by Chris Lynch
My, did I get a clap across the back of the head.
“That’s gonna cost you,” I said.
He shrugged. “Sorry, El. You did make it easier than I thought it would be though.”
“Ah,” Darth interrupted, “you two done with your little spat? Or would you like us to clear out so you can have some privacy?”
The rest of The Boys laughed hard at that, as they did at all the right places when The Boss spoke. Odie, Okie, and Obie, whom we bottom-feeders knew affectionately as the Psych-Os. This group was all too familiar from the boot camp the school ran for incoming freshmen, Twenty-One Nights with the Knights. Alaska doesn’t have nights as long as each of those twenty-one nights was, but Frankie claimed it was the greatest experience of his life. Made a man out of him. It’s entirely possible that I just don’t know what a man really is, but the truth was these guys broke Frank there. In ways that I could see but mostly ways I couldn’t, they humiliated him and tortured him and made him crawl before making him one of the chosen. It was a weird thing, and scary to me, that he had to hit bottom to get to the top. But he does have some kind of power here now. I guess that’s what he wanted even if he seems equal parts scared and happy.
“Now look what you did,” Frank said. “You know what he’s saying, don’t you? Huh?”
He seemed pretty worried about it.
“Gee, Frankie, I don’t. Does he mean that you and I really do quarrel too much, and it’s, like, messing with the special energy of the room?”
“Keep it up, wise guy. You know what they’re already calling you, right? The Velveteen Sphincter, because of the hemorrhoids, how do you like that?”
“The Vel—” I actually laughed. But it was the old laugh, the kind I did only because I couldn’t think of what else to do. The jerk laugh.
“That’s coldhearted,” I said.
“Thanks,” Darth replied. He put an arm around my shoulder and led me over to the photo-developing table. Everybody gathered around like it was a board meeting.
I was still reeling over the nickname thing. “I don’t see how I can even enjoy the book anymore now, The Velveteen Rabbit... I mean you really changed the meaning a lot.”
“See?” Darth said, laughing and pulling me harder around the neck. “I told you guys, didn’t I? I told you he was more of a funny than a dink.”
I tried to turn my head to look at him, but it was pretty well locked. It occurred to me, feeling that grip, that this was serious. Darth thinking I was funny was not just good for my social life. It was looking rather important to my physical life as well. I rolled him my eyes. “Thanks,” I said.
“So, what are you here for?” Obie snarled. Obie didn’t like me as much as Darth did. And he didn’t like the fact that Darth liked me, so it was likely to get worse. Also, Obie, two-way football star and local juvenile-delinquent-about-town, was known to be a steroid connoisseur. His eyes came across the table at me two feet in front of the rest of his skull.
“Okay,” I said, realizing that all the fun and hijinks was pretty much over.
“Answer the question for chrissakes,” Obie snapped.
“Lighten up, man,” Frankie said, sounding like a six-year-old version of himself. At least he made the effort.
Obie wrinkled him with a stare, then returned to the business of withering me.
“Okay. I came because I have to tell you something.”
Okie leaned across the table. Okie, like his bookend Odie, was the less scary brand of football meathead, the big doughy offensive lineman type who would be an athlete for exactly four years, but who would then graduate high school, marry his first cousin, twice, put on another sixty pounds, lose all his hair, go to work for his father-in-law uncle at the auto parts store where he could sit on a stool that fit his rump like a yarmulke and tell people all day we’ll have to special order that part for ya buddy. I kind of liked him.
“Is that it?” Okie asked.’ “That’s what you had to tell us?”
“I wish,” I said.
Darth released his grip on me, gave me a gentle-enough push away from him to look me over. “No,” he said sagely.
“No,” I said.
“He has something more to tell us.” Darth could see. That’s why he was the brains of this outfit.
Frankie nodded.
“You can go now,” Darth said to him without looking at him.
Um, um, um, ah, um...
“Oh,” Frankie said, likewise surprised. “Well, I thought I’d stay, you know, help out—”
“And I thought you’d go,” Darth said very seriously. This time he did look at Frank head-on.
And he was gone. I started doing this ridiculous little hyperventilation thing as I saw him leave, and only then realized how much I needed him. How much his hard-earned cool was swaddling me. Before walking out, Frank turned to me and shrugged, winked, and gave me a thumbs-up.
Shrug-wink-thumb. The triple! Oh my god, I was a dead man.
“Speak,” Odie said.
Badgering the prisoners was apparently his one Photography Club function. But he did do it very well.
With the creepy low light of the darkroom, the closing-in feeling of the group, the silent isolation of our location at the far end of the school bowels, the situation reminded me of a World War II movie when—
“What is that?” Obie barked again. He was pointing to me and talking like I wasn’t there. “You ask him a question, and he takes like a century to answer.” He leaned up close to me, started poking me in the forehead with his badly unclipped index fingernail. “What’re you doin’ in there?”
Wouldn’t you like to know, peckerhead? I mentally taunted him. Thumbing my nose, flipping him the bird, mooning him, all the things I’d have done if I were an actual tough guy. I was just about to—
“No, really,” Darth cut in. “We haven’t got all day.” He looked at his watch. “And if this is somethin’ we gotta beat you for, y’know that’s gonna take us twice as long, so we need to get on with this.”
“Of course,” I said, sensing my opportunity. “The fact is, I came to tell you some really good news.” I reached into my pocket and slapped the unused fifty-dollar tube of EXTREME UNCTION on the table. “It seems I won’t be needing this,” I said, boldly. “You know, since I’ve begun a new lifestyle, taking better care of myself, I’m feeling a lot better. So, if you don’t mind, I’d like to return the merchandise.”
It’s amazing how high some people can raise one eyebrow. Darth’s looked like he’d swept it back over his hairline. “You don’t say? The VD just kinda went away, did it?”
“Oh.” Almost forgot about that. “Well yes, in a manner of speaking. I was gonna get to that—”
“Well, how about your other little problem, then?”
I’d nearly stopped experiencing the other little problem, that’s how good the situation had gotten. However, in the heat of the moment...
I squirmed in my chair.
“Fine as wine.” I smiled bravely.
“Crushed the grapes then, didja?”
I shifted back the other way.
“Well, no, it’s a combination of proper diet, moderate exercise, and avoidance of—”
“I say we check and see for ourselves,” Obie said, without even a suggestion of impish humor. Obie had a certain future as a foul one-of-a-kind criminal genius.
Thank god the sane evil bastard was the one in charge.
“Strip him,” Darth commanded, folding his arms across his chest. “I’ll prepare the photographic equipment.”
The four of them got busy like worker ants, moving chairs around, testing conditions with a light meter for just the right look, bending me over.
I contributed a quiet gentle sobbing.
“No,” Frankie said, bursting in through the door.
“Hey,” Okie screamed. “The light was on out there. Darth, he came in and the light was on. No knockin’ or nothin’.”
Darth shook his head but smiled too.
“This ain’t good for you, Frank,” Obie said. They’d pretty well forgotten about me now.
“You don’t really need to do anything to him, right?” Frank asked.
A loud, satisfied sigh came out of Darth. “You passed,” he said to Frank.
“Huh?”
“Ya,” Obie said. “Huh?”
Darth elaborated. “We need this. Loyalty. This is good. You can’t teach that to a guy. He came in here to rescue his pudgy little friend...”
Hey! I thought. I’m not... Ah, save it for later.
“... even though he could wind up very sore for this. I’m impressed.”
Frank allowed himself a modest smile. “Thanks, Darth man.”
“Shut up. Get in the chair,” Darth answered. “Velvet, you can go.”
Holy smokes. I didn’t want this. I didn’t want the other thing either... but I didn’t want this.
“I’ll stay... with my friend... thanks,” I said, acting as if he had offered to freshen my drink rather than to get the hell out.
“Get the hell out,” he clarified.
With that, the two linemen grabbed me by the arms and showed me the door. “I thought you were impressed with the loyalty thing,” I said as they stuffed me out.
“Who gives a shit if you’re loyal? You ain’t a member,” Odie cracked, giving me a kick in the pants as a good-bye.
But they couldn’t make me stay away from the door. I hung tight to listen in case I needed to barge in heroically, but it was a pretty thick door. I could only catch snatches of conversation.
“... your mistake, Frankie...”
“... can’t just let this go...”
“... maybe gotta decide... if you’re a sphincter...”
What am I, a species now? All my friends are sphincters?
“... or are you cool?”
There was a long pause. Long, long, long. Those are the worst. Nothing ever really happens when people are talking, does it? It’s always in those pauses. I began to sweat. There were a lot of these pauses at the summer camp, and after every one Frankie came back a little bit less Frankie. I was there to clean him up at the end of it, but cleaning a guy up isn’t the same as helping him out, is it? A little late is too late, that’s what I thought then, and it was what I thought now. Frankie was in there because he wasn’t going to let it happen to me.
Then, chairs shifted. Then there was banging around, scuffling, grunting.
I was almost ready. So, so scared. Almost ready. Don’t make me come in there. Please, god, don’t make me.
Louder grunting. Something big tipped over. But it didn’t sound like a beating so much as they were all working together to rearrange the furniture.
Still, I should... I should have been in there...
But he came out.
Glistening. His face had such a high sheen, especially around the nose and mouth, even I could not sweat that much in that short a time. Only I guess I had. Drenched, I was. Probably shining just as brightly.
But he didn’t look destroyed.
I didn’t care how oily we looked.
He didn’t say anything. He walked right past me, and I fell in line behind him. Down the corridor, up the concrete steps, holding the oak handrail of the ancient wrought-iron bannister for support. Across the checkerboard of two-foot-square green-and-white tiles in the school’s front lobby, and out into the street, where we leaned for home.
“I was just about to come in there, y’know, Frankie,” I said. “I swear, I had my hand on the doorknob. I was all set to knock, wait for the light...”
He waved me off. Not like a go-to-hell wave, which might have been appropriate, but a forget-about-it wave, which was unbelievably cool of him.
“Well... thanks, anyway, you know...”
The wave again.
I felt terrible, wishing there was some little something I could do.
Well there was, wasn’t there? I could tell him.
“You’re... you’re really a man, Franko. I mean, like, even more than you think you are.”
He stopped, turned to me, and shook his head. He drew a deep breath and swallowed, as if speaking was hard for him.
“Don’t worry about it,” he honked.
“What?” I hardly recognized his sound. And the shine of his face was... oh no...
“Don’t worry about it,” he repeated, without any help from his sinuses. He sounded something like a deaf person trying to speak for the first time.
I could see now. The inside of his nose was clogged solid, with clear gel.
I pulled out my hanky. I never use it. I never even take it with me, but somehow it’s always there in my pocket when I need it. Don’t know how she does it.
I watched somberly as Frank blew a pound of EXTREME UNCTION into my handkerchief.
I couldn’t wait till my mother came across that mystery in the laundry.
He handed me the mess, and we walked on.
“Thanks, Franko. You saved my ass and—”
“Your fat ass,” he corrected.
“... saved my fat ass, and saved me fifty bucks to boot.”
He shook his head.
“What?” I nearly cried it. “What? What now? Don’t these guys have anything better to do with all their talent than to—”
Frank handed me the expelled, flattened, chewed (?) tube of UNCTION. Then he handed me a new, full one.
“No, no, no,” I wailed.
“No cash refunds,” Frank explained. “Merchandise exchange only. And, since they concluded that the original tube had been opened and used—”
“No!”
“And that you were now coincidentally cured...”
Oooh, oooh. Oh, how wrong they were.
“And that you can never be too sure about these things, that you could have another flare-up at any time, what with the stresses of everyday life...”
“Frankie, where am I gonna get a hundred bucks?”
“No, no, no. You’re a bulk buyer now, and they really do like you. So it’s only forty.”
“Still a rip-off.”
Frank gave me a big-brotherly pat on the shoulder. “You won’t think so after you see the way it can also clear your sinuses and soothe that nagging tongue-ache.”
“And I never even got to tell them the other thing, about Sally...” I started—really—back toward the Photography Club. Frank made no attempt to follow. I stopped short, his caution a fairly sobering chill. I turned to face him. “Timing, I suppose, would be important here.”
“I only got two nostrils, El. Let’s not force them to get creative.”
He’s very good at saving me, Frank is. I ran to catch up as he headed out.
All The Wrong Places
“I’VE BEEN THINKING ABOUT your situation,” Ma said, taking me on a frighteningly chummy walk to the garage.
“Which situation is that?” I asked, staring at her hand draped over my shoulder.
“You know, your loneliness problem. Your isolation, your weirdness.”
“Ma? I am not weird. Why would you say something like that?”
“So, I got you something.”
I couldn’t believe it had deteriorated so badly that she’d talk right through me. Time to turn up my volume.
“You got me a car? Ma, you’re the balls.”
“I am not, thank you very much.”
I ran ahead to yank up the garage door. “I can’t believe you did this. I cannot believe you were soooo cool. ... Oh, this’ll fix everything. No more loneliness, no more isolation and weirdness. You were right, Ma...”
I struggled with the massive, heavy, rusted green garage door that opened upward, floor to ceiling. I squatted like a power lifter and heaved, but still only got it up about a foot.
She came up to help me. “Elvin you are fourteen years old. I did not get you a car. How irresponsible do you think I am?”
“I don’t know,” I said, letting go of the door when I realized there was no five-liter Mustang o
n the other side. “You let me get this bad, I figured maybe you’d let me be screwed up and happy.”
“Well,” she grunted, “I won’t.”
Finally, she got the thing up enough for us to slide under, while I stood there tapping my foot and saying, “I’m waiting.”
Though, in reality, I could have waited some more.
“You’re joking,” I said.
“No,” she squealed, all excited about what she’d done. “Come here, boy,” she said to it. “Come on. Come meet Elvin.”
“We’ve met. And he ain’t coming.”
So she went to him.
“He’s just a little worn out from all the excitement,” she said, picking up the little bundle of joy and cradling him like a camel-hair dog-faced baby.
She meant well. She really did. And mostly I liked her. She didn’t slap me around or bring home bald fat men who smelled like second-day souvlaki on a stick and called me “sport,” and she was there every day when I woke up and she fed me and laughed at my old Monty Python tapes even when nobody else knew what was going on. She bought me Mr. Bubble and then poured it into a Head & Shoulders bottle so that my friends wouldn’t see when they were prowling around the bathroom looking for clues. She was all frigging right.
“Ma, ya big goof,” I said. “Do you know what you bought?”
She played simple to keep me off balance. “A basset hound, I believe.”
“Wrong. You bought a throw pillow. And why? What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking, mister grateful, that it would be nice if you had a puppy. A boy should have a puppy, and I realized you never had one. No puppy, no siblings, no father...”
She misted.
Hell.
Damn.
See, we don’t do this. Me and Ma, we have a nice tidy deal. She doesn’t mist on me and I don’t mist on her. There are better ways.
I chose to ignore it.
“So what did you do, Ma, did you, like, advertise, for the lamest, neediest, most useless lifeless beast in captivity?”
“Hell no,” she said. “Look what happened last time I did that.”
“What? What last...?”
Oh. I get it. Good one, Ma. She’s back.
“Actually, I needed help deciding, so I took Mikie with me. And he told me that you’ve had your eye on this little guy for a long time.”