Play Me Backwards

by Adam Selzer

  Stan was sitting on his throne. He surveyed the whole scene with a smile, and laughed triumphantly when I presented him with the white grape Slushee. Red lights flashed on the TV screen and lit up his face.

  “Well done, young minion,” he said, as he took it from my hands.

  “I guess we need another task now,” I said.

  “You want another one?”

  “I need something I can talk to her friends about besides turds.”

  “So? That works, right?”

  “Yeah, but now I’m starting to get a reputation as the Poop Guy.”

  He nodded and took a long sip of the Slushee. “It will pass. Soon, there will come a great plague and the halls will flow with the blood of the unbeliever.”

  “Right.”

  “Indubitably.”

  “Naturally.”

  “So let it be written, so let it be done.”

  Paige was probably asleep by then, in her comfortable bed, with the stuffed turtle that she always slept with. I wished I was there with her, instead of getting a contact high and a headache in a filthy basement. The stains on the ceiling—the ones I didn’t dare ask about—took on cryptic and threatening shapes above me, and a sick feeling gnawed at my spleen. Or maybe it was my liver. I coasted through biology.

  Staring at the stains is the last thing I remember before I fell asleep. I don’t remember having a drink, but I woke up with a splitting headache on Stan’s floor.

  A few other people were asleep in chairs and on the floor, and some others were awake, in various states of undress and sobriety. Those who were awake were stumbling slowly around the basement like zombies in a graveyard looking for brains.

  21. POISON

  Over the rest of spring break I tried to work as many extra hours as I could, just to have enough money for the time I spent with Paige. Those places with crazy crap on the walls and cheese sticks on the menu weren’t cheap.

  Even sex cost more than you’d think. There were bribes to pay.

  Paige’s parents both worked outside of the house during the day (unlike my mother, who worked out of a home office), so the only real obstacle to us getting any privacy at her place during the day was her sister, who was pretty hard to get rid off. On Monday afternoon while Paige and I were watching TV on her couch, Paige got up and walked over to Autumn, who was sitting at the kitchen table, talking on the phone.

  “I’ll give you five bucks to get out of the house for an hour,” she said.

  “Where would I even go?” asked Autumn.

  “Outside. Go play at the tot lot or something.”

  “I’m almost thirteen,” said Autumn. “I don’t play in tot lots.”

  “Then go sit on the swings and talk with your friends. I don’t care. Just go.”

  Autumn rolled her eyes. “Look,” she said, “I know you guys are going to have sex. Just go ahead. I won’t tell.”

  “But you won’t give us any privacy, either.”

  “I won’t peek.”

  “But you’ll be sitting outside the door, taking notes and probably recording everything on your phone.”

  “So what?”

  She eventually got out of the house for fifteen bucks, and Paige and I took full advantage of the privacy. Beds really are much better than cars or piles of laundry.

  That day was my first experience with serious, post–sex cuddling. You can only do so much of that in a car with someone flashing his lights at you, and all I wanted to do after being with Mindy and Brenda was leave. You never want to stay on the field long after you lose a game.

  In Paige’s bed we just cuddled up to each other. Her hair tickled my shoulder and smelled fantastic, and her down comforter was cool against my skin.

  And even though her boobs were right there, I found myself staring below them at her stomach moving up and down as she breathed. Lying there with her next to me, calm and breathing, was a whole new kind of feeling.

  We did it in her room again on Tuesday while Autumn was at the mall, then used the nook on Wednesday.

  Thursday morning, Stan and I were working when Autumn and a bunch of her girlfriends came into the Cave.

  Middle-school kids tend to be a big pain in the ass as customers. Half of them just order water, and the other half are really picky and demanding about exactly how they want their sundaes made. They stay for hours, make a giant mess, and never tip. I made a point of not getting too upset, since I did the same kind of thing in middle school myself, but Autumn and her friends got on my nerves, and every second around them inched me closer to being an old bastard who sat around complaining about how kids today are different, with their skatin’ boards and their velcro shoes.

  At least my friends in middle school had been smart. Autumn’s friends might have been smart individually, but together they seemed to be dumber than the sum of their parts.

  They showed up in a group of five, and we saw them coming.

  “Looks like we’re in the soup now, old sport,” Stan said.

  “We should drill for this sort of thing,” I said.

  Autumn pointed me out from the doorway as soon as they came in.

  “That’s him,” she announced. “That’s the guy who has sex with my sister.”

  “Is that true?” one of them called to me.

  I just said, “Welcome to the Ice Cave. What do you want?”

  “See?” asked Autumn. “He doesn’t even deny it.”

  They lurched towards the counter like bears coming up to a parked car in the forest looking for picnic baskets.

  “Is her sister good in bed?” one of them called up to me.

  “Does she, like, wipe down his forehead first?” one of them asked the others, as though I couldn’t hear them. “He has a really greasy forehead.”

  “I wouldn’t want to see him naked,” said another. “The rest of him’s probably greasy too.”

  They all giggled and poked each other and made jokes about the zit that I had on my nose. Like they didn’t all have a million of them under the metric ton of makeup they wore.

  I couldn’t help but think that if it was a girl behind the counter and a bunch of guys came in talking like that, everyone with any sense would agree that the guys were being complete assholes.

  I wasn’t getting any sympathy from the devil, though. Stan was laughing his ass off at me.

  “And my sister said he’s kind of a cannibal, too,” Autumn said.

  “You mean he eats her?” asked one of the friends.

  When they stopped cracking up, which took a while, the group converged into a circle, and Autumn explained that I once ate a bit of Beethoven’s hair. I couldn’t believe Paige had told her that story. Stan listened in eagerly, occasionally glancing over at me.

  “Is that true?” one of the girls asked me.

  “So I’m told,” I said.

  “Now the real question,” Stan said, loud enough to make it clear he was really talking to them, not to me, “is this: Are you sure it was a bit of hair from his head?”

  The girls all erupted in giggles and shrieks. Shrieks, mostly.

  “What do you think it was?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Maybe the undertaker was like, ‘Hey, I want a souvenir. Pull down his pants and give me the scissors.”

  The girls howled. I thought about going to the back and just letting Stan handle the giggling horde himself, but Mindy was back there and I sure as hell didn’t want to be alone in a room with her. I stood there and stuck it out.

  “Even if they aren’t pubes, that’s disgusting!” one of them said. “Who buys pieces of dead people to start with?”

  “My dad,” I said.

  “Your dad must be a freak,” said Autumn.

  “That means you probably are too,” said one of the girls. “Everyone grows up to be just like their parents, even if they hate them.”

  “You better break them up, Autumn,” someone said, “or you’ll get a weirdo for a nephew or something.”

  “He us
es condoms,” said Autumn. “I found one of the wrappers in Paige’s room.”

  I looked over at Stan with pleading eyes. This was getting way out of hand. He nodded and put a hand on my shoulder.

  “I’ve got this,” he whispered. “Don’t worry.”

  Then he jumped up onto the counter.

  “So, girls,” he said. “Enough about Leon. Which of you would like to join the Nontoxic Club?”

  They all just sort of stared at him.

  “Come on,” he said. “The Nontoxic Club. You get free ice cream for joining.”

  “I’m in,” said one of them.

  He grabbed some cash from the register, handed it to me, and said, “Go to Target and get some tempera paints and paint brushes. Make sure the paint says ‘nontoxic’ on the label.”

  I took off, avoiding the leers I was getting from Autumn. I’m sure I heard her say the word “thingie” as I walked past. Christ, my friends never talked about sex that much in middle school. And I hung around with Dustin Eddlebeck.

  When I came back, the girls were all sitting at the largest of our few tables, with sugar cookies in front of them. Stan presided over the scene, taking questions and making sure they didn’t eat their cookies ahead of time.

  “Yeah,” he was saying. “It’s kind of like the Clean Plate Club, only it’s not for idiots. Leon, you want to give all of these ladies paintbrushes?”

  I did, and Stan grabbed the multicolored tempera paints I had picked up and poured some of each color into paper cups. The Ice Cave was starting to look like the arts and crafts cabin at a summer camp or something.

  “All right,” said Stan. “Your first job is to decorate your cookie. Paint it up however you want. Express yourselves.”

  And the girls all set to work. In a few short minutes the five teenyboppers had produced really girly looking cookies, with hearts and the names of their favorite singers and stuff.

  I could imagine how my friends would have decorated cookies at that age. Anna would have probably done something truly artistic, a cookie suitable for framing. Edie Scaduto probably would have painted on a hammer and sickle, like on the Soviet flag. I probably would have done the Metallica logo, and maybe my best attempt at the bloodstain and hammer from the Kill ’Em All album cover. It wouldn’t have come out as well as I’d imagined it.

  Paige, meanwhile, probably would have made one like her sister was making. That was kind of scary to consider, but I pushed it out of my mind.

  “Everybody done?” said Stan.

  “Yeah,” said one of the girls. “Can we have our ice cream now?”

  “You’re not in the club yet,” said Stan. “First you have to eat the cookie you just decorated.”

  They all went, “Ewwww.”

  “That’s not safe,” said one of them.

  “Sure it is,” said Stan. “This paint is nontoxic. Only an idiot would market poison in a container with a cartoon bear on it.”

  The girls all sort of shook their heads and giggled nervously.

  “Jesus,” I said. “Not to sound like an old geezer, but when I was your age, my friends and I would have eaten them.”

  “Then you do it,” said Autumn.

  Well, that was it. The gauntlet was laid down.

  “Fine,” I said, “just give me a cookie. I’ll eat one if you guys do.”

  Stan gave me a cookie, and I got to work painting a Metallica logo on it. In black, with a red background. I covered the whole surface of the cookie.

  “All right,” I said, while Stan dealt with an actual customer. “Give it a minute to dry, and I’ll eat it. But you all have to promise to eat yours, too.”

  “All of us?” one of them asked.

  “At least one of you, or no one gets free ice cream.”

  They all kind of discussed it among themselves, daring each other. After a minute I blew on the cookie to make sure it was dry, then wolfed it down. It just tasted about like any other sugar cookie, really. The paint didn’t get on my tongue at all.

  “Mmm,” I said.

  I could have done something lame like falling to the floor and twitching around and playing dead, but I didn’t. I needed the kids to know I was serious. I had to set a good example and act like a proper, mature paint-eater.

  “See?” asked Stan. “He didn’t keel over and die, and now he’s a member of the Nontoxic Club, worthy of all benefits and privileges pertaining thereto. Now, which of you is going to join the club?”

  “You think we’re going to survive something just because a greasy guy who eats pubes did?” one of them asked.

  It was a fair question, but Stan went into full-on temptation mode.

  “I don’t think you want it spread around that you’re a bunch of wimps,” he said. “Or that you’re not worth partying with. That’s the kind of reputation that could follow you to high school.”

  And he went on like that, telling them all the wonders of high school parties and popularity that could all be theirs if one of them just ate a painted cookie, and how unpopular they could become if they didn’t.

  “Fine,” said Autumn. “I’ll do it if you’ll shut up. But you all owe me!”

  There was hardly any actual paint on her cookie—just a swirly pink line or two. When she took one bite, she might have gotten a tiny bit of paint in her mouth, but not much. Still, she looked like she was going to puke.

  “There,” she said. “Is that enough?”

  “Whole thing,” said Stan.

  She cringed, then another girl, one I didn’t think had said a word the whole time, picked up her own cookie and slowly, methodically, ate the entire thing.

  “Welcome to the Nontoxic Club,” said Stan.

  They all got their free ice cream, but they left as soon as they finished eating—kind of fleeing the scene, I guess. The same way you want to leave the laundry room after an embarrassing sexual episode.

  “Once upon a time,” said Stan, “I took Jesus on top of a mountain and offered him the world and everything in it if he’d worship me. Now I’m just offering teenyboppers help getting into high school parties if they eat nontoxic paint.”

  “Seems like you could have found an easier way to get rid of them,” I said.

  “Maybe. But this was more fun.”

  An hour or so later Paige came flying into the store, looking pissed.

  “Did you make my sister eat paint?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “It was just a painted cookie. It was nontoxic paint.”

  She gave me a nasty look. “What the hell were you thinking?”

  “I ate one too,” I said. “And mine had a lot more paint on it than hers.”

  “Look,” said Stan. “It’s my fault. But they were in here talking about sex and what Leon looks like naked. All it takes is one of them to go home and say we were talking about sex with them, and next thing you know the story turns into Leon flashing them or something, and half the people in town will believe it, and they’ll shut this place down.”

  “So you made her eat paint?”

  “I changed the subject and did something to get them to leave,” he said. “I’m in favor of all forms of sin and perversion, but I’m not going to do anything stupid.”

  “He saved my ass,” I said.

  Paige glared at us. She was clearly trying her best to remain calm, but she wasn’t succeeding. It was the same look she got when yearbook and girl-world drama got into her head.

  “Look,” she said, “no one thinks that Autumn is more annoying than I do, but she’s my sister. And now she’s crying and freaking out and saying she needs to go have her stomach pumped.”

  Just then, Mindy strolled out of the back room.

  “Hi, hon,” she said to Paige.

  Paige gave her a nasty look, then gave me a nastier one. The stabbing look.

  “And she’s here?” she asked.

  “Hey, I didn’t invite her,” I said.

  She reached out and held my hand, but not with much affection or anything.
>
  “My love,” she said, “I think you’re starting to understand now that we belong together.”

  I gulped, but I nodded.

  “Well,” she said, “I’m not going to be stuck with a loser who hangs out with other losers forever. I don’t want to spend my whole life cleaning up your messes.”

  “You won’t,” I said.

  “Or bailing you out of jail when these idiots talk you into doing something stupid.”

  “You won’t,” I said.

  “Or listening to you apologizing when I catch you with some skank you didn’t know you were flirting with.”

  “Look, I didn’t invite Mindy over, and I haven’t even gone back there all day. If I had, I would have been able to avoid your sister and her pervert friends.”

  Paige took a deep breath. “I know that,” she said. “But don’t you think you should find a better place to work than this?”

  “I like it here,” I said.

  “But if you worked someplace else, you could make more money and not have fucking Mindy show up all the time,” said Paige.

  Mindy smirked, then said, “Well, fuck you too.”

  Paige ignored her.

  “Also,” she went on, “I wouldn’t have to reassure my idiot sister that she isn’t going to die because some dumbass made her eat paint because she might have been talking about his dick.”

  “She definitely was,” I said.

  “So?” she asked. “What are you worried about? I told her you were above average.”

  I wished Stan would snap his fingers and turn the whole store into a lake of fire right about then. I didn’t dare to look at Mindy to see how she reacted to that one.

  “You told her that?” I asked.

  “What’s the big deal?”

  “Is that even legal?” I asked. “Talking about stuff like that with a kid her age?”

  “Sorry, okay?” said Paige. “It’s not like you haven’t told all the people back there about fucking me.”

  “No, I haven’t,” I said.

  “You haven’t told them we did it?”

  Stan and Mindy snickered like a couple of seventh graders.

  “I told you,” I said. “Guys sound like douche bags when we talk about sex.”

  “Yeah,” said Stan. “Girls sound liberated, guys sound like douche bags. That’s just the way it is.”