Wild and Crooked

by Leah Thomas

  I’m not with them. Not because I’m a horrendous dancer (honestly, so is Phil). I’m sitting alone on the bleachers, happy for my best friend. I’m not with them because I have become an option I didn’t consider on my list of unbearable fates:

  g.the crippled side note who humiliates himself to secure a glorious romance for the underdog, thereby proving the underdog a protagonist

  I’m suddenly queasy in the crematorikiln. I’m searching for my feet, and I don’t care whether the shelves give way when I lean on them, because something else is giving way, ridiculously, in my chest.

  Kalyn grabs my hand. Not to help me up; just to hold it.

  “That’s nice of him. Almost. Quillpower’s seen me at my worst.”

  Her hand is so warm.

  “Damn, your hand is colder than a witch’s titty in a brass bra!”

  I slide down beside her, giggling like mad, my pants beyond saving. Kalyn laughs along with me. We’re shaking spiders from their cobwebs.

  “Hey,” Kalyn hazards, “if he’s the one who wants to be rescued, why did Quillpower make you follow me?” Her face is level with mine, her eyes four fingers away. “Why can’t Phil do his own dirty work?”

  “Phil thinks I can talk to girls more, better, better than he can.”

  I expect her to mock that. She doesn’t. “So why’d it take you weeks?”

  “I was . . . scared.”

  There are specks of blue ink on her face, and makeup’s worn away to reveal freckles. “I’m nothin’ to be scared of.”

  I stare at her.

  “One day those thorny eyes are going to poke right out of your head.”

  “Th-Thorny eyes?”

  “Yeah. You’ve got thorny eyes. Is that condescendin’?”

  I chuckle. “Dehumanizin’, at least.”

  “Nothing for it. You and me are both twisted. The imposter and the stalker. But hey, the straight and narrow’s for bad drivers.”

  “Or people on scooters.”

  Her laugh is so big. It causes a full-on cobweb massacre. She slaps her hand against my dead knee—­

  “Oh, shit, my bad!”

  “It’s fine. Didn’t hurt.”

  She grins and lets her hand rest there for an extra second. Dad winks in my mind. How weird is that? I’ve seen so many faces in my life, but Kalyn’s is the first to remind me of his. I wonder if she’s ever posed with a goofy smile, a trout in her arms.

  “I’ll put some thought into Phil’s request. But I need a favor.” Kalyn pulls her dress away from her body. Her head tilts forward, gives her unflattering chins as she peers inside her garment. “Any idea how to get ink out of fabric?”

  “Um. Have you got hairspray in your locker?”

  “That,” she says, patting puffy bangs, “is a fair assumption. Know why?”

  I suspect an unfunny joke is on the horizon.

  “Because otherwise?” She flattens those bangs against her forehead, steamrolling them with her palm. “Timberrrrr!”

  It makes no sense, but I’m laughing too hard to remember option g.

  KALYN

  THE MORNING AFTER we skip class to hash things out in the kiln, I spot Gus from ten yards away, leaning against the staircase railing outside the cafeteria, books clutched close in his good arm. It should be impossible to see him amid the morning stampede that follows first bell, except, of course, Gus has that dandelion puff of white-yellow hair.

  Sarah’s just run back to her locker to fetch her science textbook before the second bell, so I’ve only got a minute—­

  “Gus!” I trill, all Rose-ish. “Hey!”

  Gus startles and blinks at me before dropping his eyes back to his boots.

  “Gus!” I call again, losing the trill. “C’mere!”

  This dork does an actual double-take and looks back over his shoulder. “Seriously? Get over here!”

  Gus looks both ways and picks his careful way through the crowd, hunching his shoulders to make himself smaller.

  “Sorry,” he says, “I was waiting for . . . ​I wasn’t following you. Not today, I mean.”

  “I’m not worried about that. That’s yesterday’s news.”

  Gus looks extremely uncomfortable, standing so close to me. I’m talking porcupine-quills-to-the-ass uncomfortable. His eyes keep falling back to his shoes.

  You’d think my hand is full of nettles when I clap him on the shoulder.

  “People might see you,” he mutters.

  “Well, most people have eyes. Who cares? You embarrassed to be seen with me?”

  “No! It’s not, ah. Aren’t you embarrassed to . . . well. Um.” He lifts his books. “D’you wanna carry my stuff, then?”

  Who knows what thinking process led him there, but ten bucks says it’s not a healthy one. “Do I look like a mule? I just wanted to see if you want to meet up later. Like yesterday, although maybe more during lunchtime and less playing hooky?” I lower my voice. “I’ve got a fake reputation to maintain, you know.”

  He thinks about it for a full seven seconds, and the whole time the pressure in him’s building like steam in a teapot before it bursts from his mouth: “Why?”

  Good damn question. I mean, sure, Gus made me laugh when I finally met up with him, made Kalyn feel less like dirt, but I wasn’t planning on making it a thing. I shouldn’t be tempting fate. Hell, I’m still not convinced he doesn’t have my number regarding Murder-Dad, et cetera. But it’s bumming me out, seeing how Gus is in public versus how he was in the kiln.

  “I dunno. I like talking to you, I guess?”

  “But . . . you can’t smoke if I’m there.”

  “Maybe I like you more than cigarettes.”

  He turns so freakin’ pink. Look, I’m pretty queer, but hell if blushing boys aren’t the cutest things since frolicking kittens.

  “Look, maybe I have an answer for you. For Quillpower.” Sure, that’s convincing.

  “Oh, yeah?” God, he looks so put out.

  “Fuck if I know.” I poke him in the forehead. “Kiln at noon thirty?”

  He nods and starts to smile, but then he looks right past me and pivots away real quick: I think I spooked him, until Sarah appears at my shoulder along with a delicious waft of coconut-scented shampoo. I’m gonna go ahead and bet that Gus remembers being cried at in elementary school by a certain lovely someone.

  “You ready?” she asks.

  “Yeah. Ready.”

  Maybe I don’t sound like Rose, because Sarah frowns. Her eyes trail Gus’s retreating back and then she’s opening her mouth, but I smile wide and she changes her mind. “Good for you, because I definitely didn’t study enough.”

  “Oh, neither did I!” I’m all perky again, but it feels like a strain. “When I said ‘ready’ I didn’t mean ‘ready to pass.’ Just ready to face the music.”

  Sarah chuckles, loops her arm through mine, and we’re on our way to English Honors. Suddenly my throat hurts. I miss the voice I just used with Gus.

  Basically, I miss me, even if it doesn’t make sense.

  GUS

  IF I DIDN’T know any better, I might think Kalyn is just clueless. I might assume she’s as silly as she pretends to be. I might assume that she doesn’t realize that spending so much time with me might be some kind of social sabotage.

  But I do know better. I know that people are usually much more than what they look like they are. I know that Kalyn’s laughter yesterday was as real as mine.

  When she asks me to hang out with her, sure, there’s a knot in my chest forming, because that means leaving Phil behind. But there’s another knot unwinding, a knot tighter than any of my muscles have ever been. It loosens, just a little, at the insane, lovely idea:

  Kalyn just likes talking to me, I guess?

  I watch her walk away with Sarah, and there’s another idea that’s even more lovely: I like talking to her, too, and our conversations could take us anywhere.

  It’s one abyss I don’t mind so much.

  KALYN
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br />   I READ SOMEWHERE that girls are too apologetic. There are women who say “Sorry” when someone else runs into them, and girls who say “Sorry” after sharing their opinions. This is a conditioned response that’s existed for generations, a seed planted when we’re too young to know it and usually without our parents even realizing they’re planting it.

  And saying “girls are too apologetic” still sounds like blaming them for something they didn’t choose, so fuck all that noise.

  But apologizing all the time decreases the value of the word. What we’re really saying is “my presence is less valuable than yours.” It’s sexist bullshit. I’d like to say that’s why Spences don’t apologize, but that’s not really why. We’ve just got this whole “oppositional” thing in our bloodstream. If someone shouts blue, we shout red.

  I’ve heard more sorries over the past couple weeks than I’ve heard my whole life. Gus apologizes for taking up space, apologizes for misspeaking, apologizes for his weirdo best friend. He’s not apologizing for existing, but sometimes it sounds like that.

  But hell, pobody’s nerfect, and you know what? Gus has never expected apologies from me. It’s been weeks of me not giving him a straight answer about homecoming. All he wants to do is what I want to do: shoot the shit.

  “What do you mean, you’ve never played D&D?” he demands during our eighth meeting. By now we’ve sneaked some blankets and a lamp into the crematorikiln, and it’s not as gloomy as it used to be. It’s what I think childhood might feel like.

  “You say that as if most people have played D&D.”

  Gus kicks at the dust with his boots. “Sorry. I didn’t mean . . . ​I just meant that you usually know, do things most people haven’t.”

  “You mean smoking, swearin’, and drinking?”

  “I mean looking after, um, the olderly. Elderly.” His ears are luminous Christmas bulbs. “I mean pretending to be fake-nice but secretly being actually nice.”

  I wince. “I’m not nice.”

  Gus wipes his chin. “Yes, you are.”

  “Seriously, I’m not.”

  “Agree to disagree.”

  I should let it go and start talking books and movies and crap (we both have a soft spot for cheesy old sci-fi movies, me for the unintentional humor and Gus for the bare-budget costuming), but the knowing look in his eyes makes me tetchy. “How the hell do you know? I could be an actual piece of shit. I could be makin’ it all up! The shit about old people and being nice to you: they could all be lies, you idiot.”

  “Don’t c-call me an idiot.” His smile’s gone in a puff of steam.

  “Yeah—I mean—sorry.” Guess apologizin’ is catching, or maybe there are good apologies and bad ones.

  “And don’t call yourself names. That’s not nice.”

  “What names do you call yourself, Gus, when there’s no one else around?”

  “Selfish.”

  “Huh. Me too. But who isn’t?”

  “My parents,” Gus murmurs. “They give me everything.” We talk about everything, but we haven’t talked about our families. It’s like this silent, mutually agreed thing. Like he knows it, Gus clears his throat. “Sorry.”

  “Is there anything you aren’t sorry for? Jegus.”

  “I’m not sorry I followed you.”

  “Shit. Me neither. Especially now I know it was all about Quillpower.”

  He tilts his head. “What did you think it would be about?”

  “I thought you’d figured out my dark past.” I try to make it sound like a joke.

  “Did you kill someone?” I think he’s trying to joke, too, but it sounds unnatural. We haven’t talked about true crime, even if we’ve talked about every other genre.

  “What do you think this is, Heathers? Would you help me hide a body?”

  “Hiding them isn’t practical,” Gus says slowly. “People always find them.”

  “You ain’t kidding.” My laugh is shrill.

  Gus chuckles; it sounds forced, but I appreciate it. “We could figure something else out, I guess. Um. Yeah.”

  “Creep,” I say, but I’m grinning.

  “Creeps,” he amends, and puts out his fist. I bump it against mine.

  GUS

  I NEVER THOUGHT I could joke about murder. I would never dare, not in my house. But Kalyn is so comfortable in everything she does and says, I guess it’s catching. And laughter is good medicine. Tamara knows this, but Mom doesn’t always appreciate the idea, so every weekend I leave home to visit a house where laughter isn’t so unusual.

  “You dick,” John hollers, clutching the N64 controller like a weapon, fingers working madly. “Stop it with the fucking bombs, Matt!”

  Matt cackles, round belly shaking. In the game, Link yanks another bomb out of thin air and pelts it at Pikachu. Phil snorts in derision, as if his two older brothers are bickering children; he’s playing as Kirby, as usual, and seems to spend most of his time floating near the top of the screen, far removed from danger, waiting for the moment to strike. All three Wheeler brothers are crammed on the basement sectional, but John always lets me sit in his gaming chair when I’m spectating.

  Every three weeks or so, the usual Friday night hangout in the cluttered Wheeler basement shifts from tabletop to retro gaming. I’m not great at video games, with my muscle weakness and coordination deficits, but I do okay with button-mashers like Mortal Kombat. Besides, I enjoy watching Phil and his brothers go at it, because all three of them are way too invested in throwing each other off floating platforms in Super Smash Bros. The fun comes from watching the Wheelers clash: John is large and serious and bearded and kind, Matt is short and bald and usually snickering, and Phil is Phil.

  I always savor these evenings, the camaraderie and escapism and popcorn and caffeinated soda, but today something feels off. Maybe it’s because Phil’s been quiet all evening, or maybe it’s the realization that lately when I’ve been sitting in a dark room—with Kalyn—it has actually mattered whether I’m there. I’ve been an active participant, not a piece of the audience.

  I try to feel more involved. “Phil, there’s a hammer on the upper platform—”

  “I don’t need your useless assistance,” Phil snaps, so sharply that John says, “Whoa, overreaction much?” Matt takes advantage of the hiccup by taking the hammer for himself, ending the round in seconds when he knocks both opponents into the sky.

  John hits the pause button. “Seriously, Phil, the hell was that?”

  Phil’s not looking at anything but the screen. “I simply don’t need Gus’s brand of help. It has proven inadequate of late.”

  “What are you, four?” Matt says, smile fading. “It’s a game. Apologize.”

  But Phil isn’t talking about Smash Bros. He’s talking about homecoming, and the fact that I don’t have an answer for him. He’s talking about the lunches he’s spent alone while I’ve been with Kalyn. Phil can never convey his feelings in any normal way.

  Phil stands. “Go ahead and take my spot, Gus. As is your wont.”

  He stomps across the basement and into the downstairs bathroom, pulling the door closed behind him. My ears are ringing, my throat is dry.

  Matt whistles. “Gus, I don’t know how you tolerate him. He’s so off.”

  “Is everything okay?” John says.

  I don’t meet their eyes as I pull myself out of the chair. “I’m going up for a dr-drink. Anyone need anything?”

  “I can get it—” John starts, but I shake my head.

  “No, it’s fine.”

  Yes, getting up those stairs is a slow process, but it gives me time to think. Does Phil really believe that I’m trying to, what? Steal Kalyn?

  She doesn’t belong to you, I think. She doesn’t belong to anyone.

  Is Phil really so clueless about what he means to me?

  But what does Kalyn mean to you?

  I pause at the top of the scuffed stairs. I’m not trying to date Kalyn, but I am befriending her. That feels like a small betrayal, t
hough I can’t explain why.

  I step into the kitchen and startle when movement catches my eye.

  Mr. Wheeler sits at the kitchen table with his laptop in front of him. He looks almost like Mom, typing away with a gleam in his eyes. Like Mom, he immediately changes when I appear. His eyes lock onto mine, and he closes the laptop.

  “Hey, Gus. How’s it going?” Unlike Phil, Mr. Wheeler has a face that smiles really seem to suit. “Anything I can get you?”

  I lower my eyes and make for the fridge. “Just getting some, um. I mean, drinks.”

  “Haven’t seen you around as often lately.”

  “Um, yeah. Junior year. It’s been busy.” I pull out one SunnyD and one Vault.

  “Gus. Look at me.” I do so, because it’s a hard habit to break. When I was in elementary school, Mr. Wheeler was my counselor. It’s like he left a footprint on me somewhere. “Is everything okay? With Phil, I mean? Has he been a good friend to you?”

  I open my mouth and close it again, eyes prickling. Mr. Wheeler’s always had good insight, because he’s a therapist or because he’s a good dad, I guess. But this seems too perceptive, even for him.

  “Yeah, we’re cool,” I manage, because what else can I say?

  “That’s good to hear,” says Mr. Wheeler, leaning back in his chair. “You’re all he’s got, too, you know that?”

  The implication that I don’t have anyone else stings. I’ve only known Kalyn for two weeks, but it’s not nothing. And there’s something else that bothers me, something that always has.

  I don’t know how to say it other than this: the way Mr. Wheeler talks, it’s like he thinks Phil has a disability. I used to think it was because Phil’s awkward, or Phil’s maybe on the autism spectrum, or Phil is too nerdy to function, but the older I get, the more this treatment weirds me out. Mr. Wheeler sees something sinister in Phil, some illness I’ve never seen. The way he talks, you’d think Phil was a murderer.