Grade a Stupid

by A. J. Lape

  A smart person would phone the authorities; a dumb person would back pedal on the threats; an idiot would snap a picture and post it on their Facebook page along with the caption: I got the message, so bring it on.

  I might be impressed if it wasn’t so alarmingly bizarre. Blood and gut droplets haloed its upper body, and its tongue was hanging out its mouth from what looked like a quick, hard blow to the head. Question was, how did someone get close enough to a squirrel to hit it? It was the most intriguing spectacle I’d seen since Dumpster Dude. The lesson? Never underestimate the power of fear—it compels people to do some really crazy things.

  As Murphy cleaned it up, blaming the neighborhood boys—or worse yet, Choncho, who was still on the premises—I found a chocolate chip cookie to eat then went to my bathroom to get ready for bed...in Darcyville, at least four hours early.

  Peering into the mirror one last time, I shuddered as the wind whistled outside. I was jumpy. It wasn’t every day you got a dead rodent on your front porch addressed to you personally. And it wasn’t every day you had to explain to your little sister that someone murdered her pet squirrel. My guess was we were going to lie to her. Maybe I should allow myself the luxury of a little bit of fear.

  All of a sudden, it felt very lonely in the hole I’d just dug for myself.

  It was bright and early Friday morning, and I’d slept with the lights on. I hadn’t done that since I was nine years old, but it made me feel like I had one leg up on the boogeyman. If I ever figured out who was “vadering” me (oh yeah, the bugger was back), I’d place them number one on my personal Fry Him with a Blow Torch List.

  He’d vadered all night. As a result, my lashes were glued together, and it took the force of a crowbar to pry them open. The outcome, I suppose, of only four hours of uninterrupted sleep.

  I must’ve had my finger on the speed dial for Dylan a dozen times. I had confession on my mind; problem was, I couldn’t get past the “Guess what I just did?” part of the conversation. The only thing productive accomplished was my term paper was finished (yay, me), but it was completed in between literally sobbing over my interim grades.

  Posted a few days back, I only mustered enough courage to look before I went to bed. I got a C, B+, A, C-, C, C+, and an A+. Murphy wondered why my only A+ was in Human Sexuality. It worried him. Frankly, it worried me more. I would’ve had an A in Drawing and Painting, but I forgot to hand in an assignment. Try having a ninety-five percent then averaging in a big, fat zero. It nuked your grade. I was going to try and work out some extra credit, and beg. I didn’t know what to do other than to beg on bended knee.

  When I cried myself to sleep, my dreams were all over the place. The parts I could remember were rated-NC-17 for violence followed by a double feature with Liam Woods that was XXX. At 3AM, Darth Vader woke me in a hiccupping sweat, so I changed my clothes hoping that would return me to my good girl dignity. I then saw the crucifix shimmer above my head and figured that was futile.

  It was some major suckage.

  Before I could find my inner-self-help guru—that little voice that told me things were going to be fine—I jumped when my iPhone sang with the voices of four-year-olds. That’s right. Last night, I got tired of China and changed my ringtone to a choral arrangement of This Little Light of Mine. The actions of an unstable individual, I realized that, but I needed Heaven on my side. I really did.

  Punching “accept” with my thumb, Justice belted out, “Stupid Eddie broke my nose.”

  Eddie, Eddie, Eddie, I thought. I needed to resurrect my inner-Eddie.

  Pulling the white comforter up to my chin, I winced at the sound of the weather. Heavy rain was plip-plopping on the windows, sounding like marbles on a tile floor. I didn’t have many plans for the day, but what I did have involved sunshine and activity. Well, maybe it included Liam, too. I hadn’t heard from him since Tuesday, and I had to say, that hurt my feelings. To be truthful, I was supposed to call him, but I couldn’t get my fingers to do-the-walking. What now sounded like hail might’ve torpedoed everything.

  I muttered, “Sorry, J,” as I remoted on the TV. “Eddie’s a doofus and a half.”

  “She’s a…” bleep profanity, Justice corrected. “I hate that…” bleep. “She’s like this big sea of angry instability coming at you all the time.”

  I had to agree. My dealings with Eddie were on an as-needed-basis-only in Spanish. Not many people creeped me out—gangs included—but Eddie was just this side of a Halloween ghoul.

  “Well, did you at least hurt her back?”

  Justice told me she and Eddie were sparring in their dojo downtown. Justice took her out legitimately with some sort of knee-drop move, but when the match was supposedly over, Eddie went with a side kick to the back of Justice’s head. Luckily, Justice turned in time, or she’d be food for worms. Thing was, it blacked her eye and cracked the bridge of her nose.

  “Oh, yeah,” she laughed darkly. “Eddie’s not going to feel good for some time. I dragged her to the ground by that stupid hoodie she’s always wearing then yanked it off and dug my fingers in her scalp. I literally left her crying in the bathroom trying to cover up the patch of hair I pulled out. Sometimes, you’ve just got to fight like a girl.”

  I high-fived her through the phone. “So, what else is going on?”

  “Um,” she paused, “I had a dream.”

  Justice’s I-Had-A-Dream recaps left me feeling a cross between skanky ’ho and frustrated virgin.

  I laughed. “Starring?”

  “Uh, your best friend...Mr. Hottie.”

  That was a visual I could do without. Of course it was Dylan. He was an in-your-face stud, his visage burned onto the backs of every girl’s eyelids that’d ever encountered him.

  “So, what happened in this dream?” I mumbled.

  “I couldn’t say. Nothing but blur and fuzzy on recall.”

  It’d better be; otherwise, I was going to have a serious “eval” on my relationship with her. “Good,” I blurted, “I mean, oh,” I said, quickly trying to act as disappointed as her.

  Justice laughed so loud I wanted to deck her. “I’m going to venture a guess that makes you happy, Darc, but what are you going to do when a Mrs. Hottie comes to town?” Dylan’s girlfriend? Everyone need not apply. There was no room for a Mrs. Hottie as long as I was still breathing. “No, offense, Darc,” she continued, “but sometimes I think he likes you, but you’re too dumb to know.”

  I felt the beginnings of a life-sized headache. Dylan was certainly an enigma. One minute he treated me like one of the boys; the next, a rare piece of art. Something you didn’t touch but looked at admiringly and bragged about.

  “Dylan’s Dylan,” I laughed in explanation. “Bossy, entitled, and insisting on things his way.”

  “Are you immune to that?” she guffawed. “I’m pretty sure I’d do whatever he told me to. How do you do it? How do you hang around him and not fall all over him?”

  First of all, I usually did fall all over him. Secondly, I got to hug him whenever I wanted. I wasn’t sure I understood wanting something I’d always had.

  “You’re making me feel insecure,” I mumbled.

  “Hey, it was just a dream, and I’d never take what’s yours anyway. But you need to put a stake in the ground and claim him. You need to, Darc, before it’s too late.” We made plans to catch the new action movie Vengeance with a Smile this weekend then disconnected.

  I refused to think about Dylan.

  My mind was too submerged in details, deluged with thoughts regarding my conversation with Jinx. What would happen if I did nothing? What would happen if I did anything? No matter how I tried to paint on a happy smile, I felt despair looming, sucking me down into that bottomless pit with no way out. After I wallowed in self-pity, I did my thing in the bathroom then changed into some clean clothes.

  I liked my outfit. I pulled on a gray long-sleeved, stretch-cotton T, paired it with some painted on dark jeans then threw a baby blue knit scarf around my nec
k and wrapped it twice. Fur-lined brown flip-flops bottomed out the ensemble. It didn’t make me feel better; it made me realize I was dressed up with no place to go.

  By the time I made it downstairs, it was a little past eight o’clock. Murphy was late for work pacing the floor like an expectant father. He went to bed in a bad mood in what I’d come to recognize over the years as an IRMS episode or insurance-related mood swing. A hurricane tore through the South a few days ago and took out the top two stories of a financial institution he underwrote off the coast of North Carolina. It was a “craptastic loss;” his words, not mine.

  Claudia was frantically running back and forth beside him, trying to keep in step with his stride, her black orthopedic shoes squishing like she’d stepped inside a bucket of soapy water.

  No sooner did I expel the phrase, “What’s wrong?” than I heard the dreaded words, “Jesus cookie.”

  He might as well have gored me with a pitchfork.

  My eyes darted over to the kitchen countertop—not there. I then scanned the floor—the table—even the vaulted ceiling—when I spied the empty gold plate untouched on the stove.

  A cold chill settled in my chest as my mind quickly did a rewind of yesterday’s events: Read coroner’s reports, ate spaghetti, took a shower, went to work, talked Mr. Belinski off chair, ordered pizza, got extra pizzas delivered, texted friends with leftovers, watched the Food Network, watched Trudi grope Jon, watched Ivy devour Jagger, watched Vinnie leave with Rudi, texted Dylan, talked to Murphy, got a visit from Jinx, might’ve peed my pants, found dead squirrel, grabbed a cookie…

  I heard the record player screech in my mind.

  I grabbed a cookie off a plate on the oven and gobbled it in three bites.

  Oh God. Oh, God, forgive me...I ate Baby Jesus.

  Did that now mean I was holy?

  I barely choked out, “Sorry,” when I was struck with the surreal idiocy of the entire situation. Not only was Claudia speaking of her “poor bambino cookie,” but Choncho was waving the dead squirrel carcass he must’ve dug out of the trash in the air. I debated laughing, but when I saw Murphy puffing a cigar like a smokestack, I considered stealing it and taking a draw.

  You couldn’t write this stuff, but this was status quo in the Walker household. We were a sitcom.

  Ana Rosalina was like a bull seeing red. Her pink muumuu flowing, she came at me claws bared, like I was nothing short of Mary Magdalene stealing something holy from the good people. Claudia shoved me behind her back chanting, “Niña! Niña! Niña! Pull her away from Diablo, Mr. Murphy’s!” I burst into laughter. If there was any doubt before, we now knew where Claudia felt was my final destination. Hellfire and damnationville.

  Murphy’s hillbilly was on steroids. “Git out of my house!” he yelled to all of them. “Now, git!”

  Claudia lifted a heavily beaded crucifix from her neck, waving it erratically around in a figure eight. Jesus went flying high then low, but when he swiveled around and knocked the cigar onto the floor, I knew the poop was about to hit the proverbial fan.

  “Die already!” Murphy roared, stomping it out. “For God’s sake die, or go back to Spanishland!” They started arguing, or maybe they were trying to out pray one another. I couldn’t tell. Sometimes they had a showdown of who could make it to the Throne quicker. Hillbilly and Spanish dialect neck and neck.

  Ana Rosalina pulled a small, glass vile of holy water out of her bra, untwisted the gold cap, flung it in the air around us, huffed then gave up and doused it in my face. Thank God, I didn’t go up in smoke, but I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d have one of those unconcealable scars like vampires got in the movies.

  As I giggled and wiped my eyes, I stepped backwards into Murphy, was caught off balance then ran headlong into the wall cracking my cheek, leaving me with a shiner that was going to be part African-American.

  “Sweet Lord,” I heard Murphy pray, taking my face in his hands.

  That’s what I was thinking. Sometimes I wondered what God thought of us.

  As I stood there waterlogged, Ana Rosalina looked at me like I was evil incarnate. Funny coming from her, whose son was playing with a dead squirrel. Murphy threw up his hands, barreling off to work, saying he’d call every hour to make sure Marjorie and I were still alive. I shrugged it off. I had bigger things on my mind than some holy water and a dead squirrel. Right now, it was becoming more and more clear I had bit off more than I could chew.

  21 SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION

  I HAD EVERY intention in the world of falling into a rom-com coma on the Hallmark Channel but instead attempted a prayer out loud. “I’ll brush every night. I’ll eat my veggies. And I won’t ever, ever, think about the shama lama, ding-dong.” Okay, the shama lama, ding-dong part was overkill, so I scrapped the prayer altogether.

  Murphy turned toward the stairs, half awake, half asleep, half his chocolate ice cream dribbled down the front of his ratty, white sweatshirt. Guess the diet wasn’t going so well.

  “Who were you talking to, kid?”

  “The man upstairs.”

  He raised a brow as he licked his spoon. “Well, be on your best behavior, because we’re going to His House on Sunday. God knows the Walkers need to make a good impression.” Murphy dragged us to church twice a year. Christmas and Easter. We weren’t front row people; we were in the balcony, last row. It reminded me of those little gargoyles on the tops of buildings. Just there to scare everybody.

  It was bedtime, and I’d decided to pray. I was in over my head, plus the day was so unbelievably draining I needed something. Trouble was, once I opened my mouth everything that came out felt sacrilegious. I didn’t know a lot about a relationship with the Most High, but I did know you shouldn’t confess sins—and promise better behavior—if you intended on living the same life again tomorrow.

  At least that’s what seemed fair.

  My moral compass, unfortunately, was absent in my life. I’d missed Dylan’s calls all day. When Claudia “took to the bed,” a Kentucky phrase for taking a nap when your life sucks (translation, I ate her cookie), Marjorie and I went to the mall with Finn, Justice, and Rudi. I must’ve hit a dead zone. On the way home, I noticed I had five missed calls and two ignored invitations to SKYPE. Frustrating on every level conceivable, but I was somehow stuck in the ether black hole. When I checked my voicemails, predictably he wanted to know why a dead squirrel was on my Facebook wall. Gee, if the roles were reversed, guess I’d be asking too.

  My nightly SKYPE, as a result, was with Jon Bradshaw. Guess who just broke up with whom? Can we say, T-R-U-D-I?? The other day they got along like a house on fire; my guess was it finally burnt down. The pattern was obvious. Last time they were a couple was Christmas Break; Spring Break was days from ending. Made me think she didn’t want to be seen with him. I hoped Jon never put two-and-two together—I didn’t know what it would do to his psyche. I tried not to say, “I told you so” and surprisingly was successful.

  When I told him about the dead squirrel, Justice’s broken nose, and the shiner of all shiners, I found myself whimpering, “I ate Jesus, Grumpy. All of this happened because I ate Jesus.”

  “You ate the cookie?” he chuckled.

  It was just me alone in the den, huddled on the couch, underneath a faux fur chocolate colored blanket we’d bought at Costco. In Murphy’s words, It’s ginormous, but it’s going to take something ginormous to cover your sinful body.

  Maybe he had a point.

  I took the time to sift through my motives. I loved cookies, but honest to God, I don’t think I meant to eat Jesus. “I didn’t mean to,” I said, “but to leave a cookie untouched is like heresy or something. But why did he show up on a cookie! If I wouldn’t have eaten Jesus, maybe Marjorie’s squirrel wouldn’t have been murdered.”

  “That dead squirrel happened before you ate Jesus, Walker. Do you think you were punished beforehand?”

  Good question, one that was beyond my paygrade. “No,” I finally decided on, “but I feel like
I destroyed my religious karma or something.”

  I was PMSing and what little filter I had was completely gone. Plus, a part of me—granted a small part—had finally registered how wildly troubling and heartbreaking the day was. Especially with the realization that Oscar might be hiding something (by the way, why hadn’t he called) and how I cheated the Grim Reaper where Jinx was concerned. Needless to say, I was frazzled. That wasn’t like me. Normally, I didn’t see the peripheral when I was tunneling on a specific target, but you try all of that on for size and see how sane you are.

  Jon replied in his usually impassive voice. “Walker, Jesus wasn’t on a cookie.”

  “That priest thought he was on a cookie.”

  “That priest wanted to get on television.” My friends were equally divided on the Jesus cookie, feeling it was either fact or farce; Jon, however, felt it so ridiculous I wondered if he were an atheist down deep or a disenchanted Christian. “What’s this about the squirrel being murdered?” he asked.

  Divert, Darcy. Divert, divert, divert. He’ll tell Dylan and God only knows what will transpire then. I blew my nose into a tissue, tossing it onto the carpet. “Oh, I don’t know,” I sniffled. “Things die, Grumpy. It was the squirrel’s time, I guess.”

  When he pushed for particulars, before I knew it—once again—I confessed my actions. Okay, I left out all of the juicy, life-threatening stuff, but he got the gist of it. Surprisingly, he was nonjudgmental with a smidgeon of curiosity. Made me think we needed to form some sort of working relationship, or I needed to quit accepting his calls.

  “You understand the brotherhood rules say this is confidential, comprendez?” He grunted. I took that as a yes. “So, you see,” I told him, “Jinx leads me to believe Alfonso had some secrets of his own. Red said a rival gang off’d him, but the only way to know for sure if I can finger Northside is to talk to someone within River City Smugglers. Get their spin on things because my guess is they have a mighty big spinner.”