Carter's Big Break

by Brent Crawford

  “Did you or did you not speak to her for the first time . . . four days ago?” I ask.

  “That is a fact.” He beams.

  “Man, she’s a slut!”

  “No doubt, but you can’t call her that, either.”

  I shoot him another look.

  “Dude, I need you to be cool to her,” he says nicely. I’m considering his request when he looks over at me, puppy-eyed, and adds, “We’re in love, man.”

  UGHHHHH, what the hell is wrong with this summer?

  We pull up to the movie theater just in time to see Abby and Nicky hugging like long-lost friends under the marquee.

  “Must be a friend day,” EJ observes.

  Abby looks super cute, so I pop a wheelie into standing and give her a painful kiss. “S’up?”

  Abby notices my busted-up mug and gasps. Finally. Thank you.

  Nicky’s arms are folded when she snidely says, “You’re late!”

  I look at my watch and see that she is absolutely right . . . We’re one minute late. I glance up from my watch and sigh, “You gotta be kid—”

  Abby shuts me up by touching my bruised face and asking, “How’s your face, baby?”

  I flash a wincing smile because I was just referred to as “baby” for the first time since I was an actual “baby.”

  “It’s killing us!” Nicky laughs like a horse and punches EJ in the chest.

  EJ laughs his ass off at the lame joke his whore made, so I seethe, “Wow, that joke was funny . . . in sixth grade.”

  I cannot believe those two have had sex!

  “Be nice,” Abby says, grabbing my hand.

  Nicky looks at EJ’s bike, then at her manicure, and snickers. “I don’t know why I thought when you said that you were ‘riding bikes,’ that you meant motorcycles. Of course you boys only have Big Wheels.”

  I ball up my fists to end this double-date disaster, when Abby jumps in to defend us. “Bicycles are way cooler than motorcycles. You get exercise and peace and quiet, and you’re not destroying the environment.”

  “And it’s not illegal for us to ride them,” I add.

  Abby finally asks, “What movie do you guys want to see?”

  “Cheer! The Musical!” Nicky barks.

  “Yeah right,” I snort.

  Nicky screeches, “EJ?!” in protest.

  As if my best friend would side with her over me and see friggin’ Cheer! The Musical!

  EJ looks at Nicky’s boobs and then explains to my Nikes, “Carter, um, Hilary Idaho plays the head cheerleader. She was always your favorite Get Up Gang member. . . .”

  My left eye pops open for the first time in two days. “I do not, nor have I ever had, a favorite Get Up Gang member!”

  The Get Up Gang was this morning show on the Kidz Channel that Lynn used to like, so therefore I watched. It was about this band of kids who lived in a cool clubhouse/ loft and sang corny edited versions of gangster rap songs and worked out elaborate dance routines to them. I remember kind of digging a Halloween number, “99 Problems but a Witch Ain’t One,” but Lynn stopped watching when the gang took a field trip to Iowa, and they put on overalls and cowboy hats and proceeded to assassinate the old 2 Live Crew song “Me So Horny” by turning it into “Me So Corny.” That was too much. The show was really popular, though, and those guys were everywhere for a while: magazines, cereal boxes . . . America’s Most Wanted. This one kid, Tito, who wore an eye patch, died of a drug overdose, and they just replaced him with another one-eyed guy named Tito, like we wouldn’t notice. They all seem so cheesy and happy on the show, but in real life they’re always getting arrested or going to rehab. Every episode has a moral about “abstinence” or “truth and justice in the hood,” but it’s tough to sell honesty and chastity when mug shots and sex tapes keep coming out.

  EJ is still pushing Nicky’s agenda when he totally sells me out. “Carter had a poster of Hilary Idaho in his room!”

  “My sister!” I bark. “That was Lynn’s poster, and she had it in the bathroom to work on her makeup techniques!”

  I did love that poster, though, because Hilary Idaho was super cute wearing a private-school-girl outfit and leaning back on the teacher’s desk. Her belly button was exposed, and I would get lost in it for hours. But that was years ago, and she was not my favorite Get Up Gang member. I actually liked Zac-Michael Wienus (lead singer and youngest of the Wienus Bros), because he was the smart-ass on the show and he didn’t do all that silly mugging for the camera that all the Kidz Channel kids do. . . . But I’m not going to get into that with these people. He’s Hilary’s boyfriend, and his mug shot was just on the cover of US Weekly. He had this cool smirk on his face, like, “Whatever.”

  “I’m not seeing some refried cheesefest about singing cheerleaders.”

  Then Abby pipes up. “I guess Cheer! The Musical wouldn’t be so bad. I’ll probably have to teach some of the songs at drama camp, so . . .”

  I shake my head and exhale my contempt when Abby kisses my bruised cheek and whispers, “We’ll double feature C. B. Down’s movie, Genoa Eyes, okay?”

  I give her a wink, because I’ve been working on my winks, and ask the ticket girl for two student tickets and where they keep their crackers.

  “What crackers?” she asks.

  “The crackers I’m gonna need to stomach this cheesy movie.”

  EJ busts up, but then looks at Nicky to see if it was funny or not. Turns out it wasn’t, so he stops laughing and shakes his head at me in disappointment.

  Abby grabs my hand and asks, “Can I buy you some popcorn to cut the cheese?” A fart joke! How cool is she? (I may have farted during a movie last year, and it might have been so nasty that it caused her to barf.) I can’t even fake being pissed off at her. I squeeze her hand and say, “There won’t be any cheese cutting at this movie, and we’ll need the popcorn as a prop for the double feature.”

  As soon as the lights go down, EJ and Nicky start making out. I’d make a move on Abby, but my face couldn’t handle it. She probably does want to watch this crap for the songs and stuff, so I shouldn’t just reach over and grab some boob . . . like EJ is doing before the opening credits! At a G-rated movie, he’s over there making porno grunting noises. I nudge him and tell him to “Shhh!” but it doesn’t do any good.

  The movie starts out just as you’d expect. Cheerleaders are singing and dancing. Everyone’s happy to be alive and smiling all over the place. Zac-Michael Wienus is the lead guy, and he’s supposed to be the stud football player. (A hundred-pound gay-wad with a floppy hairdo and lip gloss.) On the Merrian High football team he’d get his ass handed to him if he shimmied under the center’s butt and started gyrating his hips around and rapping about “scoring.” I recognize all of the dudes from Kidz Channel shows. They’re doing cartwheels over each other, and no one is smashing into each other properly. They’re throwing guys into the air, and the opposing team is catching them to the beat. It’s completely unrealistic and totally ridiculous and . . . I absolutely love it! I wish I could be on their football team instead of mine. Practice would be so much more fun. I’d be the best singing, flipping, linebacker/kicker of all time! Abby catches me bobbing my head to this song “Go! Fight! Win!” so I make a face and mouth, “Sooo lame.” She laughs because she knows I’m a goof and she digs me anyway.

  I guess I haven’t watched enough Kidz Channel lately because Hilary Idaho has blossomed in the bra! EJ’s busy right now, but we’ll discuss this development privately, at great length, very soon. She’s so hot! Tig ol’ bitties, long hair and tan skin, and the girl can dance her ass off. She sings really great except for when she belts out a word like “Win” and adds fifteen extra syllables, so it becomes, “Weeeeiiiiiaaaahhhheeeeeiiiiiaaahhhhhuuuuunnnna!!!” The movie finishes up in exactly ninety minutes (so they can stick it on TV in six months) with the football stud, Zac-Michael, joining the cheerleading squad and helping them prevail in the national cheer championships. He hooks up with Hilary (just kissing, of course), a
nd then they wrap it all up with a jazzier version of “Go! Fight! Win!” The picture freezes on the cheerleading squad in mid-gayness, standing on each other’s shoulders and smiling like the happiest people on earth. Zac and Hilary are holding a trophy, kissing. The credits start to roll, but the first thing that pops up reads, “A Kidz Production!” Abby and I share a look of dread as the logo slowly rolls up the screen.

  The lights come on, and EJ’s mouth is all red and swollen like he’s been assaulted by a vacuum cleaner. He has lipstick all over his face, neck, and ears.

  “Jeez, Nicky, did you reapply?” Abby asks, handing EJ a Kleenex.

  Parents with strollers are glaring at us as they walk out because of the lewd acts that were performed in our row. EJ still looks kind of lost as we step out of the theater. He points to a poster and suggests, “Yo, we should see Fart Knockers next!”

  “No, we shouldn’t,” Nicky declares. “I have got to see Cheer! again!”

  EJ’s eyes sadly lower, and I smile. Abby tells them that they’re on their own. “I need to see something smart, or my brain will fall out.”

  “Yeah, good call,” I say as if I’m worried about my brain too.

  5. THE ROCKET SHIP QUESTION

  Waiting in line at the snack bar, Abby summarizes the article I was supposed to read about C. B. Down’s film, Genoa Eyes. I think she was saying something about how rare it is for a first-time director to win the Cannes Film Festival, but she put her hand inside the back pocket of my Levi’s as she was explaining it all, so I got a little sidetracked. Anyway, she paid for popcorn, Cherry Coke, and Milk Duds for our next screening. How awesome is she?

  We casually stroll into the empty theater, and I ask, “Are you sure we got the time right?”

  But the lights dim a few seconds later and the opening credits say, “Written and directed by C. B. Down.” How cool is that? A guy that I’ve been in the same room with! A guy that went to my high school and saw me perform in the spring play . . . wrote and directed the most boring movie of all time! Oh my God. Most of it is in French or Russian, but they don’t type out what’s being said like they do in the other foreign movies that Abby has dragged me to. Ten minutes into the story, and I have a pretty good idea why we’re alone. Abby must have misread the article, because the only award this thing should have won was the Trash Can Film Festival. I wonder if she told me how bad this movie was going to SUCK when I was spacing off in the snack bar line. The only thing more depressing than the violin music that plays over everything . . . is the nonexistent story line. It starts out with a guy shooting up on the bathroom floor of a crack motel in some foreign country. Then it flashes back to a time before his life was so screwed up and he had a hot girlfriend, but she only speaks Russian . . . or French (whatever they speak in the Bourne movies) so all they can do is have angry sex. Which would be awesome if they actually showed anything. This movie is going to give art films a bad name because you only see the action for a second or two before they cut to a shadow on the wall or a bird in the windowsill or something. He gets drunk a lot, chain-smokes cigarettes, and out of nowhere . . . she leaves him and joins the circus! He tries to find her but doesn’t speak the Bourne language, and he doesn’t seem to know where he is, so he can’t find her. Then he goes back to the motel, and I think it turns out he’s been dead the whole time. Roll credits! Awesome movie; where do they give out the awards?

  I only think the guy died, because after watching this non-entertainment for two hours and twenty-three minutes, a guy taps me on the shoulder, shines his flashlight in my eyes, and asks to see our tickets.

  I look over at him with my mangled left eye and bark, “You gotta be kiddin’ me!”

  He’s startled by my appearance and stumbles backward before mumbling, “W-w-we didn’t sell any tickets for this movie, so you obviously don’t have them.”

  I jump up like I’ve been paroled from jail on a false arrest and ask, “Where the hell were you two hours ago with your ticket-sales info and flashlight?!”

  “Sir, you have to go.”

  “We’re gone,” I say as Abby grabs my hand, and we walk up the aisle.

  I can tell Abby is pissed, too, because she squeezes my hand and sounds like a frog when she mutters, “Unbelievable!”

  We step outside the theater, and I see that she really is crying, so I instinctively give her a hug and say, “It’s okay, it’s finally over.”

  Her face is pressed into my collarbone when she asks, “Are you kidding?”

  “Yeah, I’m joking. . . . It’s probably gonna keep going for another hour or two.”

  She laughs. “Oh, for a second I thought that you didn’t like the movie.”

  “Nooo, why would you think that? Who would not like it? I friggin’ hated that movie.”

  She pulls back and asks, “Wait, are you kidding?”

  “I do joke a lot, but I’m dead serious when I tell you that I’d like a two-hour refund on my life.”

  Her face is a combination of shock and disgust that I’d only expect to see if she were watching me eat a hot dog out of the trash. “You are so immature,” she scoffs as she marches toward the ticket window.

  Immature? Where the hell did that come from? I follow her to the box office, where she demands a student ticket for the next showing.

  Genoa Eyes is rated R, so I make eye contact with the ticket guy and shake my head—“No”—flash ten fingers, then five, point to Abby, and mouth the words, “She’s FIFTEEN!”

  He asks to see her ID, and she flips around too fast for me to drop my hands, so I shake both of them around and say, “Jazz hands!”

  She doesn’t laugh, so I try, “There goes their last chance to sell a ticket for that stinker. W-w-what do you want to do now?”

  Her eyes narrow, and she storms off through the parking lot. I rush to unlock my bike, but stop to laugh when I see EJ’s BMX still secured to the rack. I know that poor bastard is stuck in there watching Cheer! The Musical for the third time.

  I roll up behind Abby, thinking about how I could seem more mature real quick, but she’s wearing short shorts and taking really big steps. Her thighs are really strong, and they’re jiggling provocatively as they rub together. . . . Anything intelligent I was thinking was just deleted. I don’t even know where I am. I’m sure I was brewing up something super insightful that would make her forget about why she’s mad at me, but maybe not. She’s certainly striding away from me . . . kind of strutting, actually. Her booty is bouncing to a beat that makes me want to dance! Boom, boom, boom, boom. That damn “Go! Fight! Win!” song is burned into my brain, and it’s burrowing into my loins, so I ride up beside her and bump her butt with my hip. I take my hands off the handlebars and start to ride circles around her. I clap my hands three times before cheering, “Y’all ready? OKAY! Let’s GOOOO! Fight! Win. . . !” (Clap clap.) “Say it a-gain! And then we GOOOO! Fight! Win! Until we . . .” (I don’t remember the words.) “Something, Gooo! Fight! Weeeeiiiiaaaaauuuuueeeeeiiiiaana again!”

  From behind I see her back shaking, so I pull up to confirm that she’s laughing and not crying from embarrassment.

  I keep riding, hands free, and act out the cheer/dance/clap routine as best I can. “Ready fo’ a show, let’s GO! With all ya might, let’s FIGHT! That’s the end and we WIN—”

  Abby sings with me, “Until we Go! Fight! Win . . . again!” She jumps into the air and does the splits like it’s no big deal.

  “Wow, nice herkie!” I laugh.

  “How do you know what a herkie is?” she asks.

  “Oh, I was forced to sit through an entire movie about cheerleading one time.”

  She smiles.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t like your movie,” I say seriously.

  “No, I was upset and blew it out of proportion. I’m on my period so I’m all emotional.”

  Uhhh, we have officially taken a step . . . a personal step, a gross step, one I could have done without, but I am able to have conversations about many differe
nt subjects and want to prove that I’m not so immature after all. I try not to make a face as I add, “Oh, I-I-I know all about periods and tampons and PMSD. My dad refers to my sister’s periods as ‘exclamation points.’”

  She, too, seems uncomfortable with our current topic. She raises her eyebrows and says, “That’s a good story, Carter.”

  After an awkward moment we bust out laughing, and she finally hops on my axle pegs for a ride home. I think we’re back on track so I divert our course through Merrian Park. The sun is going down and the huge park is almost deserted as she attempts to explain why she liked C. B. Down’s award-winning/terrible movie.

  “They weren’t in a foreign country. . . . The language barrier was just a metaphor. He’d lost his ability to communicate.”

  A lightbulb goes off in my mind, and I’m glad Abby is riding behind me and can’t see it. She is so much smarter than me! “So he was just losing his mind throughout the story? I get it, but I’m still not entertained by it. I wouldn’t see Cheer! The Musical again if you paid me, but it was at least amusing.”

  She asks, “Could you believe Hilary Idaho’s boobs?”

  “Yeah, where did those come from?”

  “The silicone valley,” she replies judgmentally.

  “You think they’re fake?” I ask, and offer up a reverse high five for the quick boob joke.

  She slaps my hand and says, “Totally! I read all about her surgery in US Weekly. She was completely flat in her last movie and then all the sudden she’s a C cup? Come on!”

  I don’t have much to say about Hilary Idaho’s movies, but I love the fact that Abby and I are discussing cup sizes. “Isn’t she our age?”

  Abby replies, “She’s sixteen! What kind of message does that send to her fans?”