by Karen Rivers
He didn’t look at either of us while he spoke, but he said all the things that proper dads are supposed to say. I was nearly proud of him. Right up until the part where he called Tanis a slut and me a loser.
He might be right about me, but he should have left Tanis out of it.
She holds the steering wheel so tightly, her knuckles are white. She is mad at me.
“You don’t fucking understand anything, Dex,” she says. The windows are steamed up. I want to roll the window down but that might be rude, so I don’t.
“I do understand,” I say. “I’m sorry. It was my fault and my dad is a total wang. What do you want me to say?”
“I don’t know,” she says. When she’s mad, the bad side of her face gets even more scrunched up than normal. She looks bad. Her hair is flat on one side where she fell asleep on my chest. I should probably find that sexier than I do.
“I’m sorry,” I say again. “You aren’t a slut.”
“That’s not why I’m mad!” she says. “God, you’re so freaking stupid. Don’t you get it? I’m wearing the same clothes as yesterday. Everyone’s going to know.” Then she says, “You’re making me someone I’m not, you fucking idiot.”
“My knee hurts,” I say. The whole time she’s yelling at me, my knee has been pulsing with this pain that feels like something gnawing at my flesh from the inside. The pain has taken over my whole body. It’s radiating everywhere like some kind of internal octopus of pain, arms stretched to cover all of my flesh. “I’m not making you anything. You are who you are.”
“Fuck you,” she mutters.
I think I probably should go to the hospital. I probably need some kind of surgery.
But I can’t have surgery.
Who would take care of Dad? Gary?
Forget it.
“You’re not even listening!” she yells. Then she bursts into tears. I don’t know how to deal with tears.
“I’m sorry,” I say again.
Her lips are moving. Numbers, numbers. She whispers 25:15 and 16:209. Her knuckles are so white, it hurts to look at them.
We pull into the parking lot and I see Olivia getting out of a car. This time I get a good look at the driver. An older man, probably her dad. I’m relieved.
Tanis looks at me looking at Olivia. “No fucking way,” she says.
“What?” I say. Then I go, “Do you see her?”
“I can’t believe you, Dex Pratt,” she says. “You are too much.”
I don’t know if that means that she sees Olivia or not. “Is she real?” I say, before I can stop myself. Tanis gets out of the car, leaving the keys in. We aren’t even in a parking stall. She storms off. When she’s mad, she walks like she’s on a catwalk. I half expect her to turn and spin.
I think about proportions. I try to think about proportions. I think about why proportions matter so much to Tanis.
I think about how no one knows about Tanis’s proportions but me.
I think about the proportion of time passing to time needed.
Needed to do what? There is nothing I need to do. I put a pencil through the stretcher in my ear. When I first ran into Tanis, she leaned across the counter of Safeway and said, “Whenever I see someone with one of those things in their ears, I want to put a pencil in it.”
I think about leaving a pencil in it all day to make her laugh.
I have to park this car now. People are honking and going around me and staring. They think I’m crazy because of the way I’m acting. Because of the way I’m overacting. They can tell that I am not being me.
Or, more likely, they don’t care and I’m in the way.
I struggle to lift myself over the stick shift and slide into the driver’s seat. The pencil pokes my cheek awkwardly. My earlobe is twisting. I take the pencil out.
I drive the car into the last parking spot and now I am late. I have to limp all the way up the stairs and that just seems like too much. So instead, I just sit in the car.
I sit and I sit. I sit in the car for the entire day of school until my bladder feels like it’s gonna burst, and then I drive home. I don’t know how many people see me there, sitting in the car. But no one comes over. Not one person comes to see if I’m okay.
chapter 17
september 23, this year.
I am in the corn again. I saw a horror movie about corn once. I saw a documentary about corn once.
Corn is the cheapest food in the world.
Cornfields house psychopathic kids wielding weapons.
Corn is almost all genetically modified.
Even this corn is probably not what it appears to be: strong, green, healthy.
It’s the last corn of the season. It’s so sweet now, it’s like biting into candy. Even raw.
The rats are on a sugar high.
In Vancouver, we had this tree in the yard with dark red leaves, and if you lay under it and looked straight through it at the sun, you could see a silver outline around each and every leaf. But pull the leaves off and bring them in to inspect, and they were just red leaves, dark and flat.
It was a trick. The light can do that.
I feel like I could write, but I haven’t written a single word since I left Vancouver. I used to write lyrics. For our band. Mine. And Feral’s.
I wrote good lyrics.
When Mom married Feral’s dad, we became brothers. We used to talk so much. I feel like I’ve forgotten how to talk. I never talk about anything anymore. I try to listen to other people talking, and it seems like they don’t know how either.
Ninety percent of conversations are about nothing.
I could write good lyrics about that. Or about just this. The corn and the cobweb that’s hanging above me and the slanting sunlight and those aluminum-rimmed words. But as soon as I think of what, exactly, I’d write, as soon as I try to squish all these microscopic yellow/blue/brown/ green metallic thoughts into some kind of black and white sentence, it’s gone, like a dream dripping out of my head even as I’m still watching the end of it play out.
Anyway, fuck that.
I sit up.
I lie down.
My ab muscles pull taut and loose. I lift my shirt and look at them. I have good abs. Maybe I could be a model.
No matter how I look at the future, it all seems unlikely and ridiculous. Is there a future?
I was kidding about the modeling. There’s the laugh again. The brown birds of it on my chest.
My summer-brown skin is speckled with sprinkler dew. How did I get so brown? I was at the lake a lot. I hardly ever wore a shirt. When I was at home, I sat outside and read books and pretended to not hear my dad calling me. I found a box of books in the basement.
I read Moby Dick.
It’s true.
I read books of poetry about red wheelbarrows and felt like I understood but maybe that’s because I was high. I started getting high in the spring. I never sampled the crop before. But when I started, I couldn’t stop.
Won’t stop.
Can’t stop.
Maybe that’s what it was like with Feral and the heroin. Obviously that’s what it was like with Feral and the heroin. I’m not an idiot. I know what addiction is. I don’t know why the heroin didn’t catch me like it did him. Maybe I wasn’t worth bothering. When I picture heroin, it’s a pale-skinned man, dark hair slicked back, a wolfish grin, tight suit, hands with long nails painted like a girl’s, promises he can’t keep. He toyed with me and took Feral, laughing the whole time.
Fuck him. Fuck him. A million times fuck him. He didn’t want me. I could care less about heroin. But the lumpy, old, stinky, aging surfer who is pot has me in his grip and he won’t let me off the board. Ever. We’ll drown together.
There are crows in the cornfield. They peck back the husks and fill their bellies with the sugar-sweet corn. They call each other, and more and more and more come until the blackness of their feathers is the norm and the crows are only noticeable in places where they aren’t.
I coul
d write that.
Do people still write poems? What a bullshitty thing to do. Imagine saying it out loud, “Oh, I wrote a poem.” Worse than “I’m a model,” but not by much.
I’d punch me for that. A solid punch. Fist to bone. Red blood. The surprise factor of the pain. Someone shouting.
But still, a goddamn poem. Take that.
I close my eyes and try thinking only about words to block out the movies that want to come that I don’t want to see. There is one movie, lying in wait for me.
Starring my dad.
And my mom.
I am not going to let it start. The mist is coming off the sprinklers, making small rainbows between me and that blue sky, which is starting to sink down on my chest like a giant knee, pinning me. There are flies, dark clouds of them, shifting the air around. A giant knee. Why did I say knee?
I don’t want to think about knees, not that I can stop thinking about my knee because of the pain of it and because I know it means that there will be a shift. I won’t be an athlete anymore, so I’m going to have to find a different role to play. I’ve exhausted all the ones I can think of.
Maybe now I should be the bad guy. Take this drug thing and run with it. Expand.
Why not?
I’ve already been everything else.
The brain, the jock, the musician, the filmmaker, the athlete, the nurse, the horticulturalist.
I roll over, facedown in the dirt. I can feel it in my nose. Chemicals, rocks, bugs, dirt. I think about earthworms, their long elastic bodies stretching taut, their blind eyes reaching for the darkness. My heart is galloping away from me. Seriously, that’s how my mind says it: “My heart is galloping away from me.” When I thought that, I could see it, a black horse. A black horse trying to breathe but snorting instead. Foaming at the mouth.
There are fewer horses in this town than you’d think. Being a farm town and all. People always imagine horses. Glass gave me a cowboy hat when I moved back here. It’s brown. I told her it wasn’t small-town like on tv. I told her there were no horses.
I think Zach Meyer’s ranch is the only one in town, and even then it’s outside of town. So it really doesn’t count.
I can hardly remember Glass. We dated for almost two years and I can’t really remember anything specific except that she panted when we kissed, like she was only occasionally remembering to come up for air.
I can’t breathe.
I should roll over, but I don’t.
The dirt is filling up my mouth, and then I come up, suddenly choking on it, like I just remembered I couldn’t swim.
Only I, Dexter Pratt, could be enough of an asshole to actually drown myself in a fucking cornfield.
I am going to break up with Tanis. It isn’t her fault. It’s Olivia’s.
“It’s over,” I say in my papery voice. And the words are all scrunched up in my mouth, and so I spit and spit and spit, and it has a tang like tin and not like soil at all.
Tangs are fish. Those bright ones you see in dentist’s offices. When did all dentists decide that fish were de rigueur?
I’m soaked cold from the sprinklers.
I stand up and my knee screams from the pain of it, and for a second I think I might black out. I force myself to stand tall. Just me, taller than the corn, my filthy head sticking up above the surface like a zombie slowly rising from the depths, all wide red eyes and stealth. I wait and there’s nothing but the machine-gun sound of the sprinklers and a bird flying between me and the clouds, making them seem somehow extra3-D. I scratch my hair greedily, like I can’t get enough. Then I head for home, my phone buzzing in my pocket, bloodsucking mosquito buzzing in my ear.
Nothing ever happens in the corn. Not really.
No ax-murdering toddlers.
No blood.
That’s why I like it.
It’s everything that happens when I’m not in the corn that’s the problem.
chapter 18
INT.—DEX’S BEDROOM
Show that Dex is asleep in bed. Show his room. Show all the filthy dishes. Show his pile of unopened homework books. Show the stains on the sheets. Show how when he sleeps, his arms are thrown back above his head so that every morning when he wakes up, his arms feel unattached. Zoom in on his knee.
Show Dex half waking.
DEX
Not now. Stop it before it starts, Dex.
DEX
Fuck this.
Show Dex getting up and opening his laptop. Show Dex clicking on a small icon. Show the movie starting. It’s an old home movie that someone has uploaded and dumped into the computer. The film is jittery, like old home-movie films are. The vhs tape had obviously started to degrade.
Show Dex watching the movie.
The camera is being held at ground level. Whoever is holding it is under a bed. It is Dex’s parents’ bed. Let the viewer listen to the sound of kid breathing.
Show the shadows and dust under the bed.
DAD
You bitch. I can’t believe you did that.
MOM
I didn’t do it!
DAD
I don’t believe you. And I have proof.
MOM
You had me followed? You are such a piece of shit. I hate you.
DAD
I…
The sound of a kid crying. Show Dad leaning over the bed and the camera being dragged.
MOM
He’s not filming this, is he? Dex, are you
filming this? What are you doing under our
bed? Honey, it’s not what you think. Tell him.
DAD
It’s not what you think. Now go to bed.
DEX
But…
DAD
BED. NOW.
Show how the movie stops and show Dex, now, hitting Delete. Show Dex going through the movies one by one. Delete, delete, delete. Delete, delete, delete.
Show Dex sleeping in his bed. Show how this was just a dream.
Show how Dad is on the phone with Mom, downstairs. Show him laughing. Show the brown birds hopping up and down on the kitchen floor. The laughing birds.
Show that.
Play a song that’s hopeful. Show Dex smiling in his sleep.
CUT TO:
INT.—A GIRL’S BEDROOM
Show Tanis’s bedroom. Tanis is lying on her bed, crying. Show that she is on the phone and Kate is on the other end. Understanding, giant-hearted Kate.
KATE
Dex Pratt is not worth this, sweetie. He really isn’t. He’s a jerk.
TANIS
(sniveling)
I know. I think I love him though.
KATE
(sighing)
You don’t love him. He’s an asshole. I’ve got to go; T’s beeping in.
TANIS
Tell him Dex is an asshole.
KATE
I’m pretty sure he already knows that.
Show Tanis falling asleep. Pan her walls with all their numbers, codes that unlock everything or nothing. Show how she has drawn lines down all the models’ faces and attached sticky notes of calculations.
Show her face. Draw numbers on there. The numbers are wrong. Show how the numbers are wrong.
Show Dex, now fully awake, writing the first email that he’s written in forever. His hands feel funny on the keyboard. Show him flexing his fingers, like he’s doing something that doesn’t quite fit. Show how he’s going to write something perfect and make it up to Tanis, make everything okay.
Show how instead, he googles Olivia. Show how she doesn’t exist. No Facebook. No MySpace. No Twitter. No images. No news.
Nothing.
Show him googling Olivia’s dad.
Show how he doesn’t exist either.
Show Dex dragging his entire video collection to the trash.
Show Dex dragging one video back out again and then completely deleting the rest.
Show that Dex is still asleep.
Show that he isn’t.
Show that he
is making this up.
Then show that it is real.
CUT TO:
INT.—KITCHEN TABLE
Show Dad and his dollhouse, Glob asleep at his feet. Dad is whistling. Zoom in close on what looks like crumbs on the table. Show that the crumbs are really tiny brown birds. Show them shrinking away to nothing.
DEX
I could write the music.
FERAL
I’ll play with you, man. We were great together.
DEX
Yeah, we coulda been contenders.
Show how Feral isn’t there.
Pan the camera slowly around each room. Show how everyone is asleep. Dex. Tanis. Dad. Mom.
Show how Olivia is not asleep. Show her sitting upright in a bed. Staring into space. Fading in and out of focus.
chapter 19
september 25, this year.
The doctor says that my ACL is destroyed. No one is surprised, least of all me. He starts talking about surgery. I stop listening.
My dad and I are a fine pair, leaving the hospital. I use his chair like a walker, limping and pushing and leaning. He sits there, head bowed, like he can’t imagine how we will get through this. Like this knee injury is the final thing, the thing we can’t survive.
He is right.
When we get home, I’ve missed another day of school and there is something wrong with Glob. Something more than what is already wrong with Glob. I push Dad through the front door and Glob is right there in the hall, in the way. She is lying on her side. Her eyes are half open but her breathing is all wrong, hitching and catching and coming out in a rush, like a balloon popped.
“Now look what you’ve done,” Dad says. Like it’s my fault.
“Glob?” I say. “Good girl. Come here.”
She doesn’t move. She can’t move. She’s dying.
Dad leans forward and slides out of his chair and onto the floor until he’s lying on the dog. He doesn’t look at me, he’s muttering, murmuring, gentle in a way that he never was.