Let's No One Get Hurt

by Jon Pineda

  * * *

  They are the sons of land developers and judges who dress up on weekends as Civil War reenactors. Main Boy says his friends are the future leaders of this town. Yet even though they boast of belonging to important families, I just think of them as flies. They’re all flies. Fucking flies.

  * * *

  When Main Boy finishes taking roll, he looks at me and says, “Everybody, this is Pearl. She lives in the old boathouse.”

  “What boathouse?” Wythe wants to know.

  “It’s on a parcel of land my dad bought for me.”

  When Main Boy says this, their eyes pass over my body.

  “Does your dad know she’s there?” Wythe says.

  “No one does,” Main Boy says.

  “Good to know,” Wythe says.

  The other flies nod. Their eyes graze my shirt and zero in on my nipples. That’s all I am, and they keep nodding. I cross my arms in front of my chest. That’s when they stare at my fingers. I rub my slender arms. They want me to stroke them again, I can tell. God, they think I’m stupid. I bunch my shoulders and grip at my arms anyway, like I’m freezing. My stomach won’t stop growling.

  * * *

  The flies start eating from a tray of sandwiches Main Boy brought for the occasion. It’s one of those long party submarines, sesame-seed loaves cut into generous rectangular portions, dripping with Italian dressing. My mouth waters, and I feel like Marianne Moore. Not the famous modernist poet whose work my father used to teach, but our family dog.

  The flies are double fisting. They are making a mess with the shredded lettuce and tomato slices that slip loose between each sloppy bite. No one offers me anything. What they drop gathers in the dirt. They kick it around. I try not to stare.

  * * *

  While they’re busy eating, Main Boy takes a creased map out of the golf cart and unfolds it by holding on to one corner and shaking the large piece of paper until it opens fully.

  “Took this out of my dad’s office,” he tells them. “A survey of the county.”

  He says he’s going to work for his father this summer. Right now, it’s just looking up private easements and deeds for property owners’ names, a bunch of busywork, but soon it will be more than that, Main Boy promises. Soon he’ll run the whole goddamned company.

  Not one of them speaks, because they can’t, so I say, “What are all the red Xs for?”

  Someone had used a colored pencil to make them.

  Main Boy studies the map with narrow eyes, like he’s seeing it for the first time. His head of hair is so white, I have to resist the temptation to reach out and stick my fingers in it. I want to pull it apart like cotton candy.

  “That’s where we live, dumbass,” he says to me. “Those right there are our houses.”

  The flies laugh on cue.

  * * *

  I glance over the map. Now I see what he means. The river is a sinuous line of blue. The clump of red pencil Xs south of it marks where Main Boy and the others live in their behemoth McMansions, though on this map, there’s no golf course yet, and no country club. We’re standing in a space that’s just a big cloud of scuffed vellum.

  * * *

  I follow the river east to see if he’s marked where I live. I find the boathouse. Its structure and the plot of land around it are actually drawn in black ink, there on the original, like I belong in this world more than the flies do.

  “Why did you even invite me here?” I have to say.

  “I’m getting to that,” Main Boy says.

  I shift my weight. I can feel the sides of these shoes about to give, the canvas wanting to split near each pinkie toe. The flies watch my feet, then their eyes rise and stop, glued to the sun-bleached hairs on my skinny legs.

  THEY’RE MAKING A NEW PLAN, and they need someone to watch them make their plan. They don’t say this, but I feel it. The map is for finding places to shoot. Once they get a general idea, they’ll scout out the location. They’re talking like they’re suddenly big-shot film producers. They throw around industry terms they read somewhere, and they pause just before they use them. Some wonder aloud if they should be shooting pranking videos or just doing survival videos exclusively, which is Main Boy’s vote.

  “What’s the difference?” I ask.

  “Fake blood versus real blood,” Wythe says. He sneers.

  The others laugh, even Main Boy.

  * * *

  The goal is to get lots of views, to keep being seen.

  “We need subscribers,” one of them says.

  It doesn’t matter what comments are posted. The more views and the more negative comments, the better, or the more views and the more positive comments, the better. It’s all the same.

  Negative and positive cancel each other out.

  “Views are views,” Wythe has to add like he thinks I’m an idiot.

  * * *

  Main Boy says they’ll get paid once the total reaches into the tens of thousands, but he doesn’t know the full details just yet. The others nod like they know, but no one knows. They have their homes with dead bolts on the doors, their dresser drawers filled with folded clothes.

  “We just need to post something that’ll get their attention,” Main Boy says.

  “Who are they?” I ask.

  “What are you, a teacher?” Wythe says, all flat faced, his hair a thumbprint.

  Main Boy laughs, but then says, “Tranquila.”

  I don’t know if he’s talking to Wythe or to me.

  * * *

  The flies make a list. Clint thinks it would be funny if they shoot a video of them blasting all of the speed-limit signs they can find. He pushes on the map. His finger slides over a back road that runs near the river. The flies hover around him.

  “That’s just stupid,” Wythe says. “Something like that won’t go viral.”

  “Sure it will.” Clint clutches another hunk of sandwich. He takes a bite and keeps talking. “It’ll be so fucking funny.”

  “Fuck funny,” Wythe says. “What we need’s a prank that’s funny, yes, but that’s also scary. People need to click on it and can’t believe they’re clicking on it. You know what I’m talking about? They need to do it again and again, and even send it to their friends, and then those motherfuckers will be shaking their heads the entire time they’re clicking on it, like they can’t believe they’re doing it, too.”

  “What do you propose?” Main Boy says, still holding on to the wrench like a gavel.

  “A beheading,” Wythe says, and looks right at me.

  * * *

  Wythe takes out his phone and sticks it in my face. The others watch me, even Main Boy.

  “Go ahead,” Wythe says. “Push play.”

  I touch the screen.

  The landscape looks like another planet. There’s a man in an orange suit. He’s on his knees. There’s a person in a black suit with their face covered in black, the cloth wrapped around and around. I think of Fritter’s mural, how if it were cloth, it could be worn like this. The person in black is holding a knife and lifts it up. I turn my head.

  “What?” Wythe says, laughing. The flies crowd around the phone’s tiny screen, their faces twisting into knots.

  Main Boy looks into my eyes. “Sorry,” he mouths.

  “Fuck you,” I say back.

  Wythe pauses the video. “Hey, what’s your problem?”

  “I don’t have a problem.”

  “It’s too much for you?”

  “I’ve seen worse,” I say.

  The flies laugh.

  “Yeah, right,” Wythe says. “What the fuck have you seen that’s worse than that?”

  I step back and let them finish the video. I don’t tell them about my mother. I don’t tell them how she’s still in my head.

  DURING A BREAK IN THE MEETING, Main Boy holds up one of the shotguns and says he’ll teach me to shoot if I kiss him and maybe kiss a few of the others. I tell him he won’t have to teach me; if he tries to kiss me, I’ll be able t
o shoot just fine.

  He laughs. The flies laugh, too, except for Wythe.

  Soon the rest of us are laughing like it’s the funniest thing we’ve ever heard, though I know it’s not that at all. I look around. Their fingers are just as messy as their mouths. At one point, it feels like they’ve all taken a step toward me, like they want me to wipe their mouths for them. Or lick their fingers.

  “Why’d you come here?” Wythe says to me.

  “Mason kept talking a big game about the club,” I say. “I had to see what all the fuss was about.”

  “So what do you think?” Clint says.

  “I think you’re pussies, if you want to know the truth.”

  “Don’t hold back, girl,” Main Boy says. He grins at the others.

  “Don’t call me girl.”

  “Sorry, I was just trying to be nice.”

  “Maybe we should check,” Wythe says, “just to be sure.”

  “Sounds good,” I say. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.” I don’t wait. I start pinching at the air.

  “What the fuck you doing?” Wythe says.

  “Just practicing.”

  “Practicing what?”

  “Trying to grab it.”

  “Shit,” Wythe says, sneering, but the flies are already on him with elbows.

  “Burn,” they say, “burn.”

  I go over and climb on my dirt bike. I balance it between my legs.

  All of them stop now. Their eyes lock on the bike’s gas tank, right where it’s touching.

  “I thought you were boys, but I should’ve known you’re just flies.”

  “Pearl, wait,” Main Boy says.

  I kick-start the bike and pull in the clutch, shifting the gear into first. The bike lurches forward, like it wants to attack whatever is in front of it. I rev it good and loud. The back end crackles. I want it to be spraying glass and shrapnel. Clint and some of the others cover their ears, but not Wythe and Main Boy.

  “Head on up to the clubhouse,” Wythe says. “Tell them you’re our guest.”

  He nudges Main Boy.

  “Fuck all of you,” I say.

  The bike shudders hard between my legs.

  * * *

  I cross the golf course, but no one follows me.

  I tear a line down the fairway and then up onto a green that’s so flat and smooth it looks painted on. I burn a donut around the flag, just to do it. When I reach another fairway, I pop a wheelie and keep going. My heart is in my throat. I finally reach that spot on Main Boy’s map where the blue line stretches out and curves. It’s the river. I don’t care what his map says. It’s not all his. It just can’t be.

  IN THE DEEPEST PART OF the river, fish bore through columns and loosen the last of the cold. They carry it on their bodies like little coats. I play my father’s shoulders. They thud. Dox jangles and slides on the neck of his cigar-box guitar. Its metal resonator, a perforated snuff-tin lid, vibrates out from the middle.

  I join the clipped chorus on “Drown,” and once the verse kicks in, we all drop out like emptied crab pots. Fritter is the only one left with his bellow clicking at the end. He scoops us up and pours us out onto a long tabletop like bright red blue claws and butter-yellow corn. It’s a down-home boil. We have the rice and some potatoes, but we take a vote and decide to save it for tomorrow. This evening only songs will feed us.

  * * *

  My father dances away, his arms held out all airplane-y as he hits a gust and careens down steps to the start of the pier’s warped boards.

  “You be careful,” I say.

  He waves, lifting a wing flap. “You be careful.”

  * * *

  The river goes from television static to one smooth brushstroke. My father pounds his boots on the boards. The water below responds with concentric circles around the pilings. Dox starts in on another tune that’s meant to be a second course. Fritter goes darker, singing like he’s happy-crying at a funeral. It almost hurts to hear him. Because it’s on the heels of so much joy from earlier, I feel like we can bear it a little while longer. That’s what I tell myself. Just a little while longer, all this living we’re doing.

  * * *

  “Goddammit,” my father says. “I wish I could take this moment and seal it up for later.”

  “Like you’re canning pickles,” Dox says, nodding.

  “Like I’m canning some goddamned, motherfucking pickles, yes,” my father says, a shell of his professor self. He immediately dives off the end of the pier, headfirst into black water. In an instant, he’s Amelia Earhart’s Electra over the Pacific, his arms outstretched with rivets and gleam, but then he’s gone in a plunk. The air builds with a charge. I can taste it, every shell around every nucleus.

  * * *

  When my father surfaces, he gasps. Dox and Fritter go radio silent. We wait, but my father is also waiting.

  “Did you miss me?” He leaves a fan of hair flat against his face. It covers his mouth, like he’s talking through a veil.

  Sometimes all he wants is for me to smile.

  IN ANOTHER LIFE, IT WAS just a secret I wasn’t supposed to tell my father.

  We’re going to wake up early, before he starts his shower, and my mother is going to let me stir the water in with the prepackaged mixture for beignets. I even get to pat the dough flat, so we can then cut them into squares.

  I’ve seen her do it before. We fry up the pieces until they puff up light brown. My mother likes to hold her arm out and say, “When they get this color, we’ll know they’re done.” That’s when we let them cool on a plate lined with paper towels, all before we sprinkle them with the confectioners’ sugar white and chalky as talcum powder. If you do it too soon, the remnant oil clumps the sugar together and ruins the look.

  * * *

  “Won’t this be good?” my mother says, talking about the plan. She nudges me with an elbow. We’re thick as thieves, partners in crime. Cut from the same bolt of cloth.

  Discussing the future this way makes me happy. I clap my hands but am careful only to make the gesture without really clapping. I don’t want to slip and make a loud noise and have my father call out from the other room, “Some of us are trying to read here!”

  * * *

  The next morning, my mother doesn’t tell me she’s already started the oil. I can feel the warmth coming from the pan. I step back from the stovetop.

  “Sprinkle water in it,” my mother says. “That’s the only way to test that it’s ready.”

  I do as she tells me, flinging a handful, and the oil pops suddenly. It hits my arm. Startled, I scream. My father tears into the kitchen and grabs my wrist and asks what’s wrong. He doesn’t let go of me, even when my mother says it was just a joke, and my father grimaces and asks me, me, “What the fuck is wrong with you? What did you think was going to happen?”

  “Leave her alone,” my mother says. “You go from zero to sixty, I swear.”

  * * *

  Or maybe I have this backward.

  * * *

  When it comes to my mother, I sometimes forget certain details. Maybe it was my father who bought the beignet mix and the confectioners’ sugar, and that the two of us had gone to the store with the thought of preparing a special meal for my mother because we never really did that kind of thing for her.

  * * *

  My mother had just passed a series of exams on comparative literature, ones she had been studying for as long as I could recall, and as my father and I are walking the aisles and reading aloud the funny-sounding names on the products lined up in boxes around us, I suddenly dart off and try to hide from him, first at the end of the cereal aisle and then at the end of the juice aisle—he goes one way and I go the other—and I keep going until I find myself near the back of the store. I freeze when I see two people clinging to each other and letting go, like they’re practicing a dance.

  The woman is holding a bottle of wine and the man is reaching for her other hand. When the woman sees me, she drops the ma
n’s hand and turns her face, but I’ve already seen her. It’s done. I don’t call out to her because I realize I’ve forgotten about my father, that I left him a handful of aisles back. I take off to try and find him, and he’s there where I last left him, studying a lineup of jarred mustard. I must have this look on my face because when he sees me, he says, “What, you missed me?”

  * * *

  And am I a terrible daughter because at that very moment I tried to rush him out of the grocery store? That I grabbed the basket of things from him and said, “C’mon, c’mon, we have to go,” and I let him think it was because there was a show on television that I wanted to watch, and that nothing else mattered in the world to me more than getting home and seeing this show?

  There was the fraying conveyor belt at the checkout. There was the growing line of beeps from each scanned item. Fake jewelry made indentations on the cashier’s plump pink hands. There was the swipe of my father’s credit card, which meant we were almost free to leave. When I turned around, only strangers were milling about the aisles. I smiled then because I could see that where my body had been had been replaced by these other people I would never see again.

  * * *

  My mother was late coming home that night. She didn’t say where she had gone, and my father didn’t press her for an explanation, or at least nothing that I could tell. I lay in bed and waited to hear any sound at all. I tried to fall asleep to the silence. In the kitchen, my mother shook every pill bottle she kept lined up on the counter.

  * * *

  Sometimes it hurt to live inside my own room. I had to become a girl under the cartoon-pony sheets with her parents not saying one word to each other. I knew they hadn’t fallen asleep. They were probably sitting up in bed, each slightly leaning toward their lamps, marking opposite sides of the room, as they read from things pulled out of their pile of books. I think I slept that night, but I’m not sure. I was still awake when my father knocked lightly on my door and whispered, “Let’s make that breakfast, Princess,” and I knew he meant the beignets.

  * * *

  He was the one who had heated the oil and said, “Sprinkle water in it. That’s the only way to test that it’s ready.” And after I scream from the oil splattering across my arm, it’s my mother who appears in the kitchen and grabs my wrist tightly, like she’s holding a bottle of wine by its neck. I want to say something so badly, especially when my father begins to chide her. Instead, I look over at the red-haired woman in the framed print my mother loved. The woman is lifting her skirt. She is kicking up her legs in some old Parisian dance hall, despite the fact that those around her look sullen and tired of their life together.