“I heard you knocked up your girl,” Trevor said, elbowing him in the ribs.
“Yeah . . . ,” Winn replied.
“Nice.”
It still didn’t feel real. Winn and Corny: together forever. FOREVER. It was a little terrifying. Probably the only reason they were together in the first place was because they had the same first three letters of their last names, so they’d been thrown together constantly in the alphabetized world of middle school. Corny said God made it happen because they were soul mates. But to Winn it seemed hopelessly random, that his entire life’s path was being determined by the fact that his name was Winn Davis and not Winn Jones.
“There he is,” Trevor said. “Hey, Cal! C’mere, buddy!”
Trevor was always doing that, acting all chummy with people he barely ever talked to. As Calvin Harker approached them, a weird feeling came over Winn. He was used to being the tallest guy in the room and always looking down at people. But Calvin was at least four inches taller than him. Winn knew he could snap the guy like a twig, but he still felt strangely intimidated. There was also the fact that Calvin had been part of his and Trevor’s class growing up. He’d been held back after his heart cancer thing or whatever, so now he was a sophomore. But Winn still felt a vague proprietary feeling toward him. Calvin was a weirdo, but he was their weirdo. Except he wasn’t.
“What’s up?” Calvin said. Winn noticed him giving a quick glance over his shoulder. There was an incredibly weird-looking bald guy lurking in the corner of the lobby, watching them. He made Winn nervous. What if he was a cop, and they were all about to be arrested? But Calvin didn’t seem to be bothered by his presence at all.
“You got some more of that cool stuff?” Trevor whispered.
Cool stuff. Sometimes Trevor was such a kid, it made Winn remember why they were friends. He wished he could go back in time to when they were seven years old and life was just cool stuff like playing with G.I. Joes and going hunting with their dads and eating hot dogs at football games.
Calvin looked at them for a second, obviously debating whether to deny that the secret drug dealer at the science expo had been him. Then he shrugged, apparently deciding it wasn’t worth it. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m totally out right now.”
“But you have some of the blue pills, right?” Winn asked, hearing the pathetic desperation in his own voice.
Calvin shook his head again. “Sorry, man. And even if I did, you can’t take that stuff all the time. Like, once a month, max.”
Once a month? Once a MONTH? Winn felt his stomach sink. His plan was to take it every day! How else was he supposed to deal with having a baby? “Wait, are you serious?” he asked.
“Yeah, I mean, it’s ecstasy. You have to be careful. You’ll end up with serious brain damage if you take it too often.”
“But—except—well—I—” Winn stammered helplessly, wanting to explain that he’d rather have brain damage than face his life right now. In fact, brain damage would probably make it easier.
“I really can’t be talking about this,” Calvin whispered. “It’s a very sensitive time for me.” He nodded toward the bald guy staring at them from the corner. Then, without another word, he walked away.
“There goes my night,” Trevor said glumly. He kicked the locker, and the sound echoed down the dreary hallway. Winn covered his face with his hands.
There goes my life.
The refreshments table, 9:00 p.m.
“So, what do you like most about playing the flute?”
Benny gritted his teeth. Be polite, he ordered himself. Chrissie seemed to have read an article in a women’s magazine about how to make conversation on a date. He looked around the gym for Virginia. Where had she gone? Chrissie was nice and she looked very pretty, but she didn’t seem to understand that Benny didn’t come to dances to chitchat; he came to Be There. It was hard to concentrate on his surroundings with her hanging on him and distracting him. He wished Virginia would come back and run interference on her or something.
“I totally love your suit,” Chrissie was saying for the eighth time. “Is it Italian?”
“I don’t know. It’s my dad’s.”
Benny couldn’t say exactly why he’d decided to wear it. He was just tired of looking like an idiot all the time. He didn’t want to be the hideous nerd Virginia saw him as, but he didn’t want to be the blow-dried, pink-Polo-wearing country club phony either. He wanted to be himself. A capable, intelligent man: a Flax. Last week he’d been too afraid to even touch the suit, like he thought he didn’t deserve it or something. But it was time to stop behaving like a seventh grader with low self-esteem. An invitation to become a man wasn’t going to arrive in the mail—that fact was suddenly obvious. So he’d put the suit on. It was his now. And all the things he’d been afraid of—that his mother would be offended, that Virginia would make fun of him—they just melted away.
“Do you want to dance?” Chrissie said in her tiny voice.
Benny looked at the dance floor, which was empty except for a handful of unruly guys making a mockery of things. Everyone else was milling around outside and in the lobby, waiting for the Opposite Day joke to die so they could start taking the dance seriously and actually enjoy themselves. The scene was utterly emblematic of how things operated at Winship: a bunch of immature guys at the top forcing everyone to tiptoe around them until they got bored enough of acting like ogres for everyone else to have a decent evening.
Benny squinted out the doors into the lobby. Calvin Harker had just ducked into the boys’ bathroom, followed by the tough-looking goon with the gun.
“Hey, can you give me a minute? I’ll be right back.”
“Where are you going?”
Benny didn’t answer her. He swiftly crossed the dance floor, narrowly avoiding Skylar and Sophat doing the Macarena to a Taylor Swift song. His heart was pounding. Was Calvin Harker about to get shot by a cartel enforcer? In the boys’ bathroom? At a Homecoming dance? Benny listened at the bathroom door for a second. Then he pushed it open with his foot, peering inside.
Calvin was washing his hands in the sink. The bald man was standing by the urinals with his muscular arms crossed, not doing anything. It was weird. The two obviously knew each other, but they weren’t speaking, and Calvin seemed to be pretending the bald man was invisible.
“Hi, Benny,” Calvin said, noticing him in the doorway.
HI, BENNY. Benny’s jaw clenched, unsure whether the pointedness he heard in Calvin’s voice was real or only in his mind. He stepped inside, not wanting Calvin to think he wasn’t in control. “Hi,” he said back.
“So far so weird, huh?” Calvin remarked.
“What?”
“This whole Opposite Day thing.”
“Right . . .”
Then Calvin seemed to notice Benny glancing at the guy by the urinals. “Oh, don’t mind Olek. He’s my date! Aren’t you, Olek?”
The man, evidently named Olek, made a short grunting sound.
“We’re having a very romantic evening. Think they’ll play our song, Olek?”
Benny narrowed his eyes at them. He didn’t believe Olek was Calvin’s “date” for a second. But who the hell was he?
“Anyway,” Calvin said, shaking the water off his wet hands. “Don’t bother spending your Mystery Club resources on me tonight. I am clean as a whistle.”
“No red pills?” Benny said, testing Calvin and Olek’s reactions. Both of their faces were expressionless.
“No pills of any color in the rainbow.” Calvin grabbed a paper towel from the dispenser.
“It’s your fault, what happened to DeAndre,” Benny accused him. Calvin’s blasé attitude was getting under his skin for some reason. He wanted to see Calvin flinch.
“Excuse me?” Calvin seemed genuinely confused.
“You gave Trevor the drug that wound him up. Then you caused the blackout, which gave him the opportunity to attack.”
“The blackout was necessary. My dad is a prison ward
en and I needed to escape the bathroom without being seen. I didn’t know there would be such a high price.”
“So you admit that you’re partly responsible?” Why am I pressing this? Benny wondered. Calvin’s cool demeanor was making him feel more and more agitated.
“Trevor’s a monster. He would have done it anyway. Or something worse.”
“You can’t be sure of that,” Benny argued. “You set all this in motion. You gave Trevor drugs. You put him in a violent state of mind.”
Calvin shook his head. “Drugs don’t change who we are. They reveal who we are.”
Benny didn’t know how to continue defending his point. When it came to drugs, he was completely straight-edge. The sip of bourbon from Rodrigo was the most illicit substance Benny had ever consumed in his life. He didn’t feel equipped to debate the philosophy of drug-induced states with Calvin, who was obviously a drug aficionado. Benny glanced at Olek. He couldn’t tell if the man was listening to them particularly closely, or if he even understood English.
“Well, what about what happened on the golf course?” Benny challenged, switching his line of attack. “Do you feel bad about that?”
Calvin held up his hands. “I was just there to golf. I did not participate in . . . that.”
“But you didn’t stop it.”
He met Benny’s eyes in the mirror. “I’m not in charge of those guys. You couldn’t have stopped it either.”
“I wouldn’t have been there in the first place.”
“Well, that is certainly true.”
This time the pointedness of the remark was unmistakable. Benny said nothing, and a tense moment passed.
“I’m sorry,” Calvin said finally. “I didn’t mean it like that. I mean, maybe I did. But you’re being very judgmental and it’s making me defensive.”
“I’m not judging,” Benny said. “I’m just . . . I’m just . . .” The sentence hung unfinished in the air.
Calvin balled up his paper towel and tossed it in the trash.
“I was wondering,” he said, his tone suddenly brisk and casual, “is Mystery Club accepting new membership right now?”
Oh god. “Of course,” Benny forced himself to say. It was against his ethos to exclude people, but the idea of Calvin Harker invading his club made him feel panicked.
“Virginia told me about your investigation into the student-body president election. Very very interesting . . .”
“Very,” Benny said back, like a dumb parrot.
“How do you use that sort of information?”
Benny looked at Calvin in the mirror. “What do you mean, how do we use it?”
“I mean, what do you do?”
Calvin turned from the mirror and looked right at Benny. The wild green of his eyes seemed to be dialed up about ten notches. Do not stare into the eyes of your opponent: he may mesmerize you. Do not fix your gaze on his sword: he may intimidate you. It was one of the principles of aikido. But Calvin’s eyes were so intense, Benny couldn’t make himself look away.
“We . . . We don’t do anything.”
There was a pause. Then Calvin smiled. “That’s what I thought. Okay, let’s go, Olek. Don’t want you to miss one magical moment.”
Calvin brushed past Benny and sailed out the door. The apparently mute Olek followed him, leaving Benny alone. The fluorescent light above his head buzzed irritatingly. Benny looked sourly at his reflection. Why had that encounter been so frustrating? Because Calvin didn’t seem to care what Benny thought of him? No one ever cared what Benny thought; why should that suddenly bother him now?
He left the bathroom, unsure where to go next. He didn’t want to be alone with his reflection anymore, but he didn’t want to go back to sipping endless punch with Chrissie either. He went to the lobby doors and stepped outside. The crowd had thinned as everyone finally started to head to the gym. Only a few stragglers remained, guys leaning against their cars and waiting till the very last minute to put on their ties. The air felt cool and wintry. Benny took a deep breath.
I am calm however and whenever I am attacked. I have no attachment to life or death.
Something rustled in the bush next to him. “Hello?”
A person tumbled out, landing at Benny’s feet. Benny jumped back instinctively. The person tried to stand up but stumbled on himself and fell down again.
“Craig?”
He made a second attempt to stand up, propping himself up on the bush.
“Are you drunk?” Benny asked, though the answer was plainly evident. Craig didn’t seem to have heard the question anyway. He pointed himself toward the door and lurched forward.
“Whoa whoa whoa,” Benny said, stepping in front of him. “You shouldn’t be here. You’re suspended.”
Craig scoffed, looking at Benny like he was just now noticing he was there. “Move, freak,” he said.
Benny didn’t move. “Craig, get out of here. I’ll call a teacher if I have to.”
“Call a teacher, you lil pussy,” Craig slurred. He gave Benny a push.
“Hey!” Benny said. “Don’t touch me.”
Craig reached out and rubbed his hands sloppily on Benny’s face. Benny swatted him away, catching his glasses before they fell off. “Don’t touch me!” he repeated.
Craig stepped back and looked Benny up and down. “What the hell are you wearing?”
“Go home, Craig.”
“You look like a mini-man. Are you a mini-man?”
“Shut up!”
“Move!” Craig stepped to the right, but Benny blocked him. Then Craig stepped the other way, and Benny blocked him again. Something was coming over him. Usually Benny didn’t care what people did—it was his ethos not to interfere in “the way” of life. But he felt his fists tightening with anger. It meant nothing to Craig that he was suspended; it meant nothing to him, what he’d done. A sequence of images flashed in Benny’s mind: the mutilated deer head, the pool of blood, “HI, BENNY,” Craig’s black-painted face. All of them laughing, everything a joke.
“You’re not welcome here,” Benny said. “Get out.”
What happened next happened very quickly. Craig swung his fist, and Benny grabbed it and used his momentum to slam Craig’s entire body on the ground.
“Fuuuuck!” Craig groaned.
“Whoaaa!” people were shouting behind him. “Fight! Fight!”
Craig jumped to his feet and launched himself at Benny. Benny dodged him, and Craig ran face-first into a wall. It was like a cartoon, only there was no funny sound effect (“BONK! BOINGGGG!”), only Craig crumpling to the ground with blood running from his face.
Something shiny had skidded out of his pocket onto the grass. It was a gun. Benny stared at it for a long second, stunned. That’s a gun, he told himself, disbelieving his own eyes. It didn’t occur to him to call for help. His loner/detective instincts kicked in, and he dove down and grabbed it, quickly tucking it into his pants. People were all around now, but Benny barely saw them. He braced himself for further attack. Craig had pulled himself up and was baring his teeth like an animal.
“I’M GONNA FUCK YOU UP, KIKE!” he screamed. He hurled himself at Benny, but Benny leaped out of the way.
Aikido is not used to fight. It is the way to reconcile the world and make human beings one family. It was a saying by O’Sensei, the founder of aikido. But Benny didn’t want to be a family with human beings like Craig. He wanted to punch human beings like Craig in the face.
THWACK!
Craig tipped back like a felled tree. The two seconds between Benny’s fist making contact and Craig’s body hitting the ground felt like a long, infinite eternity. Benny dimly registered the sound of applause all around him. They weren’t cheering for him, he knew. They were cheering for violence—for the triumph of barbarity over civility. They’d be clapping just as loudly if Craig’s punch had been the one to land instead of his own. Suddenly Benny felt dizzy.
Oh my god. What did I just do?
The girls’ bathroom, 9:20
p.m.
Virginia wasn’t hiding. She was just . . . laying low. That’s what she told herself anyway. She was so nervous to see Calvin it was giving her butterflies. And without Benny to talk to, she didn’t feel confident enough to go back into the gym and just stand around awkwardly. This is what it must feel like to be Chrissie, she suddenly understood. But the thought didn’t fill her with compassion; it just made her hate herself for sinking this low. She looked in the mirror and messed with her hair for the millionth time.
Get it together, she commanded herself.
She could hear shouting coming from the lobby. It took her a second to realize that it was actual shouting, not just general excitement. Something was happening out there. She abandoned her reflection and raced out the door. A huge crowd was gathered at the doors.
“What’s going on?” Virginia asked the first person she saw.
“Scooby-Doo killed Craig!” a hysterical ninth-grade girl shrieked.
“What?” Virginia shouted. Without waiting for an answer, she squeezed her way to the center of the crowd. An ambulance had pulled up next to the white horse and carriage. A pair of EMTs were wheeling a stretcher into the back.
“What happened?” she asked someone else. “Is Craig really dead?”
The guy just shrugged. Virginia noticed a splatter of blood on the concrete at her feet. She whirled around, looking for Benny.
“YOU’LL BE SORRY! YOU’LL BE SORRY!” someone was screaming. It was coming from the ambulance. It was Craig. He sounded like a lunatic. It felt like the end of a horror movie where the guy gets dragged away in a straitjacket. What the hell is going on?
Strange Lies Page 23