The Rise and Fall of the Gallivanters

by M. J. Beaufrand

  And he wasn’t done yet. Evan turned to look at the congregation of teenage gawkers. They weren’t looking at me with my fucked-up face. They were looking at Sonia and her bloody arm in a way that made freak take on a whole new meaning.

  The Marr was right behind Evan, reaching for his dreads.

  He didn’t even see it.

  “And to the rest of you assholes, thanks for helping!” he said—spat—and flipped everyone off. Everyone in the whole school.

  Ev dragged me down the hall and out the door, where a Volkswagen Rabbit was idling in a No Parking zone. Jaime was behind the wheel. Evan opened the back of the Rabbit and shoved me in.

  “Can you park here?” I said, or tried to say. It came out a salty gurgle.

  Ev climbed into the shotgun seat and slammed the door behind him. “Go go go!”

  Jaime gunned the engine and peeled out of the parking lot. She honked a lot. She probably didn’t check her mirrors.

  I stared at her back. That was a lot of skin, and thin pink straps that looked too delicate to be a swimming suit. “Is that your bra? Where’s your shirt?”

  “It’s wrapped around your face, doofus,” Evan said.

  And even though the whole world was throbbing, I smiled. Evan used my pain to get a girl to strip. “Nice one,” I said.

  “Shut up,” Jaime said. “And lie on your side so you don’t choke.”

  I did what she said, and pretty soon there was a flood of red pooling on the upholstery.

  “I’m getting your . . .”

  “Left left LEFT!” Ev yelled.

  Jaime made a sharp turn and my head hurled against the side door. I didn’t feel a thing.

  “Bleach won’t work on this,” I said, looking at the red pool under my head. “It’ll discolor—”

  “Get him to shut up,” Jaime spat.

  “Shut up,” Evan said.

  I heard the squeal of the brakes, smelled the burn of the rubber. We spun a doughnut and landed in front of Gresham Urgent Care. Then Ev leapt out and hauled my arm over his shoulder. My last sight before being manhandled into triage was of him and Jaime standing shoulder to shoulder. Jaime in a bra and miniskirt.

  In the exam room, a nurse poked my arm with something that was painful enough to make every pore in my body break out in a sweat. She ran a tube from my elbow to something hanging above my head.

  Evan’s dad, Dr. Tillstrom, came in, snapping on rubber gloves. He was a tall, lurching guy with receding blond hair. He wore glasses with little magnifiers on them. They made him look like a giant insect, his hands mandibles as they counted sharp tools on a tray. He sat on a rolling stool and skidded over to me.

  “What did you do?” Dr. Tillstrom said. I honestly didn’t know. But it had to be something, didn’t it? I always deserved something.

  He went on: “Whatever you’re into, you’d better be keeping my son out of it this time.” He lifted Jaime’s shirt from my face and nodded to a nurse, who started dabbing.

  “I should let you stay awake for this ’cause it’s gonna hurt, and I think someone should teach you a lesson. Lucky for you I’ve had my fill of watching young boys in pain.” Dr. Tillstrom nodded again to the nurse, who found a port in the hose going into my arm and stuck a syringe of thick clear liquid in it.

  I felt a cool tingling all over my body. It only lasted a second.

  Then I didn’t feel anything at all.

  The next thing I knew I was standing in the corner of the room, watching Dr. Tillstrom bark at a nurse about lost tissue. It wasn’t just that I’d stood up from where I was and walked over to the corner. I was standing there and I was on the exam table at the same time. Two places at once.

  I watched myself lying there. I saw the soles of my boots. I saw my hands tremor and shake as Dr. Tillstrom did something to my face, which was buried somewhere under a paper sheet. I wondered what the whole kerfuffle was about. Why was that poor kid so traumatized?

  That Noah didn’t hear Dr. Tillstrom say, “It’s all right. You’re going to be okay.”

  That Noah didn’t see Dr. Tillstrom raise his glasses and wipe something from an eye with his shirtsleeve.

  He stood up and flung some instrument into a bio-hazard sink. “I can’t do this,” he said to his nurse. “He’s too much like my own boy. Get Lewiston in here. I’ll take Dementia Woman next door.”

  Dr. Tillstrom snapped off his gloves, ripped the scrubs from his body, and lurched out of the room.

  I watched the Noah on the exam table relax. And why not? If pain meant forgiveness, this had to be worth multiple lifetimes of screwups.

  I don’t know how long I stood in the corner watching someone (Lewiston?) stitch up the poor idiot on the table before I realized I wasn’t alone. Something was brushing my shoulders. Lightly. Like down feathers. They were so gentle, so warm.

  I didn’t need to look to know that Ziggy was standing by my side.

  “How long have you been watching over me?” I said.

  “Today? Not long.”

  I remembered the night in Coffee Invasion, when Ziggy had said that the Marr could have half-digested Evan, but a part of him could still be safe at home.

  “Did it get me? Am I going to start disappearing?”

  Ziggy shook his head sadly. “No, lad. You get to stay. I don’t know if it’s a blessing or not.”

  Together, we watched Lewiston sew up my nose. Clear liquid dripped from a bag that hung above my body through a tube that ran into my left elbow.

  Still didn’t feel a thing.

  “You know this isn’t as bad as it gets. There’s much worse ahead,” Ziggy said. His voice made doom sound like a song.

  I remembered Dr. Tillstrom throwing his instrument in the sink, saying, “I can’t do this. He’s too much like my own boy.”

  “I know,” I told Ziggy now. “I don’t like to think about it.”

  “You’re safe here. For the moment at least,” he said. “Go ahead and let yourself think.”

  And I did. I let it all wash over me. What I knew was happening and what was about to happen. I knew what was coming wouldn’t be as fast as tearing my nose. It would creep and retreat, creep and retreat. Some days I’d feel like we were winning, but we wouldn’t in the end.

  There. I admitted it.

  Ziggy wasn’t here to sing—he was here to help us let go.

  As soon as I understood that, it didn’t matter so much. And I understood more about what was important.

  Images came back to me in reverse. First of all, there was Jaime in her bra and miniskirt. I suppose that should’ve shocked me, seeing her half-dressed. But the impressive part was that she had actually given me the shirt off her back.

  I was pretty sure that woman wouldn’t have approved, but Jay did it anyway.

  Then there was the way Crock was completely useless until something needed organizing.

  I thought about Sonia’s rattail of a braid, and the way it smacked me across the nose when we made out. Being with her was worth every mark on my body.

  I remembered a much younger Cilla, who, before she started calling me nimrod, had hummed me to sleep when our parents fought. I remember how, even though she couldn’t carry a tune, she’d made music that drove back the night.

  And I remembered Evan. Hoisting me to my feet, dragging me to a No Parking zone when he looked like he didn’t have the strength to drag a hamster. The way he’d flipped off everyone in the entire school and told Sonia I was suing her ass—which, by the way, I had no intention of doing.

  Then I remembered Evan the way he used to be, before his appendectomy, before everything about him filled me with dread, starting with his hair. He used to be a good-looking kid. When the two of us stood side by side, you could hear the girls whisper, “Evan’s going to be the heartbreaker.” And I wasn’t ticked off, because I knew it was true. All that silky blond hair, cheekbones so high they looked like bookshelves, his lopsided smile that made it seem he was flirting even when he wasn’t.

&
nbsp; I remembered the two of us playing Mafia in seventh grade, and Evan undoing all the damage I’d done.

  He was always undoing my damage.

  “What’s happening?” the nurse asked Dr. Lewiston, from what seemed like miles away.

  “It looks like he’s crying,” Dr. Lewiston said. “Up the sedation. This isn’t supposed to hurt.” The nurse found a fat syringe and emptied it into the tube in my arm.

  I felt a tugging in my gut. I was going back and I didn’t want to. I wanted to stay there, with Ziggy. That pain belonged to some other kid, the one with the fucked-up face.

  I grabbed Ziggy’s forearm. I felt the soft material of his suit. “Promise me you’ll stay with me through the worst of it. Promise you won’t leave.”

  The tugging in my gut got harder.

  I looked at Ziggy, waiting for him to say something. But he never did. Instead, he showed me what I knew had been there all along.

  Wings. Giant golden wings sprouting from the back of his perfect golden suit. They twinkled in the light—even here in this room where the overheads were so harsh and blue they hummed.

  Ziggy looked so perfect, so unmarred, he might as well have been painted on Jojo’s ceiling.

  The tugging got harder.

  “Help me,” I begged him. “I’m going to fall.”

  All Ziggy could do was watch.

  “HE’S COMING AROUND,” I HEARD.

  I looked up. I saw crappy acoustic tiles. Watermarks. Humming fluorescent lights. I was on the exam table.

  I lifted my head and tried to see into the upper corner of the room. I was looking for something, but I didn’t know what.

  “Easy, son,” Dr. Tillstrom said. He was looking at something on a chart. His mask was gone. No insect glasses. No sharp tools.

  Hadn’t he pulled some kind of switcheroo on me? Traded me to another doctor? It seemed like he had, but I couldn’t remember that either.

  It didn’t matter. He was here now.

  I looked at the upper corner again. I was convinced something important had just happened. I could hear it, I could feel it, but I couldn’t quite remember it.

  “Was Ziggy here?” I mumbled.

  “Ziggy?” he looked at his nurse. “Not that I know of, son. But there’s a collection of people in the waiting room for you. Evan. Jaime. Your mom. Cilla. Sonia. Sonia’s dad. Sonia’s dad’s attorney.”

  I gently touched my face. I felt gauze, and smooth tape that stretched from cheek to cheek. And underneath, lips. Stubble growing on my chin, but a gaping abyss where my nose used to be.

  “Can’t feel my nose.”

  “Don’t worry. It’s still there. We numbed it up a bit, is all. I think you’ll be pleased with the scar. And if you’re not, you can always use makeup. I’m sure your sister has plenty to spare.”

  He was joking, but he was working too hard at it. The left side of his face sagged.

  I’d lost count of the number of times Dr. Tillstrom had fixed me up. This one seemed to have wrecked him in some way. I could see it in the stoop in his back, the circles under his eyes.

  He knew something important. Something that I was supposed to remember, but I couldn’t.

  He made a note on a chart. “Have you considered pressing charges?”

  “Against who?”

  “Sonia. Evan and Jaime told me all about it. I don’t think anyone would blame you if you want to put that girl in McLaren. The whole school saw what she did. You have plenty of witnesses.”

  “You mean juvie? Sonia doesn’t belong in juvie.”

  “She belongs somewhere, son. What she did to you was no accident.”

  “It wasn’t like that. I called Jaime a bitch. I deserved this.”

  He pointed a finger at me. He seemed happy to be in parent mode again. “That’s your father talking. You deserved nothing.”

  “But why? How can you be so sure?”

  He seemed to consider this. Then he sat on his rolling chair and scooted over to me. “Earlier today, when Sonia was ripping up your face, did you defend yourself? Try to hit back?”

  I didn’t say anything. What could I say? I remembered looking up at her smirk, her bloody hand, like a horror film.

  Dr. Tillstrom found something in my expression that satisfied him. “I didn’t think so. You never do. Unless you’re defending someone else.”

  I didn’t tell him about how I’d pushed Cilla two days ago. Let him think I was harmless when I was outside a mosh pit. He already had enough worries. “How’s Evan?” I said before I thought better of it.

  He opened his mouth like a fish. He looked like he was spilling over with something, words that twisted his gut in a knot and made him look like an old man. Then he clamped his mouth shut. He stood, leaned over, and kissed me on the forehead. “I love you, Noah,” he said. He patted my arm and went to get my mom.

  I didn’t know if he was talking to me, or if he forgot I wasn’t Evan (a lot of people got us confused because we were always together), or if he just needed to say the words. It didn’t matter. Because when he patted my arm, it was like the lightest brushing of wings.

  My visitors trotted through the exam room mostly in ones and twos that afternoon, kind of like animals on an ark.

  Mom and Cilla came first. “I told you, nimrod. I told you that you and that girl were a bad idea, and look what happened. But no, you never listen.”

  “That’s enough, Cilla,” Mom said. She had this short figure-skater hair that made her look competent. “I’ll pick us up some tacos on the way home, okay, Noah?”

  “Maybe not. They’re all crunchy, so they might hurt to chew,” Cilla said. “Maybe a pizza. With mushrooms. And maybe sautéed onions? They’re soft.”

  I hated onions, but I didn’t remind them. They wanted to do something for me, so I let them do it.

  Next came Sonia and Mr. Krajicek and Mr. Krajicek’s attorney.

  Mr. Krajicek was the most annoying man in Portland. He was the guy with the string of appliance stores known for the most annoying commercials on late-night TV. Nod off watching Saturday Night Live, and you hear this bam bam bam! And there’s Mr. Krajicek and his military flat-top, pretending to bang on the screen. “Wake up! Wake up! It’s the Craig Krajicek Wake-Up Sale!”

  He shook my hand when he came in, but his smile was taut. “I want you to know that I’m not like the rest of the parents in the community who think you’re a useless punker. I’ve always liked you, son. I’m sure we can take care of this incident in a way that’s win-win.”

  I hated that asshole. He thought he could manipulate me, but he brought his lawyer just in case. He thought he could manipulate Sonia too, which was worse. I didn’t have to see him after today, but Sonia would have to deal with him for the rest of her life.

  “Sonia? Don’t you have something to say to Noah?” he said. Sonia was sitting in an orange plastic chair, arms crossed, swinging her shit-kicker boots. She was going to get it later when no one was looking, and she knew it. She’d already decided she didn’t care.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, but she glared at me as she said it.

  Mr. Krajicek’s smile got tighter. “Do you want to try that again, young lady?”

  “I’m sure we can resolve this so it’s a win-win situation,” I said before he could browbeat her more.

  “I’m listening,” he said. Behind him, his attorney sat down and opened a briefcase.

  “First of all, pay my medical bills.”

  “Your mother tells me you have insurance . . .”

  “Pay my medical bills.”

  Mr. Krajicek looked at his attorney, who nodded.

  “Yes, yes, I think we can do that. If you’ll just sign here.”

  “There’s more,” I said.

  Mr. Krajicek was running out of patience. I didn’t care. I had the power and he knew it. “Pay Sonia’s tuition to . . . where is it you want to go again, Sonia?”

  “USC.”

  Mr. Krajicek’s smile dropped. “I don’t think
you’re quite aware what’s at stake, son. Sonia and I have talked about this. Tuition is expensive. She’s always known that if she wanted to go to college, she’d have to pay her own way. Perhaps on the GI Bill. It didn’t do me any harm. In fact, it built character.” He flexed a bicep. Even under his shirtsleeve I could see that whatever muscle had been there had long since turned to flab.

  “Uh-huh,” I said. “You and I both know how well that would work with your daughter.”

  “All right.” He sat down and steepled his hands. “How do you suggest I come up with that kind of money?”

  “You have assets,” I said. “Liquidate them.”

  Mr. Krajicek said, “You’re young, so I’m willing to cut you some slack. But my accounts are more complex than you can—”

  “There’s the condo in Sun Valley,” Sonia said. A light shadow crossed her face. Like the flapping of a wing.

  “The condo? You know how much that means to your mother and me.” Mr. Krajicek’s face turned red. I didn’t care what brand of bully he was right then, but he was. A bully. And I didn’t have any patience for bullies.

  Mr. Krajicek’s attorney pulled on his sleeve. “Craig? A word, if you please?”

  The two of them left for the waiting room. Sonia stood up to follow, but at the last minute came over to me. “I’m sorry about what I did to your nose,” she said, and she meant it. “I hope you understand, I was just trying to defend . . . No. But you and I have this history . . . No, that won’t work either, will it? Even in mosh pits there’s someone around to pick you up if you fall.

  “You know what I’m really ashamed of? How easy it was. It took a while, and Evan was yelling, but eventually I realized what I’d done.”

  “That’s okay. You’re built to beat on stuff.”

  “Just not you,” Sonia said. “I still hate you a little, but everyone knows you’ve been beaten enough already.”

  Huh. Kindness. I knew how much courage it took her to admit it. She would never be my girlfriend again, but she had stood up from that chair in the corner, and she had walked back to me. One more person reappearing in my life.

  “We’ll see you at Jojo’s tomorrow, right, Sonia? We’ve got work to do.”