by T Cooper
We went for pizza after, DJ on freaking cloud nine. Dude was psyched, and I’ll probably never forget that image of him in my head, in the millisecond before he knew he won, when the cheesy local weatherman acting as the YUPS host was holding DJ’s and the other girl’s forearms like they were boxers who’d fought all ten rounds without a knockout. He was peering down at his feet, rocking slightly, the lights low, breathing kind of hard, just like that boxer who’d made it through. But there was this halo vibrating around him too, a total contentment with where he was, with what just happened. He was wholly pleased no matter which way this was going to go, peaceful and calm and satisfied that he’d done the best he could possibly do.
* * *
Now back home on my bed alone, I keep thinking, What a feeling that must be, as I toss the football DJ didn’t want with the Titans logo in the air above me and catch it over and over. His bone-deep contentment when he finished performing his poem, clear even though he tried to front and act chill, not wanting to seem gloaty or unduly proud. I’ve seen Kenya with that same contentment after certain races now that I’m thinking of it (even though I know she cares more about winning than just about anything).
I wonder what that’s like, to be totally happy doing something you love so much. I’m psyched for DJ and his golden mic and all, but it also makes me a little depressed to be sitting here alone wondering if I’m ever going to find my thing like he and Kenya seem to have. I mean, even if it doesn’t work out for them, at least they’ll have tried their best at something, and maybe that’s enough. Or close to it.
What am I supposed to do? What am I made for? If I am my own story, unlike DJ or Kenya or Tracy or Chase, I don’t know how to write it. And I sure as sunshine don’t have a clue about the ending.
CHANGE 2–DAY 21
Today sucked dirty diaper juice.
I woke up feeling like a phantom. Like I didn’t even know who I was anymore. I stared at myself in the mirror as I do every morning, when I decide I’m this (fly skate rat) or I’m that (bookish literary geek) and head out to face the bad old world, just as I have for the last twenty days. But today I came up short in the invent-a-personality wheel of fortune. I had no answers. Not even pretend ones. It hit me like a bowling pin to the face that I’m really not anybody at all. I’m pieces of people, ideas of people. I have no identity, secret or otherwise. I’m water, sloshing around into whatever form is presented to me. But the me that exists without a container has no substance, no heft, no realness.
Keeping it real? What even is that? Why am I so quick to get pissed about being misunderstood? It’s like I want everyone else to solve the puzzle that is me. Because I fracking can’t.
I don’t even know what I’m trying to say, except that nobody knows me and why should they, when I don’t even know myself?
Right when my eyes opened this morning all of this depressing stuff from the night before started flooding in. I went to the kitchen to distract myself, to see whether Mom and Dad wanted to do some corny family activity like we used to when I was younger, when I was Ethan. You know I had to be desperate if I was game for bowling, or going to one of those cloying “make your own pottery” places, which is really just painting somebody else’s pottery mold—an irony not lost on me at this moment.
But when I got out to the kitchen it was empty. On the counter was a hastily scribbled note with eight dollars stuck under the paper towel roll:
We went to Costco and some other places. Know how you hate errands! Should be back by 4 or 5. Treat yourself to lunch. Take Snoop for a long walk. We have our cells. Text or call if you need anything.
Love you,
M & D
(even though it’s Mom who always writes the notes)
Yes, Mom, I need something. I need not to be such a loser that my own parents don’t even want to hang out with me on a Sunday.
With nothing to Chronicle, nobody calling me (not even Tracy, who is likely baking blueberry scones in an ruffley apron for Mr. Crowell this very moment), and no homework either (I guess so everybody could focus their juju on the big Falcons win instead of Algebra), I decided to be a good son and walk Snoopy and “treat myself” to a corn dog at the Freezo.
Which, it turns out, was an epic mistake. Not the corn dog. The walk.
Let me explain.
I somehow manage to haul my gloomy butt out of bed, put yesterday’s clothes on and pull a hat over my head, and then dress Snoopy in his harness. We go downstairs, and I hop on my board, figuring I’ll let Snoop pull me toward the park that’s about a mile away. When we skirt by the dog run, Snoopy puts on the brakes, all eager to chill with some canine friends.
“Okay, boy,” I say, picking up my board and asking Snoop to sit while I take off his leash, make him make eye contact with me, and then repeat, “Okay,” to release him into the dog run, just the way I was taught when we went to puppy kindergarten back when he was an adorable fur ball everyone cooed at on sight.
As soon as Snoopy runs into the park and starts happily wagging and sniffing all the puppy butts, two different people (two!) come running over to their smaller dogs and scoop them up. This causes some other canines (not Snoopy, mind you) to start jumping and barking and aggressively trying to snatch the two picked-up dogs out of their owners’ arms. Which. I’m fifteen and even I know that if you make something look like prey, predators are going to come calling. It’s High School 101, people.
So now the owners of the aggressive-acting dogs scramble over and start trying to drag their pups away from the people clutching their fluffy smaller dogs in the air. No one is connecting the dots that their panic is the reason those dogs are snapping like sharks, trying to get their jaws on what is being telegraphed to be the most irresistible treat ever. Meanwhile, Snoopy is just standing there smiling with his fat tongue wagging like, Let’s play!
“You shouldn’t bring dogs like those in here,” I hear from behind me. “They’re born aggressive.”
I turn around to see who is talking to me, and it’s a long-haired lady in a prairie skirt and tank top, yanking on the collar of a Rhodesian ridgeback that’s easily ninety pounds and, I see when he circles, unfixed. His testicles are the size of navel oranges.
“Excuse me?” I say.
“It’s irresponsible,” she snarls, the ridgeback attempting to yank her arm out of its socket.
“He’s just sitting there,” I try, indicating Snoopy, who isn’t even looking at her big-balled dog.
“The minute he came in, he got everybody riled up,” she insists.
“Seriously, bro.” Some hipster dad with a soul patch has walked over to add his two cents. “You know they’re born to fight, right? I mean, there’s kids in here.”
I can’t even believe what I’m hearing, can’t even get a word out because it’s so irrational and contrary to what is actually happening right in front of their faces, and yet they see something else. It’s like the whole dog park has come down with a case of Hysterical Canine Blindness. And they are picking on my dog, who is doing nothing wrong besides being born the breed he is, and my frustration and bewilderment manifests like a giant fuzzy peach lodged in my throat.
“Their jaws lock!” the ridgeback lady screeches as she finally maneuvers all her weight to push her obnoxious dog from the park, slamming the gate behind her.
“Uh—” I start, but nothing will come out.
Soul Patch Dad idles next to me, stomach paunched out, side-eyeing Snoopy. “I mean, I got no beef with the good ones, but some people . . .” He nods at the lady leaving. “You know, bro. Just like, it’s probably better if you don’t bring him in here.”
By now Snoopy is frolicking with another dog like a freaking commercial for organic dog food, the two of them leaping and rolling and wagging their tails so fast their whole torsos wiggle. Nevertheless, Soul Patch Dad gestures toward the gate, indicating I should follow.
“FYI, there’s a no–pit bull legislation working its way through the city council,” he a
dds, as a gaggle of other concerned dog owners sort of flank him like it’s Gangs of New York and we’re about to go at it with our manmade weapons fashioned from wood planks with rusty nails sticking out of them.
“Seriously?” is all I can manage, as I go over to Snoopy and grab his collar. He has no idea what’s going on and resists at first, but then I get the leash on him and he happily trots alongside me while the assembled Dog Park Mafia silently watch us go, triumphant that they got the kid with the SCARY dog to leave them to their happy, bullshit Sunday scene.
It’s only on the way back to the apartment that I think of about a million things I should’ve said. Like, Their jaws don’t lock; that’s a myth. Or, Actually, lady, pit bulls are no more aggressive than other breeds like beagles and golden retrievers. And the American Temperament Testing Society research backs that up. Or, Get your dog fixed because, news alert: the world has too many dogs already! Or even, Don’t you think you’re being a little intolerant?
By which I mean, unbelievably, irrefutably, cripplingly intolerant. Maybe even a little racist. Okay, very racist. Against Snoop—and me. I mean, when I used to walk my dog last year when I was a cute, nonthreatening blond girl, people would be all over him and letting him kiss them and slobber on them, and they’d be scratching his butt and just having a general love fest. And people would be like, What is he, a hound-lab mix? And then I’d correct them and say he’s a pit bull, and while of course some people might recoil, mostly they were obviously assuming he was one of the “good ones” because he obviously was living with a good family—a.k.a. white.
And now folks just assume he’s a pit bull right off the bat, and even though he’s the same dog, people don’t pet him as much when I’m walking him. And look what just happened. We were basically run out of the park like the Elephant Man with his Elephant Dog.
Needless to say, I lost my appetite for Freezo, and for stupid dog runs. Snoop can walk on a treadmill like on the Dog Whisperer for all I care. Or sit and watch dogs playing on TV for socialization, because we are not ever going out there and facing the awful world like that again.
* * *
By the time I moped home, Snoopy’s usually irrepressible spirit was also completely squashed, and he seemed almost as down as I was. We both plopped onto my bed right after we got inside the nice, cool apartment. My parents still weren’t home. The sun was low, and it was dark in there, but I didn’t feel like turning on any lights.
It was hard to let go of the fury in my chest. I could feel my pulse was still elevated, my skin sticky. My brain doing that exhausting circular logic thing where you try to find answers to things that have no answers.
Snoopy chose that moment to fart and then look around with confusion as if the smell and sound had come from someplace else. He crawled closer to my lap, then laid his giant, heavy blockhead on my legs with an exaggerated exhale. Yeah. Cold-blooded killer. Of air quality, maybe.
For distraction, I opened up my laptop, logged onto Google, and typed, how to beatbox. I watched a handful of videos on YouTube, and started reading about how to simulate a kick drum by repeating the letter B over and over, like in Bogus.
I do it myself: Buh, buh, buh. Snoopy rouses at the racket, then realizes I’m not calling him and falls instantly back to sleep. His nose whistles like an old man’s, the sound providing a steady background rhythm. I move on to the hi-hat, more of a tst sound with my teeth closed. TST, tst, tst, I say, loud like a tire bleeding out air in staccato.
I click on an NPR link, which suggests I say, “Baboons and pigs, baboons and pigs,” and, “Bouncing cats, bouncing cats,” over and over. Which, okay, I’m all alone here and Snoopy can’t tell anybody, so I start doing it, cupping my hands over my mouth as I spit it louder and louder, and it really sort of starts sounding like a beat, and—
Knock-knock-open.
“Are you okay?” Mom, panicked.
“Ma, what the H?”
“I thought you were choking,” she says, all worried-faced.
“Come on, can I get some privacy?” I am thoroughly embarrassed.
“I just wanted to let you know we’re back,” she says, adding. “You had privacy all day.”
I slam my laptop shut.
“Are you okay?” she asks suspiciously.
“Yep. Fine,” I say flatly, praying she doesn’t stick around.
“Sure?” she asks after a few more excruciating therapy-like seconds.
“Yep.” I don’t even bother meeting her eyes.
“Oh, you know I love a Yep.”
“Yes, I’m fine,” I snap. “I’m just tired.”
“Okaaaay,” she says, drawing it out like I’m crazy.
I get it. I’m being an evasive brat. I don’t care. I mean, I don’t necessarily like speaking the way I do sometimes, “with an attitude” or whatever Mom calls it, but I swear it just spurts out like a snotty geyser. Meh. Bleh. Yep. Wah. The words sound the way I feel inside. Which, when I can’t describe my actual feelings, is a relief, even if it pisses off my parents (and, when she’s paying attention, Tracy).
Mom leaves me to marinate in my crappy attitude. I open my laptop back up, look at the screen as the rapping story reloads, and recommence feeling entirely lame, when out of nowhere, well, probably from the depths of my subconscious that was tapped the second Kenya’s lips touched mine on Friday and I saw a flash of her future, it hits me all over again—my kiss-vision from last school year of Audrey being harassed by some thug named Kyle. I shudder. Then wonder, who the hell is this Kyle creep, what’s going to happen to Audrey when she meets him, and what the hell am I going to do about it?
I know I need to get as close as possible to her so I can do everything in my power to protect her when this a-hole shows up in her life. Maybe instead of rapping, or football, or drums, or whatever dumb hobby I stumble onto, that can be the thing I try hard and get really good at.
Maybe that’s why I was born.
Baboons and pigs, baboons and pigs, baboons and pigs . . .
CHANGE 2–DAY 22
“Das racist,” DJ pronounces at lunch, as soon as I recount my dog run debacle. “No, for real. You think they’d be schooling you if you were some suburban white kid with a labradoodle?”
“I guess not,” I say, even though I know he’s right.
I’d woken up this morning thinking maybe I had overreacted yesterday, you know, just a bad time of the month (ha!). But DJ’s rage makes me feel nearly justified.
“No, that is some bull-crap,” DJ says again. “You should write a rhyme about it.”
I laugh in his face.
“Seriously,” he says, staring dead sober into my eyes. “Or I will—” DJ interrupts himself like a record-skip, drops a forkful of coleslaw onto his plate, and frowns a little. He surveys the table. “Wait, where’s Kenya?”
A cyclone breaks out in my stomach. “I don’t know.”
He cocks his head, studies me.
“What?”
“She’s always at this table at lunch,” he states factually.
“Maybe she’s at extra help.”
“Kenya doesn’t need extra help.”
“I don’t know, maybe she went home early.”
“What happened between you two?” DJ asks bluntly.
“Nothing!” I practically yell. “What do you mean?” My voice has gone up like two octaves, so there’s no way I’m pulling this off.
“You barely talked Saturday,” he says, slowly piecing it together: the party, the car ride, pizza after. “No, seriously, what happened?” He’s staring at me like a menacing big brother. Worse, a menacing big brother and a shunned ex-boyfriend all in one. “You can tell me, whatever it is,” he tries, acting casual. Like he’s an old-school exterminator, luring me under the propped-up box with a hunk of cheese before pulling the stick away to trap me and starve me out.
That said, it’s sort of working. And, I figure, maybe DJ can shed some light on why Kenya’s avoiding me. Or if I did something wrong
I have no awareness of. Maybe then I can just fix it and we can all go back to how we were, shooting the bull over lunch and goofing on each other with no hurt feelings.
“Uh . . .” I start.
“Uh . . . what?”
“We kind of. We sort of.” I just gotta go for it: “We kissed.”
His nostrils flare. “Oh.” Muscles along his jaws pulse. “When?”
“Uh . . . at the party?” I say, reverting back to my old up-talk tic.
“Hmm,” he says, crossing his arms. “That explains it.”
“What?” I ask, but DJ is already wadding his napkin, throwing it onto his tray, and shuttling his dirty dishes to the drop-off line.
CHANGE 2–DAY 24
At Peregrine Review today, we waded through submissions for the Fall issue.
“This one’s not bad,” I say, holding up a pencil drawing of a bespectacled and backpack-wearing falcon in midair, grasping a bunch of pens with one talon, while writing on a scroll of paper with a quill in the other.
Audrey squints across the table, pinches up her nose.
Aaron glances over, does the same.
“And that’s a no,” I say, mostly to myself, tossing the cover illustration hopeful in the reject pile.
“I vote we stay classy, maybe go with a vintage photograph or something?” Audrey says like she’s asking, but I know better that she means it as a statement. As in, that’s what we’re going to do, no use arguing.
“I was thinking more along the lines of an airbrushed mountain-stream scene, maybe with a grizzly bear clenching a trout in his jaws, like on the side of a van,” I joke.