out of me with nice haircuts and Armani suits and went right to work for Plaxco. It was either pharmaceuticals or porn.

  Then she gave us a Oxycotton each.

  Meds for the Chuckleheads, she said.

  Everything in her living room feels like it’s from a museum. There’s this chair that looks more like a statue than a chair. And a huge painting of a orange blob.

  That’s a Rothko, she said about the painting. It’s worth almost as much as this house.

  Then she told us how Rothko was a abstract expressionist and how he killed himself by slicing his arm open.

  Wiggins went, What’s abscratch express? Is that like a rap group?

  Abstract expressionism is a school of painting, Bounce explained. It’s a bunch of freeform sloppy bullshit that a few of them got famous for.

  I said, I could’ve made that painting with a dead cat dipped in ice cream.

  And Bounce was like, You’re a dead cat dipped in ice cream.

  Then she licked her finger and put it in my ear.

  Their couch is so nice it’s like you need a permission slip to sit on it.

  Wiggins was really into the painting. He was staring up at it with his mouth open.

  It’s a headless buffalo, he said. You can see the little hairs on its back.

  I was like, You’re a headless buffalo, freak.

  Showers, Bounce ordered.

  We all went upstairs to her parents’ bathroom and took a shower. The bathroom was bigger than my bedroom. The bar of soap was green and smelt like salad dressing. The shampoo had a French name.

  Bounce made us all take our clothes off on the count of three. I don’t never wear no underwear so I was naked first. Bounce was second. And Wiggins wears underwear and basketball shorts under his jeans so it took him the longest.

  I was like, Why you wear basketball shorts under your jeans?

  And he said, Cause your mom likes the way they make my junk look.

  He thinks he can get to me when he says shit about my mom like that but I could give two wild fucks about her.

  Wiggins don’t got pubes yet. At least I got like seven.

  Bald bitches, Bounce said. Who’s bigger?

  I am, I said.

  Go dick-to-dick, Bounce ordered, but Wiggins turnt towards the corner.

  Wiggins is bigger, Bounce said. Bigger by a longshot.

  She was just saying that, though, cause my junk is healthy.

  Bounce’s bush is black. She let me soap it up and I got a boner and then so did Wiggins.

  Faggit, I said to him.

  I ain’t no faggit, he said back.

  Focus, monkey-boys, she said. Focus.

  After the shower, we all put big fluffy robes on. We were definitely starting to roll. Bounce gave Wiggins a extra Oxycotton for his tooth. Sometimes my dad’ll take two of them pills and just stare out the patio doors and drink Cherry Coke and fart continuously. Bounce’s parents got like whole bins of the shit. Oxycotton, muscle relaxers, and this stuff called Klonopin, which she says is for seizures and panic attacks.

  Bounce fed us microwaved Cinnabons and we sat on the big gray couch and she showed us all these brochures of the prep schools her parents want to send her to. One is called the Kent School and it’s in Connecticut, way out east. The buildings look perfect, like they got baked in a oven with some brownies.

  My heart suddenly felt like there was a hook in it.

  I imagined Bounce walking in between those buildings with a bunch of rich kids, wearing a uniform and kicking leaves and watching videos on their iPhones.

  There was another school called Groton. And one called Canterbury.

  We’ll never see you again, Wiggins said.

  You wish, Bounce said.

  Then she showed us this other brochure for a handgun. In the brochure it looked like a toy, too perfect to be a gun, like it would squirt water or Kool-Aid.

  It’s called a Glock, Bounce said. It’s German. The craftsmanship is stunning.

  How much? Wiggins asked.

  This baby goes for a little over six hondo, she answered. We’re two-thirds of the way there.

  I suck at math so I said, What’s that?

  Wiggins said, Like four something.

  Bounce went, Two more weeks of collecting should do it. We’ll have to hit Burr Oaks and Cedarwood Heights.

  So to buy it you call the brochure? I asked.

  Bounce said, We give the cash to Wally Nerf. He’ll take care of it for us.

  Wally Nerf’s the shit, Wiggins said.

  I went, He is the shit.

  Bounce was like, The shiznit Wally Nerf iznit.

  Wally Nerf lives in a Winnebago over by the minor league baseball stadium. He fixes electric guitars and sells stuffed cats to old widows. The old widows bring him their dead cats and he stuffs them with fiberglass insulation and mounts them in a action pose. No one knows how old Wally Nerf is. He might be thirty and he might be sixty. He has a face like a rubber shark. Bounce says he poisons the cats to keep his business going.

  Total genius, she says.

  He sells fireworks and crystal meth, too.

  Wiggins said, And after we get the Glock — then what?

  Bounce said, Then we de-poet the Poet.

  Wilbur Logg, the man with the dog, I rhymed.

  Bounce nodded with hot do-me eyes.

  Wiggins was like, What does de-poet mean?

  I went, What does it sound like it means?

  Bounce said, The chucklehead’s had it coming.

  And after that? Wiggins asked.

  After that we do whatever we want, Bounce answered.

  Whatever’s clever, I added.

  Then Wiggins said, What about pep school?

  Bounce said, Prep school.

  I was like, Yeah, prep school.

  As usual, the Oxycotton was making him dipshitty.

  Then Bounce went, Let’s watch some Ultimate and turned on her fifty-four-inch plasma TV and we watched a cage match. This West Indian giant with tiger stripes tattooed on his neck was pulling some roide
d out Tasmanian’s face off. There was blood gushing from where the Tasmanian’s left eye was.

  Wiggins said, After we make enough money for the Glock, and we de-poet the Poet, what do we do with the Frog?

  I was like, We de-Frog her, right?

  De-Frog the fucking Frog! Bounce laughed. How amazing would that be!

  Poetic! I cried. Ribbit-ribbit!

  Later we ate a Tombstone pizza and two more Cinnabons each.

  Wiggins looked confused about stuff.

  I was like, What’s wrong with you?

  Nothing, he said.

  You look confused, I told him.

  He said, You look like a ass-fuck.

  I just laughed cause even though Wiggins finally took a shower he still looked funny with his tooth missing.

  The Kent School Admissions Essay Question (250–300 words): With regard to being an individual, what do you feel most distinguishes you from your peers?

  Say a girl sees a bird. A small blackbird. Say it appears to be dead. Like it flew into a large bay window, mistakenly thinking it was flying into a new vector of sky, fooled by the reflection. Or maybe its heart broke because it saw something shift in nature. Like its mother being mauled by a fox. Or maybe it was shot out of a tree by a boy with a pellet gun. Say this girl encounters the fallen bird, still alive, and wants to know more about its internal systems. So she takes a tool to it — a hammer or a screwdriver — and pries it open. Not out of cruelty or hatred, but out of a pure curiosity as to how it’s made. As to how it’s different from other animals she has come to know. Its various connective tissues and the makings of its heart.

  This girl pushes nature to an uncomfortable limit because she is not satisfied with what she is shown in school, on TV, on the Internet. Cheerleaders bore her. Varsity-letter winners are an absurd menagerie of cardboard joke people. She wants to know the shapes and odors of the world. She wants to get down in the dirt with the worms and the beetles. She wants to know the way meat moves through the packaging house. The way the animal body contains liquids and solids. The way muscle attaches to tendon. Ligaments. She wants to know these things from the smells she acquires on her hands.

  She is not afraid of seismic discomfort.

  She is not afraid of malice or beauty.

  She is not afraid of sex or the holes in her body.

  She is not awed by parents or priests or coaches.

  She is not afraid to die.

  Say this girl is me.

  Carla “Bounce” Reuschel

  Dumas, Illinois

  the white wolfs got blueberry eyes and a long banana tongue

  her song is like crying and its like laughing and its like a sky scream

  I fell out of the tree but dingdong helped me back up before the wolf with the bubble on his tongue came

  dingdong had to pull me by my hair and some fell out and turned into grass in his hand

  the wolf with the bubble on his tongue is scarier than the other ones cause his teeth are more yellower with silver tips

  we ate eggs today

  eggs from blackbirds and we ate some leaves and some bark too

  dingdong said the bark had chocolate in it but he was just saying that cause hes sad for the world

  then shane fell after we ate and the wolves ate his face and hands

  shane wanted to ride horses and make a family and a farm

  me and dingdong and this girl named brighty watched the wolves pick at his body they ate him up greedy

  eventually his bones turned into a cloud and rained

  brightys pretty but she forgets to hold on sometimes and shes got a peppermint leg and the wolves can smell her good so there are three of them waiting for her under her tree

  youll fall I keep telling her

  youll fall unless you hug the tree better

  my head itches where my hair was but its okay

  dingdongs hand is blue cause its weak from where he pulled me

  oh dingdong I say

  poor dingdong

  my hand was blue too from where I fell on it but now its strong again cause I ate

  I dont cry and I dont get cold

  Last night we took the Future Pill. It was pink and shaped like a little egg. Bounce put one on my tongue and put one on Orange’s tongue and then she put one on hers.

  What’s it called? Orange asked.

  The Future Pill, Bounce said.

  On the bottle it said Ergot 7.

  Bounce was like, Get ready, chuckleheads. Get ready to absorb some knowledge.

  We drank it down with a Strawberry Quik.

  To the future, Bounce said.

  Me and Orange were like, To the future.

  We were behind Orange’s house, near the woods.

  Nothing happened for a while so I just stared into the trees. They were glowing from the fires. At first I thought there was just one fire, but after a while I think I counted three different fires, then a fourth.

  How many men do you think are out there? I asked.

  At least a hundred, Orange said.

  Twenty at most, Bounce said. Fucking weirdos.

  I said, What do you think they’re doing?

  Orange went, Being warlocks.

  Bounce was like, I’ll bet all they do is drink hard liquor and fight each other.

  I was like, In the winter they’re gonna freeze.

  Orange said, All the buttsex’ll keep em warm.

  Bounce went, You would know, Firebox.

  It looked like shapes was moving around the glow parts. Maybe there wasn’t just men out there? Maybe there were some monsters, too? Like a half-man half-goat or a Bigfoot with a sword, in charge of everything.

  After a minute Bounce said, They’re trying to stop time.

  How? Orange asked.

  By living away from things, she answered. No alarm clocks. No cell phones. No responsibilities.

  I thought about stopping time.

  I imagined this huge grandfather clock on top of a mountain. I walked up to it with a sledgehammer. There was a ladder leaning against it. Just before I started climbing the ladder the clock’s face turnt into Denzel Washington and he started laughing at me. His big white movie teeth were blinding.

  Then I was suddenly walking into the woods.

  It was the fall and my feet were swishing through leaves.

  And then I was walking up a tree.

  And then it was the winter and snow was freezing my eyelashes.

  I walked sideways up the trunk of the tree, my body bitch-slapping science and nature. It was like being in a cartoon without the drawings.

  I had gumdrops for eyes and balloon skin.

  I walked on top of all the trees, looking down at the fires. The snow was falling right on the flames but it wasn’t melting. It turnt the fire white.

  Then it turnt it into water.

  Then into a woman’s hair.

  I counted seven hundred and forty-one fires.

  And then just like that I was back in the grass with Bounce and Orange. We were lying head-to-head-to-head.

  I ain’t feeling shit yet, Orange said.

  You will, Bounce said, I promise.

  He said, You feeling anything, Wiggins?

  Not yet, I lied.

  I didn’t trust Orange no more. There was a coldishness between us. Like when you find a penny in the freezer. I had a thought that I could kill him. I could stab him hard in the heart or cut his throat or drop a machine on his head when he was sleeping.

  Then I started dreaming with my eyes open and I saw my soul. It was a crystal egg and it could fly. It hovered over my head. I kept trying to see if it had a face on it but it wouldn’t stop moving. Like Denzel Washington. Or like the face of a president or a face that you find on some money or the face of a famous rap star. I tried to catch it but it kept scooting away, just out of reach.

  Come here, I said to it. Come here, Soul.

  At one point I remember seeing Orange standing naked over a coffee can. He was p
eeing and picking at his pubes.

  My piss is ancient fire! he screamed. My stomach is a volcano and my piss is ancient fire!

  His skin looked like it was glowing from the inside. Like he swallowed a star.

  And Bounce turning circles with her arms spread wide.

  Then all of our clothes were off and then they were back on and then they were off again.

  I only touched my Soul once and it burnt my hand.

  I woke up squeezing my fingers.

  I don’t know how I got home.

  When I came out to the kitchen Dirty Diana was about to leave for work. Her nurse’s uniform was so white. So so so so white. Whiter than Denzel Washington’s teeth on that clockface. My head was pounding. Somehow I was wearing Orange’s shirt. It said Wrigley Field Sucks! and had the Cardinals’ logo on the back.

  Dirty Diana said, I’m taking the weekend off.

  She’d gotten a haircut. She’d gotten a haircut and she looked like a girl.

  I just nodded.

  It felt like there was troll hair in my mouth.

  She said, Cortina’s taking me to Niagara Falls.

  I was like, Where’s that?

  In New York, she said.

  I said, New York City?

  New York State, she said. It’s a voluminous waterfall. It’s sposed to be really beautiful.