by L. T. Vargus
But there are people with these disorders, various kinds of “overlapping neural circuits” or something, that make them unable to reason it out. They find it difficult to resist the impulses. It sort of makes them more prone to get addicted to stuff, having their brains wired this way. Some people think it’s genetic and call it the addiction gene.
There are even people with brain damage that have very little impulse control at all. So these crazy ideas pop into their heads and they have to act upon them. There’s no real filter there. They just do the things that occur to them. Sort of thoughtlessly wandering through life.
Wouldn’t that be a crazy way to live?
* * *
Robert still won’t talk to me. I think he is done with me.
* * *
In the Netherlands they have this Christmas tradition where Santa goes around with his trusty sidekick Zwarte Piet. Now, these days, Zwarte Piet is a loveable doofus type character, kind of aloof, I guess, to amuse the kids. I should probably explain that the direct translation of Zwarte Piet is Black Peter. And he is always played by a white Dutch person in full blackface makeup.
In.
Goddamn.
Sane.
This still goes on today. Like I sort of explained, outside of the blackface aspect, it’s fairly tame now, but it wasn’t always that way.
Originally Zwarte Piet was evil and dumb. Santa used to beat him with a stick. A stick! Old Sinterklaas, as the people of Holland call him, was generally pretty rough with the bad kids all the way around, which is incredibly creepy. They used to sing songs about how Santa and Black Pete would shove the bad kids in a burlap sack and take them off to Spain. Good times.
In the 1800’s, though, they changed things up and made the whole thing all lighthearted and everything.
Still, what the fuck? Elves with sweet toys weren’t good enough? Sheesh.
* * *
Today I got a firsthand glimpse of the Mean Girl Phenomenon that Beth was telling me about. We were eating lunch and Bree McIntosh and Tess Pulju walked by our table. Right as Bree passed behind Beth, she made this exaggerated puking/gagging sound. Like, “bluu-EHH!”
Tess snorted (in a most unladylike fashion, I might add), and she and Bree walked away laughing. Actually, it was more cackling than laughing. Definitely a witchy cackle thing going on there.
Beth stabbed at her salad with percussive little motions. She speared a piece of broccoli and aggressively swished it in the little cup of ranch before shoving it in her mouth.
“What was that all about?” I said.
“Oh, that’s their newest joke,” Beth said, shaking her head and forcing a wad of lettuce past her teeth. “Isn’t it hilarious?”
I swirled a French fry around in the puddle of ketchup on my tray.
“Did you... I mean... How do they know?”
Beth swallowed and raised her eyebrows at me.
“That I’m bulimic?”
She looked back down at her salad and poked at a slice of cucumber.
“I told Stacey Peterson a long time ago, and I guess she must have blabbed about it.”
She flipped the cucumber slice over.
“Stupid cow. I never should have trusted her and her big stupid cow mouth,” she said and drove her fork through the cucumber so hard that it went all the way through the cuke and got stuck in the styrofoam tray.
I think what I found weirdest was how indirect it all was. They didn’t stop or look at Beth. If I hadn’t heard Beth mention their names specifically when she talked about them before, I don’t know if I would have picked up on it being directed at her. When a guy like Troy Summers bullies you, it’s totally in your face. But these girls... it was like they were bullying in secret code.
And even though they didn’t touch her at all, it kind of seemed meaner than the way guys do it.
* * *
I bet sliced smoked sausage wouldn’t be a terrible pizza topping.
* * *
Thursday after school, I went with Beth to the library so she could get some books for a paper she has to write for Biology. We walked through this little park in the middle of town on the way.
“I was reading about eating disorders on the internet today,” she said. “And this website kept saying that eating disorders are very difficult to treat.”
“Yeah?” I said.
“Yeah. Something about that pissed me off. Maybe it was partially the context. There was a defeatist, sympathetic tone to it, sort of like, ‘good luck with all that.’”
“I get what you mean,” I said.
A robin hopped across the grass in front of us. It stopped and plucked a worm from the ground before hopping away.
“But it made me realize that I have a lot more fight to me than I thought I did,” she said. “Left by myself, it’s easy to feel powerless, you know? To feel stuck.”
She raked her fingers through a tangle in her hair before continuing.
“Once somebody else suggests I’m powerless, though? I’m all like ‘Fuck you! What do you know about me? I can change myself.’”
She looked at me.
“It reminds me of things you’ve talked about. Like about bullies and people trying to control each other. Well, you can’t control the world, but you can control yourself. You can change yourself. We’re not all just powerless and trapped in the roles we find ourselves in. We can change.”
Chapter 24
I DREAMED THAT I WAS at school, but the building was empty. Vacant hallways stretched out in all directions. Silence enveloped me. I messed with my locker for a long time, but no matter what I did, I couldn’t get it to stay closed. I was pretty sure all my books were going to get stolen.
Then this gurgling static sound faded in around me. The sounds lurched and swayed, increasing in volume and echoing down the corridor. It seemed like if I listened to it hard enough, I could make out these tones, almost like a distorted keyboard, playing a melody within the wall of noise. But if I stopped concentrating, the slosh and pop of the static overtook the music again.
I moved toward the sound, past the gym and down a flight of steps past both of the locker room doors. It got louder to the point that I could feel the deeper gurgling notes rattling my chest. The melody grew clearer as I turned a corner toward the dead end hallway with just the door to an old boiler room ahead of me.
I turned the door knob, and the sound stopped. Total silence again. I opened it slowly to reveal an emptiness, just nothing, like a pitch black lack of anything, on the other side.
Then I woke up.
* * *
I always wind up getting to school pretty early and milling around in the hallway for a while. Today that went a little weird. It was still early enough that not very many people were there, but I ran into Beth by the Coke machine. She looked all excited.
“Come on,” she said.
She grabbed my hand and had me follow her out into the parking lot to Nikki Turner’s pale blue Ford Taurus. For whatever reason she had the keys to this girl’s car, which was vacant. We climbed into the backseat and sat down. Beth jerked a pack of Virginia Slims and a purple lighter out of her purse and lit the skinniest cigarette I’ve ever seen.
“You smoke now?” I said.
She nodded.
“I don’t know. I’m trying to get this whole eating thing under control and smoking makes me feel less stressed. Gives me something to do to take my mind off of everything.”
People always suck at explaining why they have chosen to start smoking. I mean, once you’re addicted, fine. That makes sense. But the weird rationalized excuses for choosing to get started are always nonsense. She went on:
“I’ve spent all of this time obsessed with control. My mom controlled me, and I wanted to control something of my own, so I developed this eating disorder. The whole world out there is made up of a bunch of people battling each other for control, but it never leads anywhere good. At some point you have to let it go, you know? You have to stop tryi
ng to control things and let them be.”
Maybe I was annoyed by the smoking. Maybe it was something else. But I was in a pretty bad mood. I hammered out a fast drum beat on the rubbery blue door handle with my fingers.
“Well, smoking is a very attractive and desirable quality,” I said.
Her mouth dropped open, and she laughed a little whispery chuckle. I think she thought I was just making a joke or something. Once her eyes searched mine and saw the complete lack of humor there, she swiveled her head away to look out the window.
“No, seriously,” I said. “Sucking tar and chemicals into your body until your insides turn black? So sexy. That’s what every guy wants.”
She didn’t move a muscle. Her head still faced away from me, completely still. Smoke spiraled off the end of the cigarette in her hand.
“You’ll smell tremendous, too,” I said. “The odor of your hair will always conjure my best memories of ashtrays and toothless people sitting on the stoops at a trailer park.”
It felt weird. I’d never been so aggressive with her. On one hand, it felt good to finally assert myself, to stop being such a puss, and smoking really is dumb and unhealthy and everything, you know?
On the other hand, I don’t know why I wanted to hurt her like this. I knew she was in trouble, and she needed help, but for some reason all this anger welled up in me, and I couldn’t help myself. I’m sure I could’ve found a way to constructively criticize the smoking, but I don’t think it was even about the smoking. Who the hell knows?
She unfolded the ashtray door and smooshed the cigarette into it.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “You’re right.”
She leaned across the backseat and hugged me, resting her head on my shoulder. And part of me wanted to tell her I was sorry. Part of me felt like it was so pathetic for her to submit to my control so willingly after I treated her that way and wanted to stop it somehow. But I didn’t do anything. I just hugged her back.
“I know you’re only trying to help me,” she said.
The cigarette still smoldered in the tray, so I picked up the butt and stamped it out for good.
* * *
We always want more. I think we are coded for it, really. A team wins a championship, and they get right back out there to try to win another one. The richest corporations in the world only want one thing: More. Wal-mart built over 3000 new stores outside of the United States from 2005-2011. McDonald’s builds a restaurant a day in China alone.
They have so much. They want more. They build more. They do more. More. More. More.
At some point, it starts to make sense. ’Cause you’re never really done. You never reach a plateau of bliss and happiness where you just stop and relax. You want more, and you fight for more every day or you die. Retiring to a life of luxury is a death sentence. They talked about how a bunch of studies confirm that in my Psychology class. We aren’t wired to be content. We aren’t wired to coast. We are wired to fight. We are wired to endlessly work toward something. Anything. So the work never really ends, and there’s only one motivator for work, truly: More.
Look at me, all I wanted was the girl, and once I kind of got her, I wasn’t actually happy. I had complaints about the way she kissed me. And more than that, I just wasn’t satisfied somehow. I want more. We always want more.
I knocked Troy down and stomped his ankle, but I’m not fulfilled. Now, I don’t necessarily want to commit more violent acts against him or anything. I’m not satisfied is all. I solved that problem of Troy, but I want something else. I don’t even know what it is that I want yet. Maybe it doesn’t even matter what it is, so long as it’s more.
Yep. More. Always.
I think maybe that is the meaning of life. Seriously.
Chapter 25
I WENT TO NICK’S HOUSE, and he was all drunk again. Just sitting by himself in the living room of his apartment chugging Budweisers. Ridiculous. His skin was all shiny and dark around his eyes, and he smelled pretty bad. He grunted, which I took as a hello.
“Hey, what’s up?” I said. “Is Donnie at work?”
His eyes rolled. I guess that meant that Donnie was indeed assembling gorditas. (Maybe.) Even if that was pretty rude of Nick, he didn’t have the hateful energy like he did the last time he was drunk. Really, he just seemed listless.
It didn’t really make sense to me. He looked like he was on top of the world after we got that loaded jewelry box. What goes up must come down, though, I guess, and he’d crashed pretty hard. I’d never seen him like this.
“You doing alright?” I said.
He sighed heavily.
We sat in silence for a while before I finally turned on the TV and flipped through the channels. Donnie had rigged up the wiring so that they were leeching the neighbor’s cable and got like every channel. Weirdly enough, I still couldn’t find anything interesting to watch, though. I watched a few minutes of some guy working on a “pleasure garden” in his backyard, whatever the hell that means. Looked like a flower garden to me, but whatever.
All of a sudden, Nick leaned forward and sprayed vomit fucking everywhere. It was insane. He made no attempt to stop himself or make a move toward the bathroom or anything. He just showered the floor and himself with beer foam and chunks of Wendy’s chili.
“Jesus,” I said.
Nick leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.
* * *
Weirdly enough, we talked about alcohol in Psychology today. So here’s what I learned. We all have heard a bunch of times that drinking kills brain cells, right? Right. Well, what I didn’t know was that the actual sensation of brain cells being damaged is what being drunk is. So basically people are killing their brain because it feels good. Weird, right?
So the booze gets in there and starts damaging the crap out of these things called dendrites, which are sort of like the stems at the end of brain cells that communicate from one cell to another. In other words, the damaged cells can no longer talk to each other. As people first get drunk, the inhibition of communication between these neurotransmitters and stuff give them a euphoric feeling. As the alcohol continues to take effect, though, it depresses the brain functions, which is why really drunk people seem to slow down. They slur their speech and their motor skills seem to deteriorate. Pretty soon they vomit all over goddamn everything. Shitty deal.
* * *
“Come on,” I said. “I’ll clean this up, but you gotta change out of those clothes.”
He didn’t move until I yanked on his wrist to demand he get up. I laid paper towel over what seemed like gallons of vomit while he went and got a new shirt and everything. More and more fluid soaked up from the floor. I ran the roll of paper towel right down to the cardboard tube and had to resort to using a couple of beach towels as well — one with neon lobsters and crabs and stuff all over it, the other a full size image of Hulk Hogan tearing his yellow Hulkamaniac shirt off. (I’m guessing that one is Donnie’s.)
Nick came back out into the living room in fresh clothes and sat on the non-moist chair.
“Where’s your wet shirt?” I asked.
“Meh,” he said and shrugged.
Right. He leaned back again and seemed to be dozing off. I had to dig around in the dirty clothes on the floor of his room to find the offensive garment. I climbed down the steps to throw the beer and vomit soaked t-shirt and beach towels into the washing machine. My hands were all juicy by now. What a goddamn delight it is to babysit a drunk, eh?
Their basement was all cobwebby and seemed like the kind of basement that’d be full of spiders and cave crickets and such. Cardboard boxes lined the walls, and there were a couple shelves covered in various cables, cords, old WD-40 cans and stuff like that. The only thing that really stood out was a tattered old poster for the Wes Craven movie The Hills Have Eyes hanging over the dryer.
After I’d gotten the washer up and spinning, I noticed that one of the basement windows was all loose. It was fucked. Definitely not installed correctly.
It was just kind of sitting there, the wooden frame not attached to the concrete foundation at all. The bottom half of the frame was leaning into the basement to the point that I thought it might fall and shatter everywhere, so I tried to push the whole unit into place.
Instead it kind of fell into my hands. I had an awkward hold of it, so I brought it down to my chest to adjust my grip when I realized that I could see under the back porch through the opening. That seemed odd. That they’d build the porch over this window, completely enclosing it. The soil under the porch was pitch black. And disturbed. It looked all lumpy and like parts of it had been dug up.
In the area just on the other side of the window sat one of several bulged spots in the Earth, and the ground there looked the most recently mussed.
I had a feeling I knew what it was.
I hoisted myself up so that my belly rested on the concrete, my legs still dangling into the basement. It smelled like roadkill under the porch, a penetrating sort of stench that I felt certain would cling to my hair and the fabric of my clothes for some time. I brushed the top layer of the dirt away and began grabbing handfuls to dig deeper. The smell got worse.
Eventually I exposed mannequin feet. It was weird. I knew they weren’t really doll feet, of course. I knew it was human flesh, but I still saw them as mannequin feet for a moment before it really sank in. Ten toes with alternating pink and black nail polish, covered in chalky white powder that I assumed was lime. They’d shriveled some.
I froze. Jesus. It was what I expected when I saw the raised area in the dirt about the size of a body, but now that it was real, it was much more shocking. Disturbing. Nick had killed Tammie and who knows how many other people. Looking at the raised spots in this makeshift cemetery, he’d buried at least four of them down here.