Rotten (9780545495899)

by Northrop, Michael

  “Sure, if the car doesn’t die,” he says. “What’s up?”

  Rudy’s tiny Ford is older than we are. It was built in 1993 and not even all that well. We are chugging along Burnside Road, listening to the engine slowly give up on this world, and not saying anything. It’s a little awkward. Rudy’s my best friend and the most inappropriate person I know, so you’d think I could talk to him about anything. I used to think that, too, but this one has had me stumped for months.

  “So,” he says finally. “What’re we, checking out the sights? Leaf peeping?”

  “No,” I say. I’m trying to figure out how to start, how or if.

  We get stuck behind one of those little post office trucks with the steering wheel on the wrong side. When the guy pulls over to stick a handful of catalogs and bills in the next mailbox, Rudy pulls out into the other lane. The Fiesta labors past and then backfires at its vanquished opponent.

  With the road open in front of us, Rudy tries again: “Nice day for a drive, huh?”

  I’m ready to talk now.

  “You know how, like in cartoons, the first assignment kids always get at the start of school is an essay?” I say.

  “Maybe,” says Rudy. “What kind of essay?”

  “What I did on my summer vacation.”

  “Oh,” he says. “Oh yeah.”

  “Well,” I say.

  “I was not expecting this. Not at all.”

  “I’m a man of mystery.”

  “You’re a tight-lipped ass.”

  “That’s a badly mixed metaphor.”

  “Stay on target,” he says. He knows my tricks. “What you did on your summer vacation. About time, by the way. About time you told me.”

  “Well,” I say. “I didn’t spend it with my aunt.”

  “Knew it!” he shouts. “Man, you lie like a rug. Now tell me where you really were, so I can decide how pissed to be right now.”

  “I really was upstate,” I say. “That part was true.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “I was in, well, I was in juvie. It was one of those big, half-empty places upstate.”

  “Was it like, what, a prison?”

  “It was half like that, and half like, I don’t know, kindergarten,” I say. “They just treated us like potentially dangerous children. Which I guess we kind of are, but still. We had to talk about our ‘feelings’ a lot, and you know how much I like that.”

  “Right, like: ‘And how did that make you feel?’” he says.

  “Exactly.”

  “OK, so why were you there?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “That’s the thing. It’s just … it’s not good.”

  “Yeah, I figured there was some reason you were stonewalling. I mean, juvie … It’s almost kind of cool.”

  “It’s not cool! That’s just stupid. That’s just, whatever, it’s ridiculous. People who say that haven’t been there, like it makes you some kind of badass. It makes you a loser, all right? First of all —”

  “Whoa, I just meant —” Rudy says, but I’m not done.

  “First, it’s the most depressing place on Earth. And that’s in the summer. In the winter, I don’t even know. Second, what do I need that for? Who am I going to impress? How hard is it to be tough around here anyway? It’s not. People already think we’re at least that. What do I need the extra credit for? And you know what I don’t need? I don’t need everyone knowing and just putting that on me. I don’t want to be a dead-end loser. I am going to frickin’ get out of here and not hang around downtown at, like, twenty-seven, trying to save up for smokes, all right?”

  “Jesus,” says Rudy. “Relax, all right? I’m not going to put it on your permanent record.”

  I sit back and breathe. It doesn’t seem like enough, so I pop my head out the open window and let the air blast my face for a few seconds. When I duck back in, Rudy asks the same question: “Why?”

  It’s possible that my entire speech was some kind of attempt to avoid answering him the first time. It’s possible he knows it.

  “You can’t tell anyone,” I say.

  This is the part I never wanted to admit, the part I wanted to just bury in a hole for the rest of my life. But there’s no avoiding it now: I can’t tell the what without the why. I can’t believe I’m going to do this. I’m disgusted with myself.

  “I stole perfume,” I say.

  It’s quiet for a few seconds — or as quiet as a mistreated 1993 Ford Fiesta can be — as Rudy tries to decide whether or not I’m joking. A few seconds stretch to a few more. Then Rudy says something equally crazy.

  “I gotta say, when you, like, asked us here today, for this long, slow drive through the frickin’ woods, I thought: Oh Christ, he’s gonna tell me he’s gay. And then I was relieved it was something else, but now I’m like: ‘Wait, are you? Is that what this is?’”

  “What? Shut the hell up!” I say. I’m pretty sure he’s just saying that to cut the tension, but I’m not 100 percent sure. “See, that’s why I didn’t want to even … Christ.”

  “But, dude, you stole perfume?”

  “It was for my mom! For Mother’s Day,” I say. “I wanted to get her something nice ’cause, whatever, her year has kind of sucked, and I haven’t exactly helped.”

  “Well, that’s … I mean, I can see that. But, I mean …”

  “Yeah, believe me, I know. It’s bad. I went into that place downtown. That stupid little …” I can’t bring myself to say “boutique,” but there aren’t that many possibilities downtown and Rudy figures it out.

  “Illusions?”

  “That’s the place.”

  “Never been in there.”

  “I hadn’t either, but it seemed worth a shot. So I was looking around and everything basically cost more than I had. The lady was watching me really closely, but then I told her why I was there — looking for a gift for my mom — and she calmed down. And she just, I don’t know, calmed down too much. She went in the back to check on something, and I pocketed it.”

  “The perfume?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you left?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So how did they …?”

  “Hidden cameras, like, three of ’em,” I say.

  “I guess that explains the calmness,” he says.

  “Yeah, I didn’t even check. It just didn’t seem like a high-security environment.”

  “So, wait, they sent you to juvie for stealing perfume? Did you, like, punch her to get away? Or wait, was it because of the fight?”

  “Kind of. They definitely brought it up.”

  “That’s lame. We wouldn’t even have gotten in trouble for that if we hadn’t won so bad.”

  “That’s all on Aaron. I was pretty much useless.”

  “Showed you can take a punch.”

  “Or eight. Anyway, it was mostly the perfume. It was really expensive. They were like, ‘That’s our best perfume!’ Which it probably was, but I mean, that was kind of the point.”

  “Like how much?”

  “Like, two hundred bucks.”

  “No way!”

  “Yeah, which is also apparently the difference between petty theft and theft in this state. It actually could’ve been worse. My uncle is a really good lawyer, at least at that kind of stuff. He’s been useless with Mars, but he struck a deal super quick so I could serve the time over the summer. The whole summer.”

  “Damn,” says Rudy.

  “Yeah.”

  “So you spent the summer in a high-security kindergarten upstate for stealing perfume?”

  “Yeah.”

  “But you’re not gay?”

  “Drop dead.”

  “Remember how I said it was kind of cool before?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, I take it back. Obviously.”

  “Obviously.”

  “Damn.”

  “You can’t tell anyone,” I say. “Ever.”

  “Course not,” he says, and he might even m
ean it. He leans back in his seat and looks around at the world, like it changed somehow while we were talking. In a way, it did. Just the fact that someone else knows now, the fact that it’s out there, even if it never goes any further, it changes things. It knocks me down several dozen pegs, for one thing. I might as well finish the job.

  “It’s like you try and be who you want to be, and listen to the music you like instead of what everyone else is listening to, and not take crap from people and act in a way that lets them know not to give you any,” I say, looking straight ahead out the windshield. “And then the world comes along and pulls your frickin’ pants down.”

  “Yeah,” says Rudy. “You got pantsed. And spritzed.”

  “Yeah, ha-ha. But you see why I didn’t tell you?”

  “Kind of,” he says. “Still should’ve told me. Kind of dickish not to. You don’t think I knew you were full of it? You don’t think I wanted to know?”

  I think back to that day at Wendy’s, the sneak attack. “No, I knew. I was just … kind of dickish.”

  “Yep.”

  He takes the turnoff at Mill Pond Road. As he’s straightening out the wheel, he adds: “Just don’t tell Mars.”

  I don’t answer.

  Rudy pulls the Fiesta up along the grass in front of my house. He keeps the engine running because starting it is sometimes an issue.

  All I can think to say is: “Well then.”

  “Yep,” he says.

  We’ve already said enough. He manages a quick, strained smile, and I climb out of the car. The Fiesta sputters a few times but doesn’t quite stall, and it picks up speed as it drives away. I walk across the lawn in pretty much the same way. Rudy was actually super cool about it, much cooler than I thought.

  It’s kind of weird to think of your best friend having something like that over you. Not that I think he’d ever use it. How many embarrassing things do we know about each other by now? But then it’s weird to think of keeping something like that from your best friend for months, of either lying to him or avoiding the topic.

  I’m not second-guessing that. I know why I did it: It’s embarrassing as hell, and I really did want to bury it forever. I bet everyone has at least one thing they’re taking with them to the grave — some bad thing they did or thought. It seemed like this could’ve been mine, if I could’ve waited them out, or if they just would’ve let it drop. Frickin’ Mars, man.

  JR’s face pops into view in the window of the kitchen door. He’s looking straight at me with eyes so round and wide that it’s like he’s trying to hypnotize me. Maybe he is. You are getting sleepy…. You are getting me biscuits…. You are letting me out the back door before something bad happens….

  As I reach the door, he starts whacking the glass with his paws, like phantom high fives. I open it quick before he breaks anything and remember at the last second to wedge my body into the gap before he can squeeze past.

  He gives ground as I enter the kitchen, and before I can even close the door, he’s shooting through the house, heading for the back door. As I swing the door closed behind me, I see something blue hanging off the inside doorknob.

  I make a mental note of my own to come back and take a look after I let JR out. He clearly has some pressing needs right now. I open the back door and he launches himself out into the yard. I leave it open so he can come back in on his own and head back to the kitchen.

  The thing on the doorknob is just a few nylon straps, circles and lines connected by a couple of metal rings. There’s a Post-it note stuck to the door next to this thing and I lean down to read it. The note says: Put this on if you walk him!

  It’s a frickin’ muzzle. It’s a bad idea in so many ways. One, I’m not really sure he’d let me put it on him; two, he’d hate it; and three, what do you think when you see a dog with a muzzle on? You think he’s dangerous. You think he has to wear it or he’ll bite. It reminds me of The Silence of the Lambs, one of those movies that’s always on some channel late at night, the scene where they put the mask on Hannibal Lecter. And it’s not true, either — well, it is for Hannibal, but not for JR. People just have to not be stupid around him and he’s fine.

  I crumple up the Post-it and let the muzzle drop back against the door. I turn around and JR is right there. I jump like eight feet. It’s not because of him: I’m still thinking of Silence of the Lambs.

  “Scared me, boy,” I say.

  I sort of wonder what he’s doing back so soon and why he’s standing here, but I think I know. I turn around and look at the window on the kitchen door again. There are nose prints on it, and not just the ones from when I got home. He’s been looking out the window all day.

  “You missed me, huh?”

  Apart from that one trip to Brantley last week, this is the first time we haven’t spent the day together, at least in the same house. I look down at him and he looks up at me. And then it’s like: What the heck, I’ve already said so many embarrassing things today, what’s one more?

  “Missed you, too,” I say.

  JR doesn’t say anything, just stands there, waiting for his biscuit.

  Back in the dark ages, before cell phones, a guy could probably call a girl, change his mind before she picked up, and not have her call him back three seconds later. That time has past. My phone is on vibrate, skittering spastically across the tabletop. The name on the screen is JANIE.

  I pick it up, put it down, pick it up again, and answer: “Hey.”

  “What, you hung up on me?” she says.

  “Dropped call,” I say.

  “Bull,” she says.

  I try again: “False start.”

  “Better than an early finish,” she says.

  “That was one time!”

  And now the conversation has officially begun. I guess it had to. Janie is the other person who absolutely can’t find out about this secondhand. She would straight up de-ball me. JR seems to be taking that OK, but I don’t think I could make the adjustment.

  I take a deep breath. “You know that essay that kids write on the first day of school, like in cartoons and stuff?”

  It’s easier to tell her. It surprises me how much easier it is. Part of it is that I just told Rudy, and I’m recycling large chunks of material, and then I remember the rest. The other part is that I already had this conversation with her, even if it was just in my head.

  It was last May, I guess. Janie had just gotten her license and I’d just been sentenced. I’d spent the day before waiting around the courthouse with Mom and Greg, and then we were in and out in what felt like no time at all. Greg had already made the deal, so I just went in there to hear the judge talk at me and bang her little wooden hammer, and that was that: summer upstate.

  I spent a lot of the next twenty hours thinking about how I was going to tell Janie, and then I spent all of the hours after that not telling her. It was too perfect a day. And when I didn’t do it that night, I started to get the stupid idea that maybe I could keep it all a secret, that I could just do the time and come back and it would be like it never happened.

  So I’ve told her pretty much the whole story at this point. “And I already had that other thing,” I say, tacking it on at the end so that maybe she won’t notice. But she does.

  “That stupid fight?” she says. “With those skaters?”

  “Yeah,” I say. I don’t bother with my standard excuses — how one of them threw the first punch, and I should know because I took it — she’s heard them before. “But we basically just got a warning for that.”

  “So this was your second time?” she says.

  “Kind of,” I say, “and I took something that was really expensive, so it was worse.”

  I get another crazy stupid idea: I’m just going to tell her the truth on everything. Because I need to try harder with her. I need to be better, and maybe this can be how I start. I feel like I have a chance, because she’s still listening and not hanging up.

  “Idiot,” she says. “So what was it? What’
d you take that was so expensive?”

  “Perfume,” I say, crazily, stupidly.

  “What kind?” she says.

  Now there’s something Rudy didn’t ask. I try to remember.

  “SaFire, I think. It’s misspelled, like Adventure Tyme.”

  That’s where we went that day: Adventure Tyme Amusement Park, a small park on a lake about fifty miles from here. She drove, her first real trip as a licensed driver. I’m not sure why they spell Tyme that way; I guess maybe it’s supposed to seem old-fashioned. Which doesn’t explain the roller coasters and laser tag. Whatever the reason, we started calling it Adventer Tyme Abusement Pork, and it seemed like the funniest thing in the world. Of course, everything seems funnier when you’re at an Abusement Pork on a sunny day with a licensed driver who is, to me, still the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen and she’s wearing a tank top.

  “That’s not fair,” she says.

  She means it’s not fair to bring that memory up in this conversation. And she’s right, but it’s what I was thinking and I’m being honest today. There was this game we played toward the end of the day. It’s hard to describe, but it was basically a big Plexiglas case with a bunch of moving shelves inside. The shelves had hundreds of quarters piled on them, and all you did was drop another quarter into one of the slots and watch it land inside. But the shelves were already piled so high and moving back and forth, so sometimes that one quarter would be enough to cause a bunch of other quarters to spill over the edge. Then you reached in the bottom and pulled them out.

  Of course, most of the time you just lost a quarter, but we got lucky. It was maybe the third or fourth quarter we dropped. We’d just broken a dollar. Right before I put it in, Janie said, “Like a wishing well, like making a wish.” And so I did. I think she did, too. Then I dropped the quarter and it was like a little silver landslide. We both reached in to scoop out our little haul and we split it. The day I left for upstate, my pockets were still half full of quarters. I knew they’d just take them away when I got there, but I had to bring them. It seemed like the wish wouldn’t come true otherwise. As it turned out, it didn’t anyway.