by L. T. Vargus
I didn’t know what to say, so the car fell silent again.
“I don’t know. I am tryin’ to show you how I see it. Expand your horizons and shit. I mean, Jesus, we all buy clothes made by kids in Chinese sweatshops. People in Africa starve to death. The people in power must know there is no right or wrong to let those things happen. It only matters to them when it serves to keep you feelin’ powerless and small and scared so they can keep order and keep makin’ money.”
He flicked his cigarette butt out the window and lit another.
“When we drop bombs on people, that is good. When other people drop bombs on us or blow shit up, that is evil. It’s all a joke. It ain’t real.”
He turned to face me.
“Couldn’t you feel it? Didn’t you feel that when we were in that house?”
“Yeah.”
I think I did.
Chapter 8
JUST GOT BACK FROM THE movies with Beth. I think it went pretty well. I don’t know.
We loaded up on snacks. We’re talking a huge tub of popcorn, slathered in butter or whatever the hell hydrogenated oil fake butter stuff they have. (Trans fats? Dr. Oz would never approve.) To drink, a large Coke for me — no ice — and a medium Sunkist for the lady. (That’s the orange stuff.) In terms of candy, I went for gummy bears and Twix, also known as the best of both worlds. She went for Tropical Berry Skittles. She could’ve had anything. Tropical Berry Skittles. Her choice.
We were pretty early, so we sat a while in the mostly empty theater while dated trivia questions popped up on the screen. Bruce Willis this. John Travolta that. The floor was all sticky as usual. I kind of think it’d be weird if the floor wasn’t sticky, actually. Like some piece of theater tradition would be missing.
“Girls are so insane,” she said.
“Oh, really?” I said. “I guess I don’t really know about it.”
There weren’t a bunch of people there, but she was talking loud enough that I felt kind of uncomfortable. It was weird. On one hand, I could appreciate the idea that she was comfortable or confident enough to just let it rip, but on the other hand, talking that loud in public is almost like an act of aggression. Sort of like a “Yeah, I see you sitting over there, dude, and I’m going to just yell anyway, so fuck off,” kind of thing.
“Well, you’re lucky,” she continued. “One on one, maybe they aren’t so bad. When you get a group of girls together, though, they suddenly morph into these psychotic, cut throat control freaks. It’s all a very unsavory business.”
“Sounds like it.”
I wanted to ask about the specifics, but I felt weird. Plus I was kind of just hoping that she would stop yelling, you know?
“Women are obsessed with control. Just trust me on this.”
I shoved a fistful of popcorn into my mouth and nodded. She followed suit.
Before the movie even started, my stomach kinda hurt from pounding down all that junk food. Beth ate like a champ, though. She powered through the Skittles, put a real dent on the popcorn and even had some of my gummy bears and Twix. She plowed it right down long after I felt sick. Pretty impressive, really.
Eventually the theater went dark and the trailers and movie started. I didn’t know if I was supposed to like hold her hand or something. So I was kind of thinking about that the whole time, and I didn’t pay attention to the actual movie so much. My palms got all sweaty, so I kept drying them off in case I ever got up the courage to make contact.
I didn’t.
About forty minutes in, Beth got up and went to the bathroom for a super long time. When she got back, she smelled like peppermint and offered me a Tic Tac. That is like the only plot point I remember from the evening. Except a few minutes after that, she put her hand on my arm again, like she did in art class. She only left it there for a few seconds, but I don’t know. It made me not feel as weird or gross or whatever.
As far as the actual movie, I do remember that there was a scene in there where a couple of the guys had to pee really bad from drinking too much iced tea. The dummies in the theater were loving it. So yeah. It was that kind of movie.
Also — side note — I hate how pretentious people have to always say “film” instead of movie in their stupid la-de-da voices. No one cares that you watched some movie, dickface. We don’t think you’re super cool and sophisticated and shit. So there.
* * *
In Psychology today we learned about this study on brain activity when playing video games. The book had these photos of a brain scan with like a rainbow of colors in the head, the areas with brighter colors representing a lot of activity in that part of the brain, you know.
So when someone is first playing a particular Xbox game or whatever, their whole brain is lit up red and yellow. Like because they have to learn how the game works and all of that, the whole thing is engaged and figuring it out.
Once they’ve played the game a bunch of times, though, only the two or three areas of the brain necessary for that particular task light up. Seriously maybe like 1/5 of the scan was now lit up in a couple of little spots. Most of it was black — completely inactive. I guess that’s why games get old after a while. Once something becomes routine, most of your brain can just shut down, you know.
It made me think about how my mom has this daily ritual of going to work, coming home, making food, watching TV, going to bed and starting the same thing again the next day. So it’s like most of her brain can just sleep all day. It seems like a lot of adults are like that, really.
* * *
I had a dream last night that I was sitting on the couch, but I could fly around the house if I tucked my knees up against my chest. It was rad. I think I must have been faintly conscious of the fact that I was lying motionless in real life or something.
Beth was there, and her cat kept dying and coming back to life. This fat tabby cat named Geoff. It would just slump over on my desk and die. And she’d get all upset and start crying. And time would pass, like a few days. And we’d talk about how we should probably bury him ’cause he might start smelling or whatever. And then I’d touch him, to pick him up to go bury him, you know, and he’d suddenly roll over and be fine. It happened three or four times over the course of the dream. She said that it must just be a dislocated shoulder.
At the end I went outside and floated way up above my house. Not our apartment now, but the house from when I was little. Anyway, I went up past this telephone pole by the garage and just kept going. And then finally I kind of stopped going up and just hovered way up there a while, looking down on the house and the back yard and everything. I could see Beth sleeping on a porch swing, and Nick and Tammie fighting in the driveway. It all looked so small. And I thought about how eventually I’d have to fall down or something.
* * *
Remember all that talk about McDonald’s advertising? How they want to be your trusted friend and everything?
Well, whatever they’re doing with those ads, it works, apparently. To an insane degree, it works.
I read about a study today that found that kids think food in a McDonald’s wrapper tastes better. And the food inside the wrapper, you ask? Doesn’t actually matter.
The power of that McDonald’s branding is so strong, the messages in those relentless ads wired so deeply in the impressionable young brains, that they prefer the food in the McDonald’s wrapper no matter what it is. If they’re given two servings of the exact same food — one in a McDonald’s wrapper and the other in a plain wrapper — they think the McDonald’s food tastes better the vast majority of the time. The same McDonald’s fries won preference 77% to 13% as to tasting better, with the remaining 10% saying they tasted the same. Even with stuff like store bought milk and carrots, the kids preferred the McDonald’s wrapped version. (They liked the ones labeled McMilk and McCarrots, I guess.)
The Standford researcher who conducted the study, Dr. Tom Robinson, said the kids' perception of taste was "physically altered by the branding."
Yes
, you read that correctly.
Physically.
Altered.
Well played yet again.
Chapter 9
LESSON THREE TRANSPIRED THIS EVENING. So I’m supposed to feel smarter, I guess, but I feel dumber. Let me start at the beginning, though.
I went to Nick’s after school. No crazy police scanner stuff this time. Donnie was away assembling tacos. (That’s the official terminology they use at Taco Bell. “Assembling tacos,” I mean. For real.)
Nick sat in the living room, trimming his fingernails with a pocket knife. Tammie sprawled next to him, still wearing her pajamas. She painted her toenails, alternating pink and black.
Tammie looked up from her nails and brushed the hair out of her eyes with the back of her hand.
“Hi.”
“Hey,” I said.
Nick didn’t even bother looking up when I first walked in. He looked distracted. After he was finished with his lumberjack manicure, he sprang from his chair and jogged toward his bedroom.
“Oh, wait here a minute,” he said.
When he came back, he had a wad of money in his hand. He peeled four 50-dollar bills and a 20 from the stack and handed them to me.
“What’s this?” I said.
I fanned the money out in front of me like a hand of cards.
“It’s your cut.”
“My cut?”
“From the other night. I sold that jewelry. This is your cut.”
“Oh.”
“Look, I ain’t goin’ to lie to ya. I didn’t split it 50-50 or nothin’. We both know I did most of the work and all. But you were there, and people who work should get paid, right? So that’s your payment.”
“Thanks. It’s just... I mean, it seems like a lot.”
“Gold ain’t no joke.”
“Yeah. Sheesh.”
He shoved the wad of money into his pocket and we sat down.
“Tonight’s an easy one.”
“Huh?”
I was still a little shook up by the whole money thing, I guess, so I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about.
“The next lesson.”
“Oh, right.”
“Your task? To procure alcohol.”
I paused a beat to let it sink in.
“That’s it? But couldn’t I just have you buy it for me?”
“Nope. And Donnie ain’t here, but even if he was, I wouldn’t let him buy it for you neither.”
I thought about that. I knew Tammie was only 19, so she would be a no-go as well.
“So what am I supposed to do?”
“Acquire the alcoholic beverage of your choice.”
“Well, yeah, I grasped that. I meant how?”
“Don’t matter to me. Be resourceful.”
“Great.”
Keep in mind that I’ve never been drunk, of course. I believe we touched on the thing about me being a huge pussy already, but, honestly, I cannot stress that enough.
“Better git,” Nick said. “You ain’t gonna find any booze sittin’ around here.”
When I got out to the porch, Tammie was there. Like she was waiting for me. She smiled.
“Don’t worry about it,” she whispered. “All you have to do is wait outside the store and ask someone to buy you some beer. It’s really simple, and it totally works.”
“So you’ve done this?”
“Loads of times.”
She kind of put her arm around my shoulder and did like a sideways hug thing. I guess it did make me feel a little better.
Shit. I can’t keep my eyes open. I’ll have to finish this tomorrow.
* * *
I left Nick’s and walked a few blocks down to Broad Street Market, a small grocery store that mostly specializes in liquor sales. There’s a little three-walled porch area by the front doors, bricks painted maroon, and there’s a rectangular opening crafted into one of the walls like maybe a window was there once. Kids sit on the ledge in that opening often, and I sat there now, facing the parking lot. My legs dangled over the brick wall, and I could just reach the tips of my toes to the pavement and kick at rocks. Something nice about the sound of my rubber soles scraping rocks over blacktop.
It was Friday night, so the parking lot buzzed with people from all walks of life preparing to binge drink. College kids. Factory workers. Business people. Everyone knows that the weekend is generally a time to funnel hooch into your face until you pass out, puke or both.
The crowd provided a gift and a curse for my purposes. On one hand, lots of people meant lots of opportunities to ask one of them to buy me beer. On the other hand, a constant flow of customers made it harder for me to single any of them out for a private, one-on-one conversation. Would people grow more reluctant to buy a 40-ounce of King Cobra for a high school kid if they knew others were watching and listening? My guess was abso-friggin-lutely.
(And yeah, I did choose King Cobra primarily because of the cool cobra on the bottle. It’s also very reasonably priced. Bonus.)
So I waited. And I debated what characteristics my target demographic should possess. The first segment of the population I ruled out was older women. Moms (and grandmas) are probably the lowest probability group in terms of converting a purchase of teenage booze. Don’t misread that. I know there are loads of trashy grandmas that would love nothing more than to furnish me with malt liquor. We’re speaking in terms of probabilities, though. The trashy grandmas are outnumbered.
A non-trashy mom hopped out of a green dodge caravan and smiled at me on her way into the store, her natural kindness and decency illustrating my point.
Next, I ruled out anyone wearing business attire. Suits, khakis, polo shirts — no, no, no. Neck ties? Don’t make me chuckle. Casual dress only, please. Camo anything would be considered a perk.
A man sporting a pin-striped suit stepped out of a Lexus and slid on expensive sunglasses for the 20-foot walk to the store. Based on nothing more than years of TV viewing, I felt somehow certain he would be purchasing scotch.
Anyway, I realized that I was stalling. All of these demographic thoughts served as a way to put off actually asking someone, which I admit intimidated my balls off.
I started thinking about what words I would use, testing out possibilities in my imagination:
“Hi. Can I get you to buy me some beer?”
“Hey. Could you buy me alcohol?”
“Will you buy me a forty of King Cobra?”
“Pardon. Would you do me the small service of purchasing an ice cold lager that I might imbibe this eve?”
Somehow I liked the idea of jumping right into the question and being specific up front. A hard lead loaded with the facts. No fluff. No needless words. All that. No more pussyfooting. Whoever walked up next was going to get asked.
So of course the parking lot died. Not a soul for miles. I felt like a damn tumbleweed should roll by.
Thinking back, I’m not sure if the place actually got less busy or if time seemed to slow down ’cause I was dying of nervousness.
Finally, a guy in a black t-shirt and baseball hat walked up. Now, technically, his hat wasn’t camo — it was plain black — but it did have the mesh trucker-style in the back, which is a fine camo substitute in my book. I hopped off my perch and moved quickly to meet him a good five or ten paces away from the store.
I planted my feet, and I blasted him with my question:
“Will you buy me a forty of King Cobra?”
Nailed it.
FUCKING.
NAILED IT.
I thrust money toward him. He half-flinched when my hand moved toward his person and then stopped dead in his tracks and seemed to size me up. His eyes squinted as he looked me over as though in deep concentration. It seemed like forever. I felt like music from an old Clint Eastwood movie should be playing.
“King Cobra?” he said.
His voice sounded like sandpaper coated with nicotine and whiskey stains.
“Yes, sir,” I said. (Sir. A nice touch
.)
He nodded, creases forming at the corners of his mouth. The creases slowly curled up into a half-smile as he took my money.
“Meet me in the alley out back.”
“Sure.”
I wasn’t exactly sure what he was talking about, ’cause there are kind of two allies running along different sides of the building, really, but I went for the closer one. Upon reaching the alley, I realized that this would be a great way to steal my money. Here in the alley, I had no view of the front door or much of anything beyond the brick walls surrounding me. He could just buy a lot of beef jerky and Skoal and head for the hills, laughing his dumb face off all the while.
It felt like forever. I tried to stay all cool and calm, but half of me was thinking this guy just stole my $20, and the other half was sure I was going to somehow get arrested for this. I kept counting to ten and telling myself that if I got to ten and he still wasn’t there, I’d go check it out. But instead when I got to ten, I’d just start over, saying to myself that I really meant it this time.
Finally, he strutted around the corner with a brown bag in one hand and a pile of money in the other. He smiled as he approached.
“Here you go,” he rasped.
He dumped the change into my hands and then handed over the concealed elixir. The money was all there. He didn’t even keep a buck or two for his troubles.
“Thank you.”
“Not a problem, bucko.”
(Bucko? This was new to me.)
He pivoted and walked off into the sunset. It’s somehow comforting to know that, even in this day and age, there are still good Samaritans out there willing to buy beer for strange underage kids for no good reason. To me, those are the real heroes.
* * *
I headed back to Nick’s with the secret potion hidden in the bag and nestled in my arm like a premature infant. I had to really work to stay in G-mode.
The nerves bound up into a weird clenching fist in my gut, and I wanted to swivel my head around constantly to make sure the cops weren’t tailing me. G-mode required me to instead mosey along like all was normal and, if anything, a little boring.