by Brent Runyon
3. Gum
Fucking great.
The bus is outside. Jesus, it's a short bus, one of the ones that they take retarded kids around in. I walk out and the bus driver opens the doors for me. There are only two other kids, both about my age. There's one girl in the front seat who's wearing a helmet and looking out the window. What the fuck.
The bus driver asks me a question. “Where you going?”
“Dominion.”
“All right, stay seated, young man.”
“Okay.”
I walk toward the back of the bus because that's usually where the cool kids sit, but what's the point of sitting in the back by myself? I haven't been on a bus in so long. It smells like motor oil and asparagus.
After a couple of miles, we stop and the retard gets off the bus. I stand up and start to get off too, but the bus driver says, “Sit down. Not your stop, young man.”
“Okay.” I sit back down.
Michael Mager meets me in the waiting room, and we get buzzed into the main part of the building. He leads me into a little room with four other kids. They all look a little older than me, two girls and two boys, and they all look like trouble.
Michael says, “You guys, I'd like you to meet our newest student. Brent, this is the group. Group, this is Brent. I'll leave you to your own introductions.”
A chubby nurse who looks a little like that actress Shelley Winters comes over and shakes my hand. “Hi, Brent. I'm Suzanne. I'm the nurse around here.” She's got that kind of syrupy Southern accent I can't stand.
“I take care of the day-to-day things, so I'll dole out your medication when you need it, okay?” I don't take any medication. Shouldn't she know that?
I shake her hand. A tall skinny kid with a green hooded sweatshirt and hair falling in his face comes over. He says, “Hey, I'm Owen. What's up?”
I say, “What's up.” He looks like a skateboarder, I wonder why he's here.
The other boy stands up. He looks like he might lift weights. “Yo, wussup, man? I'm Steve.”
“Hey.” Oh, I see, he's white, but he acts like he's black. He looks tough, I better stay away from him.
A short girl in a long hippie skirt and dirty hair comes over. “Hi, I'm Calliope.”
“Hi.” She's kind of pretty.
The other girl comes over. “I'm Christina.” I don't know what to make of her. She's pretty, but she's dressed like a real slob in torn jeans and a sweatshirt.
We all sit around in a circle in orange cafeteria chairs. The girls sit next to each other on one side of the circle and the boys sit on the other side with a chair between them. I sit down next to the nurse.
Suzanne, the nurse, says, “So, Christina, you were saying?”
“Yeah, I was at this party this weekend, and it was just, like, you know, crazy. All these people were so fucked up, and I was like, should I get fucked up? And there was this kid there, and he took me into a room and showed me, like, forty sheets of acid.”
Suzanne says, “Did you take any?”
“No. That's what I'm saying. I was like, should I get high? And then I was like, no.”
What is she talking about? I mean, I've heard of acid, that's like LSD, but I didn't even know it came in sheets. This girl is fucked up.
Suzanne says, “Well, I think that's really good, Christina. Does anyone else want to tell us about their weekend? Steve?”
“Yeah, so I was, like, hanging out on my block, and this kid who's like a total punk ass came over, and he was like, ‘Wussup?' and I was like, ‘Nothin'.' Then he was acting fucking whack, man. Man, if I was strapped, man, I would have popped a cap in his ass.” He laughs, pulls up his shirt to show where the imaginary gun would be, pulls it out, and pretends to shoot it.
Everybody laughs except for me and the nurse. I can't believe this shit. I'm hanging out with a bunch of druggies and gangsters.
At lunchtime, they open the doors and let us walk up the street to the Hardee's all by ourselves. I didn't know we were going to be able to do this. Owen and Calliope walk ahead of the rest of us. I wonder if they're dating. Christina, the druggie, comes over to me. “Hey,” she says.
“Hi.”
“What's up?”
“Nothing.”
“You in here for drugs?”
“What?”
“You in here for drugs?” I can't believe she asked me that. Do I look like a druggie? I thought it would be obvious.
“No.”
A big truck drives by us and blows out a cloud of black smoke. The air smells like gasoline. I used to love that smell.
She's not going to quit. “So, why are you here, then, if you're not here for drugs?”
“Um.” I don't say anything for almost a minute, trying to think of what to say. She's not asking what happened to me, she's asking why I'm in the hospital. She's still waiting for an answer. I say, “I don't know.”
“You don't know?”
“No.”
“Okay. Want a cigarette?”
“Um, okay.” I've never really smoked a cigarette before, except for that one I smoked out by the shed that time, but everybody else here smokes, so what the hell, I might as well try it.
Christina lights the lighter and holds it out for me. I put the cigarette between my fingers and hold it over the flame. She says, “No, put it in your mouth.”
“Oh yeah.” I put the cigarette in my mouth and lean over the flame, but it's really hot, and I pull away. I try again, but I keep thinking it's going to set my hair on fire or my gloves or something. I pull away from the flame again and she pushes it closer to my face and I pull away again. Jesus, that's hot. She's just staring at me.
Finally I get the end of it lit and suck a little smoke into my lungs. I cough it out. The smoke is so hot and burning me on the inside, why would anyone want to do this? God, why would anybody do this? My hands are shaking.
I pretend to smoke it for a while and then put it out in the ashtray outside of the Hardee's.
When I get home, I go right to the basement and lie on the little bed we've got set up there. It's so cool and quiet down here. It feels like a little habitat for a snake or something.
I grab my new book, 101 Amazing Card Tricks, that Mom got me at the bookstore. I find one that looks good and pretty easy. I separate all the cards and start practicing. I'm getting good at this.
Mom calls me up for dinner when Dad gets home, and they start asking me all about my day. I don't really have much to tell them.
Mom says, “So how was your first day?”
“Fine.”
“What'd you do?”
“I don't know, stuff.”
Dad says, a little gruffly, “Like what?”
“I don't know, sat around.”
I can tell they're getting frustrated, but I don't really care. I mean, come on, fuck them. It's my life.
I get up to get some more milk and Dad asks me to get him another beer. I go over and pour it for him, and then I realize I shouldn't be standing this close to him. He looks up at me and asks, “Have you been smoking?”
“What?”
“Have you been smoking?”
“No.”
“Have you?”
“No.”
Fuck. I drink my milk standing up and go back downstairs.
I want to show my new card trick to Michael Mager. He's into magic too. He's great at the disappearing coin trick. I mean, you really think it's in the hand that it's not in.
My trick is simple, it doesn't take all that much doing, but it's still a good trick. To do the trick, first I had to separate all the black cards from the red cards, so it's really easy to tell which one is his because his is the only black card in with all the red ones.
Anyway, here goes.
“Pick a card, any card.” My voice is shaking. I forgot what else I was going to say.
“All right.” He picks one and looks at it. He gives me a funny look as he puts it back in the deck, like he knows exactly what I'm do
ing.
Now I turn over the deck and start looking through them.
I say, “Is that your card?”
“Yup. Pretty good.”
“Yeah?” My hands are shaking as I push the cards back together.
“One thing, though.”
“Yeah?”
“Try not to make it so obvious that the red and black cards are separated next time.”
Fuck.
Dad's outside raking leaves. We always rake them into a brown plastic trash can and then I get in and stomp on them. I told him to call for me when he needs me. Mom's making brownies from a box. I'm just sitting on my ass, watching American Gladiators. Nitro is trying to shoot this guy with a tennis ball gun. The guy is trying to shoot the bull's-eye behind Nitro's head, but he doesn't aim long enough to even come close. Nitro is pretty accurate with the tennis ball gun. I wish I had one of those.
I hear Rusty barking like crazy and then Dad calls out, “Brenner, come here.”
“Wait a second.”
“Come here!” Why does he always have to yell when it's not even an emergency? I fucking hate that.
I go outside to see what he's yelling about. He put Rusty on her leash, but she's still barking like crazy. He's standing on the fence looking down at something in one of the big brown trash cans. I climb up there next to him, I bet we look like those guys in the rodeo getting ready to ride the bulls.
At the bottom of the trash can is a possum, curled up into a little ball.
I say, “Is it dead?”
“I don't know.”
“What are we going to do?”
“Let's see if it's alive.”
Dad picks up a tennis ball from the yard, one that we throw around for the dog, and holds it over the possum. When my dad gets excited, he starts talking in this high-pitched voice with a funny accent that sounds like he's from Switzerland.
“All right, Brenner, get ready to run because when I drop this thing, man, we don't know what's gonna happen, budder.”
“Okay.” I laugh at Dad's accent, but I am actually scared.
Dad drops the tennis ball and we both jump back before it hits. The possum screeches, and my dad and I yelp too.
“What do you think, Brenner?”
“I don't know.”
“Well, he's still alive.”
“Yeah, what's he doing?”
“He's pretending to be sick so we'll leave him alone. I'm not going to have a possum living in my trash can.”
I follow Dad down into the basement. He grabs a wood splitter, which is just this heavy metal triangle you're supposed to use for chopping wood.
I say, “What are we going to do?”
“Get rid of it.”
“Why?”
“So it doesn't get Rusty. And so it doesn't get you guys.”
I pick up a bunch of weights that we have lying around. I don't think we've ever used these things for anything except maybe holding down science projects while the glue is drying.
We carry them up and stand on the railing with the weights and the wood splitter. The possum is still there. He hasn't moved. I wonder what he's doing.
Dad holds the wood splitter over the possum, lines it up, and lets it go. I pull my head back before it hits, but I can tell by the sound that he missed. It just bounced off the bottom of the trash can.
“Missed it.”
“Give me a weight.”
I hand him a five-pounder, which is pretty heavy, especially if you drop it on something's head.
Dad drops it. This time it hit. The sound is terrible.
The thing is squirming around in the bottom of the trash can. We hurt it. Oh God, we hurt it. We should stop. We should stop.
“Dad, shouldn't we leave it alone?”
“We can't stop now, Brenner, we already hurt it. We've got to put it out of its misery.” He picks up the ten-pounder, holds it over his head, and lets it drop. I hear a squish, but no squealing. It's over.
Craig's home for the weekend. We're all sitting around the table, eating Dad's famous pancakes. He always makes breakfast on the weekends. His pancakes and his French toast are so good, and he makes the best coffee cake.
We each have a section of the paper. Dad is reading the front page. Mom is reading the Parade magazine section. Craig is reading sports. I like to read the comics on Sunday because they're in color.
I see something out of the corner of my eye. The silver Get Well Soon balloon just came out of my room. It's at the top of the stairs. Now it's drifting down the stairs.
I say, “Look.”
They all look up from their sections of the newspaper. Craig says, “Weird.”
The balloon comes down the stairs, turns the corner, and comes straight toward me.
I feel so calm. I can't explain it, I feel so calm all over my body right now. I know what the balloon is going to do. It's just going to circle around my head and go back upstairs, that's all. Nothing else. It's okay.
It looks so alive the way it's gliding along, moving in slow motion, working its way over to me.
It's coming around the breakfast table, not touching anyone else. It finally gets to me. The string circles around my head. I can feel it lightly touching my hair.
And then the balloon goes back around the table, back up the stairs, and into my room.
Mom looks at me and says quietly, “That was your guardian angel checking up on you, making sure you're okay.”
“No, it wasn't.”
I run up the stairs and into my room. The balloon is there in the corner, just sitting there, not doing anything. There must have been a draft that carried it downstairs. Maybe it's leaking air. It could have been anything.
I'm sitting at Hardee's with the other kids from Dominion. They're so pathetic. All of them are total drug addicts, it's all they ever talk about. Christina says, “We were at this party and this guy was there. He was totally burnt out. I mean, like, totally gone. Somebody told me he went out into the rain with about forty hits of windowpane in his pocket, and it sank into his skin, and he's been tripping ever since.”
Owen says, “That's awesome. Before I got busted, I was hanging out at a friend's house, and this guy had the biggest bong. Dude, it was so big, you had to stand on a chair to take a hit.”
Calliope says, “If I could, I'd smoke pot forever and lie underneath the stars listening to the Dead.”
I think they know that I'm not like them. At first, they asked me questions about what happened to me. I told them I was in a house fire, but I don't think they believed me. Now they pretty much just ignore me. I don't care. I don't really have anything to say. Steve's getting released on Friday, and Owen might too. Christina just has to pass her drug test and then she's gone. I don't know about Calliope, I think she might get released sometime soon.
I've been working on a new card trick. It's a cool one because it always works and you don't really have to do anything.
I ask Michael Mager if he wants to see the trick. He does.
“Okay, now, I want you to pick a card from one of these three piles.” I can hear my voice shaking. Shit, that's embarrassing.
He says he's chosen the card. I say, “Okay, now, tell me which pile it's in.” He says the center pile. I grab the center pile and pull it toward me, but my hands are shaking. Why are my hands always shaking?
I turn all the cards over. The nine of clubs falls out of my hands. Fuck, I'm such a spaz.
I lay all the cards facedown on the table in four piles. I say, “Okay, now, point to two piles.”
He does, and I take them away. There are two piles left. I say, “Point to one pile.”
He does, and I take that one away. Now I say, “Point to two cards.” He does, and I take those away. There are two cards left. “Point to one card.”
He does. I say, “Turn it over.”
He does, and I can tell by his face that it's his card. Yes. Fucking yes.
All the other kids have been released. It's weird because no on
e made a big deal out of it. One day they just didn't show up. There's a new kid named Nick, and he's dressed like a skater, so I figure he's here for drugs. He's shy, so that's a relief. At least I won't have to talk to him.
Actually, he might be here for attempted suicide. It's hard to tell, but I noticed some bandages on his wrists. Maybe that was just a skateboarding injury. But there's something about him that's sad. I think it's the way he uses his hair like a screen to keep people from being able to see his eyes. I can relate to that.
I've been here at Dominion for one month and Michael Mager says that after a few more weeks, I'll be able to go back to regular high school. Jesus, that'll be scary.
I'll see all the people I know. And all the ones I don't know, and they'll all want to know what happened to me. Someone will probably shut me in a locker because I'm a freshman or beat me up, and then my skin grafts will break down and I'll have to go back into surgery and start the whole thing over again.
I'm lying on the bed in the basement. I notice a blue thing underneath the pool table.
Oh my God, it's a Smurf. We got these when we were little kids and they're still hanging around in the basement. That's so awesome. Look at him, it's Papa Smurf, the one with the beard.
My friend Jake and I used to come down here and hold matches under his head. God, poor Papa Smurf. One side of his face is all black and melted. Sometimes we used to light a can of Lysol and spray him with fire, like a flamethrower. And now look at him.
We also tore the arms off of Cobra Commander and put his head in a vise. We took Duke, from G.I. Joe, and twisted him around until his spine snapped. Now he's in two pieces. And then we set them on fire too.
Why did we do that? I can't remember why we used to always be so mean. It seemed like fun at the time, but now I can't remember why.
Every Wednesday, at Dominion, we do a big group therapy thing. Mom and Dad, and sometimes Craig, come and sit around with the other kids and their families. There's only one other kid here now, Nick, who's got the worst haircut I've ever seen. His bangs are so long he can almost fit them in his mouth, but the rest of his hair is shaved like a buzz cut.