by John McManus
“School’s out of the question.”
“We’re in the ninety-fifth percentile,” he said.
Hank and the girls looked at each other and giggled.
“My parents got me in,” Hank said, “just like yours got you in.”
“No, I’m in the ninety-eight-point-fourth percentile,” said Caidin, feeling a sudden urge to see his mother.
He made up an excuse to leave. But when he arrived home, he found a note for him and the maid that the Maddoxes were in Dallas.
Smoking a joint, he searched Diaryland for boys named Juaco—nothing—and then Milo—dozens, all alive. He searched for ones who wanted to kill themselves, and these were easy to find. Every other boy on Diaryland wished to die. Their heroes were Kurt Cobain, Jim Morrison, the kid who’d perished on a bus in Alaska. Most wrote with indistinguishable dreamy fatalism, but one called Timescale aspired to a wholly original death: floating in a balloon into a wildfire; sailing to Antarctica to walk nude into its tundra; coating himself with sugar and lying down among fire ants. Caidin tried to concoct some outlandish methods of his own to post in a comment. He couldn’t come up with any, and besides, Timescale would ask why he wanted to die, when he wanted only to talk. He dialed his brother’s number. Busy bombing Ramadi, Caleb didn’t answer, not like Caleb was any fun anyway. If he were home, he would only be drinking vodka with his stupid girlfriend. He’d never even taken Caidin out in the Porsche.
For first period the next day, the principal called an assembly. Refugees were pouring into Houston, she said, and some would be enrolling at their school. A few had arrived already. At lunch they hung out in the parking lot by their souped-up cars. These didn’t seem like people to be trifled with, but Caidin was lonely enough to saunter over. “How fast will that thing go?” he asked about a Charger.
“You are?”
“Caidin Maddox.”
“And you drive?”
“A Porsche Carrera.”
Their glances at each other seemed to say, People are the same everywhere you go. “You want to race?”
“Sure, that sounds fun,” Caidin said.
“When I go fast, the cops stop me.”
“So you don’t want to?”
“What rules do you propose?”
“Forget it,” he said, and headed to Astrid’s, where she and Izzy lay on her bed packing a bong. “How was school,” mocked Izzy; “what did you learn?”
“There’s these refugees from Katrina.”
“God knows what percentile.”
When they laughed, he couldn’t tell if it was at the refugees or at him. “They can have our textbooks,” Astrid said. “We’re joining the Rainbow Gathering.”
“Then they can have mine too.”
She sat up and kissed him. “We didn’t think you’d come.”
“Why not,” he said, knowing none of them would be joining a thing.
His mood improved when Hank showed up with some ecstasy. Soon he could feel an intense, beautiful love for Astrid and everyone rolling across his shoulders. He apologized for going to school. “Let’s bet on when my folks realize I’ve dropped out,” he said, and Izzy bet next week and Hank October and Astrid never. The less you cared, the better you looked and the better you felt. He stared in the mirror at the bones lurking under his skin, trying to watch the concern dissolve away.
“I bet my eighteenth birthday,” he said, “when they learn that I’ve become ineligible for the Air Force.”
“I want go on a drive,” Izzy said, which sounded great, but Hank and Astrid only stared up from the bed.
“Get in,” he told Izzy, and aimed the two of them fast as ever toward the distant thunderheads. “You don’t love Astrid,” Izzy said while they raced across endless ranchland, “and I don’t love Hank. Let’s go to Bozeman.”
Afraid she was about to profess her love for him, Caidin said, “Bozeman?”
“Milo’s parents moved there when he died. I can’t find their number, so I figured we’ll just show up.”
Recalling her report of Juaco’s kiss—it had been amazing—he said, “How would you know who I don’t love?”
“Chill out; let’s have fun. Have you done salvia?”
She got a pipe out and packed it with what looked like parsley. “It’s legal,” she said; “it makes you high for thirty seconds.”
With a finger she covered the carb. He pulled smoke in and inhaled. The highway narrowed and then faded away. It was dark now, and he was climbing the outer wall of a skyscraper, high above an abyss. He’d nearly reached the top, but his fingers didn’t have much glue left. Soon he was gripping for dear life in that frigid wind. Across the glass, inside, stood his parents and all the people he’d ever called his friends. Cozily warm, they chatted together by a fire. “Let me in,” he cried, but only a few even turned to watch him run out of glue and fall.
He came to in a world upside down: water for grass, dirt for sky, a herd of cattle dangling. Izzy’s vomit fell up, and then he got it; he had flipped the Porsche.
They crawled out through the windows and phoned Hank. While they waited, Caidin scraped off the vehicle ID. “Do you think God saved us?” Izzy asked.
He couldn’t tell if the question was sarcastic. “I think God was trying to kill us,” he said, except somehow neither he nor Izzy had suffered a scratch.
The next day he borrowed Astrid’s Volvo and went to school to find there weren’t seats for him in his classes. Some teachers didn’t know him. Worse was when the teachers who did asked no questions about where he’d been.
“Hey,” said Jeff in the lunch line.
“Sorry for skipping so much school.”
“You think it harmed me?”
“Jeff, come on.”
“Come on what, be your friend so I can die in a wreck?”
“How’d you hear about my wreck?”
“You had a wreck?”
“You said you’d heard.”
“Was it the Porsche?”
“I didn’t wreck. Screw you.”
After school, instead of returning the Volvo to Astrid’s, he took it home. “Where’s your brother’s car?” said his father, back from Dallas.
“My girlfriend’s got it. This is her car.”
“That’s who you’ve been spending so much time with?”
“Yeah, I think I really like her.”
“Good for you, kiddo. Good for you.”
He erased Astrid’s voicemail without listening to it. The next day, hoping to put things back on track, he drove to school in her car again. It was too late for the Ivy League, but in Texas the top ten percent of each class got into UT. Probably too late for that too, but he could try. On a precalculus test he scored a ninety.
“You skipped that unit, cheater,” Adam said afterward.
“I’d never cheat,” Caidin said, his feelings hurt. You’re jealous of how hot girls like me, he thought, running a hand through his long hair.
“There’s a new hurricane.”
“Hadn’t heard.”
“I doubt your new friends watch the news.”
At home that afternoon his parents had the weather on. The storm was a category three, named Rita. “This isn’t some Ninth Ward shack,” his mom said, but the next morning Rita had strengthened to four and it was time to leave. By midday, as school closed early, the roads were gridlocked. Ten minutes and Caidin hadn’t gone half a mile. The drivers seemed like a parade of idiots for moving so slowly. He tried something new: at every intersection, if traffic was bumper-to-bumper in one direction, he chose the empty way. Soon he was far from his house, on a street he realized led past Milo Hux’s neighborhood.
Knowing that they had gone, Caidin could allow a conversation with the Huxes to play out in his mind. He could even turn onto their street and drive to their gate. It was all my fault, he was telling Mr. and Mrs. Hux when he saw a man—no, a boy, tall and slender, with toffee-colored arms—standing in their front yard.
The speedome
ter didn’t stop at 120; it went all the way to 180, yet Caidin found himself braking, lowering the window, and saying, “What are you doing?”
“Looking for somebody,” said Juaco Luna, meeting Caidin’s eyes. He knows, Caidin thought.
“They moved to Montana, in the Rockies.”
“Yeah, I know where Montana is.”
“I mean, I don’t know the states of Honduras.”
“El Salvador. I grew up here.”
“Milo crashed his car and died.”
“Yep, that’s pretty much why they left town.”
Juaco’s lips seemed designed to look mired in a painful, constant memory, and Caidin longed to touch them.
“Why does everyone think you’re Honduran?”
“That was maybe just the guy who turned me in.”
Now his heart gulped blood the way his lungs gulped air. “Where’s the LeBaron?” he asked, hoping it wasn’t the car Milo had died in.
“Impounded.”
“I’ll drive you to pick it up.”
“I’ve heard how you drive,” Juaco said, but he got in.
Gripping the wheel to still his shaking arms, Caidin took them slowly forward. “Who told you about my driving?”
“Milo. He had a crush on you.”
“Give me a break,” Caidin said, but then he thought back on Milo’s gaze in the mirror. He remembered holding Milo underwater by the shoulders, pressing down with flat palms to maximize the amount of skin he touched. Maybe he’d have strangled the boy if it meant getting to touch him.
“Milo could be kind of a bitch,” Juaco said, putting a hand miraculously on Caidin’s leg. “I mean I get why you teased him.”
Caidin lifted his foot from the gas. On a leafy boulevard, the city skyline girding itself against roiling clouds ahead, they coasted to a halt. “Izzy Baxter says you’re coming back for her,” he said, trying to understand.
“Izzy’s cute, but she’s a total pothead.”
“Why were you living at Milo’s?”
“Yeah, his parents helped mine a long time ago,” said Juaco, leaning over the gear shift toward Caidin.
Juaco’s lips closed around Caidin’s lower lip. Their tongues touched. Already Caidin was dreading the end, wishing he could freeze time. He squeezed Juaco, pulling him closer. Juaco’s warm breath spread through him along every axon until he was trembling everywhere. Cars were passing; he didn’t care. He hoped they saw. It occurred to him that he was cheating on Astrid, and even that felt good.
A tractor trailer sped by, the wake shaking the two of them in tandem until Juaco sat upright and touched Caidin’s cheek. Only then did Caidin realize he was crying.
“You’re a good-looking guy,” Juaco said, drying his tear; “you’ll find someone.”
“I doubt I’ll live that long,” he said as he tried to get hold of himself.
“Don’t be dumb. Everyone hates high school.”
“You know there’s a big hurricane.”
Juaco nodded. “Yeah, I’ll find a ride out of town.”
“No, I’m taking you to your car,” Caidin said, moving forward again, but not for long; the impound lot turned out to be ten miles toward the coast, on a highway under contraflow.
Through a twisting labyrinth of oak-lined streets he found a back route home, where his dad was on a ladder nailing boards to the windows. In the kitchen his mom was throwing out food. “This is Juaco, and he’s spending the night,” Caidin told her.
She narrowed her eyes. “Is Juaco a common name?”
Caidin remembered the newsletter from back in the spring. “Geez, Mom, make your own friends, okay?”
“What zone are you in?” she asked their guest. The Maddoxes’ zone would depart in the morning.
“My parents already left,” Juaco said, as Caidin spoke over him: “He’s going tomorrow with his aunt.”
Leading Juaco upstairs, a finger hovering behind the small of Juaco’s back, Caidin rehearsed in his mind for the next kiss. In his bedroom, though, the mood seemed to have changed. Juaco sat down on the desk chair instead of the bed.
“How’d you get back?” Caidin said. “Did you pay a coyote?”
Juaco giggled. “This rich guy got me a visa.”
“Oh.” He wondered if Juaco could hear his ears’ thrumming. “If we could make it to the impound lot, I’ve got my mom’s credit card.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Because I want to.”
“Do you think hot people are better than regular people?”
“I just, you can’t get by here without a car,” Caidin said, except of course the city was being destroyed anyway.
The phone rang. “Why haven’t you left, Snot?” said his brother Caleb, on the other side of the world.
“Tomorrow morning. Are you okay?”
“I’m the only guy from Houston whose folks haven’t left,” Caleb said, sounding more petulant than concerned.
Caidin listened to the whistling emptiness of the Iraqi steppe. “Are you the only one whose dad bribed him to go to war?” he heard himself say.
“Don’t talk about Dad that way,” Caleb said.
“I wrecked the Porsche,” he said, suddenly wanting to hurt his brother. “I was high. It’s probably totaled.”
“You’ve always been a shitty liar.”
“Seriously, who tries so hard to send his sons to war?”
“Who talks about his dad that way?”
Before Caidin could answer exactly who, the dial tone began to hum.
“Will your dad bribe you too?” Juaco asked.
“It was more of a threat than a bribe,” Caidin said. “But it only works if you care whether he’s ashamed.”
They played Xbox awhile, and then they watched the evacuation. When Juaco fell asleep on Caidin’s bed, Caidin muted the TV and watched him instead. Just barely, he let his finger brush against the tiny hairs on Juaco’s arm. Of course hot people are better, he was thinking when the knocks came, in the blast-beat pattern of the Poisoned Wasteland theme music.
The door swung open, the light came on. “I need my games,” said Jeff. “We’re leaving in an hour for. . . . Oh.”
Juaco opened his eyes. “Are you Jeff?”
“My folks are waiting,” said Jeff, ejecting a cartridge from the console.
“If you’re Jeff, Milo thanks you for being nice.”
Meticulously looking away from the bed, Jeff took another game from the shelf. Say something, Caidin thought. Say I saw you touching Juaco just now. Say dead people can’t give thanks. Say dude, the kid you’re lying next to killed your friend. But Jeff said only, “Hope you booked a hotel.”
“Mom’s friends with the whole Capitol,” Caidin said. “We’ll probably sleep in the governor’s spare rooms.”
Jeff turned out the light and closed the door behind him. Soon Juaco was snoring again, and Caidin lay awake wondering who else Milo had left messages for. Was there one for Caidin, too hatefully worded for Juaco to show him? Or had Juaco deemed the message too kind? He might never know. He fell asleep and awoke to a ringing phone. “Put Cleo in her carrier,” his mother said. “We’re almost home.”
Outside, wind was whipping the live oaks. To the east the sky was ash-gray, while an otherworldly green light shone in the west. “Juaco’s coming with us,” he said.
“Get dressed, Caidin. They’ve raised it to five.”
“You’d rescue a cat and not my friend?”
“You told me his aunt?”
“There’s no aunt. He came back alone to get the automatic scholarship.” Instantly Caidin knew his guess must be a correct one: their school was the best in Texas, and Juaco was at the top of their class. Juaco hadn’t returned for Milo, Izzy, Caidin, or anyone but himself.
Just as quickly, Caidin realized how dumb it was to think so, when it was at school that Juaco had been exposed.
“Cleo’s part of our family. Your friend has a family. Now where’s the Porsche?”
“I
got high on salvia and flipped it.”
“We need it in the garage!”
“Most likely it’s already at a garage. After I go surfing, I’ll call around.”
Juaco was up and putting on his shoes. “We’re taking the Volvo,” Caidin told him. “We’ll meet up with my folks in Austin.”
“Dude. Is that even your car?”
“No, it’s my girlfriend’s. Come on.”
Juaco crossed the room, turned to study Caidin. “Best of luck,” he said, and he headed for the stairs.
Caidin followed him down. “I mean, where else would you go? San Salvador?”
“Not to hurt your feelings, but I’d rather live in Fallujah than stay with your folks.”
Juaco had reached the landing. Behind him, Caidin grasped for any threat or promise that would stop him from exiting into the gale. He thought Juaco must have seen what unreturned love had done to Milo, and yesterday’s kiss was his revenge. It was a plan so elegantly cruel that Caidin wondered what percentile Juaco had scored on the IQ test. Separate from his withering heart was a sudden dread that his parents’ maid, Consuela, might be approaching the door as Juaco opened it. She wasn’t. He walked out, and dwindled into the shower of lantana flowers and air plants. What a stupid thing to have feared. So was the entire storm. Rita could destroy Houston for all Caidin cared, because aside from this, nothing was ever going to go wrong.
GAINLINESS
VICTOR WAS A PECULIAR BOY, said his parents’ few friends, an assessment that irked Victor even as he suspected it was correct. Take his cage dream. Lying awake nights, he fancied himself shackled to a wall beside the home-schooled boys from across the road. A hook-nosed villain would poke him and those boys with a pitchfork, naked. If he felt himself falling asleep during this fantasy, he pressed ice to his face to sustain the scene. What was this if not peculiar? He carried needle-nose pliers in his pocket for extracting snot without touching it. Journeys of any length had to begin on his left foot. He peed sitting down. After brushing his teeth he swallowed the toothpaste, risky as that might be, because he’d always done it that way.