by Travis, Todd
“Let’s go, Shakes, don’t go rubbing one out on the tour bus, you sick pervert!” Goodwin shouted from the other side of the door. “This ain’t your grandma’s house!”
Shakes sighed. It was at least three hours to Portland, if not more.
Chapter Five
Faye “Fat Chick” Clemons smoothed her blouse; it was brand new and she was insanely proud of it. She knew that they were eating at a steak and lobster house later that night, but she planned on not touching a single bite of food, not a bite. She wouldn’t even order anything, she didn’t want a plate of food near her. It’d be just water for her tonight.
She’d go hungry but she was used to that. She didn’t want to chance spilling any grease, butter or anything on it, no stains. It was incredibly expensive, shiny and dark metallic blue. Blue like her eyes, she thought. She’d wanted it ever since she’d seen Kat Dennings wear the same exact blouse on a red carpet somewhere.
She saved up for months for this blouse, running errands for her mother and babysitting for the little creeps who lived next door. They were two boys and a girl, all under the age of nine, and she hated them with every fiber of her being. They didn’t listen to her, they fought constantly and called her “Fatty” when she made them go to bed. She hated it but the money was too good to turn down. She couldn’t get a real job; she tried everywhere. They wouldn’t give her a job at McDonald’s, none of the stores at the mall, no one would hire her, because of her weight, she knew. So babysitting was her only option.
The blouse had to be special-ordered as Faye was a plus size. Actually, she was a plus-PLUS size, if the truth be told. She was a big gal, her mother liked to say with some pride. Faye’s mother was big, too. It was genetic, her mother said. She came from a long line of big women. Faye didn’t find that comforting at all. Big was fine, but big was one thing, fat was another. She was much more than big, she knew. She was fat.
So were her mother and father, who both lived on starchy, fatty foods. They ate through mountains of frozen pizzas, drive-thru burgers and fries. They were regulars at the local Italian restaurant for the all-you-can-eat pasta. Their home was filled with bags and bags of Lays potato chips, their personal favorite, store-bought chocolate cookies, cartons of ice cream, cheesecake and cans of pressurized whipped cream.
Her mother didn’t cook or bake; she thought that was a waste of time. Why go to all that trouble when others do it for you and so much better, it was reasoned. Food was just a short drive or a phone call away.
Faye couldn’t imagine her parents ever having sex, not at the size they were now, they were both far too big to even contemplate it, but she felt even at an early age that her parents had an unnatural, intimate bond when it came to food. They both let out moans of delight and pleasure when they ate, stole glances at each other and giggled like kids. Food was their sex. It was sick and disgusting.
Faye tried to diet, she tried really hard, sometimes went days without eating a bite. But nothing seemed to work. She gained weight without even trying. Just glancing at a Burger King commercial seemed to add pounds onto her frame.
But she did what she could, as best she could. And the blouse, which she just got last week, made her happy. She didn’t go to Homecoming, of course, and knew she wouldn’t be attending Prom, but at least on this trip she’d look nice for once. She leaned back in her seat and stared at her reflection in the bus window.
Tracy Jones popped her head up from the seat in front of her. Faye hadn’t realized she was sitting behind her, otherwise she would have moved. Tracy was pert, vivacious and attractive, her skirts always the shortest in the class, her blouse always unbuttoned down as low as she could get away with.
“Faye, something looks … different about you. Can’t put my finger on what it is. Did you do something to your hair?” Tracy asked. She had a playful gleam in her eye.
Faye ignored her at first, though she knew it would do no good.
“Wait, did you get your ears pierced?”
Faye just stared out the window.
“Did you lose weight? No, that’d be crazy, of course you didn’t lose weight.”
Faye’s cheeks burned with anger.
“Wait … is that … a new blouse?”
Faye finally turned and faced Tracy.
“Faye, that’s an absolutely beautiful new blouse. I have to say, it’s stunning.”
“Thank you.”
“My only question would be, why ruin it by wearing it? You’re completely destroying the reputation of that gorgeous work of art by letting it be seen on the likes of you.”
Tracy glanced at her friends and they all tittered.
“And honey, metallic isn’t a good look for you. It reflects, you know. Which in your case, means it reflects A LOT. You need stripes. Vertical stripes. Lots and lots of vertical stripes. This makes you look like a blimp at a ball game.”
Faye finally snapped. “Why are you bothering me? Don’t you have like, you know, some random guy you have to go down on?”
Tracy turned back to Faye in disbelief. Faye never fought back like this. This was a first. “What did you just say to me?”
“I said, don’t you have some guy you have to go down on? Because that’s what you do, right? That’s how you get guys to like you, right? By going down on all of ’em.”
“Uh, guys … like me … because I’m hot.”
“They only like you because you’re a slut,” Faye said. “A blow-job slut.”
Tracy’s friends went “ohhh” and Tracy’s eyes went wide. She leaned in close.
“They like me because I’m hot. I do what I do with them because I like it. I like sex, I like boys, I like sex with hot boys and they like it with me because I’m hot, too. And the only reason you DON’T do that is because you’re a disgusting fat pig too afraid to go on a diet, stick your finger down your throat or get your stomach stapled, so don’t you ever, ever sit and judge ME ever again, you fat fucking bitch. I’ll make your life a living hell.”
Tracy held Faye’s gaze until Faye finally wilted and looked away.
“And you make that beautiful blouse look like a fucking tarp,” Tracy said as she turned back around and sat down. Her friends tittered.
Faye just burned with shame and anger. Life is already a living hell, she thought.
Chapter Six
Edward “Special Ed” Kaminski stared out of the window in wonder, watching the highway and Oregon scenery fly by. Ed rarely got out of their town of Radford, so this trip was a real treat for him. His grandmother, who he had lived with ever since he was seven, didn’t like to drive on the freeway or at night, and Ed hadn’t been able to pass the test for the driver’s license. He’d tried again and again, but it was just beyond him. So traveling this far was a big adventure.
Ed wasn’t retarded, his grandmother would tell him again and again, he just wasn’t as quick as everyone else. Slow, Ed would say, and she would correct him immediately. No, she’d tell him, you’re not slow. You’re just not as quick. That was important to her. You’re not retarded, you’re not slow, she’d say, you’re just not quick.
Ed wasn’t smart, he knew, but he was smart enough to know better than that. He WAS slow. Reading was difficult, he had that thing where letters didn’t look the same as they did for everyone else, he couldn’t remember what that was called, but he had that. And he just had to think harder about ordinary things, things that most kids just did without a thought, like tying shoes or simple addition or, well, figuring out a smartphone. He didn’t have a phone or e-mail. His grandma didn’t have Internet and they had a phone at home, so why carry one around, she’d say.
Not that Ed would have anyone to call, even if he had a cell phone. He spent nearly every hour he wasn’t at school with his grandma, who was retired but always kept herself very busy. She made him sweaters, baked treats for him and took care of him, which she’d done ever since his mother and father had died in a car accident when he was very young. Ed could barely remember his
parents. His whole world was his grandmother. Ed was slow, he knew, but he was loved.
Ed stared out the window and hummed a song, one of his grandma’s favorites, but he couldn’t remember what it was called, something from the big band era. Ed was nineteen already and would turn twenty shortly after graduation. He’d graduate high school, just barely, with a lot of Ds on his report card.
He was big, well over six feet and over two hundred pounds. He was round but he wasn’t fat. There was real strength in his body. He could bench his weight and then some. The high school coaches wanted him to try out for football during his sophomore year, but his grandma wouldn’t allow it at first, she was worried to death that he might get hurt. The coaches snorted at that. Ed was a tank, they told him and her. He’s the one who will be putting the hurt on others.
A few of his teachers called her in for a conference to talk her into it, they were convinced it’d be a good thing for Ed, that it’d help him bond with other students and give him something he could be good at. It’d be character building. They’d convinced her that it’d be good for his education. Tearful, she finally agreed, sick to her soul that something might happen to her precious boy.
Ed didn’t get hurt, but football turned out to be a disaster for him. He could never remember where he was supposed to go; they’d tell him left, he’d go right. He’d forget what to do and stood around confused most of the time.
And more than that, when other players hit him, Ed never responded back in kind, he never hit back. He could hit the sled hard enough to jolt the coaches, but he simply couldn’t make himself hit other players in kind. Since he’d always been bigger than other kids, his grandma had hammered it into Ed’s consciousness from an early age that he wasn’t to ever hurt anyone else, and it was too hard for him to overcome that psychological wall just for football, a game that to this day he didn’t understand.
Ed was a gentle soul, he didn’t have an angry bone in his body, his grandma liked to say, and the entirety of football practice just confused and alienated him even more than schoolwork had. He suited up for a few games, and eventually even made it onto the field for one where the outcome had been decided. He was put on the offensive line and it was a complete mess. He got mixed up when the play started and ended up knocking down his own quarterback. Which was bad, he knew.
And then he did it again on the very next play. The coaches pulled him from the game immediately and announced, in front of everybody, that he was the other team’s best player. He didn’t get that, and didn’t understand why everyone else laughed. His grandma had been on the sidelines, overheard that and was furious. She marched right up to the fence and called the coach out in front of everyone. She told them all off, reminded them that it was their idea for Ed to play this foolish game, not Ed’s, and shame on them, shame on them for doing this to her poor boy. She screamed at them.
After that debacle, it was decided that the Ed Kaminski football project was a complete bust. Ed went back to his usual schedule of remedial high school classes, lunch and then home to watch game shows with his grandmother, except for one thing. The jocks had figured out that Ed, big as he was, wouldn’t ever fight back or even get angry no matter what they did, so they delighted in finding small ways to humiliate him.
“Hey, Special Ed,” one of the jocks whispered from the seat behind him. It was Roger; Ed knew him well. He’d played cornerback and was always picking his nose.
It just wasn’t in Ed’s nature to get angry or mad. He simply got confused and sad when they made fun of him. He knew what they were doing, of course. He wasn’t stupid. He was simply too slow and too kind to get really angry.
“Special Ed, check this out,” a hand poked up by the window, holding a smartphone. On Roger’s phone a dirty movie played. It was a very dirty movie, with completely naked boys and girls doing naughty things to each other. Very naughty things.
“Stop it,” Ed said. “I don’t like that.”
“It’s hot, Special Ed, you know you love it,” Roger said and giggled.
Ed scrunched down and tried not to think about it, but he could hear the moaning from the movie on the phone and it made him uncomfortable in his private area. Roger did this to him a lot. Grandma made a lot of Ed’s clothes, and didn’t often buy him new ones, so as a result his pants were nearly always too short and too tight.
One day in gym class last year, Tracy Jones lifted her T-shirt at him and showed him her underwear as a joke. It made him stiff and uncomfortable in his bathing suit area in a way that everyone could tell. Ed turned red with embarrassment as everyone laughed. Even the gym teacher laughed and just shook his head at the whole thing.
Since then Roger delighted in leaving dirty pictures in Ed’s locker, showing him videos right before or after gym class, trying to get him stiff when there were girls around. With his tight pants or gym shorts, it was always apparent.
Ed knew about sex stuff, he’d taken health class with everyone else and had seen the science pictures of their body parts. He knew that boys touched themselves down there, and so did girls. He knew that it was part of being a boy. But it made him so uncomfortable and embarrassed that he avoided all of it; he didn’t even like being in that health class.
“Get ready, Special Ed, this boy’s about to nut, here he goes … and boom!” Roger giggled again.
Ed closed his eyes, put his hands in his lap and pushed back at himself. He tried to think about his grandma, how disappointed she’d be if she knew about the dirty pictures and what they did to him. She hated smut. And whatever Grandma hated, Ed avoided.
Ed rocked back and forth, eyes closed.
Chapter Seven
Valerie “Psycho” Weems turned up the volume of the music on her phone, trying to drown out the chattering of Linda Sue Harris in the seat next to her. Just to irritate Linda Sue, Valerie chose the White Album, though most likely the significance of that would be lost on Linda Sue, if she were even aware. Valerie forwarded it to one of her favorite songs, “I’m So Tired” and maxed the volume up as far as it would go. Valerie was a serious Beatles fanatic; most days they were the only reason she got out of bed.
She ignored whatever Linda Sue was prattling on about, deliberately turned away and stared out the window. She knew without looking that Linda Sue would just put that sanctimonious I’m-being-patient-with-Psycho-Weems-smirk on her face and go back to reading the King James Bible on her kindle.
Valerie slid her hands under her sleeves and dug her nails deep into the soft fleshy part of her inner forearm. She pushed until the pain came, and she welcomed it. Linda Sue was proving to be most stubborn. She’d announced to Valerie, and to anyone else within earshot, once school started that fall that she was going to make a difference in Valerie’s life. She said that she knew Valerie had had some difficult times and probably felt lost and alone, but Linda Sue was going to prove to her that she wasn’t alone. She had Jesus and her heavenly father and that’s all the company anyone would ever need. Linda Sue declared that she was going to show Valerie the lighted path that God leaves for everyone.
Then she put both hands on Valerie’s shoulders and said, “I’m going to show you Jesus’s love, it’s pure and it’s so beautiful.”
And then she hugged her. If Valerie had the capacity to be embarrassed, she might have been at that moment, but she just stood there, slack. Other students just laughed at Linda Sue, except those in Linda Sue’s group who were also Christian soldiers. Valerie just took it, expressionless, which was her usual look. She felt nothing, as was her norm, and when Linda Sue finally released her, Valerie walked away without a word.
Valerie preferred not to speak to anyone, and avoided it whenever possible. She did the bare minimum in terms of homework, didn’t speak when called upon in class, just kept her head down and her headphones and sunglasses on in between class. They kept taking both away during school hours, but she’d just get new ones. She’d speak upon occasion, but only when absolutely necessary. She flitted through
school for three years just like that.
They’d made her see a school counselor last year, Mr. Truman, who tried to talk to her about her mother, who tried to get her involved in what the counselor called “The Healing Process.” Valerie just stared at the Mr. Truman, not speaking for the whole hour each time. At the end of the year, the counselor got frustrated with her and said, “What is it you want?”
“I just want to be left alone,” Valerie said. And it was true.
He stared and told her, bluntly, that if the administration thought that she was going to try and kill herself again, then no one would or could leave her alone. If she promised him she wouldn’t do that, at least while she was still in school here, he’d let her out of these sessions.
She agreed to that instantly. She figured out his game, Truman just didn’t want to be responsible if Valerie finally pulled it off and killed herself. She was glad to be free of him, finally. He stunk of cigarettes and acted like he knew more than he did.
Valerie saw a regular shrink, too. That was part of the agreement to get out of the hospital the last time she tried to hang herself, a year and a half ago. And that shrink, Dr. Stein, was a woman and a lot smarter than Mr. Truman.
Dr. Stein had no problem sitting in silence with Valerie for fifty minutes. She’d occasionally make comments, ask questions, especially about the long sleeves Valerie always wore, even in the summer, but she never took it personally when Valerie didn’t respond.