Safely ensconced in the shotgun seat, Vinnie patted his pockets. “Hold up, I forgot my wallet,” he grumbled. Vinnie realized he was in peril of breaking the reentry rule, which stated that a passenger surrenders shotgun status if he goes back inside for any reason. Resigned to his fate, a downcast Stallion headed back into the house while his thick cologne formed a trail behind him, streaming off his head like the pillowy exhaust from a jet.
By the time Vinnie returned, Corey had positioned himself in the front seat. From the back, Jude had barely noticed. He’d just received another text from Becka.
I just got my hand stuck in a can of Pringles!
ELEVEN
“I talked to the Duffmeister today,” Vinnie announced from the backseat. “He’s a hurting unit.” Vinnie was referring, of course, to their friend Terry O’Duffigan, aka the Duffmeister. According to Vinnie, Terry had gotten his hands on a bottle of vodka the previous night and had attempted to drown himself with it. Turned out to be a bad idea.
The big problem with drinking, Jude believed, was drunk people. They usually acted like idiots. At parties or in the woods with friends, Jude always stayed in control. The Duffmeister was something else entirely. He changed personalities. After a couple of beers, Terry became an outsize version of himself—louder, funnier, happier—until he passed out or threw up. But it never seemed to faze him. Terry liked drinking, maybe too much. Some guys were like that. Girls too.
“Amateur,” Lee scoffed.
Vinnie laughed. “He was up all night, calling Ralph on the big white telephone!”
That got a laugh from everyone. The Duffmeister would be hearing about it for weeks.
“Did he get caught?” Corey asked.
“What do you think?” Vinnie answered. “He was hacking into the toilet bowl. Those things echo! ‘Help me, heeelllp me!’” Vinnie whined in a slurry voice. “Duff’s parents were cool about it, but he decided to lie low tonight.”
Jude tapped a message into his cell: Drivin around. Bored. U?
The boys were not big partiers. In fact, as a loose group, they could more easily be identified by what they were not rather than what they were. Not geeks, not freaks, not burnouts. In that sense they were like the color black, actually an absence of color, defined by what it was not: not blue, red, orange, green, heliotrope, or puce. On aimless nights like tonight, when they had no fixed plan other than to “get out,” Lee often grew irritable. He steered his mother’s car down different roads, pulled into fast-food places so they could buy fries and shakes, or on warm nights lean against the bike racks like a shaggy band of brothers, harmless outcasts in basketball kicks, before shoving off again to specifically elsewhere.
Lee pulled the Ford to the curb. He demanded, “Where now, geniuses?”
Shrugs, silence all around.
“I am not going to drive around all night if there’s no-freakin’-where to go. It’s stupid and I’m sick of it.”
The guys knew it was all bluff. Lee loved sitting behind that wheel; he just liked complaining about it almost as much. As the oldest among them—Lee would be a senior next year—he held a status and a power that made him the King of Saturday Nights. He wasn’t about to surrender his only true advantage. He snapped, “Gas costs money, you know.”
Yup, yawn, they knew. So they dug into their pockets, pulled out slim wallets or crumpled bills, pooled their resources, and handed up twelve bucks worth of good times on the asphalt wonderways. Freedom to burn.
“Okay, great,” Lee muttered, organizing and refolding the cash. On principle, he refused to chip in. And what could anyone say to that? He asked again: “Where now?”
It was the conversation Jude dreaded. The “What do you wanna do now?” routine. For days and weeks, months and years they batted the same words back and forth. What do you want to do? I don’t know: What do you want to do? It made Jude’s ears ring, a big heavy bell clanging inside his skull. Here they were, done with finals, with nowhere to go. Jude felt trapped in the soft, cushioned boredom of suburban life. Maybe a good place to grow up, and maybe okay for settling down, but Jude was in neither of those places. He was in between, a lit fuse, a teenage rocket exploding, and he felt there was nothing for him on this Wrong Island.
They ran through the usual list of options: the beach, the woods behind the high school, Canino’s basement, Mill Pond, the bowling alley, and on and on. One by one, the ideas were shot down before they could even take wing, like slaughtered ducks on a lake, blood and feathers everywhere.
Jude half considered bagging out altogether—go home and play guitar, watch TV. But he’d take too much crap for bailing now.
“How about the Amityville Horror House?” Corey suggested—fascinated as he was by close encounters with the paranormal. So off the boys went, relieved to have a destination. It was the crucial distinction between wandering around all night like four lost losers or having a purpose. To everyone’s surprise, a squirming Vinnie produced a slim bottle of brown liquid from deep in the nether regions of his jeans.
“Sweet, where’d that come from?” Lee asked.
“Uranus, I think,” Corey commented, frowning.
Vinnie grinned. “I raided my father’s liquor cabinet. He gets bottles all the time as holiday gifts. He’ll never miss it.”
Vinnie unscrewed the cap and gave the bottle a sniff. “Bourbon, boys. Bottoms up!” He lifted the liquor to his lips and slugged down a shot.
“Save some for the rest of us,” Lee complained. “Pass that bad boy up front.”
“Lee—” Corey chided.
“What? You want to get out and walk?” Lee countered, snatching at the bottle. “I’m going to take a sip, that’s all. Since when did you join Mothers Against Drunk Driving?”
Lee offered the drink to Jude, who declined. “Nah, I’m good.”
“Oh, that’s right, you like the runner’s high,” Vinnie teased. “Is it really true, though? After a long run, do you feel all tripped out?”
Jude shrugged.
“The runner’s high,” Lee scoffed. “If I run around the block, all I want to do is throw up a lung.”
The boys drove in silence, lulled by the hum and thrum of rubber on asphalt, the headlights mystical on the wet, shimmering road, content to be headed somewhere. The Amityville house was a place to go, another bullet to kill Saturday night.
Jude couldn’t imagine stealing alcohol from his father. The guy was Mr. Free Range Organic, constantly shoving bananas in the blender, spooning in heaps of protein mix, talking about roughage and—worst of all—his weekly acai colon cleanse. Mr. Fox counted his calories, monitored his cholesterol levels, and shuddered at the thought of an ice cream sundae. His father drinking bourbon? Jude couldn’t see it.
As for his mom, she practically had a pharmacy in the medicine cabinet—Jude had snooped it out like Encyclopedia Brown—with little bottles of Vicodin and OxyContin to kill the pain and who knows what else? The delicate chemistry of happiness. At least she didn’t drink anymore. It was something.
Lee took another short sip, passed it along like a big shot. Jude tried not to judge. He guessed everybody had their own way of keeping the wolves at bay.
“What’d you do last night, Corey Man?” Canino asked.
“Not much,” Corey said. “Some powerdisking. I caught up on the final season of Friday Night Lights. Why didn’t anybody tell me that show jumped the shark? There’s not enough football. Then I finished reading Breakfast of Champions. Insane and hilarious.”
“Reading’s bad for the eyes,” Canino noted. “You’ll go blind that way.”
“Thank you, Mr. Twenty-Twenty,” Corey retorted.
“Breakfast of Champions? What is it about, Wheaties?” Lee joked. He laughed after delivering the line, like the canned soundtrack on TV sitcoms: “Ha-ha-ha.” It wasn’t that funny.
“Yeah, right, barfwad. I read a book about a box of cereal,” Corey scoffed. “Seriously, Kurt Vonnegut was totally righteous. He looked around at all
the stupidity in the world and pointed out how dumb everything was—and he was funny as hell doing it too.”
“Yeah, like what’s so stupid?” Lee asked, as if he didn’t like the sound of this Vonnegut guy.
“Like ‘The Star-Spangled Banner,’ for instance.”
“He thinks it’s stupid? Our national anthem?” Lee was gearing up into argument mode.
Jude groaned internally. Lee was becoming a problem. Car or no car, he was growing tiresome. Something had to change. Jude couldn’t wait to get his license. Freedom.
“Admit it, Lee, it’s a lousy-sounding song,” Corey replied. “Vonnegut says it’s gibberish sprinkled with question marks.… ‘Oh, say, can you see…?’”
“What does he want? The song is about a battle—‘rockets’ red glare’!”
“‘The bombs bursting in air,’” Jude added.
“Exactly,” Corey said, rising to the challenge. “What kind of country picks that as their song? I mean, look at us. We didn’t pick it, we’re stuck with it—just like everything else around here.”
We didn’t start the fire, Jude thought.
“Maybe we should all vote on our favorite song?” Lee asked.
“Yeah, that’d be great,” Jude commented. “Make it a popularity contest. The new national anthem would be sung by the latest Disney teen product or, like, Lady Gaga.”
“Skank,” Vinnie opined.
“She’s hot,” Lee said. “I’d do her.”
Jude frowned. “You’d do her. That’ll be the day. Do you ever wonder if she’d do you?” He made no attempt to hide the irritation in his voice. Lee danced on his nerves.
“I don’t know what the hell she’d do,” Lee snapped back, glaring at Jude in the rearview mirror. “Don’t get political on me, Jude. I’m just stating my personal policy on who’d I’d be willing to bang.”
Vinnie snorted. “Right, and Lee’s got such high standards.”
“She’s gotta have two legs and a pulse!” Corey exclaimed, finger thrust into the air—and even Lee had to laugh at that.
“I’m not one of those necrophiliacs,” Lee said. “No corpses, no circus freaks, no carny tang, that’s where I draw the line.”
“Carny tang? What the hell?” Jude laughed.
Meanwhile, Vinnie eyed the road. Their car was stuck behind a slow, gray Impala. “Come on, Lee,” he urged. “Pass this old lady.”
Lee hit the turn signal, announced “Turbo jets on,” and accelerated into the left lane.
“Slinggg-shot!” Vinnie cried, as the car sped past the chugging Impala.
Corey returned to the main topic. He couldn’t help himself. He was one of those guys who became like a missionary knocking on doors, spreading the good word about his latest discoveries. It could be a new song or a pretty girl or a phone app or the coming zombie apocalypse. Corey was like a bull rider who couldn’t let go. “It’s what the song’s about, Lee,” Corey persisted. “Or really, what it’s not about. There’s no mention of peace or hope or happiness.…”
“Oh please, Corey Man, shut the eff up, will you?” Lee said. “The song is about a battle—we fought for our freedom, for Christ’s sakes. And the flag was still there!”
“Maybe Vonnegut was right,” Jude said.
“Yeah, he’s right,” Corey agreed. “Counterculture, that’s what I’m all about—whatever’s out there, I’m against it!” Typical Corey. He had the rule-hating gene in his double helix.
“Yeah, but what are you for?” Lee asked.
“You know what I’m for?” Corey said. “I’m for … ‘Oh, say, can you see…’ that McDonald’s up ahead? I’m for pulling into the drive-through. I’m starverated.”
When they reached their haunted destination at 112 Ocean Avenue in the town of Amityville, Lee killed the lights and coasted curbside. The boys stared out the windows at the old, silent house. It was three stories high with seven windows facing the street, a few tall trees and a low, neatly manicured hedge set off a few feet from the front of the house. At a casual glance, it looked about as scary as a cucumber sandwich.
They had all been there before, even though the drive to Amityville was more than half an hour. There was something magnetic about the place. The house was famous for its ghostly legends, and the second-rate Hollywood movie that was based on all the weird stuff that happened after the DeFeo murders back in 1974, scaring the living daylights out of the next family that moved in until, one night, they fled the house and never returned. No one would ever know what really happened.
Lee turned around in his seat to once again retell the tale, his voice hushed and mysterious, drawing out the words to build suspense. “So after the murders, the Lutz family moved in,” Lee began.
The boys had all heard it before, about as much as Green Eggs and Ham, but no one tried to shut Lee up. After all, it was his car and they were a long way from home.
“I guess they got a bargain price,” Jude opined.
“Yeah, but after they moved in, all this sick shit started happening,” Lee said. “Like, swarms of flies were everywhere, even in the winter. The father of the family used to wake up in a cold sweat every night at three fifteen—the exact same time of the murders. Green slime oozed from the walls. And one night they saw a demon’s face in the flames of the fireplace.”
“I’m calling bullshit,” Canino said. “It was a hoax.”
“Cheesy movie though,” Jude said appreciatively.
“Hold that thought,” Corey said. “I’ve got to take a leak.” He climbed out of the car, forfeiting shotgun, and wandered off into some nearby bushes.
A minute later Corey scrambled into the backseat, laughing and gasping and still zipping up his jeans. “Go, go, go!” he shouted.
“What the hell?” Lee asked.
A fist pounded against the side window. It was a white-haired geezer who appeared like a vengeful ghost out of nowhere, sputtering and ranting at the boys, telling them to go away, they had no business here, blah blah blah. He was pretty excited for a grandpa. Stallion gave him the finger, and Lee hit the gas—four guys racing in the streets, a little buzzed and laughing, speeding into the heart of Saturday night and the start of Jude Fox’s sixteenth summer on the planet.
TWELVE
Operation Becka swung into full effect. With Corey acting as Jude’s spiritual adviser—“Go for it, Jude dude,” was the sum of Corey’s advice—Jude spent many hours deep in thought, meditating on Her Beckaness. At work Jude took every opportunity to make small talk, joke around, and take breaks with Becka. He even went so far as burning CDs for her, a lovesick act if ever there was one. He painstakingly selected each song for maximum meaning and full effect. The music would reveal to her his secret soul, his beating heart, his unspoken depths and innate goodness. They were, in other words, a bunch of really sad songs, one after another. All strummed in a minor key. Jude pushed the CDs into Becka’s long thin fingers and jabbered about these really great tunes she absolutely had to hear.
And Becka, for her part, seemed to enjoy Jude’s fumbling attention. She listened to the music, commented favorably on some of it, and threw pieces of stale pretzels at the seagulls. They often chatted during lunch breaks in the shade of a breezeway, a concrete passageway that connected the main concession building to the women’s bathrooms and shower facilities. It was actually nicer than that sounds. Things with Becka usually were.
“What about your family?” she asked. “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
“No, just me,” Jude said. But that wasn’t exactly true. So he clarified, told how he used to have a little sister, Lily, but she died, like, six years ago.
“I’m so sorry,” Becka said. She reached out, put an open hand on his upper arm.
“Yeah, no, it’s fine,” Jude said. “I mean, it totally sucked, and I guess it still does sometimes, but you kind of get used to it.” He looked away, uncomfortable and embarrassed, not used to it at all. He didn’t want to talk about it, had already said too much.
“How did she—?”
Jude turned to her, eyes dull and brown. “I can’t talk about it, Beck,” he apologized. “Not now.”
Becka nodded and didn’t try to make it better. She just sat with him, silent, together. He loved that Becka didn’t try to smooth it over with idle nothings, all the empty words like Band-Aids he’d heard over the years, how sad it was and how it must have been so hard for him and how terribly unfair everything was. People like his neighbor Mrs. Buchman, who prodded and poked and made sympathetic noises when all he ever wanted was to be left alone.
Jude was grateful that Becka didn’t probe for facts.
“Hey, you know what?” Becka said. “I heard we’re getting a new closing manager—that guy Roberto told us about.”
“Kenny ‘Half-Baked’ Mays, the man, the myth, the legend,” Jude said, grateful for the change of subject. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
“Roberto says he’s the coolest boss ever.”
“Yeah, like Ernie from Sesame Street,” Jude said.
“Ernie? What?” Becka asked, her eyes like bright beams, smiling.
“I guess this guy, Kenny Mays, is supposedly the biggest partier on the planet. They call him Half-Baked.”
Becka laughed, “Half-Baked Mays—like the potato chips. Who comes up with this stuff? I don’t know, it doesn’t sound right. How does the world’s biggest partier become a manager?”
Jude shrugged—no idea.
Becka seemed to chew on that for a while, ever the queen of speculation. Her face immediately brightened. “I just remembered. Did you see that notice about the softball game on the bulletin board? It’s coming up.”
Jude raised both hands. “Don’t tell me, you’re like a ninja when it comes to softball.”
Becka blew on her fingernails, brushed them on her shirt. “Seriously? I’ve got mad skills. Are you going to come? It’ll be fun. We totally need you—we can’t lose to Field Six.”
Before You Go Page 6