My Chemical Mountain

by Corina Vacco

  “Jason has a girlfriend. Valerie Tennyson,” Charlie explains.

  “Not true,” I say. Sitting next to Molly makes me feel itchy. She smells like peaches. Valerie sometimes smells like vanilla. I liked my life a lot better when girls were gross and dead frogs were beautiful. Now everything is so complicated.

  “You’re not going on no date,” says Randy. “You don’t have any money. You don’t have a car.”

  “I’ll steal Dad’s truck,” says Charlie.

  Randy laughs out loud. “You’re crazy. He will kill you. Why don’t you just have them over for tacos or something?”

  It’s time for Randy to unlock the front door. We watch old people flooding the bingo hall. Saggy arms, dentures, gambling visors, and polyester. I catch a whiff of expired perfume that makes my stomach turn. I wonder if it’s a rule that old people have to dress old and smell old.

  “I thought up an idea last night,” I tell Charlie. “A way we could get Cornpup some of the money he needs.”

  Charlie is holding a book of matches. He strikes them, one by one, watching the flames burn and then disappear.

  Molly says, “Charlie and fire, now that’s scary.”

  CHAPTER 18

  PLANS

  THE first bingo game is under way. A man in the announcement booth calls out, “B-two, G-nine, B-eleven, I-nine, O-three.” The players are in deep concentration. They do not talk to each other. They do not look up. There is only the furious dabbing of numbered squares.

  I think about eating tacos with Valerie, Jill, and Charlie. It would be so weird. Valerie’s skinny, with tiny bones like a bird. I bet she’d only eat one taco, while me and Charlie, we’d eat five or six. And then she’d probably want to hold my hand or something. I can see it now, me with a piece of cilantro stuck between my teeth, and Charlie flicking shreds of cheese into Valerie’s long, dark hair.

  I don’t know if I really want Charlie to be there when I hang out with Valerie, because he might tell her things about my fat mom, or he might make up a lie about me that’s meant to be a joke but won’t be taken that way, like the time he told Cornpup I fart when I run fast, which is not true. On the day we had class pictures, Charlie got pizza sauce all over my good shirt, and I swear it was on purpose.

  He’s the friend I hate and the friend I love, all mixed into one person.

  “Hey, Fire Starter,” I say. “Do you want to hear my plan or what?”

  Charlie doesn’t even bother looking up from his matches. “It won’t work.”

  “You don’t even know what I’m gonna say!”

  “It doesn’t matter what you’re gonna say. There is no way we can raise two hundred dollars for Cornpup before school starts. Not legally, anyway.”

  I hesitate. Suddenly I’m not sure my idea will sound as good out loud as it did in my head last night. “I was thinking we could do a Freak Tour.”

  Charlie makes a face.

  “Just hear me out. Every piece in the Freak Museum has its own story. Each story happened somewhere. So we take a group of kids to the field of barrels and we tell them it’s a war zone where the robot battles took place. And then we take them to the tunnels we dug, where crazy scientists are hiding robots; and to the steel mill, where a ghost is still looking for his glass eye; and to the rubber factory, where giant rats stalk and eat humans.”

  “We’re not showing anyone our tunnels,” says Charlie.

  “Wait, why does Cornpup need two hundred dollars?” Randy has a confused look on his face. “I thought some doctor is gonna fix his skin for free.”

  I explain how Cornpup is gonna have to take care of his body after the surgery. “The doc says he’ll need to apply expensive creams four times a day, plus he’ll have to take herbal pills and drink detox tea. Otherwise the cysts could come back.”

  Randy mutters something about the doctor being a scam artist.

  Charlie says my idea could work. “You know that wooded area by the tracks, kind of by all those railcars?” he says. “I found a cold patch of dirt about ten feet wide—”

  “The cold spot!” Molly interrupts him. “I’ve been out there. You’re walking along, and it’s a hot summer night, and then suddenly you feel this frozen ground right under your feet. No animals around, not even bugs. It’s like a dead zone. Maybe you could think up a story for that.”

  “It’s where the ice monsters live,” I say. “In underground cities.”

  Molly says, “Wow. That was fast.”

  Charlie says, “That’s nothing. Wait till you see his sketchbook.”

  “What about the water in the creek?” Randy asks. “You got a story for that too?”

  “Depends on the color,” I tell him. “Red is goblin pee. Green is alien blood.”

  Now Randy laughs. “That’s actually pretty hilarious.”

  They ask me how much I’m gonna charge for the tour. I don’t know. Charlie says the tickets should be cheap, because little kids never have any money. Molly says there’s no reason why we should limit this to just little kids. I tell her we’re absolutely limiting this to little kids, because the tour will cover every no trespassing zone from here to the 990, and I don’t want to deal with police officers, lawsuits, phone calls to parents, or any other adult complication. Randy says I have a good point. Charlie lets it slip that we’ve got a bloody flannel and a shoe box full of dead bats in the Freak Museum. Molly says the bloody flannel sounds disgusting and we should be careful because bats carry rabies. And then Randy is back on the subject of tickets, which he thinks should be expensive, since the Freak Tour is a once-in-a-lifetime event.

  “Bingo!” shouts a woman with tubes in her nose. She can’t get up to show her ticket, because she’s strapped to an oxygen tank with Canadian flag stickers all over it. The announcer leaves his booth and walks over to check her card. She wins two hundred dollars. She waves a pink dabber above her head, and a few people applaud lamely. Game two begins.

  “Cornpup charged two dollars for a trip to the incinerator back when all the frogs died,” says Charlie. “A ticket to his Freak Museum costs maybe four bucks. So we charge three dollars for the tour and a buck-fifty for a book of stories.”

  “What book of stories?” Viper is getting restless. He stands in my lap. I don’t want Randy’s boss to see. I try to cover him with my bag, but you can still tell he’s there. I press down on the base of his tail, trying to get him to sit, but he fights me. We’ll have to leave soon.

  “The one you’re gonna write,” Charlie tells me.

  Whoa. Wait a minute. I never said I was writing any book.

  “You get twenty kids, and you’ll make close to a hundred dollars,” says Randy. “Not bad.”

  Charlie pushes his cup away. He walks toward the door without saying goodbye to anyone. Typical. I climb off my stool, thank Randy for the free soda, and clip Viper into his harness.

  Charlie is fidgeting at the door. “Hurry up. Hurry up. Hurry up.”

  “Wait.” Randy doesn’t shout this to Charlie. He says it quietly, to me.

  I turn back to the counter. Charlie lets out a loud, impatient sigh.

  Randy says, “I think the Freak Tour is a real good idea. But I’m not so sure Charlie should be volunteering you to write out an entire book of landfill stories. That’s a lot of work. If you decide to do it, then sure, yeah, throw a little money Cornpup’s way. Just swear to me you’ll keep something for your trouble. It’s important to look out for yourself.”

  So this is what it feels like to have a big brother, someone who cares about my best interests. Cornpup might help me assemble the books, and I bet Charlie will promote this thing till kids are beating down my door for tickets, but Randy’s right. Most of the work will fall on me. I’ll have to write out all my stories. And the illustrations will take forever to draw. Maybe I should get something out of this.

  When I was really little, like six or seven, I found a wad of cash out by the loading docks. I thought it was a million dollars, but it was probably more l
ike fifty. I kept the money in an empty plastic margarine tub under my bed for weeks before I finally showed it to Charlie. He said a plastic margarine tub was too risky. He told me he’d keep the money safe for me in his lockbox. I never saw that wad of dollar bills ever again. It doesn’t matter that I had no idea what to spend fifty dollars on, or that Mom probably would’ve found that money and used it for groceries. What matters is that I let Charlie call the shots. I always have.

  I leave the air-conditioned Golden Nugget and catch up with Charlie in the parking lot. I take my shoes off and step barefoot on the hot pavement. I let Charlie walk Viper for a while. We are sweating, and Viper is panting, and no cool breezes come to us from the north. The sun won’t set for hours, won’t even touch the tree-tops until after seven.

  “Let’s ride the landfill tonight,” says Charlie. “Tomorrow we’ll start planning the Freak Tour.”

  I was thinking the exact same thing.

  CHAPTER 19

  CHEMICAL MOUNTAIN

  CORNPUP has the best basement. His dad buys used pinball machines from taverns that go out of business, and there’s a jukebox that looks old-fashioned but plays hard rock music, and there’s a spare freezer stocked full of pizzas and stuff. The only bad thing is, we have to put up with his little sister, Abbi, who runs around the pool table, screaming, with three dolls strapped upside down in a plastic stroller, until Charlie says, “Please, Cornpup, there must be a soundproof closet we can lock her in. Just for a little while.” Now she’s upstairs having dinner, which means it’s late. The Schumachers never eat before dark.

  We got sidetracked. Charlie and Cornpup are shooting pool, and I’m playing the monster pinball machine, racking up thousands of points, because I’ve figured out how to get the ball to roll up into the mummy’s eye, and then down a long, neon green tube, before landing in the vampire’s outstretched hand. When I’m on a hot streak like this, Charlie won’t play me.

  “What time is it?” Charlie asks.

  I have a high score, twenty-two thousand points.

  Cornpup runs upstairs to check. He yells down to us, “Nine forty-five. And there’s a tornado warning. It’s real windy.”

  “Good,” says Charlie. “Let’s go.”

  Cornpup says I can stow Viper in the basement while we’re gone, which is a relief. I’m still not sure it’s safe to leave Viper alone in my bedroom. He could whimper, and Mom would find him, and then I’d be in major trouble. I give Viper a beef-flavored bone and make a dog bed out of Cornpup’s army-green sleeping bag. “I’ll be back in a little while,” I say. “Be good.”

  When me and Charlie get upstairs, Cornpup has on a trench coat, a knit cap, and a pair of rubber dishwashing gloves.

  “It’s not that cold out,” I say.

  He frowns. “It is to me.”

  We hop onto our dirt bikes and ride to the Poxton landfill. The wind is nasty. To keep control of our bikes, we have to concentrate. Charlie loves the extra edge. He thinks the wind is something that can be defeated. He says, “This is the best night. This is unbelievable.”

  We hydroplane across puddles of motor oil.

  Charlie’s motorbike is green and black with bits of rust on the body. Cornpup used junkyard parts to build his own dirt bike. It’s an ugly metal contraption, rusted from top to bottom, and the wheels aren’t the right size, but it works. My bike is white and blue and silver, with thin tires and a shiny motor. It was on my front porch the day after Dad’s funeral. Mom kept asking me if I stole it, which really pissed me off. I told her the truth: I had no idea where the dirt bike came from. It’s still a mystery.

  We ride along Two Mile Creek, cutting tracks in the mud and hopping the knotted tree roots we call “demon fingers.” We squeeze through a torn chain-link fence and maneuver between two parked semitrucks.

  Charlie says, “Gas fumes are my favorite. They make me feel high.”

  I look back at Cornpup and shout, “Seriously! Can’t you ride any faster?”

  He shouts back at me, “I built this bike. It has personality. Your factory-made bikes have speed but no soul!”

  “I don’t understand half the stuff that comes out of his mouth,” says Charlie. “I really don’t.”

  Our wheels slip in the mud, but we don’t wipe out. For Charlie and me, not being the first to fall is a matter of pride. Cornpup has to fall before we do, and then it’s like a faucet has been turned on. We all fly off our bikes on purpose, laughing at each other. The more blood, the more mud, the better.

  I look at Charlie and say, “Quick detour.”

  He nods, knowing exactly where I want to go, exactly where to turn.

  Adjacent to our old elementary school is a landfill that first inspired me to draw. When I was really little, sitting on a swing, staring at broken cement slabs and PVC piping, I kept seeing faces of beasts in the rubble. Unlike Chemical Mountain, with its tall, dome-shaped peak and beautiful slopes, this landfill is a plateau, rugged and uncapped. It holds a collection of hazards—car batteries and computer monitors, deep holes and piles of slick fly ash, sludge that has hardened into oddly shaped boulders—and it feels like an obstacle course. At the far end of the landfill, there is a deep split in the earth, about four feet wide. We call it the fault line. Whenever I jump it, I always look down and wonder if it’s a portal to another world, a place where creatures grow strong and evil, or if it’s just a bunch of emptiness, an infinite hole.

  “This used to drive me nuts when we were little,” says Charlie. “What’s the point of putting a really fun landfill five feet away from a playground and then putting up a fence so we could look at the landfill all day but never play on it?”

  “They didn’t put the dump next to the school, you idiot,” says Cornpup. “They built the school next to the dump. Because the land was cheap. That’s what city commissioners do: they build schools on the cheapest land they can find, right next to some power lines, ten feet from an uncapped landfill, with weird smells outside so the teachers can’t ever open the windows. And these politicians are so old, by the time we’re eighteen and can really hold them accountable, they’ll all be dead. Screwing over a bunch of kids is ingenious if you really think about it. We’re the easiest targets.”

  “I’m so sick of your negativity,” says Charlie. “If you hate it so much here, then move somewhere else.”

  “Both of you,” I say. “Just shut up and ride.” I try to peel away all cool like they do in the movies, but my bike does this sputtering thing that it’s been doing lately, and I have to work the throttle for a few seconds before I get any decent pickup. Charlie accelerates past me. I watch him lift his face to the sky and howl like a wolf. Cornpup walks his bike over two large pieces of machinery. He stops to pick up something that looks like a round saw blade.

  Me and Charlie race each other, neck and neck, adrenaline burning in our veins. I jump a propane tank and skid into a trench of black slime. Charlie rides up an aluminum ramp and jumps off the end. When Cornpup finally joins us, his nose is running.

  “I found a Chinese star,” he says.

  I take off again, toward the far end of the landfill, my dirt bike moving at full speed. I dodge a methane vent at the last possible second. I fall into a pile of PVC pipes and wires. I watch Charlie ride with perfect balance along a thin steel beam. Cornpup is buzzing after us at a sorry pace. Me and Charlie stop and wait for him by a pile of rotting shingles.

  Charlie strikes a match from his pocket and then drops it into a crater filled with a metallic liquid that makes me think of mercury. The flame explodes, jumping high above our heads, and my heart fills with a strange, peaceful feeling. How can Charlie create something like this, I wonder, with just one match? He always knows exactly how a thing will burn.

  Cornpup isn’t interested in the fire. He buzzes past us, like an old man on a scooter at the grocery store. Charlie rides off to join him, howling as he goes. My feet are planted on the ground. My bike idles quietly with an occasional sputter. I feel like I shou
ld do something about the fire, but I have no idea how to extinguish it. I sort of want to leave it burning, because it’s beautiful, except maybe it will spread across the industrial fields, blackening everything like a total eclipse.

  I watch Charlie slide his bike to a stop in Cornpup’s path. I am sure a crash will follow, but Cornpup hits his breaks just in time. I watch them talk for a minute. I watch them laugh. I wonder why Cornpup is always so quick to forgive Charlie, who can be so mean. Or maybe it’s Charlie who’s forgiving Cornpup, for constantly pointing out the negative, for always being such a buzz kill.

  “I’m almost out of gas!” Cornpup shouts to me.

  I look at my own gauge, and it’s low. I catch up with my friends, and park my bike next to Cornpup. I ask him what’s wrong with his eye.

  “A bug flew in it,” he says.

  Charlie’s teeth are so white they almost glow in the dark, and this makes the spaces where his teeth are missing seem really obvious. He says, “I’m dying of hunger. When we get home, I’m gonna make myself a big old pot of macaroni and cheese.”

  Cornpup jumps the fault line first. I can’t bear to watch. His dirt bike barely has enough power to lift off the ground, but he makes it up and over somehow. Me and Charlie go crazy cheering for him, laughing.

  Charlie goes next. He borrows Cornpup’s knit hat and pulls it down over his eyes. “I’m gonna jump this blindfolded,” he says, and that’s exactly what he does.

  “Wow,” says Cornpup. “That was stupid. And great.”

  I go last. I’ve jumped the fault line a hundred times, before Charlie even knew it was here. I’m not scared at all.

  But when I take off, my back tire gets caught on a machine lever. One-tenth of a second is all it takes. My front tire makes it to the other side, spinning like a round saw into the dirt, and for a second I think I might live through this, until I feel the back half of my bike drop sharply down, a sudden dip that turns my stomach, my body sliding into the black canyon. I catch hold of a rock and grip it so tightly that my fingernails lift and bleed, and still my hands are slipping.