Nothing Special

by Geoff Herbach

  This was very smooth operating by Gus. Best way to break a nice person like my mom is to make her think doing what she really wants to do is going to harm the environment and stop all future generations from existing.

  Jerri shook her head, put her hands on her hips, and looked up at the ceiling. She said, “I was really looking forward to this drive for some reason.”

  Of course, I knew why. I didn’t know know (didn’t think they were going to be like…boyfriend and girlfriend), but I knew she wanted to see your dad. Before Gus could stop me from talking, I said, “Jerri, I think maybe you should just visit Ronald this weekend even if I’m not with you. You could stay a couple of days, then help him move stuff back here for the summer session.”

  Jerri looked at me. Squinted a little. “You think, Felton?”

  “Oh, yeah. If I could visit Aleah, I sure as hell would,” I said. (I really didn’t know they were becoming a couple!)

  “Nice language, son,” Jerri said. “Maybe I will.”

  “Chicago’s not far,” Gus said.

  “Shut up, Gus,” Jerri said. “Enough rhetoric, okay?”

  “Huh?” Gus said, as if he didn’t know.

  This was definitely the weekend when our parents became an official unit, Aleah. You have my lying to thank for it.

  Anyway, it was a done deal. There. We did it. Gus was driving me to Ann Arbor, except not to Ann Arbor at all.

  Out on our driveway Gus whispered, “What’s up with Jerri? She’s kind of mean these days.”

  True. Jerri was not acting the part of the Jerri I’d known my whole life. This was not a bad thing. “I think she’s snapping out of the depression she’s been in for like eleven years, maybe. I don’t know, exactly.”

  “Oh,” Gus said. “I like it.”

  So, we were all set up with lies and bull crap, all set to hit the road. Apparently I have enough courage to seriously, crazily lie to my mom, even if I’m scared to go to a camp by myself.

  • • •

  Oh Jesus, Aleah, the plane is bouncing up and down. I think we’re possibly crashing. Seriously. The big dude just spilled a tiny bottle of wine all over himself. This is a disaster. Oh God. Jesus.

  Turbulence. The big guy smiled at me. “F-bombing turbulence.” Now he’s reading what I’m writing: Hello, man. My name is Felton.

  He just said, “Hiya, Felton!” I think he’s had four tiny bottles of wine.

  No, only three. “Three, Felton!” he said.

  He is saying out loud anything I type.

  I’m a big, drunk jerk!

  He didn’t say that.

  Sorry.

  He said it’s okay.

  The girl with the zombie book is laughing. Why can’t she be my girlfriend, Aleah? She’s right here. She’s cute.

  Sorry. I don’t mean it.

  The man just read that whole thing out loud to the girl. She laughed at me.

  I’m going to close the computer.

  August 16th, 2:35 p.m.

  On the Way to Charlotte, Part II

  The big drunk guy is snoring like Grandma Berba when she has a cold.

  Chainsaw McGraw.

  I almost fell asleep, but then the little girl in front of me moved her chair back and smashed my knees at the same moment my favorite big drunk ripped on his chain saw. I woke thinking I was in a horror movie (with zombies chain-sawing through the door of the tiny, smashed closet I’m hiding in).

  No. I’m just smashed on a plane, Aleah. (You should see how I’m typing—like a hobbit with arthritis, all bent up in a tiny hobbit-sized space.)

  Also reminds me of being smashed in Gus’s smoky car for like a thousand hours. Gus and I didn’t get along very well on our trip. It started bad and got worse.

  The start?

  On Friday morning when we were supposed to leave, he was totally late to pick me up. He was supposed to get me right after he finished the freaking paper route. “Oh yeah, about six, man. I’ll be there.”

  Jerri and I waited in the living room, my big bag filled with false football stuff and lying on the floor. And I felt horrible and guilty and sweaty and afraid. It got later and later. I called Gus at 6:40 to see what was the matter. He didn’t answer. Why wouldn’t he answer? Because he didn’t want to.

  Freaking anxiety! There were many, many lies afloat in the Bluffton air, Aleah.

  As it got lighter and brighter and later, Jerri sat there in that same gross robe she’d worn all last summer when she was getting more and more depressed until she didn’t get out of bed and didn’t shower and just wore that ugly robe day in and day out, looking like a dead lady wearing a robe. I hate that robe.

  I didn’t say anything about her robe.

  Jerri didn’t say anything about anything for that whole hour we waited. Together, we stared out the window at the empty main road. Together we sat in silence waiting for the great, late douche Gus.

  Then, after it became 7 a.m. and not the six o’clock hour at all, probably to break the tension she could tell was totally exploding inside of me, Jerri said, “Talked to Andrew late last night. He’s having a great time. Really loves that Tovi girl.”

  “Oh-ho-ho,” I said.

  “Tovi is an interesting name,” Jerri said. “I’ve never heard it except your dad’s sister named her kid Tovi. Do you remember Evith, your aunt?”

  “No!” I shouted.

  “What?” Jerri asked.

  “I don’t remember her,” I said.

  “It’s funny, you know? Evith and I got along really well back in the day. Why do people treat each other so poorly? I lost my husband too. They didn’t just lose their son and brother.”

  “Wow,” I said.

  “It’s been over eleven years now. I can’t believe it.”

  “No!”

  “Yeah, we’ve never talked much about your dad’s family…”

  “Never!” I said.

  “It’s high time. I don’t know why I hid things. When Andrew gets back from camp, we should really sit down and try to collect all these bits and pieces and…Do you know Ronald and Aleah specifically sit down once a week to discuss her feelings about her mom?”

  “Jesus!” I said.

  “Felton?” Jerri asked,

  “Wow!” I said. I could feel sweat beading up on my forehead. I jumped off the couch and started pacing around. Did Jerri know what was going on? What was this about you and your dad? Why was she bringing this family business up now? Did Jerri know something more? Had Andrew told her what was going on? Did Andrew talk to you and you talk to Ronald and Ronald talk to Jerri? “Whoa,” I said.

  “Uh,” Jerri looked up at me, one eyebrow raised. “Are you okay, Felton?”

  “No.”

  Just then, just in time—as I was just about to blow this whole wicked sham out into the open, drop the bomb, drop everything—an hour and fourteen minutes later than Gus was supposed to be, his Toyota rolled down the main road toward our house. The windows were down and smoke billowed out. Have you ever seen a Cheech and Chong movie? They’re on cable sometimes. Billowing smoke.

  “Ah, crap,” I said. There were two people in the car. “Freaking Maddie.”

  “That Gus is such a two-bit sack of B.S.,” Jerri shouted, standing up. “I don’t want you to go with him.”

  “I have to go with him, Jerri.”

  “Does Gus take drugs?”

  “No.”

  “You swear on…You swear on your Grandma Berba’s grave?”

  “Grandma Berba isn’t dead.”

  “She will be one day. And she’ll be buried. And you’ll have to live with this lie for the rest of your life, kid.”

  This call to honesty was not exactly the kind of thing I needed to hear at that moment, but I kept
my composure. As far as I know, dipshit Gus—who smokes and acts all irresponsible while maintaining excessively high grades—is not remotely on drugs.

  “Jerri,” I mumbled, my brow and hands sweaty and gross, “I swear on Grandma Berba’s future grave. Gus is not on drugs. I haven’t known him ever to take even a single drug. He is totally clean in that way. I say this to the best of my knowledge, okay? So you can’t blame me if Gus does take drugs and I don’t know about it, okay?”

  “Okay.” Jerri narrowed her eyes at me. “Grandma Berba can safely die now.”

  “Jesus. Shut up, Jerri.”

  Jerri blinked at me. “I’m just joking, Felton. No big deal.”

  “When do you joke?” I said.

  “Whenever I want,” Jerri said.

  I was wound tight, I tell you.

  Then Gus honked and Jerri flew out the door and started giving him and Maddie the wholesale business regarding smoking cigarettes and being late and getting little kids drunk on lemonade. By the time I dragged my bag out there, Maddie and Gus looked truly terrified, mouths opened, nostrils flared, like a great, terrible wind blew in their faces. Then Jerri gave me a big hug, helped me throw my gear in the trunk, gave me a hug again, pointed at Gus and Maddie and shook her head, then waved and smiled. Gus put the car in reverse and turned around.

  “Your mom is a savage, savage woman,” Maddie said.

  “Who knew?” Gus said.

  “I sure as hell didn’t,” I said. Then I looked back at Maddie. “Please tell me you’re not coming.”

  “No,” she said, her fake French face getting all pouty. “I have to stay in Bluffton to do Gus’s stupid paper route.”

  “Come on, not just that…You have to baby-sit your cousin,” Gus said.

  “And baby-sit my diaper-assed, worm-filled, little skank of a cousin.”

  “She’s a two-year-old,” Gus said to me. “Kids are pretty damn gross, man. I saw her eat a cricket.”

  When we dropped Maddie off at her house, she and Gus made out for about ten minutes, all wound in a tight ball, falling over on the hood in broad morning light. While they made out, I sat in the passenger seat with squirrel-nut anxiety firing down my legs and arms. We needed to get the crap out of town before somebody stopped us or somebody figured out who Tovi was or somebody gave me enough of a brain to stop the madness and just go to Michigan. Gus and Maddie kissed and kissed. Ridiculous.

  (Also made me miss you, Aleah. A lot.)

  When Gus finally got back in the car he said, “Why are you so sweaty?”

  My mouth took off! “Are you kidding? We lied to your parents and told Jerri that you were meeting up with some U Mich professor Hector dude, and Jerri wanted to talk about Dad’s family this morning, and if you don’t meet up with this Hector and Jerri sees your mom or dad and asks about how your visit with Hector is going and they call him to ask…we’re totally busted. Totally screwed.”

  “Felton,” Gus said. “Calm, buddy. We’re going to be busted, okay? There’s no doubt. Our parents aren’t idiots. We said all that crap so we could get the hell out of town. Once we’re gone, we’re gone. Then when the crap hits, we’ll tell the truth. It’s not like they’re going to call the cops on us, you know? So, just relax and enjoy the ride, okay?”

  “Oh,” I said. I took a deep breath. “Okay.” I looked straight forward, not at Maddie, who was being bitched out by her mom on her front step.

  And then Gus took off like a bat out of Bluffton (a very slow bat, because his Toyota is not a fast car at all).

  • • •

  Oh man. Turbulence. Chainsaw snoring man’s head just bounced off my shoulder.

  Oh shit. I hate this flight. I could be home. I’m so stupid.

  Oh, now Drunky is awake. He’s even drunkier than he was before he fell asleep. He’s reading this again. He just told me I’m not stupid. The girl on the aisle just said, “Why do you think you’re stupid?”

  “Because I’m so dumb,” I said.

  “That’s redundant,” she said.

  “Smarty pants,” the drunk dude said to the girl. Then he laughed really hard. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!

  I have to put the computer away. These people are in my business. (Trying to hide the screen.)

  August 16th, 3:07 p.m.

  On the Way to Charlotte, Part III

  Okay. Not so bumpy at the moment. The Big Drunkowski has fallen to his left on top of the zombie-reading girl. She’s giving me the eyeball. I try to shrug at her, but I am cramped up and the air smells like cow manure. What am I going to do? I can’t help her.

  At least Drunky McFarts-so-much is asleep, so he can’t read my screen.

  Okay.

  • • •

  Even though Gus gave me the Google map he printed out, with our route computer-traced all the way down the middle of the dang country, I had a hard time believing he knew what he was doing.

  We left Bluffton in what I was sure was the absolute wrong direction. Florida is south and east. We went south and west.

  Instead of just cutting into Illinois, which is less than twenty miles straight below Bluffton, Gus put us on U.S. 151 and shot us toward Dubuque, which is in freaking Iowa, which is to our freaking west. And it’s a place we go all the damn time so it didn’t feel like we were going any place special at all, which I found very frustrating.

  “What are you doing? Let’s just go to Hazel Green and cross over into Illinois down there, man. That’s more direct,” I said.

  “Have you ever heard of a map? It shows roads? It shows the big roads? Look! There are no big roads that cross straight south into Illinois. Do you see that? Look at the piece of paper I put in your big, dumb hands.”

  “Shut up, man.”

  “Dumb hands.”

  “Shut up,” I said.

  “Stop acting like such an ape all the time,” Gus said.

  Nice start to the trip.

  We rolled off toward the Dickeyville bottoms. Gus’s lateness and meanness immediately made me sleepy (daytime stress makes me sleepy—opposite of night), which immediately made me fall (half) asleep, which I assume made Gus happy because who wants to sit next to a stupid talking ape for like thirty hours straight in a tiny car? Maybe an ape biologist, but nobody else.

  This was super too: while I was sleeping and waking and bumping my head on the window and drooling and opening my eyes and squinting at the bright sunlight and falling back asleep, I dreamed about Cody throwing me all these passes in games, about how I’d come out of my cuts and the ball would be in the air, but then I’d forget what I was doing and the ball would hit me in the chest or the face or on the neck, which is kind of impossible. I dreamed this same scenario over and over, and the miles went by and I woke and slept and drooled, and everybody was dream-screaming mad at me and then Gus hit me on the shoulder and I woke up.

  “Ma-koe-ku-tah,” he said.

  “Cody thinks I’m on my way to Michigan,” I said.

  “What, dude?” Gus asked.

  “What?” I rubbed my eyes.

  “Maquoketa, Iowa. Gus need breakfast sandwich, Mr. Gorilla,” Gus said.

  “Why is everybody so damn mean?”

  “What are you talking about, you freak?”

  He pulled into the McDonald’s in this small Iowa town.

  While we were eating a couple of bacon, egg, and cheese biscuits, Gus talked about this movie he saw that showed where fast food comes from (giant death farms made out of razor blades where animals get really sick to their stomachs and then all fall over and sleep in their own feces until they die of cancer), and I sort of lost my appetite.

  “Oh, it’s gross, brother. It’s wicked.” He kept eating, though. His mouth was way open too, while he chewed, so I could see all the dead and mushed-up poop animals getting chomped up in there
.

  “Why don’t you shut your mouth when you eat?”

  “Because I can’t get food in my mouth when it’s shut, you dumbass,” he said. Then he took another bite and made a big show of sticking his tongue through it all. He made this ahalahalahala sound in the back of his food-packed throat at the same time.

  Totally disgusting.

  At that point, he hadn’t even begun the cigarette-smoking marathon. That particular start line happened to be at the exit of the McDonald’s. He pulled out his white and blue pack of Parliaments, lit up, then offered me one. “Care for an after-dinner mint?” he asked.

  “Yeah, not too much.”

  “I love me this abscessed filter.” He spun the cigarette around to show me this sort of hole in the butt. “Love to stick my tongue in the groove, baby.”

  “I seriously have no idea who you are.”

  “You’ve missed it,” he said. “I’ve gotten sexy.”

  Literally like three years ago, me and Gus were playing with Muppet dolls. I’m serious. We played Kermit and Miss Piggy in his living room and filmed ourselves putting on a Muppet puppet show.

  Sing it, Gus! “Why are there so many songs about rainbows, and what’s on the other side?”

  We were immature eighth graders. We were funny, though.

  “You want to drive?” he asked after he finished sticking his tongue in the groove.

  “Yes. Please.”

  “You don’t have to be short with me, Felton. I’m trying to show you a good time, okay?”

  “I don’t smoke.”

  “You don’t have to smoke.”

  “Why do you smoke?”

  “Because I want to.” He handed me the keys. “Just stick to the map, Felton,” he said.

  “I go where the wind blows,” I said.

  “You used to be funny,” Gus said.

  “You used to think Miss Piggy was hot.”

  “That hasn’t changed, Felton. Drive the car.”

  About twenty minutes later, on Highway 61 heading south, Gus put an old Green Day album on his iPod so it blared (I like Green Day fine), then rolled down the passenger window and began smoking again.