The Good, the Fab and the Ugly

by Compai

  With the exception of a spastic white ghost creature whipping around the inflatable roof, the Haunted Barn Moon Bounce was the same as all Moon Bounces. Puffy plastic walls creased, bowed, quaked, and trembled, a massive air pump droned, and, inside, a mass of seventh and eighth graders tossed about in chaos, masks of unbridled glee on their squealing pink faces. If they’d paused to look, they might have noticed Jake Farrish, his doleful face smashed against the net, observing them with the glazed eye of a trapped tuna. Junior high . . . he thought with a wistful sigh.

  Such a happier, simpler time.

  “Hands off the net!” a crackling voice bellowed from behind the ticket booth, and Jake looked up. The Carnie couldn’t have been older than nineteen, but with his tattooed, sunburned arms, and massive, burly chest, he looked about thirty. Jake watched as one of these arms dislodged from its coordinate armpit, moved like a crane toward a large scuffed buzzer, and punched the button, sounding an alarm.

  Needless to say, Jake’s hands were off the net. “Sorry,” he apologized.

  “Step away from the Bounce,” the Carnie replied, and Jake took a few obliging steps backward. “Did you hear what I said?”

  “Dude,” he winced, indicating his size twelve Converse. “I stepped.”

  “Alright,” the Carnie gritted his teeth, and steamrolled toward him, fists swinging. “What’s your name?”

  “Why?” Jake asked, flinching in the hot gale of Carnie breath.

  “Once again,” he continued, cricking his neck. He didn’t appear to speak so much as tear words from the open air, gnashing them like meat between his teeth. “What. Is. Your. Name.”

  “No way, man.” Jake held his ground. “I didn’t do anything.”

  “Will someone here tell me this guy’s name?” He roared, whirling to face a gathering crowd of goggle-eyed kids. Jake’s eyes darted around in panic. It was only a matter of time before a teacher, sensing the commotion, intruded into the scene, and then . . . and then what? He hadn’t done anything!

  “His name is Zach Braff.”

  The crowd parted and she stepped forward, dressed for the season in a strapless orange silk organza mini dress and black patent-leather heels. Her tumultuous curls, restored to their original black coffee hue, were pulled back into a stem-green double-rope headband to which she’d sewn two delicately crocheted, matching green leaves. Her frosted lips, an iridescent cupcake color, matched her fingernails, which lined like pearls along her dainty hips. Not that Jake noticed this crap. All he saw were her eyes, which — in the half-second they rested on his — sparkled and snapped, alive again with their old familiar light.

  “He’s my brother.” Charlotte returned her cool blue-green gaze to the Carnie.

  “Really.” He grinned, eyeing Charlotte up and down. “Someone hogged the looks in the family.”

  “And brains, unfortunately,” she sighed, once he’d finished laughing at his own joke. She returned a sisterly gaze to Jake, sighing with sympathy. “He’s a little . . . challenged.”

  “No kiddin’.” Carnie mulled over this new grain of information, scratching his sturdy trapezoid of a neck. Charlotte straightened Jake’s collar, brushing some invisible lint from his shoulder.

  “Zachy.” She shook her head and touched his cheek. “We didn’t eat too many pumpkin cookies, did we?”

  The Carnie pushed some air between his lips. He wasn’t stupid — he knew he was being played — but he wasn’t in the mood to argue with a girl, especially one this pretty. Later that night, he’d heat up a pot of Campbell’s chicken noodle and stir and stir, dreaming up their life together. It would be an isolated life, deep in the heart of an uncharted forest. He would loft the Moon Bounce in the highest part of the forest canopy and invite her there to live, surrounded by brilliant blue sky, moss-covered tree branches, chattering parrots, kindly sloths, and the sound of dripping rain.

  He turned toward Jake and, without warning, button-punched his scrawny boy-chest. “No more pumpkin cookies for you.”

  “Ow . . .”

  “Come back later.” Carnie ignored him, returning to Charlotte with a mild wink. “I’ll give you a free bounce.”

  “Ooo!” she trilled in an effort to disguise her inner ew. Then, affecting an air of saintly patience, she led her “brother” away by his elbow. Jake happily allowed her to guide him (if she’d needed to declare him mentally deficient to save his ass, he might as well return the favor by playing his part). He gazed about the carnival, offering the world an uncomprehending smile. His brown eyes shone with wonder. A small petal-white butterfly fluttered by.

  “Bird!” He pointed. “Bird! Bird!”

  Charlotte yelped with laughter, ducking her face into her hand — and then quickly threw his arm from her grasp, chastising herself. “Don’t make me laugh.” She shook her head, flashing her eyes. “This isn’t funny!”

  Whirling on her tiny heel, she stormed toward Kate and Laila — who, after mutual steely looks in Jake’s direction, closed behind her like double doors. Jake stood for a few seconds, numb with confusion, and in a flash of frustration, followed his ex-girlfriend to the POSEUR booth. Melissa sat behind the table, lording over a thumping black boom box. On either side of her, Petra and Janie stood on plastic foldout chairs, mounting their blue-and-gold-silk POSEUR banner.

  Charlotte found her seat next to Melissa, while Jake steamed ahead, pushing his way through the gathering mob of fashionistas. “What was that?” He panted, laying a hand on the wood table. “Why did you just do that?”

  “I don’t know.” Charlotte frowned, ripping into a bulk pack of Starburst while the rest of the girls looked on, curiosity piqued. “I hate to see an old friend in trouble.”

  “No way.” Jake shook his head, his voice husky with stress. “You didn’t just do that to save my ass.” Charlotte tipped the bag on its side, raining the rainbow candy into a waiting Waterford crystal bowl. “Admit you miss me.”

  “Ew.” Charlotte pinched the empty bag at either corner, snapping it clean. “I think you should leave.”

  “No,” he replied, with a simple bob of his eyebrows. “My sister told me to come.”

  “You did?” Charlotte flashed, causing Janie to drop a corner of the banner and wobble in her chair.

  “I told him between one and two,” she explained in a rush. “During your break.”

  “During her break?” Jake observed. “Gee, Janie. Way to bend over backward.”

  “I just . . . I didn’t want it to be awkward!” she stammered.

  “We’re not awkward,” Jake and Charlotte cried in unison, aggressively avoiding eye contact.

  “Um, excuse me?” Melissa planted a manicured hand on her hip, temporarily halting her distribution of pink-and-black POSEUR buttons.

  “We’re promoting POSEUR awareness,” Petra explained.

  “And you two are not representing,” Melissa bristled. With a hard look, she raised a bullhorn to her lips. “Free Starburst!”

  “What I don’t understand . . .” Charlotte locked eyes with Jake and resumed her rant at a low hiss, stuffing candy into anonymous outstretched hands. “. . . Is the way you just, like, go around. Like nothing ever happened.”

  “I go around like nothing happened,” Jake scoffed in abject disbelief, looping the periphery of the booth. Eager to escape his advance, Charlotte sprung from her seat, scurrying to the foot of the table. Jake instantly rooted himself in his tracks; it was one thing to argue with your ex in public, quite another to chase her around a booth. From either end of the long table, they faced each other, eyes narrowed like rival tennis champs.

  “You’re the one who’s in love with someone else,” he informed her, lobbing the first ball.

  “Oh please,” Charlotte sent it flying back. “I never said we were in love.”

  “Really,” Jake retorted with an expert backhand shot. “That’s not how Janie tells it.”

  “He forced it out of me!” Janie explained, descending from the wobbling chair to saf
er ground.

  “Well,” Charlotte sniffed. “Fine. Maybe we are in love. So?”

  “So?” Jake gripped his face and sort of smeared it around. A rueful laugh escaped his lips. “We broke up, like five minutes ago!”

  “As if you care.” Charlotte tightened her jaw. “Janie told me all about how happy you are.”

  “You did?” Jake turned to his sister, agog.

  “Omigod.” Janie covered her face in her hands. “Please, don’t put me in the middle of this.”

  “You’re not in the middle!” they cried again in unison.

  “You wanna know who’s in the middle of this?” Melissa blasted into her bullhorn, causing every person in a fifteen-foot radius to cringe, clapping their hands to their ears. “Me. And I do not want to be here.”

  “Fine.” Jake scowled, shoving his hands into his beat-up corduroy pockets. And then, to no one in particular, he muttered, “See you around.”

  “Don’t forget your free Starburst!” Melissa bellowed, and Charlotte shot her a defensive glance. Removing her heels, she took off at a sprint, chasing Jake down. She waved her hand above her harried head.

  “Jake! Wait!”

  Melissa unwrapped a yellow Starburst and popped it into her glossy pink mouth. “That was crazy,” she pronounced with a bob of her perfectly groomed eyebrows.

  “I don’t know what to do.” Janie shook her head and solemnly chewed. “I don’t think I can take it.”

  “Oh, come on. Stiffen up.” Petra smiled, unwrapping a green Starburst. “I’ve seen way worse.”

  “Marco and I never fight,” Melissa informed them proudly, after a disapproving glance in the direction of the slowly turning, spastically flashing Ferris wheel, where Jake and Charlotte continued to rave, gesticulating wildly. “Those two need to learn to resolve their conflicts in a mature manner.”

  “You mean like us?” Petra scoffed at the irony. “We can’t even decide on a bag without death threats.”

  “Please.” Melissa slapped the air with her hand. “This is not the time.”

  “Um . . . it kind of is,” Petra pointed out. “October thirty-first is Monday. And today? Is Thursday. If we plan to have a bag ready, we better make a decision, like, yesterday?”

  “Actually,” Janie timidly intruded. “I have a possible solution?” Melissa and Petra waited, solemnly sucking their Starbursts. “I just thought,” Janie continued, blushing at their attention, “instead of choosing one design, we could, like, take the best elements of all our designs and combine them into one. You know . . . come to some sort of . . .”

  But before she could say “compromise,” they were distracted by a long and terrified scream.

  Thursday, October 27 — 7:33 p.m.

  Are you there, Tom? Itís me, Nikki.

  I have been a member of MySpace for more than 13 months (I wasn’t allowed to join until seventh grade or else I would have been a member for much, much longer ;-)). I remember when I first joined MySpace and my page said “you have 1 friends” and that friend was you! I was excited but at the same time a little freaked out because a) I didn’t know who you were and b) you’re way, way older than me (Happy 32nd, btw!!!) Anyway, the combination of these two things meant I was worried you were a cybermolester and/or i-Perv.

  To be on the safe side, I called my best friend (ex-best friend now) because she’d already been on MySpace for two months and I figured she’d know what to do. But she just started laughing like, “Oh my God, you’re not talking about Tom, are you?” And I was like, “What?” And she was like, “Nikki! He started MySpace. He’s an automatic friend, not a friend friend!”

  Well, then I felt pretty dumb.

  But a lot has changed since then and I have totally changed my attitude. I realize I should have never felt dumb or embarrassed — that feeling excited was the right way to feel. Because when you think about it, it’s a lot like how my grandmother says it is with God. I mean, she says God accepts everybody no matter what — so does that mean we should all be like, “Oh yeah. God. He accepts everybody so He doesn’t count?”

  Answer to my own question: No!!! LOL!

  Basically I would like to apologize for not thinking of you as a “real friend.” And please don’t think I’m only writing you now because you’re my only MySpace friend left (besides celebrities and my cousins in Florida) because that is so not the reason. The real reason is we have so much in common. For starters, we both don’t smoke, are from L.A., and have “General Interests” such as karaoke and finding new food!!! Also, we are both air signs (you’re a Libra, I’m an Aquarius) and like Whitney Houston, Kelly Clarkson, and movies such as Beauty & The Beast and Gladiator.

  Okay, this comment has gotten waaaay too long. Sorry! Basically I just wanted to say I’m looking 4-ward to getting to know you better. And please write back soon!!!!:-)

  Luv <333

  Nikki

  P.S. Happyyy Halloweennn!!!!

  Thursday, October 27 — 7:37 p.m.

  Are you there, Tom? Itís me, Nikki.

  Sorry!! I know I only wrote you four minutes ago, LOL!! But I just wanted to say that just because I wrote you a super-long comment does not mean you need to write me a super-long comment back!;-) Even if you wrote me a small to medium-length comment back, that would totally, totally make my day!!

  Luv <333

  Nikki

  P.S. I heart your sideburns!!!!

  Thursday, October 27 — 8:58 p.m.

  Are you there, Tom? Itís me, Nikki.

  So, so sorry I’m writing you again! Please don’t think I’m psycho — I totally get that you have 213,957,272 friends and your mood is “busy,” so it’s not like I expect you to write me back right away!! It’s just I happened to be looking at your profile again and I just noticed that under “About Me” you wrote: I’m Tom and I’m here to help you — send me a message if you’re confused by anything. And even though I know you probably mean “confusion about MySpace,” and not “confusion about life in general,” I still thought maybe you could help with just one thing?????

  Last Thursday, I was supposed to eat lunch with this kind of nerdy girl but she left and forgot to take her geodes with her (geodes are like rocks but with crystals inside). I knew she’d be super upset so I decided to return them to her, but when I walked up holding her blue tackle box (that’s where she keeps her geodes), she was like, “You stole my geodes!” I was like, “No, I didn’t. You left them behind!” but she refused to listen and started to cry. Like really cry. Like her nose turned pink and her eyes puffed up like those fat goldfish with puffy eyes and at one point a huge snot bubble came out of her nostril. Pretty soon a big crowd formed around her with everyone looking at each other like, “Why is she crying?” with these “How sad” expressions on their faces even though I know for a fact they’d all made fun of this girl a million gazillion times!!! Then I heard this new girl say, “Nikki stole her geodes,” and right after she said it the nerdy girl cried really loud so of course everybody thought what she said was true. Then somebody called me a bad word (the same bad word had been written on my locker, FYI), and I turned around to see who it was and something cold and slimy hit me on the face. At first I thought it was a loogie (sp????) except the only boy I know who can make a loogie that big is Casey Madigan and he lives in Denver now. Before I could wipe my face, more of them hit me all over my back and my neck and my knees, and there were all these splattering noises, and I screamed really, really loud. I ran and ran until I was in the girls’ bathroom and these two ninth-grade girls stared at me and the one with brown hair said, “Ew,” and the one with blue hair started laughing and it wasn’t until then that I looked into the mirror. I was covered in pumpkin guts. Big disgusting globs of orange pumpkin guts and pumpkin seeds all in my hair and my face and all over my favorite white Lacoste shirt.

  I ended up going home early.

  The thing is, there’s this hard, hard ache feeling inside my throat and behind my heart that won’t go away. In scie
nce class, we learned about petrified wood — which is what happens when trees get buried in the ground where there isn’t any oxygen and they turn into stone. For the last three days, I’ve felt like I haven’t been able to breathe, which probably means I haven’t gotten enough oxygen, and meanwhile the ache feeling is getting harder and harder and I can’t help but wonder . . . are there such things as petrified human beings?

  Okay, now that I wrote it down I can tell I’m being com-puh-lete-ly overdramatic!!!! But still, it would be so helpful if you were like, “Nikki, you’re being dramatic!” Also, that things won’t feel this way forever. And that things will get better (soon!).

  For some reason it doesn’t help at all when I tell myself these things.

  Luv <333

  Nikki

  “Bravo! Bravo!” Vivien cried from the edge of the embossed gold velvet settee, springing to her feet. She was auditioning pianists for her all-important engagement party, and Seedy had insisted Melissa be there, because, quote-unquote, it’s real important to Vivien. Uh-huh. More like “real important to Vivien” to ruin her Saturday morning and afternoon.

  Melissa wrested her attention from her Apple iPhone — she’d been updating her Web site MoonWalksonMan.com — to focus on her soon-to-be-stepmother’s clapping hands. She’s still doing it. Melissa narrowed her eyes, carefully unwrapping a leftover pink Starburst. At first, she’d thought it was only her imagination, but after a week of cold, hard observation, she now knew for sure it wasn’t. She glanced at her father. Am I the only person seeing this?

  Now that six-foot-high, fake-purple-eyed Vivien Ho had a twenty-six carat ring to show off, she’d reassigned all hand-related activity from her right hand to her less-inclined left. She waved with her left. Answered her cell with her left. Opened doors, smoothed her hair, and applied lip gloss with her left. But because she was actually right-handed (it was all Melissa could do not to scream this fact out loud), even the most basic gestures looked plain off.