“I don’t. It’s just an observation.”
She puts one finger in her ear. “Could you please not talk anymore?”
“I can’t believe I bothered to begin with.”
Beth holds her nose with two fingers. “Could you please maybe brush your teeth once in a while?”
Mom walks over, wearing a towel around her waist and a big woven sun hat that has BAHAMAS in purple cursive.
“Hi, guys. What do you want for dinner?”
“Don’t know,” we say in unison.
“Isn’t the water great? It’s so refreshing. I could swim in it forever.”
“Yup.”
“Can I get you anything from the room?”
“Nope.”
“Well, okay.”
“Okay.”
She finally leaves.
“Did they see?” Beth hisses. I look over. The frat boys are busy yanking down one another’s board shorts and ordering pitchers of crayon-colored vodka.
“I doubt it.”
“If anyone asks, we can say Mom and Dad are a couple we met on the plane.”
I raise an eyebrow.
“I’m twenty-five and you’re twenty-three. The story is we’re cousins who just happen to enjoy traveling together.”
“That’s the story?”
She eyeballs me over the top of her Wayfarers, a streak of white Banana Boat across her nose she forgot to rub in.
“Is there a problem?”
“No. It’s just that one cousin seems to enjoy it a whole lot more than the other.”
That night we eat with the old couple. Dad Sudden orders a third rum, his remaining hair sticking up in chlorinated tufts. Mom winks at me, bragging about how last summer I played third base on this team you didn’t even have to try out for to join. Then Beth takes the reins, talking a bunch of giddy shit about cars, boys, and classes.
The old couple yawns in tandem.
“Yup, she’s a pistol,” Dad Sudden says, looking at me through rum goggles. “But at least she’s not vegetarian.”
I announced I no longer ate meat six months ago, making pompous statements about animal cruelty and evil farming practices, avoiding all stocks and tallows. I’m not sure why I have become so adamant. In truth, I don’t really care. In a year I’ll drop the whole thing and start in on bacon again, but I don’t know that now.
“What are you going to order, honey?” Mom asks. “They have fish. Can you eat fish?”
“Fish is meat.”
Dad Sudden scoffs, spearing a cherry from his drink. It falls off the stem and cartwheels down his white guayabera, leaving juice spattered across the front.
“Goddammit.”
The old couple excuse themselves as the waiter rushes over, trying to clean it with a handful of paper napkins, just making it worse.
Beth starts to laugh. Mom starts to laugh. I start to laugh.
And for half a second it almost feels like we’re a family, until that second is over.
The taxi tour begins at eight. It’s an ancient pink DeSoto, pictures of smiling customers taped to the dash and seat backs and roof liner. They are uniformly smiling, sunburned, happy.
It’s oppressive.
The driver, Livingstone, gives his tour spiel in a gentle, lilting patois. Dad Sudden’s camera shutters everything it’s told to. We look at a few ruins, a few gun emplacements, a casino, and then stop at a deserted beach on the other side of the island. While my parents and Beth are swimming, I sit under a tree and watch the waves. My back presses against the layered bark, which hurts, so I press harder. After a while Livingstone gets out of the taxi and sits heavily beside me.
“Whas the mattah, young prince? You don’ like ta swim?”
I shrug. “I just don’t want to get wet and have to sit on my salty nuts for the next three hours.”
He laughs. “Smart thinking. I prefer to stay dry meself.”
My parents crawl out of the ocean, flopping onto their towels, shoulders red and raw and defenseless.
“How was it, my friends?” Livingstone calls.
“Beautiful,” says Mom, in her clingy one-piece. There’s sand in her long blond hair, which hangs in wet lanks. “I love it here.”
“Whas not to love?”
“Plenty,” I say under my breath.
“I know it,” Livingstone tells me. “You think I want ta drive y’all around all day? But who it helps to say out loud?”
I eyeball him. “What, is that some kind of life lesson?”
“Yes,” he says, and goes back to his cab.
We’re almost at the hotel when the car banks into an awkward turn.
“Whoa there,” Dad Sudden says, grabbing the dash.
Livingstone slows to a crawl, approaching an accident. A rented jeep filled with college kids has flipped over. A guy lies half under the hood, while two girls stand uncertainly on the tarmac. One of them is bleeding.
“Don’t be lookin,’ now, folks,” Livingstone says.
Mom puts her hand over Beth’s eyes. “Maybe we should stop?”
Livingstone doesn’t answer, keeps driving, the sound of an ambulance in the distance.
“It’s okay,” Dad Sudden says. “Right? I mean, they’re coming? The sirens?”
“That’s right,” Livingstone soothes, shifting into low. I look back. The guy under the hood seems to be staring at me. He’s wearing a yellow tank top. His mouth is open. The taxi creeps around the final debris, broken glass spread over the tar so evenly it looks done on purpose.
I spend the last day by myself, down at the beach. There’s a stable up in the hills. Ranch hands wearing old gym shorts and straw hats bring dozens of horses down to the empty strip and race them, weaving in elaborate patterns, hoof prints left in the sand like cursive. Afterward, they remove the rudimentary saddles and let the horses swim out, water churning, past the breakers. I am mesmerized by them, heads ratcheting through the surf, wet exhalations as they glide in a group. I begin to wonder if their noisemaking is not, in fact, some kind of language. Turn left, turn right. I’m hungry. Man, is this water cold. The horses spin around as a group, aim toward the beach. When they come in, the cowboys rub them down with old towels, roans and speckled grays steaming at dusk, corded with muscle, ignoring the whispers of their handlers.
It’s nighttime before I make it back to the room. Mom pops her head in the door.
“Where have you been, honey? I was worried.”
The cheap fluorescent light peeks around her cotton nightie, glowing through the material. I roll over.
“Beth? Are you awake, hon?”
Beth doesn’t answer, either.
Mom closes the door.
The bedspread is bunched tightly around my feet.
I can feel Beth’s eyes on my neck like ten-pound weights.
“I don’t want to go home tomorrow,” she says.
“I know,” I say.
“The weird thing is, I don’t want to stay here, either.”
“I know,” I say.
She reaches her hand across the bed. After a while, I hold it. We listen to each other breathe for the longest time, until I finally fall asleep.
I’m lifting weights beyond the three-point line. Curls, presses, more curls.
A kid I’ve never spoken to before rolls up. He’s big, with freckles and a mullet. His name is Tench.
“Wassup, Sudden?”
“Not much.”
“Gotta question for you.”
“Shoot.”
“You gonna back out?”
“Huh?”
“Undercard. Dayroom. Trying to figure out where to bet my bones.”
“Oh. Right.”
“Word is, you and B’los are boyfriends.”
“Excuse me?”
“I bet on you, you refuse to fight, I still lose.”
“Got it.”
“So, are you?”
“What?”
Tench clenches his jaw. “Gonna fag out?”
I do one more set of curls, count seventeen-eighteen-nineteen, even though I’m really on seven-eight-nine.
“No.”
“No, what?”
I dump the weights, just missing his toe.
“I’m fighting, okay?”
He smirks. “Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about! Feisty. Everyone figures white boy gonna fold. It’s long odds on your skinny ass. You kick the Mexican piss out of that dude, I’m gonna clean up.”
“Awesome,” I say, and walk back across the court, hoping he’s not following.
We’re at the Pines, maybe fifty people, most of the soccer team still in their white shorts and cleats after a big win, someone springing for a keg. Fredtallica plays in a loop out the back of a car parked strategically below. Spence Proffer is pushing random people in the chest, spilling their beers. Three different girls tell me Spence told them to tell anyone who asks that he’s looking for Elliot.
Three different dudes tell me that Spence told them to tell me that Hella is dead.
Fortunately, Elliot is home taking care of Lawrence. Or maybe in the backseat of a station wagon, taking care of Angie Proffer. Spence looks up at me like he can hear my thoughts, nods, grins, then knocks something out of a freshman’s hand. The kid looks down glumly, says nothing, walks away. Spence picks up whatever it was and puts it in his pocket. I’m pretty sure if I weren’t standing next to Young Joe Yung, he’d come over and put me in his pocket, too.
Lacy Duplais is here; she keeps trying to catch my eye.
I want her to and don’t want her to.
Ravenna Woods is here; I keep trying to catch hers.
She wants me to, doesn’t want me to.
Ravenna’s standing next to the fire, fake-laughing at everything Kyle Litotes says. The party has barely started, and Saint Litotes is already half in the bag. He’s got a big plastic quart of Royal Gate, pouring vodka in everyone’s drinks, in people’s beers, in people’s sodas, everyone laughing, Knock it off, Kyle! Any other kid would have already gotten his ass kicked, but Clitotes is the golden boy. The soccer god. The dude who discovered the party at the very same time the party discovered him.
“That kid is a total wipe,” Young Joe says. “Maybe I should have just let him choke.”
I look over, surprised.
“Wow, dude. That’s a very non-Joe statement.”
He takes a sip of beer. “I guess sometimes I just feel like deep down I am an evil man, no matter what I claim or wear or shit-talk about, so why not let it all out? You know what I mean, Ritchie?”
I am fairly blown away, having always assumed a guy like Joe Yung comes by his positivity with zero effort, that his smiles cost him nothing. That maybe it’s even genetic. I can see now how wrong I was. Some people actually put a lot of effort into restraining themselves. Or at least their worst selves. I should probably try it sometime.
“Young Joe, do I ever.”
He nods. “The path toward righteousness is a long and difficult one.”
“Agreed.”
“But there’s nothing says a righteous man can’t pull off a harmless prank now and again, is there?”
“I guess.”
Young Joe Yung’s ever-present smile returns. “Follow my lead.”
He walks into the middle of the party, winks, and then flops over like he’s having a full-bore seizure.
A trio of girls scream.
“Holy shit,” I say, and run over, make a big show of slapping his cheek and trying to revive him. Young Joe moans and groans, really hamming it up. I manage to drag him upright, one arm half around my shoulders, gripping the back of his belt and moving through the crowd. He’s heavier than a mattress full of cement. He can’t keep his balance. We spin around clumsily. Pissed looks are exchanged, but when people see it’s Young Joe Yung, they tone down the complaints. He keeps veering unpredictably, sweat pouring off him in waves. The crowd parts like the Annoyed Sea, Hey, hey, man, what the? Oh, wow, what’s wrong? Be cool, dog. You okay, Joe Yung? Knock it off! Whoa!
Young Joe has somehow manufactured mouth foam. His eyes roll back. He’s speaking in tongues, in what sounds suspiciously like some kind of Dungeons & Dragons language. People are starting to freak. Joe finally spots his prey, takes two huge side steps, and logrolls Kyle Litotes. Litotes goes down with a yelp, face-first into wet leaves and pine needles, losing his vodka and staining his little soccer shorts. Joe rolls the other way and puts out half the fire with his neck. I bonk into Ravenna and, mother of god, does it feel good. My body is Silly Putty, absorbing the sense-memory of her skin. Lacy Duplais gives me a look. Joe blubbers more fake language, shit about orks and attack points, and then wipes out Litotes again, grinding him into the mud.
Some people laugh. Some give a fake cheer. Girls try to help Kyle up and keep slipping themselves. Six dudes help me carry Joe along the path, barking orders and being super responsible like they’ve been training as EMTs for years. We all finally stow him like a broken air conditioner in the backseat of the Saab.
“You want us to follow you, Sudden? Make sure Joe’s okay?”
“Nah, fellas, I can handle it. But thanks for your help. You just might have saved a life tonight.”
“Sure thing. Good luck.”
I peel out and Young Joe sits up, gets in front.
“That,” I say, “was hilarious.”
He wipes his face. “I dunno. Actually, I don’t think it was very funny after all.”
“Are you kidding? You deserve an Oscar.”
He wipes mud and leaves and squirrel shit into my upholstery. He wipes and wipes, and dirt just keeps coming off him.
“No, it was wrong. Even for Kyle Litotes. It was mean. I shouldn’t have done it.”
I nod. “It did kind of suck when those dudes all helped out. They were actually worried about you.”
“I know,” he says glumly. “But by then it was too late to stop.”
Young Joe Yung is something I have never seen him before: way bummed.
I head over to Scumbies and treat us to veggie micro-burritos and coconut waters. We sit on the curb, chewing, as car after car pulls up.
“I keep being the person I always swear I will never be again,” Young Joe says, mouth full.
“I know exactly how you feel.”
He picks a bean off my pants and eats it. “You do?”
“You have no idea.”
In the morning my phone goes off like a bomb. The ringtone is the Misfits, Glenn Danzig yelling, “There are paint smears on everything I own, the vapor rub is lying on a table of filth!” Pure poetry. Three times. I pull myself out of bed and flip the thing open.
“Who is this?”
She waits a minute. “Lacy.”
“Lacy who?”
“Lacy fuck you, that’s who.”
“Oh, hi.”
“Anyway. Are you listening?”
“Listening to what?”
“Kyle Litotes wrecked last night.”
“Litotes got wrecked? Big surprise.”
“No. His car did. Totaled it.”
“Wait, are you serious?”
“He and a bunch of soccer heads were drinking beers out at the Pines.”
“Yeah, I know. I was there, remember? You know I was there.”
“Yeah,” she says. “And then, when they decided to take off, I guess he got tired waiting in line for everyone to take that left back onto Route Six, so he got cute and tried to gun it past them and lost control and slammed into a Dumpster.”
“He’s dead?”
“I guess he’s alive, but everyone says he’s messed up bad.”
I put my head down on the counter. My whole body trembles. Behind my eyes, cars crash, whole lines of them, one after another.
Pure impact.
“Are you there?”
“Yeah, I’m here.”
There’s a long pause.
“We haven’t, I dunno, talked for a while?” she says.
“I know.”
&
nbsp; “Are you mad?”
“Me? Why would I be mad?”
“So that’s it, huh?”
“What?”
“How this works.”
“How what works?”
Lacy hangs up.
Two minutes later she calls back.
“Everyone’s going to the hospital at noon.”
I picture the flowers and the solemn handshakes. I picture all the people crying, or making themselves cry because they feel empty inside, and then being hugged by moms and aunts and whispering Kyle’s name whether they liked him or not, everyone staying stronger and more positive than everyone else.
Accident etiquette.
Grief 101.
There’s no way.
I just can’t do it again.
“So I was wondering,” Lacy says, starting to choke up. “Would you at least bring me there?”
I should. I absolutely should. I’m a total jerk not to.
“Oh, man. I dunno.”
“My dad won’t let me drive anymore. At least for another five months. Besides, for some reason I just can’t face going alone. Not today. Please?”
I let out a long stream of used air.
“I don’t think so, Lacy.”
“You don’t think so?”
I’m about to explain when she hangs up again.
An hour later there’s a knock at the door. I say a silent prayer to Wotan that it’s not Rude.
It’s not Rude.
“Kyle Litotes bought it last night.”
It takes a minute to register that Spence Proffer and his neck are on my front stoop. He’s enormous, all nostril, wearing jeans and a cut-off Molly Hatchet shirt and his stupid Italian horn necklace. His bulk is unnatural, like cinder blocks stuffed into a lawn bag. I wonder if it’s possible he’s smart enough to know where to get steroids, let alone what end to stick them in.
“He didn’t buy it. I heard he was just messed up.”
Proffer laughs. “Yeah, just screwing with you. He’s only messed up.”
“Only?”
“Only, like, permanent.”
“What are you doing here, Spence?”
I wanted to call him Proffer but didn’t have the balls to.
“I was at the hospital. With the whole rest of the school. Everyone crying on everyone else’s shoulders. Noticed you weren’t there. Thought to myself, that’s weird, a big dramatic hospital scene and no Ritchie Sudden.”
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