Bad Kid

by David Crabb

  “A note?” he asked with a smirk. “What do you mean?”

  “Like a note that excuses you from participating in PE.”

  “You don’t need a note,” he smiled, flipping his bangs out of his eyes. “Nerd.”

  The way Greg called me nerd was sweet, as if the word’s rightful home had always been on his lips.

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “I don’t need a note?”

  “No. You just . . . sit out.”

  I repeated it slowly, like someone who didn’t speak English.

  “Sit . . . out . . . ?”

  “Yeah. You show up. You sit here. And you wait for fifty minutes.”

  “What?” I asked. This simple and obvious possibility blew my mind. Greg howled with laughter and slapped my shoulder.

  “You thought . . . all this time that . . . you had to do gym class!”

  I started to laugh with him, but not the way I usually did with kids who mocked me or adults whose jokes I didn’t understand. It wasn’t fake laughter intended to let me fit in or save face. It was chest-filling, gut-busting, very loud laughter.

  “Hey!” Coach Allen boomed at us from below, “Quiet! You got five more minutes!”

  “David,” Greg whispered, “another part of ‘sitting out’ is never looking like you’re enjoying yourself. It’s key!”

  Suddenly it all made sense: Greg’s stoic lack of expression, his bored silence, and, most important, his yearlong lack of participation in gym class. No undisclosed disability or top-secret physician’s note was required to sit out. All it took to not do it was not doing it. I thought back on my entire freshman year: all the push-ups and jumping jacks, and the hundreds of miles run on that blacktop track, all because I assumed I had to. How much time did I waste playing volleyball in those ill-fitting polyester shorts? And how many afternoons could I have spent laughing, albeit quietly, with Greg Brooks in the bleachers?

  In the hallway as we left class, a shaft of sunlight hit Greg’s handsome face, turning his bronzed hair platinum as he swept it off his forehead. Looking at him made me feel like a shrunken, gray-skinned zombie.

  “See you tomorrow!” he yelled, swinging his backpack over his shoulder. “If you don’t change out, let’s hang out in gym tomorrow.”

  Waving good-bye, I knew perfectly well I would never change out for gym class again.

  CHAPTER 5

  Alone in a Darkened Room

  Greg and I spent the last week of our freshman year getting to know each other in gym class. We also spent a fair amount of time getting yelled at by Coach Allen for laughing. Coach was so mad by Friday that he made us both change out and run on the last day of school. Greg and I completed our laps side by side, chuckling together as he cursed me for ruining an otherwise perfect record of nonparticipation.

  “I hate you so much,” he snickered, panting as he picked at the crotch of his gym shorts. “These shorts blow chunks.”

  “Now you know,” I laughed, trying not to look directly at his face in the blinding sunlight for too long.

  “Well, I understand why you’re so skinny now,” Greg moaned, wiping sweat from his brow. I chuckled lightly, trying not to seem excited that Greg had noticed my body changing over the last school year.

  After class, we exchanged phone numbers and agreed to hang out that summer. At home that first day off from school, I waited for Greg’s call, but nothing. A week later I still hadn’t heard from him, and I was starting to feel crazy. I would’ve clasped my hands and knelt by my bed had I not decided a few weeks back that prayer was a racket. I figured that if God was the kind of architect who would make me fret and suffer that much over his own faulty design, I’d rather not work with him (if he was even there at all).

  Although I had Greg’s number, I was afraid to be the first one to call. I had to play it cool and wait it out. But after another Greg-less week passed, I was crushed. I was also as pale as a ghost from all the hours spent indoors staring at the telephone.

  And then the phone rang.

  “Hello,” I answered, my voice quivering at the possibility.

  “Hey, it’s Greg,” he said as I hopped up and down as quietly as I could. It turned out that Greg’s family’s four-day summer trip to visit his great-aunt had become an extended stay when she fell down a flight of stairs. They had only just gotten home. I felt bad that Greg’s aunt had gotten busted up, but I could’ve cared less as the following question flowed from the receiver into my ear.

  “You wanna stay over tonight?”

  I hesitated—partly out of fear, but I was also executing a favorite courting ritual of my mother’s.

  “Never seem desperate,” she’d remind me while staring at the phone for three whole rings before answering.

  “Hello?” Greg asked. “Are you there, David?”

  “Sure,” I said, staring at the Saturday-night shows I’d circled in the TV guide. “I don’t think I have any plans.”

  Two hours later I was in the bathroom, trying to cover a massive nose zit with flesh-tone Clearasil, a product supposedly designed for Caucasian humans, in spite of its peachy-orange hue. After several attempts, my schnoz still looked like a tiny, radioactive tangerine. No matter how thinly I laid the Clearasil on, I still had a huge orange dot in the center of my face. A half hour into washing and reapplying the stuff, my mother popped her head in the doorway.

  “David, I . . . Oh, honey. Your face looks like a Twister mat,” she sighed. “What’s going on with your makeup?”

  “Mom, it’s not makeup!”

  “You know your mother wouldn’t mind if you wore makeup,” she chirped, styling her hair in the mirror. “Some men live their whole lives as ladies because . . .”

  “Mom! I’m not a lady. I’m just trying to cover my zits, okay?”

  “Honey, try this Oil of Olay instead,” she said, pulling a small tan tube from her purse. “Your face looks like you were drinking a glass of Tang and your mouth missed the glass.”

  “I don’t want your makeup, Mom. It’s for women. This Clearasil is bisexual.”

  “David,” she giggled, “it’s actually called unisex, meaning both men and women can . . .”

  “I know, Mom! Just leave and go to Mike’s already!”

  My mom had started dating Mike a few months earlier. He lived in Seguin, a small town forty-five minutes away, where she was going to visit him for the first time. In the mirror over my shoulder she put on lip gloss, muttering as she hiked up her brassiere. My mom had always been self-conscious about her ample cleavage.

  “Honey, do I look like a shameless hussy?”

  “Mom,” I said to her reflection, “stop worrying.”

  “Well, I’m nervous about meeting Mike’s kids tonight,” she said, staring at her reflection and shrugging, as if to say, I guess this is the best we can do, old gal. “You would tell your mother if this top made me look like Dolly Parton, wouldn’t you?”

  “Mom, you look great,” I said, rubbing her shoulder. “Besides, where are you supposed to hide those things?”

  “You turd!” she yelled, laughing herself to the front door. “Your mother should be ashamed of you.”

  As she walked out, I yelled, “Good luck on your date, Mom!”

  From the stairwell on the other side of the door she absentmindedly replied, “You too, honey.”

  An hour later I left our apartment complex and began my hike to Greg’s. As I walked down Harry Wurzbach Road in the humid sunset, the neighborhood changed. The houses got nicer, the businesses got fancier; gas stations were replaced by high-end craft stores and dress shops. I was entering the ritzier part of San Antonio, near Randolph Air Force Base.

  Twenty minutes later I arrived, double-checking the address Greg had written on a pack of gum in gym class. It was a newer house painted a soft eggshell with pale gray trim; the sidewalk was lined with tiny electric candles. The trees on either side of me whispered with the sound of tinkling metal chimes. I stood at the large, frosted glass door and ra
ng the bell. A few moments later Greg’s mother appeared, wearing pink-framed glasses and a powder-blue top; a long blond braid rested on her shoulder.

  “Hello, dear. I’m Georgia, Greg’s mother,” she said, wrapping her arms around me.

  “Oh . . . hello, Mrs. Brooks,” I stammered, ensconced in the smell of roses and cinnamon.

  “Welcome,” she said with warm familiarity. “Let me show you our home.”

  “Okay!” I beamed, feeling like an orphan offered shelter on a cold Christmas Eve.

  Georgia’s floor-length skirt made it seem like she was floating through the house, a stream of pastel gossamer trailing behind her. The floors were covered in Spanish tiles and the kitchen glowed with stainless-steel appliances. The den was furnished with a plush, overstuffed couch and love seat. Georgia slid open the patio door to reveal a crystal-blue, forty-foot swimming pool glistening in the moonlight. Tiki torches softly blazed around the yard and bamboo chimes sang from the surrounding trees. It was so much more than my mom and I had ever had, like my favorite Architectural Digest homes come to life.

  “We have extra trunks if you want to go for a swim sometime this summer,” she said. Torchlight reflected off the pool’s surface and danced across her face. Her earrings shimmered as a faint breeze lifted the pastel silk draping of her sleeves. She was Glinda the Good Witch, come to life as someone’s mom.

  In the kitchen, she poured me sparkling water and gestured to a slightly cracked door off the foyer. “Greg is just down that hall.”

  I picked up my bag and walked toward the door, saying, “Thanks for having me, ma’am.”

  “Call me Georgia, honey.”

  As I raised my hand to the doorknob, it crept open on its own, creaking like a horror-film door behind which gruesome discoveries awaited. I looked back at Georgia at the end of her kitchen, suddenly so far away.

  “The house isn’t like this once you’re down that hallway,” she said, bidding me an ominous adieu. “That’s the boys’ wing.”

  I could’ve sworn I heard a thunderclap as I peered down the darkened hallway ahead.

  “Hello?” No one answered. I looked over my shoulder, asking, “Georgia, does Greg . . .” But, like magic, she had vanished.

  The hallway seemed endless, stretching out ahead of me like the gaping maw of death. As I crept forward, a din of clashing sounds grew louder: car crashes, screaming women, laser guns, electric guitars, like the sound of several thousand televisions on at the same time.

  “Greg? Where are you?”

  A thudding boom echoed from the recesses of the blackness as a dim shaft of light broke through the passage ahead. A stocky, muscle-bound man with clenched fists appeared. He was covered in a sheen of sweat, wearing nothing but tiny black shorts.

  “Who are you?” he barked.

  “Uh, I’m . . . uh . . . I’m David.” I held up my duffel bag in front of me, like it was proof that I was a welcome guest in this house of horrors.

  “Greg! Greg! Greg!” he yelled repeatedly, while staring directly into my eyes. I struggled to maintain eye contact as I remembered my locker-room mantra.

  Don’t look down. Don’t look down. Don’t look down.

  Greg appeared from a door across the hall, wearing sweatpants and a blue T-shirt.

  “Jesus, Greg,” the boy barked. “I’ve been yelling for an hour, dick-slice.”

  “When aren’t you yelling, assface?” Greg sneered back.

  “Bite me. Is this is your friend, fucktard?”

  “No, Johnny. It’s a deranged murderer. Of course it’s my friend, you idiot.”

  Suddenly, Johnny thrust Greg down into a headlock. “Say it,” he yelled, squashing Greg’s neck as he flexed his gigantic bicep beneath his jaw. “Say, ‘My name is Greg and I’m a — homo who loves noogies!’”

  “This . . . is . . . my . . . brother . . . Johnny,” Greg wheezed as his brother rubbed two knuckles back and forth on top of his head “He’s . . . a . . . dick.”

  Maintaining his grip around Greg’s neck, Johnny outstretched his free hand and flashed me a crooked smile. “So you’re friends with Greg, my little sister?” he asked, shaking my hand.

  “Sure,” I whimpered.

  “Nice meeting ya, Dave,” grunted Johnny as he released Greg. “Don’t let my brother give you a BJ after you fall asleep.”

  “Sure thing!” I instinctively replied, like I’d just been given a polite reminder to wiggle the handle when I flushed. As Johnny stomped back to his room, a door behind me swung open.

  “Who are you?” asked a redheaded boy in his early twenties.

  Greg choked out an introduction. “This . . . is my brother Adam.”

  “Hi Adam. I’m David. Nice to . . .”

  Before I could finish, another door opened behind me. An adolescent boy with shaggy brown hair leaned into the hall, clutching a Swatch phone against his chest.

  “Adam, shut the fuck . . . Oh . . .” he paused, noticing me, “who are you?”

  Before I could answer, Adam interrupted, “Shut up, Charlie! I’m trying to study!”

  “You’re too stupid to study, dickweed!”

  “I’m not the one making the noise, shit-for-brains!”

  Their screaming match continued a foot and a half from my face until Georgia appeared down the hall, carrying a tray. “Calm down, boys,” she delicately reprimanded, offering me a carefully arranged platter of Pizza Pockets. “I thought you’d like some snacks.” She looked down at Greg hacking on the floor with tears streaming down his face. “Oh, you boys,” she smiled, patting my cheek. “It’s a kind of hell down here, David. Have fun.”

  Greg’s bedroom was like an oasis in the midst of a nightmare: a clean, well-lit space with two twin beds and a huge window facing the front yard. Across one of the walls was a poster for a band called Erasure.

  “David, how have you NOT heard of them?” Greg said, leaping from one bed to the other like a deranged ballerino. He tore through a box of cassettes on the floor. “You haven’t heard ‘A Little Respect’?” He popped the tape into a boom box and tossed me the cassette case. “They’re the best. Check out the cover.” Greg bounced onto the bed beside me, propping his chin up on his palms as he began to explain why he loved Erasure. I tried to keep my eyes focused on the lyric sheet as his body leaned against mine. No friend had ever been so close to me on a bed before, or anywhere else, for that matter.

  “That’s my favorite song!” Greg yelped, pointing his finger at the liner notes in my lap, a mere four inches from my crotch. I instinctively stood up from the bed.

  “Your room is awesome!” I said, stretching and yawning to convey the message, I’m not freaked out by your jabbing at my penis. I’m just feeling really sleepy all of a sudden and need to wake up.

  Greg looked at me quizzically. “Um, do you want to change or something?”

  “Uh, sure!” I said, opening my duffel bag and taking out my clothes: two pairs of khaki pants, three polo shirts, two pairs of boxer briefs, and white knee-length socks.

  “Are you staying over or moving in?” Greg chuckled, picking at my clothes as if they were evidence from a crime scene. “We’re gonna watch a movie, not go to church.”

  He brushed past me to his closet and opened the doors. “You can borrow something,” he said, tossing me a pair of sweatpants and a Max Headroom T-shirt.

  “Well?” he said, staring at me expectantly. “Are you gonna change?”

  “Here?” I asked, not wanting to be naked or partially naked in front of anyone, anywhere, ever. “You want me to change here?”

  “No, David. I was thinking you’d change in the kitchen.”

  “The kitchen?” I asked. “You want me to change in the kitchen?”

  “I’m joking, weirdo,” he said, fiddling with his cassettes. “Change here. Duh.”

  I began to disrobe at a snail’s pace, reminding myself that normal boys changed in front of one another. I tried to jump out of my pants quickly as Greg glanced away from me, bu
t I snagged my right ankle in the cuff. Balancing on one leg like a flamingo, I started to hop to keep from falling over. But it was too late. I face-planted onto the bed, squirming, my legs bound together at the knees by my pants.

  “David,” Greg chuckled, making the room’s cool air feel even colder on my exposed bottom. “You are hilarious.”

  In the full-length mirror on Greg’s closet door I saw myself: splayed out on the bed, legs akimbo, Greg laughing beside me. In spite of my vulnerable position, I started to laugh with him. “Nerd,” he chortled. And I swooned.

  We spent that night listening to Greg’s cassettes, talking about school, and fending off his intrusive brothers as they barged through the door to borrow his clothes, tapes, and CDs.

  Four hours later we lay in each of the twin beds, watching TV. A film was beginning that neither of us had seen. A thin man in a nightclub crooned into the camera through a metal fence. On the dance floor, a veiled woman in sunglasses and her gaunt male partner observed the crowd, spotting a red-haired punk girl with her husky, unshaven boyfriend. At sunrise they took a limo to a very dark house, where they started flirting and stripping for each other, inexplicably still wearing sunglasses. Throughout every scene, each character smoked. There were so many smoldering cigarettes in the film that at one point, while a young David Bowie slid his hands up the leather miniskirt of a young Ann Magnuson, I thought I actually smelled smoke. As a thick gray cloud drifted in front of the TV, I realized it wasn’t a hallucination.

  “Greg!” I said, noticing him half-out his window, smoking. “What are you doing?”

  “Take a chill pill. I do it all the time. Want one?”

  He passed me a Marlboro Ultra Light 100 and a lighter across the threshold between our beds. I put the foreign thing in my mouth as if I’d done it a hundred times before, repeatedly trying to spark Greg’s lighter to life until he impatiently ripped it from my hand. Leaning forward with the Marlboro in my mouth, I noticed the perfect musculature of his outstretched arm as he held the flame to my lips.

  Don’t look down. Don’t look down. Don’t look down.

  As the flame died in Greg’s hand, I took my first drag off a cigarette, fully prepared to cough up my guts the way teenagers in movies do. But as the smoke poured down my throat as smoothly as an oyster, I knew it: I was born to do this. It wasn’t the first time that something new felt instantly natural to me. Before smoking, there was disco dancing, fashion sketching, and appetizer platter arranging. But this was the first time I felt good at something that was actually cool. I caught my reflection in the television screen, superimposed over David Bowie’s porcelain face. A cigarette looked as at-home in between my lips as it did between his.