Wild and Crooked

by Leah Thomas

  “Fuck,” Phil spits, dropping any trace of that prudish accent. “Fuck!”

  Phil throws himself outside before I can even turn.

  About seven cars down, I spot what’s got him riled. Two figures are standing in the downpour. There’s this tall guy I’ve seen around school, one of the so-called Gagglers. Leaning against him is Gus, looking about ready to fall over.

  I never thought I’d see Quillpower sprinting toward a fight. I never expected to see him make a lurching, fists-up beeline through two inches of water. Phil is made of sticks, but his arm doesn’t snap when he decks the Gaggler in the cheekbone.

  I’m outside now, caught in the chaos, not thinking about whether or not Gus’ll want me there, or maybe only thinking about it. Phil lays another punch on the Gaggler.

  The Gaggler’s yelping like a pug by the time I reach them, and the pair of ’em are rolling in the puddles on the tarmac. Gus isn’t watching any of this; his eyes are red and cloudy behind rain-streaked glasses, fixed on something beyond these two tussling idiots.

  I steel myself and step into his line of vision. “Gus? You okay?”

  He’s staring at some random car. And before I can register why, Gus sees me.

  A Spence and a red Ford Taurus. Me, wearing that stupid white dress.

  To my horror, Gus starts giggling, way too hard, like something’s scraping the sound out of his lungs, squeezing it like old glue from a blocked bottle. The wrongness of it makes me feel like I’m getting punched. It rises over the sound of splashing and cussing at our feet, over the rain and the rumble of engines.

  I step around the idiots—Phil’s in a headlock—and put my arms around Gus, wanting him to stop making that sound. Something burns my elbow, but I don’t let go.

  “Gus, hey, Gus. It’s okay.”

  “It isn’t.” He won’t stop giggling. I catch a whiff of his breath—skunky, green, way too familiar. Now I clock the burning at my elbow, all right.

  “Are you—Jesus, Gus? You’re smoking pot?” I pluck the joint from his fingers and throw it into the mud.

  He’s still giggling, eyes unfocused. “You think cripples can’t—can’t get high, too?”

  “Don’t call yourself—”

  “Don’t tell myself what to call myself,” he snaps.

  “You’re asthmatic, dumbass!” I’m nearly bowled over when Phil rolls into my calf. “Would you quit it? Christ!” I thrust a ballet flat into the nearest puddle, kicking water at the pair of them. Once, twice, and a third time, until I feel my foot hit flesh.

  The Gaggler yelps and the two finally split. Phil’s glaring, wiping his nose on his sleeve. The Gaggler scuttles backward, crablike, trying to get up. For some reason he’s fumbling in his pocket. So help me, if he has a shiv—­

  But he pulls out a digital camera, of all things, and snaps a picture of us.

  “What a reunion!” The Gaggler looks livid, but he’s grinning. I’ve seen guys grin like that in prison. Dad warns me not to go near them.

  “Delete that, Garth.” Phil’s voice is creepy-calm.

  But this guy—Garth—tucks the camera away and buggers off, limping as water splashes at his ankles. Phil looks ready to chase him, but I put my arm out. We watch this asshole climb into a small sedan, watch it light up and pull away.

  “Timbbbbbberr.” Gus is done laughing.

  I’m shivering, but not just cold. Gus isn’t looking at me, but he’s not shoving my hand away. He’s not as tense as usual. It’s like the water’s melting him. I don’t know which version of me I am, but she’s scared to speak.

  “That motley-minded lout,” Phil mutters. “That pox-marked puttock.”

  “Hey,” Gus says, “I left my evil socks in the food court.”

  “Okay. Let’s go get dry. At least on the outside.” It’s another one of my confusing jokes. I’m saying we’re all sobbing on the inside. But it doesn’t make any sense.

  ACT FIVE

  Enter PHIL WHEELER

  PHIL

  I CANNOT RECALL the last time I deigned to dine in an Orangee’s restaurant. The food within ranks as barely adequate on the edibility spectrum. But within Orangee’s, we are bombarded by blaring country-pop lyrics rather than icy dollops.

  The greeter surveys we three misfits through tired eyes: Kalyn in pizza-stained, translucent garb; Gus, clutching a ridiculous pair of socks and hiccupping like a drunkard; myself, mud soaked and swollen faced, paper towel hastily shoved up my nostrils, leaning on Gus’s cane because he refused to carry it.

  “Table for three?”

  A waitress sets a children’s paper menu on my seat to spare the vinyl my ruin. Kalyn, thus far silent, asks the waitress for another children’s menu and crayons.

  My compatriots have elected to sit beside rather than across from each other. Gus is dissociating, presumably overwhelmed. Kalyn is as still as the proverbial grave.

  Our waitress returns with waters and crayons on a tray, menus wedged beneath her arm. I order onion rings. “Would either of you like anything?”

  Gus leans his head against the window glass. The light refracts on the water dribbling outside, casting mirrored shadows on his skin. Kalyn merely overturns her cup of crayons and draws a purple grid on the back of her menu.

  I have never been socially adept. Even among my brothers, LARPers all, I struggle most in public and private. Yet in this merry company, the mere fact that I thank our waitress renders me the most capable in this booth.

  “What fit of madness has taken the pair of you?”

  Gus stares at his lap. Kalyn stares daggers at me.

  “Really, Phil? Wanna explain why you decked the Gaggler?”

  Intoxicated or not, this captures Gus’s attention. I can scarce look at him. Not only because we have argued. Not only because I am questioning my treatment of him. Kalyn has asked me to consider Gus’s treatment of me. I have much human thinking to do, which is no simple thing. My conscience is a carefully cultivated thing.

  “Garth Holden is no friend to us. In no uncertain terms, he is a cream-faced loon.”

  If I were better at interpreting facial expressions, I could register the degree of hurt in Gus’s eyes. Is it more or less than yesterday, when I left him in my van? Does it pertain at all to the bump beneath his forelock? Is it more or less than our first childhood argument, when I drained his chocolate milk and replaced his carton with an empty one?

  Kalyn snorts. “What did he do? Beat you on a level of Underlook?”

  “He could never.” A basket of microwaved circles appears before us. “Would either of you like to partake?”

  “No thanks.”

  “ ‘But if it be a sin to covet honor, I am the most offending soul alive.’ ” Frankly, I am surprised to find my knuckles bruised. I can’t recall when last I engaged in violence.

  Before I met Gus, I destroyed without consideration. I overturned desks and pinched classmates’ skin. Children and animals knew to avoid me. When I speak to Kalyn of my baseness, she cannot fathom the depths from which I have climbed.

  I struggle to empathize with people who aren’t fictional.

  At age five, I received an individualized education plan. I was tested for autism, but fell short of the spectrum and landed in some nether realm. I was intelligent, but not emotionally so. My father claims I was a conscientious toddler. I wept to see others weep.

  “When you were three—and you won’t remember this—you fell off your bike and smacked your head. You were hospitalized for a week, with damage to your temporal lobe. It happened while you were still growing. It stunted you, son.”

  It is strange to be called stunted when you are taller than anyone your age. It is stranger still to be called stunted by a parent who’s crying tears you can’t comprehend.

  If I taught Gus words, Gus taught me the tenets of humanity. If I cannot feel for others, I can mimic feeling. Gus is a living, breathing conscience, a so-called bleeding heart. Dad let him bleed on me, hoping it might stain me a better h
ue of human.

  I haven’t hurt a soul in years, until today.

  Gus sobers as rain rails without. “Phil. Tell me why you hit Garth.”

  I tell them what they do not know about Garth Holden.

  Gus idolizes anyone who seems comfortable in his own flesh. Garth has idolized Gus in return, in a manner of speaking. Garth has a morbid streak that goes beyond writing gothic poetry. Garth Holden once visited my home to be soundly beaten at video games. He was inquisitive about my best and only friend.

  A number of people in the world are obsessed with true-crime stories. The obsession itself is not an issue. But Garth was not interested in Gus as a human being. He was interested in Gus as the son of a murdered man. He asked to be introduced to Gus. He asked if I’d seen the crime-scene photos. He asked whether I knew gory details.

  Eventually he asked if Gus had received brain damage because his mother was shocked during pregnancy. That was the last time I used my fists. Garth then, Garth now. Gus has gazed longingly at Garth and his “Gaggle.” I have glared them gone.

  A crayon breaks in Kalyn’s fist as I relay this. “Oh. Maybe I’ll deck him next.”

  Gus tugs the menu closer. He selects a black crayon and scribbles. This perturbs me. One of Gus’s greatest bugbears is the way outsiders infantilize him.

  “Kalyn’s dad killed my dad.” He hiccups again. The crayon does not pause.

  “Ah.” It all comes together, a thing brought to fruition before me. “I see.”

  I assumed Kalyn’s arrival signified the commencement of a coming-of-age romantic comedy. In truth, this is a murder mystery. Perhaps a tragedy. I wasn’t wrong to think our lives a story. I was simply wrong about which genre we belong to.

  “We should start researching immediately.”

  “Researching?” Kalyn lifts glassy eyes.

  “If your father is innocent, then another culprit is responsible for the crime.”

  “He’s not innocent,” Gus says. “He can’t be.”

  To my amusement, Kalyn nods. “I don’t think Dad’s innocent. But whether he was justified is another thing—”

  “Justified?” Gus sputters. “I’m sorry, but? It was murder!”

  “ ‘I’m sorry, but?’ Were you there?”

  “The new evidence must be compelling. We could consider alternative suspects.”

  Neither of them looks thrilled by the suggestion, which baffles me.

  “It’s compelling, all right.” Kalyn pulls her eyes from Gus’s white face. “But Dad’s always said he did the deed. Who lies about being innocent?”

  “No one,” Gus says, “except someone with, um, other bodies to hide.”

  “You don’t know anything about my dad!”

  “I know he’s still breathing.”

  “Enough.” I long to speak to the logical parts of them, but they are caught up in the minutiae of emotions. “This unhappy fate need not result in hatred. With you, Capulet, nor you, Montague. It’s a cliché.”

  “Goddamnit, Quillpower—life ain’t a Shakespearean tragedy!”

  “So you say. Yet your stars are clearly crossed.”

  Gus closes his eyes.

  “Gus,” Kalyn says, “I told you to never come near my house. Now you know why. You’re the match to my gunpowder.”

  “Not every explosion yields negative results,” I suggest.

  “If you’re about to go off about Tetris rows again—” Kalyn warns.

  “Sometimes you must raze a fortress before you can build anew. Today’s headlines may trigger an explosion, yes. But what will come after, once the refuse is tidied away? The possibilities are fascinating.”

  “I’m sorry, Kalyn. Phil always . . . he does this.”

  “At least I do something.” It is better than the alternative. It is better than throwing chairs.

  When I was five, I hit my head and my soul flew out of me.

  I will never remember who I was before, if I was anyone else at all.

  John gave me my first Dungeons and Dragons handbook during my first school suspension. The book was dog-eared and stained with spaghetti sauce. The pages were stuck together with the glue of dried soda spills. But the font was legible. Laid out in plain writing were stats, a tangible system for weighing character attributes. Suddenly made measurable were concepts such as Wisdom and Constitution and Charisma. If it takes assigning numbers to my peers for me to see their value, isn’t that preferable to seeing no value whatsoever?

  The two of them are mum. To alleviate their stage fright, I remove the audience. “I’m going to the restroom. To change the tissues.”

  I duck behind a pillar. I do not wait long.

  “Gus . . .”

  “Kalyn.”

  “Phil is so much weirder than you let on.”

  “He’s w-weirder than—than . . . yeah.”

  “He’s weird, but he’s got a point. Should we try and solve this?”

  “I just met you, Kalyn,” Gus replies after a beat.

  “Yeah. I know. It’s been less than a month, Gus. That’s it. Our whole lives, our parents’ lives, versus a month. I get it.”

  “I drove to Spence Salvage today. For the first time.”

  Clink. Kalyn sets down her drink. “Was it as trashy as you expected?”

  “. . . I don’t know.”

  “Bullshit, Gus. I saw your house. Fucking mullet mansion.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “D’you think it’s worth the struggle? This thing we’ve got going here. Not that I like taking shit lying down—Spences don’t.”

  “Your—your dad did. By confusing, I mean. Confessing.”

  Her exhale almost reaches me. “I know. I’ve got questions for Dad, believe me.”

  “Me too. For mine. But I can’t ask them.”

  “Keep on guilting me, why don’t you?”

  “If your dad didn’t do it, I’m not g-guilting you.”

  “. . . okay, smartass.”

  “. . . if he did do it. I’m still not guilting you.”

  “. . . okay.” Kalyn drops the epithet.

  This conversation lacks the rhythm of poetry, but I have learned to lower my expectations of laymen. They may not see the symmetry of this, but I do.

  “Gus. I don’t expect you to wanna be in my life after . . . ​ after all this.”

  “We’ve known each other one month.”

  “I heard you.”

  “One month—but, but I already, you’re already, part of me.”

  “Because that’s what I wanted! Gus, you don’t really know me. I conned everyone, you included. Classic Spence.”

  “Yeah. You con people. I still like you.”

  “You’re just high, Guslinda.”

  “No.”

  I hear nothing for a time.

  “God help me, you’re getting my hopes up here. I didn’t know I had hopes deep down in me to begin with.” Her laugh is minuscule. “It’s not like me.”

  “Maybe it is like you.”

  “. . . the wide and crooked, Gustier?”

  I can hear his smile. “Maybe. The wild, I mean—wide and crooked. Maybe Phil’s right. Maybe we can at least do better than our parents.”

  “That goes without saying. I don’t plan on shootin’ you anytime soon.”

  Gus isn’t laughing. Kalyn isn’t, either, though she mimics the sound.

  “Sorry, that was . . . ​look, this could be damned impossible, Gus.”

  “Not impossible. Difficult. There’s a difference.”

  “Is everything all right?” Our waitress appears beside me. I put a finger on my lips.

  “My companions are reconciling a doomed friendship.”

  “. . . ​Okaaay. I’ll get y’all a second order of onion rings. On the house.”

  Both members of my troupe jump when I approach.

  “More onion rings are coming.” I note Gus’s frown. “Yes?”

  “I’m still p-pissed at you.”

  “No, you’re not.” I
swat the air with a hand. “You’re too overwhelmed with your world being rent asunder.”

  “Phil. You ditched me yesterday.”

  “Oh.” If my moral compass says so, so be it. “I am here now, am I not?”

  Gus cocks his head.

  “Jesus, Phil, just tell him you’re sorry.” Kalyn’s eyes bore into me. “You say a lot of words, but I know bullshit when I smell it.”

  I concede. “Apologies, Gus.”

  His frown persists. “Aren’t you still pissed at me?”

  I consider his set jaw. “Why should I be? It seems like a waste of energy.”

  Here is what Gus has never considered:

  My dad didn’t pair me with him to help Gus with his broken thought processes. He hoped Gus could repair mine. I don’t expect Gus to find the work easy.

  “We need to ask questions. Perhaps a stay in the library could benefit us—”

  Kalyn folds her arms. “Weren’t you going to go change those tissues?”

  “Ah?”

  “Phil, you’re bleeding!”

  I put a hand to my seeping nose. I am very alive today.

  I need not be emotional to be invested. The role has never mattered so much to me as having one. It’s about never being ignored in a classroom, never left alone to destroy my surroundings. Never being an NPC.

  As the new lead investigator in the James Ellis murder, the single force that may keep Capulets and Montagues from clashing, it’s fair to say:

  Phillip Wheeler has entered this story at last.

  GUS

  BLACK-PEPPER CLOUDS GIVE way to a green-skied evening. The whole way back to Samsboro, Kalyn and I wait for a different storm to break.

  The Death Van tailgates us from an unsafe distance. Phil got over yesterday so fast. After everything, where we stand now isn’t any different than where we’ve always stood.

  Pot is overrated. Hours later I’m too sober, with an aching head and a burning throat to show for it. Onion rings churn in my stomach.

  Maybe Kalyn wants to escape Phil’s driving. But maybe she wants to be near me.

  I don’t want to give up yet. There aren’t many things worth keeping in the world. Maybe Kalyn and me, our friendship, isn’t worth keeping, either. But almost every aspect of our lives has been decided for us. Trying to make this work is our decision.