by Jeff Strand
“You can do it. I have faith in you.”
“Fine. Uh, the Boston Strangler.”
“Too easy. Albert De Salvo. Thirteen victims, all women, between June 1962 and January 1964. They were all sexually assaulted and then strangled. He usually posed as a—”
“So what non-death-related hobbies do you have?” I asked.
“Computer games. The gory ones, at least. I do like cartoons. Hey, these pictures aren’t going to bug you, are they? I can tone it down if you want.”
“Nah, that’s okay,” I said, giving myself a mental kick in the ass as soon as the words escaped from my mouth.
“Cool. Have you been set free yet?”
“Excuse me?”
“Did your parents leave yet?”
“I drove myself here.”
“Nice. It took me three hours to get rid of my mom yesterday. I thought I was going to have to fake a demonic possession to make her leave. So you have a car?”
“Yeah. Not a good car, but a car.”
“Excellent. Have you eaten?”
“Right before I got here.”
“Good plan, good plan. Get in that one last meal before you have to face the cafeterias. But don’t worry, one of our neighbors is premed, so if you need a stomach transplant he’ll be around.”
“I heard the food here was pretty good.”
“Yeah, the fish sticks I had last night were decent. I just like being cynical.”
“Okay. Well. I think I’m gonna head over to the campus bookstore. Did you already get your books for the semester?”
Will shook his head. “I’m gonna hold off, though, in case I have to drop any of my classes after the first day.”
Good, I thought. “All right. Nice meeting you. I’ll be…uh, back.”
Okay, so I had a weird, morbid, fairly annoying roommate. I could live with that. I was in college, damn it, and I was going to have the time of my life!
I hadn’t returned to Branford Academy after that miserable year. Instead, my parents had sent me to Twin Streams Academy, which had no nearby streams and which was pretty much the same as Branford save for the lack of a psychotic little creep like Darren. It sucked but I got through it.
I moved back in with my parents during my high school years. I worked evenings at a movie theater and weekends as a busboy at a restaurant, and while at home made myself as invisible as possible. My mother and father didn’t seem to mind having me around when I didn’t exist.
Though my grades were decent but not spectacular, I relentlessly pursued college scholarships. And I got them. I ended up with a full ride at Shadle University, an Arizona college that was less than an hour from Branford Academy. One weekend I thought I might make a road trip to my old school and fling a shitload of eggs at whatever campus windows I could find.
But I was here. I was completely on my own. Completely free. Though I was going to work hard and study like an absolute maniac, I was also going to have fun. This was my opportunity to reinvent my life, and gosh darn it all to heck, I was going to take advantage of it.
I fell in love for the fourth time, right there in the bookstore line.
I don’t mean that I fell in love four times while standing in line, although the length of that particular line would not have made this entirely out of the question. Rather, it was the fourth time in my life that I’d fallen in love.
The first was the day after I turned fifteen. She was sitting on the edge of an indoor fountain in a mall, licking an ice cream cone. Blonde hair, blue eyes, brown lips (from the chocolate). The most beautiful girl I’d ever seen in my life. I vowed that no matter what, I would work up the courage to walk over there and talk to her.
I did not work up the courage to walk over there and talk to her.
I was still fifteen the second time I fell in love. This time it was with Mrs. Vierling, my biology teacher. The spark of love first hit me when Mrs. Vierling consoled Wendy Chandler, who was crying over the dead froggies, and it was a love that sustained throughout the rest of the school year. Since Mrs. Vierling was twenty years my senior, married, and bound by both moral and legal restrictions that prevented her from dating me, it was doomed to be an unrequited love. But I harbored a fantasy that she was secretly into skinny fifteen-year-olds, and that if we’d ever found ourselves trapped in a closet together, she would have ripped off my clothes and taken me roughly.
We did not find ourselves trapped in a closet together.
The third time I fell in love I was seventeen, and so was the object of my affection. Margaret. A redhead. Absolutely gorgeous. We had three classes together, and my time spent gazing at her contributed to me answering more than one question from the teacher with “Huh?”
I confessed my love to my friend Bryan. He shared this news with lots of people. Lots of people shared this news with Margaret. Margaret, whose taste in men did not lean toward those with large purple birthmarks on their chin, was humiliated. She told me to leave her the hell alone (which I guess she meant in a preemptive way, since I’d never even spoken to her). Lots of people witnessed this event. Most of them seemed to enjoy it.
The fourth time literally took my breath away.
Something struck me in the gut so hard that I let out an ooomph, pronouncing it exactly that way. Both hands went to my stomach as I struggled not to double over and puke.
Then I stared into the wide, horrified eyes of the girl who’d accidentally bashed her duffel bag into me and was immediately entranced. I was entranced, suffering from physical agony, and embarrassed because the other students in line were staring at me, all at the same time. It was quite a sensation.
“Oh my God! I’m so sorry!” The girl lowered her duffel bag and put her hand on my gut. “Did I hurt you?”
I shook my head. Had she not hurt me so badly, I might have managed a verbal response.
She pushed up her thick glasses. She had long blonde hair that was pulled back, was a couple of inches shorter than me, was thin but not waifish, and was positively adorable. “I’m sorry…I wasn’t paying any attention to where I was going. I’m such a klutz. Are you sure you’re okay?”
I nodded, still struggling to keep my lunch from making a cameo appearance.
She removed her hand from my stomach. “Okay, well, I’m really sorry about that. I’ll just go slink off now.” She gave me a sheepish smile, the most beautiful smile I’d ever seen in my entire life, and quickly walked away.
I watched her go, regretting that I hadn’t thanked her. It took me another fifteen minutes of standing in line to realize that regretting that I hadn’t thanked her for bashing my gut was really, really stupid.
Who was she? What was her name? What was in the duffel bag? Why had she been so distracted that she didn’t see the long line of students? What was her major? How long had she worn glasses? Where was she born? When did she lose her first tooth? Was she into skinny guys? Did she have any tattoos?
I finally was able to pay for my books. Destitute, I left the campus bookstore and started to head back to my dorm.
“Hey!” somebody called after me. A guy.
I turned around. A dark-haired guy I didn’t recognize hurried over to me. “I knew it!” he said with delight. “I’d recognize that birthmark anywhere!”
My hand instinctively went to my chin. Who in the world was…?
“Darren?” I asked.
The guy grinned. “Yep. I thought that was you in line. I saw that girl walk right into you. So how’ve you been?”
I shrugged. My stomachache was returning and I really just wanted to turn and walk away.
“I got here a couple of days ago. They really screw you over with those book prices, don’t they? And when we try to sell them back we’ll get about a quarter of what we paid. Good racket they’ve got going here.”
“Yeah,” I said.
Darren looked at me carefully. I noticed that he’d acquired some serious muscle tone since our Branford Academy days, which was easily visible throug
h the white Shadle University T-shirt he was wearing. His hair was still shoulder length but stylishly cut, and he’d matured into an extremely handsome guy. Model material, easily. I was still a dork and it wasn’t fair.
Darren frowned as he studied me, but then he let out an incredulous laugh. “Holy shit, you’re still upset, aren’t you?”
I shrugged.
“I can’t believe it! Dude, we were just kids! You can’t hold a grudge against me for that! C’mon, forget the past. This is the present, Alex!”
I looked him in the eye. “You ruined my friends’lives.”
Darren’s smile faded. “Okay, okay, I’m not going to pretend that I wasn’t a fucked-up little kid. But I didn’t ruin anybody’s lives. You don’t get your life ruined when you’re twelve. I was a bully, what can I say?”
Not a bully; a psychopath …
“Look, I really need to get back to my room.”
Darren shook his head. “No you don’t. C’mon, this is no way to act. Let’s leave all that crazy shit in the past. You were always a cool guy, Alex.”
“And you mutilated Peter’s dog.”
“I was twelve! There’s a statute of limitations, you know. When I was twelve I also farted in a movie theater. It was the nastiest, smelliest, wettest fart you can imagine, and the smell probably soaked into everybody’s popcorn and ruined the movie, but I’m sure that by now they’ve all gotten over it because I was twelve.”
“Maybe.”
“Are you saying that people are still upset over that fart? Because if they are, I’ll apologize to them personally. I’ll buy the plane tickets and I’ll walk up to their front door and say, ‘Hey, I was the kid in the third row center who’d just eaten the burrito, and from the bottom of my heart I apologize for that foul, lingering odor.’”
I couldn’t hold back the grin. Darren extended his hand. “C’mon, screw the past.”
I hesitated for a second, but then nodded and shook his hand. “All right.”
“Cool! So let me buy you lunch.”
“I just ate.”
“Eat more.”
“I’ve got a lot of stuff to do.”
“Okay, so, you’re not really screwing the past, are you? You can’t do this to me. You can’t still think of me as that weirdo. I had issues. So did you. So did everybody. C’mon, we’ll hang out, we’ll have fun, I’ll get you laid.”
I chuckled. “Oh, gee, how can I pass that up?”
“You can’t. C’mon, let’s go.”
As we walked to the student parking lot, I took out three beanbags and began to juggle. I’d learned to juggle in high school and when I got nervous, which was often, it helped me relax. Juggling now was not helping me relax. I’d been all psyched for the college experience, and it was already sullied because I didn’t have the balls to just tell Darren to go away and find some other freshman to torment.
“Damn, you’re good,” said Darren. He seemed genuinely impressed.
“Thanks.”
“Can you juggle more than three?”
I nodded. “I can juggle five of them without messing up, and I can do up to seven messing up a lot.”
“Can you juggle flaming torches or running chain saws?”
“Flaming torches are easy. They’re perfectly balanced and easy to throw, so the only trick is to not lose your concentration. Running chain saws, no.”
“No way!” said Darren, amazed. “You can really juggle flaming torches? You’re not just messing with me?”
“I have some back at my dorm. I mean, ignitable torches, not torches that are on fire right now.”
“You hope.”
“Yeah.”
“So what other hidden talents do you have?” Darren asked. “I bet you know a bunch of magic tricks, right?”
I nodded, increasing the height of my throws. “A couple.”
“Do you know how to saw a woman in half?”
“Sure.”
“How?”
“It’s a very sophisticated animatronic woman that separates in the middle. You have to buy them direct from Disney.”
“No, seriously.”
“It’s a secret.”
“So, magic tricks, juggling…are you an escape artist, too?”
“Nope, but I can make balloon animals.”
“Cool. So are you paying your way through school by doing children’s parties?”
“Nah. It’s just for fun.”
“You have all these marketable skills and you’re not doing anything with them? You know what the problem is; it’s that you’re such an introvert. You always were. Dude, if I could juggle flaming torches I’d be marching past every sorority on campus, letting the women flock to me.”
I caught the three beanbags and shoved them back into my pocket. “Obviously you live in some bizarre alternate universe where women go for guys who can juggle. Being able to do magic tricks is actually a very effective form of female repellent.”
“I dunno, it shows that you’re good with your hands.”
I chuckled. “I just do it for fun. But if you’re ever in desperate need of a balloon animal, I’m the guy to call.”
“Can you make balloon roadkill?”
“Not without popping it.”
We reached his car, which was only slightly less crappy than my own, and drove to a small burger joint called Patties. Our conversation was lighthearted and effortless, and I realized that I was surprisingly comfortable around the guy who’d been responsible for one of the most miserable times in my life.
Maybe he was right. He’d been twelve. Perhaps it was time to get over it.
We sat down at a corner booth and the attractive waitress, who looked to be in her early twenties, was giggly and flirty as she took our orders. Of course, all of the flirting was directed at Darren. She winked at him as she left to get our drinks.
Darren leaned forward and put a shielding hand next to his mouth, speaking confidentially. “I do believe that our waitress has a rather intense desire to fuck me.”
I barely stifled a laugh. “I think you may be right.”
“Well, I’ve got a girlfriend back home, and I figure I should be loyal to her for at least a couple of weeks. Our waitress will have to deal. My girlfriend’s a waitress, too, actually.”
“So waitresses have a thing for you?”
“Waitresses, cashiers, beauticians, accountants, policewomen, political leaders, you name it. It’s tough being such a Grade-A stud muffin.” Darren shook his head and sighed in mock misery. “So, what about you? Are the women in your hometown going to be doing a lot more masturbating now that you’re gone?”
“Oh, definitely,” I said. “I’m sure sales of baseball bats have tripled.”
Darren grinned. “Seriously, did you have to leave a girlfriend behind?”
“Nah. I didn’t date all that much.”
“Not all that much, or not at all?”
“Not all that much. There was one girl, Vickie, where we sort of wavered between just friends and more than friends, but nothing really happened.”
The waitress returned with our Cokes. Though I couldn’t be positive, I was pretty sure that she’d undone an extra button on her blouse. “Can I get you anything else?” she asked, looking straight at Darren.
“I think we’re okay for now.”
“Well, if you need anything, just wave at me. My name’s Stephanie.” She left the table, but it looked like she had to pry herself away.
“Oh, yeah,” said Darren. “She wants me.”
“Do you need me to clear a spot on the table?” I asked. “I can find someplace else to sit.”
Darren threw a glance over at Stephanie, who was taking another customer’s order. “I’ve gotta say, if I were the kind of person who would cheat on his girlfriend this soon, she would be near the top of my list. Did you notice the extra button?”
“I thought I was imagining it.”
“So, you don’t have a girlfriend, huh?”
“
Nope.”
“Well, like I said, I’m taken. But I’ll bet I could get you together with Ms. Stephanie.”
I gasped in pretend excitement. “Really? Do it! Do it! Oh, please do it! I’ll be your best friend!”
“I’m serious.”
“No, you’re not.”
Darren nodded. “You want her?”
He looked absolutely serious, which made me a bit uncomfortable. I leaned back in my seat. “What do you mean, you could get us together?”
“I’m not talking about a relationship, but I’ll bet you anything I could get both of us invited to her place. I’ll get her percolating, you can drink the coffee.”
I laughed. “That’s the stupidest metaphor I’ve ever heard.”
“So, you up for it?”
“I’m thinking no. It wouldn’t happen anyway.”
Darren shrugged. “Your loss. But, hey, the offer stands.”
“Thanks. I’ll continue to fail to get women on my own.”
“Maybe you should juggle when she comes back with our food.”
“Again, I think you’re really not tuned in to the dating prospects of magicians.”
“Here, let me see one of those beanbags.”
I reached into my pocket and took out one. A green balloon came out of my pocket with it and dropped onto the seat.
“Oh, hey, even better. Why don’t you make a balloon animal for Stephanie?”
“Nah.”
“Why not? You think this place is too classy?”
“I don’t feel like it.”
“You’re such a weenie! Get out a balloon or I swear to God I’ll embarrass the living shit out of you. I have no shame, I mean it.”
Since I had absolutely no reason to doubt that those words were true, I picked up the balloon and stretched it out a few times.
“Why do you stretch it?” Darren asked.
“Makes it easier to inflate. And it weakens the balloon a little bit so that if it pops it won’t send a chunk of rubber flying through your eyeball and into your brain.”
“I had no idea balloon animals could be so deadly.”
“Oh, they’ll kill you like a bullet.” I put the end of the balloon in my mouth and inflated it, leaving four inches at the end to serve as the tail. A couple at the table across from us turned to look, and I selfconsciously tied a knot in the end. I felt like an idiot, but began to pinch and twist the balloon, locking segments into place, until I’d formed a traditional example of a balloon dog.