Wise Young Fool

by Sean Beaudoin

  “You thought you were cute?”

  “Ha. Yeah, I’ve had my eye on myself for a while now.”

  “What about Lacy?”

  “What about her?”

  Ravenna stretches coyly. “Isn’t your girlfriend going to be angry that you’re out here with me?”

  “Lacy is most definitely not my girlfriend.”

  She nods with approval, then leans over. We kiss. Her mouth tastes like frozen strawberries. I nibble her lips. Soft and then sharp. It doesn’t seem real.

  Am I actually touching Ravenna Woods?

  I am.

  Am I actually groping Ravenna Woods?

  I sort of am.

  In fact it’s almost like watching footage of some other lucky prick, except it’s me. There’s so much of her, I can’t decide what to concentrate on. It’s like those scenes in all the vampire books where the starving but humane vampire loses control, full of lust and blood and bloodlust, almost draining his willing human. After a while she laughs and gently slaps my face.

  “Slow down, Speed Racer.”

  I try to hide my disappointment. I also try to hide the part of me pointing frantically toward magnetic north.

  Ravenna steps away, toward the edge of the rock, and does a little dance, putting on a show. Not a stripper routine, but something slower and classier. Something French and cinematic. It seems vaguely illegal. Against science. Flouting natural law. She hums off-key, weirdly composed, totally un-self-conscious. Or maybe she just dances for guys a lot. Either way, it truly is a thing of mystery and wonder. I’m proud that I can step back and take a second to admire it dispassionately. Especially when it ends with her slowly taking off her baseball shirt.

  “Wow, awesome bikini,” I say. The bikini is like a Band-Aid and two rubber bands, tiny, azure. I can see the almost-invisible downy hairs that run up her back and thighs.

  “Who needs it?” she says, then winks, removing her top with a flick of the wrist. The totality of her is finally lo and thusly revealed unto me. It’s like Christmas morning. Angels are playing trumpets and orchestras are blaring hosannas to the gloriousness and gorgiosity made flesh.

  I’m staring.

  I know she knows I’m staring.

  She likes that I’m staring.

  She knows that I know she likes that I’m staring.

  “Are we gonna swim or what?” she asks, dipping a toe in the water. I figure it’s not too smooth to pull off my shorts for a full-frontal, Oh, won’t you take me down to Crowbar City, where the grass is green and the girls are pretty, so I sort of turn to the side, yank them down, zip by her, and dive in. It’s the perfect temperature, clean, clear. Fish dart and curl, startled. I kick out and float on my back, breaking the surface like a periscope, my manhood dappled by a thousand eager wavelets.

  I want to tie a flag on it and steam back into harbor.

  “C’mon in.”

  “Don’t rush me.”

  I wonder what it’s like to have sex underwater. Movie-awesome? Or clumsy, mossy, and difficult? Ravenna stands there, enjoying my scrutiny. She does a little sashay and then finally dives with a heavy splash, ripples concentric as I submerge beneath them. When I come up, expecting to see her head bobbing, it’s not there. None of her is.

  She’s been under for a long time.

  I swim back, call her name, treading water, rotted leaves between my toes.

  “Ravenna?”

  The water is calm. I shiver, confused, getting ready to yell, when I notice a flash of pink up in the foliage. I swim back in, clambering up the mossy rock with difficulty.

  “Ravenna?”

  She’s behind a bush, crouched and turned away.

  I pull the shrubbery aside, reassuring myself it’s just some dumb joke. Like maybe she’s going to leap up and ravish me standing. But she doesn’t leap. She doesn’t ravish. Instead she turns, holding herself. Bleeding.

  “Hey, what the hell?”

  The sharp planes of her face are screwed into a red, teary mess. The sarcasm is gone. The haughtiness is gone. All that’s left is pain.

  And it’s strange, but in that look, the edges of her mouth turned down, anguished and alone, Ravenna is distilled into her perfect self. It’s like she’s made of glass; I can see clear through her and back. I can’t believe I never noticed before. It’s not the body or the face, the tortured slope of her shoulder that’s the source of her allure. It’s the acceptance that an elemental discomfort is the natural way of things.

  “Hit the rocks diving,” she mutters. “More shallow than I thought.”

  I look down.

  Her nipples are badly scraped. The skin around them is torn and curled. Blood thinned with water runs down her stomach and into her bikini bottoms, beading there before continuing to her ankles. It’s like the final scene of Carrie. I’m not sure if I should touch them or touch her. She stares at her feet, holding herself with crossed arms. I reach out and she pulls away, really crying now.

  “Do you want some leaves?”

  “Leaves?”

  “Like, you know, as a bandage?”

  “Oh my god.”

  “Or cold mud? To act as a… a…”

  A crossword pops into my head. Twenty-three down. A nine-letter word for soft, moist mass, typically of plant material or flour, applied to the body to relieve soreness and inflammation.

  “Poultice.”

  She grabs her shirt and starts down the trail. I realize I am still naked. My body seems particularly pale and lame. I yank on my shorts and catch up, holding her elbow and guiding her over rocks, listening to her little yelps of pain with each step. It takes forever, but I finally get her in the car, trying to make her comfortable.

  “It’s going to be okay.”

  “No, it really, really isn’t.”

  I lean over to kiss her but she pulls away, showing me her cheek.

  “What can I do?”

  “Just get me out of here.”

  “You got it. Home or hospital?”

  “Home.”

  “You sure you don’t need, uh, stitches?”

  The look she gives me could quarter a horse.

  I jam the key in the ignition, crank it hard.

  And then do it again.

  And again.

  The Saab won’t start.

  Ravenna puts her face in her hands and begins to sob.

  “I’ll deal with this,” I say, then pop the hood and fiddle with some wires. I have zero clue what any of them do or are for, conjecturing as to their possible purpose or guilt. I push a couple knobs, yank a few belts, blow on battery terminals. The piece of shit still won’t start.

  HORROR.

  I get out again and think about who I can call. Elliot?

  HORROR.

  Looper?

  HORROR.

  Lacy Duplais?

  HORROR.

  I finally decide, punching in some numbers.

  “Yeah?”

  I explain the situation.

  “Is bad.”

  “Can you come?”

  “I come.”

  Half an hour later, Rude pulls up in a decommissioned tow truck.

  “Where the hell did you get that thing?”

  He gets out in a black beret and leather cape, peeks in at Ravenna, and whistles.

  “And so? Very nice.”

  “Uh, Rude?” I say. “She’s bleeding, not deaf.”

  He puts the T-bar under the tires, then lifts the front end.

  “You must ride in cab with me. Is illegal, sitting in car on tow bar.”

  I explain to Ravenna.

  “No way. I’m not moving. Or riding anywhere with him.”

  I walk back over to Rude. “We’re staying in the Saab.”

  He nods. “The domestic violence is very ugly thing, Ritchie.”

  “But I didn’t—”

  He holds up one hand, cutting me off. “I do not wish to hear. You ride in Saab, keep heads down. If cops are pulling us over, I am not covering f
or you. Okay, O.J.?”

  Neither of us says a word for miles, facing at a forty-five degree angle like we’re about to blast off. I check my phone. One hundred and seventeen messages. Ravenna also doesn’t say a word when we pull into her parents’ driveway, and she doesn’t say a word as she slams the door, walking pigeon-toed into the garage.

  I get in the cab with Rude, who is staring at Ravenna’s ass.

  “Very, very nice.”

  “So are you going to call Dad Sudden after you drop me off?” I ask. “Report in and tell him all about it?”

  Rude jams it in reverse, gunning back into the street. The Saab whips around behind us like a can on a string.

  “I do not call your father. I do not report.”

  “How come?”

  Rude thinks for a minute, as if trying to decide the best way to translate.

  “Today, I think, you are officially man. Is no longer his business.”

  I’m coming back from the library. Suddenly people in the hallway are clearing out and making space. For a second I think it’s for me. Then I realize Peanut and Conner are following behind.

  “Hey, Mouth! You talking to anyone today?”

  Ten feet behind.

  “Yo, Mouth, you reach out and touch someone yet?”

  Then five.

  “You make a love connection?”

  Then three.

  “All that talking, you must be out of anytime minutes.”

  I keep walking, arms held across my chest, pigeon-toed in fear.

  I don’t turn around.

  The worst thing you can do is turn around.

  “Warriors,” Peanut sings in his Georgian accent. “Come out and play-ay.”

  They follow me all the way around the side of the building.

  “Warriors, come out and play-ay-ay.”

  I finally make it back to the units.

  “Busy making friends?” Meatstick asks.

  I stand next to him like we’re leaning against the wall outside 7-Eleven.

  “I have no friends.”

  “That’s too bad. “

  “Nah, it’s easier. Cleaner.”

  He grunts. “Had myself a little date last night.”

  “Again? With who?”

  He doesn’t answer, just winks.

  “The Meatman still gets around, huh?”

  “You better believe he does.”

  We stand there with our hands in our pockets. Kids walk by, but none of them meet my eyes.

  “Had enough of the stroll?” he asks.

  “Yeah, I think it’s time to hit the sack and watch a little cable.”

  He laughs, leading me to my box and slamming the door shut.

  I lie on the bunk and try to sleep, while all down the hall, Peanut’s voice echoes.

  “Warriors, come out and play-ay-ay-ay.”

  Elliot is sitting on his couch, noodling on this old beater bass half-assedly. He runs through the Sly Stone tune “Stand!” and then plucks away at something I’m pretty sure is the Stooges’s “Loose” but could just as easily be some new pussy John Mayer thing; you can never tell with the bass, especially one that’s such a colossal piece of merde. Lawrence is in his chair, nodding to a phantom orchestra since the reel-to-reel has come to an end, spinning aimlessly, the leader making a tiny slap with each revolution.

  The house smells like rice pudding and diapers.

  “I got your messages,” I say. “All of them.”

  Elliot won’t even look up, practically speaking to his boot.

  “Dude, you missed practice.”

  “I know.”

  “Chaos was there. Lacy was there.”

  “I know.”

  “Question is, where was your lame ass?”

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  He chuckles grimly. “Let me get this straight. Your play is gonna be to act like it’s no big thing?”

  “I’m not acting.”

  “You said you’d be there. You promised you’d be there. I mean, I guess what I’m wondering is, does your word stand for anything at all?”

  I stare at his bald dome while he zips through this weird overtone scale, milking it for all its impending doom.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Do I give a fuck about your sorry? No. Does your sorry change anything? No.”

  “Sorry is as sorry does,” Lawrence says from across the room.

  Elliot finally looks up, eyes flat and angry. “So why’d you blow us off, Little Runaway?”

  “It’s sort of private.”

  “Private?” he says, turning like he’s talking to an imaginary jury. “Everyone knows there’re no secrets in a band!”

  “Privacy is an unreasonable expectation in most circumstances,” Lawrence agrees.

  It’s two against one.

  So I take a deep breath and just tell them. All of it. From ducks to Rude.

  When I’m done, Elliot sits there shaking his head. “You’re so lying.”

  “Nope.”

  “You blew off practice to be with Ravenna Woods?”

  “I did.”

  “For her.”

  “Yes.”

  “For that stuck-up wanna-Britney, fat-ass money-tease?”

  “Her ass is so not fat. But yes.”

  Elliot stands and kicks a chair. It slams into the wall, leaving a chair-shaped outline in the Sheetrock.

  “Uh-oh,” Lawrence says.

  “Listen, Hella Crazy,” I say. “You’re seriously starting to get all Charlie Manson about this. It was just one practice.”

  “Just one practice,” he says softly.

  “And, I mean, fine, it’d be great to win Rock Scene 2013. I definitely want that guitar. But, like, so what if we don’t? It’s a stupid contest by a stupid company with stupid bands. Okay? Get a handle.”

  Elliot sits down and puts his face in his palms. I think he’s just trying to communicate, in a new and quiet way, how furious he is. Shaking with anger. Ready to explode. About to kick me in the neck, toss me into the wall.

  And right then, right there, the whole world slides sideways, slowly changing color.

  From sepia to all black to lily white and back.

  Because Elliot Hella is crying.

  “Are you seriously crying?”

  He looks up, shrugs. His eyes are red. His bald dome is blotchy and flushed.

  “No.”

  “You are. You totally are! What in the hell is going on around here?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I thought you said no secrets. You just said zero secrets!”

  He wipes his eyes. “Fine. I’m failing out of school, idiot.”

  “That’s not good,” Lawrence says.

  “Oh.”

  I’m quiet for a second.

  “Yeah, it’s really terrible and all, but, um, wait, who gives a shit?”

  Elliot nods. “About school? No one. So what? I’ll graduate from the school of punk instead. I’ll get a degree in mosh. But everyone else at Sack High is going off to college in a few months. Off to Paris for a year. Off to their hedge-fund internships and cooking schools and institutionalized learning facilities. Meanwhile, I’ll be right here in Sacktown. Which, you know, is fine. As long as I’m here with my band.”

  “I hear you.”

  “My full band.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  Elliot leans in, all chin and bad breath.

  “I don’t just want to win, Ritchie. I need to win. Hell, I’m gonna be ladling pasta for the next four years. You think I don’t know that?”

  “So it’s about the money.”

  “No, it’s not about the money! Or even showing up Flog and Angelo. What I really want is…”

  And you know what? It’s amazing. Because even up to this point I have no idea what it is that my best friend really wants, no clue at all how he’s gonna finish his sentence.

  “… what I really want is that Hollyrock slot.”

  “Oh my god.
Are you kidding me? That’s why you’ve been such a hard-on the past two months?”

  Elliot stands up, bald head bobbing over his enormous torso. “Yeah, why not?”

  “Well, let’s see. Because reality TV is beyond stupid? Because they only want the morons and pretty boys and guys with fourteen-pack abs? Because there is zero chance we could ever actually get cast?”

  He shoves his hands in his pockets. “We could.”

  “You might as well catch a red-eye to Vegas and blow your wad on slots. You might as well join a cult and wear a robe and wait around for the Rapture. I mean, the odds are practically infinitesimal.”

  “Infinity is a disproven mathematical concept,” Lawrence says.

  “I know how far out it is, okay?” Elliot says quietly. “But it’s something. It’s a chance. You don’t see any other chances hanging around, do you? Any life-changing piñatas ready for me to take a stick to?”

  “No, but—”

  “But nothing. So, yeah, it’s embarrassing. I want to be a star. I admit it. A superstar. I want people to know who I am and have a special trailer and an assistant. A hot assistant. I want toys and lunch boxes and posters and a freaking action doll that looks exactly like me while not looking one iota like me.”

  “That’s so not punk.”

  Elliot laughs. “Punk’s not punk, you fan boy. Punk hasn’t meant anything since 1977. Punk is just a word for angry losers to describe what they wish they were and what they’re glad everyone else isn’t, so they have something to feel special about.”

  I put my head in my hands. It’s too much to process. It’s like being told that the coolest person you’ve ever met in your life believes in the Easter bunny and voted for Mitt.

  “So now the cards are on the table, Sudden. I need to know right here, right now. Are you in or not?”

  Lawrence has fallen asleep again. The house seems even smaller and more worn than usual. Elliot stands there in his Clash shirt, brown eyes hard, stubble and squat legs and raw attitude and sweaty desperation.

  “Yeah, I’m in. All practice, all the time.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  He nods, exhaling, genuinely relieved.