Beautiful Children

by Charles Bock

  Was she swapping spit with Ponyboy or was she flashing back to kissing Ponyboy, or was the whole night a hallucination? How long had passed between that moment and this one, between that first hallucinated kiss and the hallucination of her confusion?

  The back of his hand traced lightly over her mons.

  This, her last sensation.

  6.7

  “How do I get back to your house again?”

  Newell stiffened in response to the question; he remained covered in shadows, kept looking out the window.

  Kenny's hand left the steering wheel; he wearily rubbed his eyes. “I can take Maryland Parkway, right? That'll cross with Sahara.”

  Newell snorted, as if he could not believe what he'd heard. For the first time in a while, he turned and fixed a hard look at Kenny. “This is bullshit.”

  “We've had enough fun tonight, don't you think?”

  “Yeah. You had fun.”

  “I'm trying to talk to you here.”

  Newell answered over Kenny, drowning his words: “Yeah, you try all your fag bullshit on me. You get all oh, you do something cuz you just feel like doing it.” The boy's voice turned mocking now, vicious: “That don't mean you know how it's gonna come out—”

  “Great. Have another tantrum, Newell. Make sure everyone's kissing your selfish little ass.”

  “BULLSHIT—”

  “Really cool there, dude.”

  Newell's eyes bulged, hatred consuming his ability to think, his ability to speak, his stare burning. “Fuck you, Kenny,” he said.

  “Yeah, fuck you, too.”

  “I know you want to. We both know you want to.”

  Kenny pushed against the steering wheel, releasing and opening his hands. “I was trying to talk to you. Can't you hold on with your little spoiled routine just for five seconds?” Kenny's voice wavered, but he controlled it, and released each word with an icy calmness. “Be a fucking human being for five seconds, okay?” His hands closed around the wheel once more. He took three hard breaths now, leaving his chest hollow. “I said I was sorry, Newell. I am sorry. I didn't mean . . . I didn't mean to—”

  “So it's my fault!”

  Kenny bit his lip. “It was just a couple of seconds. I couldn't . . .” His next words, help and myself, twisted, fading before they could form. There was silence, the low constant rattle of the FBImobile, the darkness shifting to cover Kenny, Newell, the seats they sat on, the trash around them. The sound of a gunned engine rose from the opposite side of the street, where a tricked-out flatbed was waiting for the light to change.

  As if released from a straitjacket, Newell suddenly jerked back against the bucket seat. He moved the canister to his side and crossed his arms. He looked past Kenny now, into the intersection, and Kenny did the same, the pair of them staring anywhere but at each other, the light remaining red.

  “The longest light ever,” Kenny said.

  Newell turned, staring out the window, the back of his head facing Kenny.

  “I'm your friend,” Kenny said.

  “You lie.”

  “Maybe,” Kenny grunted. “But I am.”

  “I don't believe you.” Newell kept looking out the window. “I don't believe anything you have to say.”

  Kenny took in the boy's words, waited, and finally responded with a low exasperation, almost as if he were arguing with himself. “Well, fuck if I know what to do, then.”

  “You lie just like everyone,” Newell spat.

  “You don't want to go home. And you sure don't want to be in this car with me. So you tell me: what do you want to do? Fucking tell me, Newell.”

  Chapter 7

  7.1

  It sounded like a train wreck, feedback overwhelming the piles of home stereo speakers, distortion blasting through the amplifiers, coming out like revving lawn mower engines, aluminum bats pounding on sheet metal. Only there wasn't any edge. The sound wasn't dirty and driving, wasn't muddy and sleazy in the worst way, which is the best way. It wasn't an evil train wreck.

  Way back in a previous lifetime, Lestat had been a stereo junkie. Even now his favorite way of scrounging bread was to work as a cut-rate sound tech at shows and ragtag gigs like this one in the desert. Sometimes bar managers gave him a job sweeping up afterward, and once in Austin—at least Lestat thought it was Austin—a band had let him sleep in their rental van. If Lestat had been the tech guy tonight, no way he would have put up with this droning bullshit, especially not out here where sound carried so well.

  Emerging from a whirl of elbows and purple dreadlocks and kicked-up dust, he headed away from the mosh pit, unable to see for shit, the night filling in almost everything, the headlights of a few cars barely outlining the congestion in front of him—fans bouncing up and down like human bingo balls in a popper, punks holding their cell phones toward the stage. Lestat twisted in between a pair of skinheads; his knee felt stiff; he started favoring his right leg. But he survived the thickest part of the crowd and passed some dweeb stupid enough to be wearing a green wool stretch cap in the middle of August. Then he passed a stacked blonde too awesome-looking to ever talk to—alone, she had a camcorder pointed more or less toward the stage. The blonde had pink streaks in her hair, and she was swaying from side to side with a lazy sexuality that reminded Lestat of a similarly amazing brunette he'd hopped trains with before he had started rolling with Danger-Prone Daphney. Raven was her name. New Mexico and Arizona they'd traveled together, and she'd never let Lestat touch her. She'd had wild green eyes, Raven, and a penchant for mysticism. More than a few times Raven had explained to Lestat that she came from a lineage of important figures in the federal government. Lestat never found out that her real name was AprilWiss, that she was seventeen years old, or that her government lineage was a third cousin who worked nights sorting mail. Lestat never knew that April Wiss had last been seen at her residence inWichita, Kansas, on January 11 at approximately ten p.m. He never knew that April had not told anyone where she was going or when she would return. When they were riding on steamer trains in the black of night, April Wiss, aka Raven, used to put her head on Lestat's shoulder and nod off, and Lestat would feel her breath on his neck. April Wiss had three dots tattooed on her right hand, behind her thumb. She was supposed to take medication for mental illness but when Lestat and she used to ride trains, she took no medicine, just smoked bushels of weed. Frequently April became depressed and violent for reasons Lestat could not understand, and nothing he did helped. April had not taken any clothing or personal belongings when she left home, and her mother had not seen nor heard from her since that evening. When she needed money real bad, Raven disappeared. The next morning or sometimes even three days later Lestat would meet her at some predetermined coffee shop, she'd be sitting at the counter, all quiet and nonresponsive. They'd been in Scottsdale together and Lestat had gotten himself a job as a dishwasher and he'd given his first week's salary to Raven and still she'd refused to fuck him. Said it would have meant too much.

  The cellular phone they'd gotten off that kid earlier in the night. Lestat wondered if the tip he'd been given about who had it was true.

  The incline became steeper over the next twenty yards, and as Lestat's combat boots sank into the soft sand, he began the gradual climb, heading toward the interstate. Out here the crowd had fanned out, populating the desert basin in the manner of the stars in the constellations, and a few camping flashlights and lighters were floating around, which made the analogy especially accurate, Lestat thought. He approached a circle of pierced kids. They had a small flare lit at their feet, and were passing a bottle around, and as Lestat drew close, he saw that some were wearing concert shirts from hard rock bands that had broken up before their occupants were born. Lestat then noticed the insignias on some of the shirts weren't actually for real bands, but brand names. The fad shocked Lestat, and his irritation must have shown, because the pierced kids vibed him pretty good in return, and he veered sharply, avoiding the group entirely. He climbed a bit more, his leg
s heavy now, his lungs feeling a smoggy burn. But the music sounded cleaner out here, crisper; the band had settled down, found themselves a rhythm and stride, and Le-stat could hear the hook—it was kind of catchy, actually. Lestat paused and looked back, taking in the scene: the crescent moon on a high perch in the clouded charcoal sky; the mountain ranges crossing the horizon in jagged, looming shadows; the rim of civilization shimmering to the east and giving way to darkness. Amid the field of blackness, a horseshoe of truck headlights were focused on the party, and from this height and distance, the band almost seemed to him to be a set of action figures in motion atop a cardboard box. A few idiots were climbing onto the stage and dancing around with disjunctive energy, they were turning and running, leaping off the edge of the stage, into the mêlée of slam dancers and raised hands. But all this chaos was neutered by distance. The whole scene seemed insignificant from here, an excuse that allowed everyone to congregate and party, be they scruffy and goateed Hackey Sackers, ravers in bright oversize shirts, lotharios chatting up jailbait, or runaways. Yeah, they were out here, too.

  Like maybe this guy he used to see on the street every now and then. Lestat never knew his name but the guy was funny as shit, just had a great sense of humor. Three or four times Lestat had landed in some new city with a decent runaway population and was trying to figure out the lay of the land, and wouldn't you know it, he'd run into that guy. Each time the guy had shouted Lestat's name and wrapped Lestat inside a bear hug and they'd spent the night laughing and catching up, like they were college roomies at the alumni club or something, and by then it was too late to ask the guy's name. Tall and yoked with muscles, the guy had a strawberry birthmark on the tip of his right ear. His right nostril and right ear were pierced, and he had three studs on his right eyebrow. He had a steel barbell in his tongue and a messy black cross on his right shoulder. Back when the ink of the guy's cross was still fresh and glowing, Lestat had teamed up with him for a while. They were both in the Northeast and it was one of those relentless winters, too cold to be out on the street. Lestat and the guy went halfsies on thirty-dollar flop rooms each night. Sometimes they ran shoplifting scams and split the take, but more often, at the crack of noon, each went his own way, out to panhandle, steal, and hustle up the bucks for a room. In addition to his backpack, the guy carried around a pool stick inside a thin black case. He also had a small set of Craftsman work tools. He'd find abandoned televisions and videocassette players on the street and spend hours dismantling and putting them back together. Lestat and the guy spent a fair amount of their time talking about gearhead stuff, it was yet another bonding point between them, finishing their hustles for the day and meeting up to gab and—if they had the cash—drink themselves insaner. Once when they were blasted out of their minds, the big lug might or might not have told Lestat his real name was Jeromy Dernay. Lestat only heard part of what he was saying, so he wasn't sure. Lestat had ended up blacking out and when he'd awakened, all the information from his previous eight hours had disappeared, so he continued referring to him by nodding and going Hey. The missing person's report on Jeromy Dernay, originally filed in Newton, Mass, related that Jeromy was six feet two inches, 210 pounds, with black hair, and a date of birth of May 19. On June 22 of some two years ago, following a fight with his parents, Jeromy left a note stating that he wanted to be on his own. Jeromy took clothing and personal belongings, as well as jewelry belonging to his stepmother. He was known to be proficient at the sport of billiards and had been sighted at pool halls throughout the Midwest, although each of those sightings would now have been more than six months old. The police's last reported sightings for Jeromy had indeed been in the city of Las Vegas, Nevada. More than once Jeromy had been spotted at or around the WestCare health facility, whose officials did not report their clients’ comings and goings to authorities. One of the last times Lestat had taken Daphne to get checked out there, Jeromy had been in the waiting room. He'd given Lestat one of his sun-blinding smiles and had crushed Lestat's spleen with his hug and they had exchanged a number of sincere and heartfelt pleasantries, and Lestat hadn't said anything about the sarcoma lesion on Jeromy's chin. Lestat had remembered that the big galoot was in town because one of the pierced guys in the group with all the faux heavy metal T-shirts had the build and mannerisms of Jeromy. But Lestat wasn't about to go back and confirm, either way.

  Deblinda Big Black was out there, too, although she may have been calling herself Rosa, Heather, or Whisper. She was sitting on the arm of a long-discarded couch that sagged in the dirt and was bereft of its cushions. A bunch of younger types were also there, pubescents and adolescents, eyes closed, knees pulled to their chests, talking low and passing a pipe. Deblinda was five feet five inches, 116 pounds, with a birthmark under her right eye, and was known in her conservative hometown of Troutdale, Oregon, for the outrageous act of piling on the black eyeliner. Deblinda had attended Turtledove Catholic High School, where teachers described her as sullen, and students referred to her as a freak. On May 18 of this year, at approximately three fifteen P.M., Deblinda had called her mom to let her know she would be home after drama tryouts. However, Deblinda had neither come home nor returned to school. The last time Deblinda had run away, she'd been missing for two months before authorities discovered her in an apartment complex in Medford, Oregon. She'd been found in the company of a thirty-one-year-old Caucasian male, who at the time was in possession of a .45 caliber automatic pistol, a weapons permit, five sheets of homemade acid, and materials that might be helpful in manufacturing crystal meth. Deblinda's purse was found to contain matchbooks from bars in Sheridan, Wyoming, as well as a blank postcard from Devil's Canyon—which, Lestat guessed, was where she'd met Danger-Prone Daphney, their friendship catching fire in a manner not all that different from the way Daphney had taken to that little bald girl tonight. Deblinda, or Whisper, or whatever she called herself, looked the worse for wear on that couch, Lestat thought. She had lost a disturbing amount of weight, and her pallor was sickly, a pale bluish green. Plus something had happened to her jaw; it was no longer properly aligned, but veered dramatically to the right side. Just moving her mouth looked like it caused her a great deal of pain. Maybe that was why everyone called her Whisper.

  Lestat continued his quest, heading up the sandy incline, not thinking so much about the call he was going to make now, but remembering, getting lost in the experience of moving and being transitory, making his way through winding and graveled and mud-filled roads, looking out for the nearest gas station hoses, for back alley spigots, for the flashing lights of a speeding police car. Lestat had waited out thunderstorms in the dim game rooms of rural bowling alleys, and he'd trembled in the wake of semis going so fast they made the ground vibrate, shook the morning dew from the grass. One night that seemed not all that long ago, Lestat had found shelter in an abandoned shanty of a farmhouse that was situated right beneath a bunch of power lines. Another time he'd picked grapes with illegal aliens in a field for sixteen hours, receiving twenty bucks for his efforts. Lestat regularly followed delivery trucks at five in the morning, stealing newspapers the minute they'd been laid down on lawns; he stood on thoroughfare medians and sold those papers to morning commuters. Just about anywhere you went, the grocery stores left stacks of folded-up cardboard boxes right behind the trucker ramps, and if you made sure to have a box or two with you, then when you took a break and sat on the sidewalk, your ass would not get sore. Lestat kept a ninety-nine-cent black marker on hand so he could turn that supermarket cardboard into a sign that might help get him a ride, traveling on whims, traveling with specific purpose; staring out through a bus window at desolate landscapes, balling himself up in the back of pickup trucks and turning up the collar on his heavy peacoat. One memorable afternoon, Lestat had wandered a hiking trail in some unnamed forest, and the shafts of sunlight had poured down through the spaces between the leaves and branches, and the rustling wind had been loud enough to make him think a plane was taking off. Birds that he could
not see had had some sort of careless dialogue among themselves, and as Lestat had listened to them, he'd stared contemplatively at how moss was growing along the barks of fallen trees, and for a time, he'd felt a deep and abiding tranquility, a peace whose very idea under normal circumstances he would have denied and ridiculed; and the beauty of this peace had about justified everything Lestat had been through.

  But moments where the solitude actually worked for you, these were few and far between. When you were alone as much as a runaway was, you lived beneath the crushing weight and breadth of a freedom where there was nowhere specific to go, no one to turn to or rely on; a freedom without restraint or responsibility, that was both empowered and burdened by the realization that you did not matter. If you didn't keep yourself collected, something as random as the bright red innards of roadkill could send you spiraling. It got so bad that even with the day's paper right in front of him, Lestat still couldn't keep track of the day of the week. Meanwhile, there was no such thing as a fast-food assistant manager who was comfortable with a runaway stinking up his booth (no matter how many apple pies you bought, they didn't want you). Clerks shooed you out of quick marts; rental cops pulled you from department stores. The real pigs rousted you from park benches. You had to avoid the social workers, the Jesus freaks, and most important, the shelters for runaway teens—rumors circulated of girls raped, of brutal beatings, and on top of that, the guys who ran the place were inevitably pervs, they fondled boys. Arrest and juvenile detention centers were constant threats. Deportation loomed at the end of every distant siren. Time and all its emptiness worked against you, simultaneously propelling and chasing you. The best antidote Lestat had come up with, the only way to prevent all the threats from swallowing him, the only way to stop his experiences from fusing together, was to try to fully involve himself, to engage, utterly and completely, with whatever came his way. As Lestat humped and hitched rides and sat in doorways; as he waited for some guy to get back from someplace, to meet up with him, to direct him to some other guy who might put him up for a while (so long as he didn't mind sleeping on a floor); as he waited for the solution of his next meal or just for the rain to ease up, there was always the odd detail, the memory poem, not necessarily exciting, but involving: the next sentence of the letter he was composing in his head (to each parent, to every single one of his unrequited loves), the knot where a scam or swindle hadn't worked out so well, ins and outs, new twists and options and things he could have done differently.