A Really Awesome Mess

by Trish Cook

  “Hey, that was really nice of you,” I said. “But I don’t get what it has to do with sex.”

  “Did you read the bottom of page two?” she asked.

  I flipped to it and sucked in my breath. It was from Mason. Saying how much he missed me.

  “What!” I yelped.

  “Right. They broke up again this week. Him and Lizbeth, I mean,” Joss said. “I’ve been dying to tell you that.”

  Before I came to Assland, I probably would’ve hoped that meant we were going to get back together. Now, it just made me think he was a total ass.

  “Now go to the top of page three,” Joss said.

  It was from none other than Danny Schwartz. Sorry. I’m sure you are, too. I told the school no apologies necessary. Hope you come back to Stonebridge Country Day soon. Lots of people had liked his comment.

  “So, what do you think?” Joss asked with a huge smile.

  “I think I want to talk about something else.” It was just too embarrassing to admit how happy it all made me. “Tell me more about what’s been going on at home.”

  She rummaged around in her bag some more and came up with car keys, jingling them just inches away from my face. “Got my permit yesterday. Mom and Dad even let me drive part of the way here. See? The car’s right over there.”

  I noted where it was, then we headed to the gym doors. A ball immediately went whizzing by my face but I didn’t even flinch—because I was having the best brainstorm ever.

  “Joss, would you do something for me, even if I don’t have time to fill you in on all the details right now?”

  She looked skeptical. “I guess, as long as you promise me no one gets hurt—especially you.”

  “Promise,” I said, grabbing her keys and her hand. “Come on, let’s go. I’ll explain on the way.”

  “Whaaaa?” she said.

  I shook my head and put a finger to my lips. “We need to leave now if we want to get back in time for the stuff with Mom and Dad. My goal is to not get a level drop for what we’re about to do.”

  We bumped into Justin right as we were heading out the door.

  “I forgot what maniacs these dudes are,” he said, gesturing to his twin brothers.

  “I’m taking Little Willy to the refuge now,” I whispered to him. “Cover for me and my sister, okay?”

  “Wait,” he said, grabbing my sleeve as I turned to go.

  “What?”

  “Let me help,” he said. “I’ve been part of this since the beginning, and if you’re going to put your ass on the line for Jenny, I should, too.”

  I shook my head. “We got this.”

  “I want to. Please,” he said.

  I looked at the twins. “What about them?”

  Justin thought about that for a second. “Maybe your sister can stay here, babysit them and cover for us at the same time?”

  “Sure,” Joss said, and gathered the boys to her like she had a great secret. “Your brother and my sister have to go to a special class right now, so I’m gonna play with you all morning, okay?”

  I GOT TO BE THE GETAWAY DRIVER. THIS WOULD HAVE BEEN COOL if I weren’t behind the wheel of a freaking Honda Odyssey. It was pretty hard to feel like the main character in Grand Theft Auto: Assland when you were the wheelman for a rolling toaster.

  I sat behind the wheel feeling like every window in Assland was hiding a person who was staring down at me. Finally I saw movement out of the corner of my eye—it was Emmy, small to begin with and now positively Smurf-like as she was all curled over and ducking behind cars.

  She’d borrowed one of my jackets. Since it was big enough to fit a normal-sized person, it provided plenty of room for Emmy to tuck an increasingly large, bigger-than-a-stuffed-Dora pig underneath and hunch her way through the parking lot. I hit the button and the side door slid open—so maybe there were some advantages to using a minivan as a getaway car—and Emmy and Willy tumbled in. I hit the button again and gunned it out of the parking lot before Emmy could even sit up.

  “Ah, Jesus, relax, will you? Nobody’s following us! It’s not like we just robbed a bank!”

  “Don’t wreck my Bonnie and Clyde buzz,” I said as we turned from the gravel driveway out onto Rural Route 12. Emmy joined me in the front seat and started punching the Farm Asylum address into the GPS. “Hey,” I said. “Won’t they be able to track us with that?”

  She gave me a quick, disgusted look. “Dude. We’re only going thirty miles. Even on a road like this, that’s still only going to be like an hour. They won’t even know we’re missing for another half an hour at least. It’s not like we’re going on some coast-to-coast crime spree.”

  “I knew that. I just … I wanted to be careful. I left a note on Mom’s windshield just to throw them off the scent.”

  “Oh God. What did you say?”

  What I’d actually written was Hey, Mom & Patrick. Stole away with my new girlfriend. Needed some alone time. You know, hormones, sexual reactivity, all that. Sorry, but a kid’s gotta obey his urges sometimes. Back for therapy and punishment tonight!

  But maybe Emmy didn’t need to know all that. “Let’s just say I won’t be getting out of SR group anytime soon.” Emmy yowled and punched my arm. “Hey! Not while I’m driving, okay?”

  “Fine,” she said. “Pull over so I can beat the crap out of you.”

  I didn’t look over to see if she was serious. I just kept my eyes on the road and said, “Look. We have to keep Willy’s existence secret. Right? I mean, if anybody finds out about him, they’re gonna wonder exactly what he was doing at Assland. And that’s gonna implicate at least Jenny, but possibly everybody else, too. And then everybody gets knocked back a level or three and nobody gets to go home. As much as I want them to stay, I don’t feel like we can really do that to them.”

  Emmy didn’t say anything for a minute, and then uttered a soft, “Dammit.”

  “What?”

  “You’re right. It’s the most believable excuse. It’s so believable that no matter what we said, people would assume we snuck off to have sex. Dammit.”

  “Well, you know, if you want to make it more credible, we could—”

  “Yeah, with Willy and his funk in the backseat. That’s hot.”

  “So it would be within the realm of possibility if Willy weren’t in the backseat?”

  She punched me again. “I don’t give a shit if you’re driving. And no. Not within the realm of possibility. You wish.”

  I stared at the road for a minute. “I mean,” I said, “kind of, yeah. Not like … I mean, I just … like you. Like that. In the I want to be your boyfriend way.”

  Emmy didn’t say anything, so I looked over at her. She had her eyes closed, and she was taking deep breaths. Only a few seconds went by, probably, but they went incredibly slowly. Finally she turned to me and sighed.

  “Aw, crap,” I said. “The like-you-as-a-friend speech. Ugh, I’m sorry, you don’t have to say it. I’m familiar with it, and I’m sorry I brought it up and made the pig theft awkward and everything, and if it’s not too awkward to still be friends, I actually do still want to be friends. Okay?”

  “Not at all what I was going to say,” Emmy said. “What I was going to say is that I think my mind and body are both still too messed up right now for me to really let anybody get close to either one. But, in the event that I start feeling normal enough for something like that, you’d be … I mean, you’re like first on the list.”

  My face was on fire. I didn’t know what to say. She’d just told me she couldn’t be my girlfriend. So why did the air in this Honda Odyssey suddenly feel electric, and why did I want to kiss her?

  I was so preoccupied I almost didn’t see the Audi TT whiz past us at about twenty miles per hour over the speed limit. “Son of a bitch,” I said.

  “Nice,” Emmy said. “You know, this is what I mean about not opening up to anyone right now, because I just put myself on the line and—”

  “Oh my God, I’m sorry, I wasn’t talki
ng about what you said. That was incredibly sweet, and I totally get it. Well, I mean, I understand it. Sort of. But I was son-of-a-bitching about the fact that my dad just whizzed by in his midlife crisis car. I didn’t think the old man was gonna make it.”

  “At the next intersection,” the GPS commanded, “Turn right on Rural Route 25.”

  I did, and neither one of us talked for a while. For the first five minutes or so the silence felt nice, but then, after about twenty-five, it started to get awkward. I turned on the satellite radio.

  “Oh God, my dad’s classic rock,” Emmy said, reaching for the dial.

  “Hang on!” I said. “Look at the song!”

  Thin Lizzy, the screen said. Jailbreak.

  Emmy rolled her eyes.

  “Come on! You gotta admit it’s appropriate!”

  “Fine. But after this is over, we’re listening to something made in the last fifty years.”

  I drummed on the steering wheel as the song rocked on. I’d never heard it before, but it was pretty badass. And then I heard sirens.

  “Oh shit,” I said, checking the rearview mirror.

  Emmy smiled. “Relax,” she said. “It’s in the song!” Sure enough, she turned the song down and the sirens went away. Almost.

  “Ha, ha. Funny. Turn it off.”

  “I did!” she yelled. I looked over at her face. She looked serious. And yet I could still hear a siren. “Think it’s for us?” I said.

  “Can’t take the chance,” she said. “Gun it. Hold on, Willy!”

  I pushed the accelerator to the floor and watched as the speedometer crept up to seventy-five. This didn’t feel incredibly safe, or, actually, safe at all, on a two-lane rural road. But we were still ten miles from the farm refuge.

  I drove for five minutes, my foot heavy on the accelerator and sweat dripping down my face. I checked the rearview mirror obsessively and saw nothing. Until I did. Way back—probably at least a mile—I saw flashes of red and blue.

  “Shit!” Emmy said. “They can’t be after us. Can they?”

  “Well, if I keep going this fast, they will be. We’ve gotta get off the road,” I said, and Emmy punched the GPS screen frantically.

  “Okay,” she said. “The interstate is just a mile and a half away.”

  “I think that’s a bad idea. Once we hit the interstate, the state police can come after us. They’ve probably all got our license number. Hey. Do you think they’re tracking us with the GPS?”

  Emmy thought for a second, then powered it off. “Probably not.” She turned around in her seat. “Shit. They’re closer. Lights and sirens.”

  I was going to go to jail. Grand theft auto, grand theft hog, grand theft anorexic chick. Ugh. Well, I guess better me than both of us. “Listen,” I said. “I stole the pig. And when I saw you with keys, I made you drive me and the pig. I threatened you with bodily harm, and what with my manly physique, you were afraid I’d snap you in half, so you went along with it.”

  “Dude. What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about the story we tell the cops. No reason for us both to get locked up.”

  “Aw, Justin, are you trying to take the fall for me?”

  “Well. Yeah.”

  “That’s really sweet,” she said, and then she started to laugh.

  “Um. Are you laughing at the fast approach of the long arm of the law, or what?”

  “No,” she said. “I’m just laughing at my life. If you’d told me six months ago that I’d be touched because a guy offered to take the blame for the car and livestock I stole … well, let’s just say I wouldn’t have believed you.” Before I could formulate an answer, Emmy screamed, “Truck stop!” and pointed ahead on the left right by the ramp to the interstate.

  It had a full parking lot, and I could see at least three other minivans. “Okay. Here we go,” I said and roared into the parking lot. I pulled in between two other minivans and killed the engine. “Now what?” I said.

  “Now we take Willy and get the hell out of here.”

  “Shouldn’t we, like, try to blend in or something?”

  “Yeah, with a pig under our arm. We’ll fit right in. And truck stops are the sketchiest places on the face of the earth. Some evil truck stop pimp would probably have us both turning tricks in the parking lot within about ten minutes.”

  “Evil truck stop pimp?”

  “They exist. It’s a thing. Now come on. That cop will be here in seconds. We’ve gotta find a place to hide.”

  I looked around the parking lot. I guessed we could break into another car, but then there was always the risk of the owners coming back. “There,” I said, pointing.

  “No,” Emmy said.

  “Come on. Let’s ask Willy. You know he’d love it.”

  “God. I cannot believe the stuff I am doing for this pig. Let’s do it,” she said. She grabbed Willy, and we ran out of the door and across the parking lot and climbed into the Dumpster. It was exactly as nasty as I imagined a truck stop Dumpster might be. And Willy immediately started tearing through plastic bags and rooting around and eating whatever he could get his snout on.

  “If I get through this without vomiting, it’s gonna be some kind of miracle,” Emmy said.

  “So,” I said. “Come here often?”

  Emmy rolled her eyes. “Just keep quiet for a few minutes until the cops go away.”

  I pointed at Willy. “Tell him, will ya?”

  “They’ll think he’s a rat.”

  We spent ten minutes sitting in the Dumpster. Willy was as happy as a pig in a Dumpster full of garbage, but I was kind of grossed out. Things were dripping on me, and it smelled like sour milk and piss in there.

  “All right,” I said. “I’d rather be locked up than stay in here for one more minute. Stay here and I’ll check to see if it’s all clear.”

  “The hell with that. I am going to projectile heave until I drop dead if I don’t get out of here. Let’s go. Come on, Willy.”

  Emmy grabbed Willy and we climbed out of the Dumpster. I didn’t see any evidence of a police car. “Should we go back to the car?” I whispered.

  “Too dangerous,” she said, “they might be waiting for us on the road. We’re gonna have to go cross-country. We’re only a couple of miles away from the refuge. This way. I checked it all out on the GPS before I powered it down,” she said and scampered into the tall grass beyond the edge of the parking lot.

  And now I was the one snickering. “What is it?” Emmy asked.

  “Pig on the lam!” I said.

  Emmy rolled her eyes. “If you keep saying corny crap, this walk is going to be even longer,” she said.

  THE FARM ASYLUM—OR AT LEAST THE PLACE I ASSUMED WAS THE Farm Asylum based on what I’d seen earlier on the GPS—was a little speck at the end of the field.

  “Let’s make a run for it,” Justin said. He was holding a grunting and squealing Little Willy under one arm and grabbing my hand and dragging me into the cornfield with the other.

  “If Willy doesn’t stop squealing, he’ll lead the cops right to us no matter how fast we run.” I kicked a stalk and then grabbed my shin. Those things were harder than they looked. “And getting hauled back to Assland by the po-po is not the way to get out of there anytime soon.”

  “Sometimes I wonder if I even want to get out anytime soon—” Justin began, but couldn’t finish his thought because Willy shrieked his little head off and wriggled out from under his arm. Willy fell with a plop to the ground and we both gasped.

  But he wasn’t hurt, and started snuffling around the dirt and plants. “Go on,” I said.

  “Maybe this sounds stupid,” Justin said. “But I feel safe at Assland. And even semi-happy sometimes. The real world—my real world—isn’t really like that.”

  I got what he was saying. But I also thought it was kind of a cop-out. We couldn’t live in Assland forever. “No one’s real world is like that. You know what I mean?”

  He melted back into his usual
gloom. “You mean you think it’s better for me to feel crappy all the time?”

  I shook my head. “Not at all. I just think maybe it’s time you figured out why you’re depressed at home but semi-happy in the loony bin.”

  We started walking toward the speck that I’d pegged as the Farm Asylum, following the rows of corn. The plants slapped Justin in the face every so often, and he swatted them away, all annoyed. I guessed being short wasn’t always so bad, because I was below the face-swatting leaves and forged ahead untouched by maize.

  The corn was planted in straight rows, which kept Willy in line. He walked happily behind us like a puppy. Justin took a deep breath, then slowly let it out. The effect was something along the lines of a leaky radiator.

  “Easy, Emmy. I always know what to expect at Assland. Wake up, breakfast, school, lunch, groups, dinner, study hall, nightly reflection. At home, I never know what’s coming next.”

  “Hate to be the one to point it out to you, but in life you never know what’s coming next either. It’s kind of what keeps it interesting.”

  It probably would have been easier not to tell Justin how I felt about this stuff. But that was what I had done with Mason—like, I never explained how much us being “secret lovers” bothered me—and look where it had gotten me. So I thought it might be good for Justin to hear what I had to say, and for me to say it.

  But Justin scowled at me. “Since when are you such a philosopher? And since when do you think you’re so healthy? You still weigh basically nothing, you still hate yourself and your life, so who are you to judge me?”

  “Not judging. Just stating the facts,” I told him, his words landing with a thud in my gut. I’d gone for honesty and it had been received like criticism. Not exactly the effect I’d intended.

  “Fuck off,” he said.

  “Right back at ya,” I said.