Ferocity Summer

by Alissa Grosso

  Let’s talk about him. He was neither trim nor overweight. He was a man of some mass who carried it well. Shrouded beneath his clothing was a generous amount of flesh that could either be tubbiness or firm and solid muscle. Masking this mystery mass were some of the loudest clothes I had laid eyes on all day, all summer. In fact, aside from campy movies, I don’t think I’d ever seen someone dressed so absurdly. He wasn’t wearing a T-shirt. He wasn’t wearing jeans. Nor was the man wearing something that could be mistaken for business clothes. He wore a Hawaiian shirt—turquoise, green, and yellow swirled together in the pattern of palm trees and ocean waves. His pants were white. I was pretty confident I’d never seen a man wear white pants before, with the exception of the guys who pumped gas at Hess, but they didn’t have much of a choice in the matter.

  Whoever this man was, he was obviously lost.

  He entered the store. He walked to the beverage case. I watched him not only because he was the only customer in the store, but because there was something not right about him. As if the clothes weren’t enough, he refused to take his sunglasses off once inside, and there was also that way he carried himself. It made my stomach very uncomfortable. I slid my hand over to the little button underneath the counter, the button which would signal the local police force that something had gone horribly wrong at Johnny’s Quik Mart.

  Cold beads of sweat rolled down my armpits, despite the fact that my skin had broken out in a layer of goose bumps. My heart pounded loud and fast in my chest, like on one of those nights when I consume too much caffeine and am kept awake by every little noise I hear, when every little noise from the hum of the refrigerator to the wind blowing the trees outside signals that my worst nightmares have been brought to life. There was now two hours and fifty-seven minutes to go in my shift, but I wondered if I would ever see freedom. It seemed more likely that I would be brought down by a heart attack because some customer with poor fashion sense forgot to take off his sunglasses and couldn’t decide what he wanted to drink. I was not being paid enough for this job.

  Then, suddenly, a movement. He reached not for a gun, not for a machete, but for a bottle of iced tea. Well, what had I expected, after all? Had I expected him to take out a gun and start shooting up the beverage case? That would be ridiculous. What kind of whack job went around shooting up refrigerated beverage cases? No, the chances were better than good that if he was going to shoot up anything it was going to be me, and that it was going to be sometime after he asked me to hand over the money and was disappointed to learn that the entire contents of the cash register was a paltry $322.83. If I was lucky, he’d be a really bad shot, or have a tremor in his hand and the bullet would just graze my ear or take a chunk out of my shoulder.

  I licked my lips and tried not to look nervous. Criminals could sense fear, couldn’t they? Or was that dogs?

  He placed his bottle of sweetened, no-lemon iced tea on the counter.

  I picked it up, punched a few buttons on the register, and said, “A dollar twenty-nine.”

  “Tell me, Priscilla, why is it that things are always something-nine cents?” he asked.

  The bottle of sweetened, no-lemon iced tea plummeted from my hand to the linoleum floor where it shattered into a million and nine pieces, splashing iced tea just about everywhere, including on my shoes and bare legs. I couldn’t move. I had never introduced myself. I wasn’t wearing a name tag.

  He didn’t seem to mind about the spilled beverage nor about the fact that I seemed in some state of paralysis. He slapped $1.30 on the counter and walked out without getting his change, without getting his bottle of iced tea, shattered or otherwise.

  People called Sherman “Cump” for short. Tecumseh was his real first name. When he was a kid, his dad died and his mom couldn’t afford to take care of all the kids. So this rich family, the Ewings, adopted Sherman and then christened him William. A traveling preacher picked the name because the day of his christening was St. William’s Day, and the Ewings said it sounded good to them. How fucked up is that? I don’t think anyone ever called him William, at least no one who knew him.

  “Look, maybe he’s just some perv who walks into convenience stores and says weird shit to people,” Willow said as she smoked her cigarette. “People get off on the weirdest things. It’s a sick world.”

  “It wasn’t what he said that was weird, it was that he knew my name,” I repeated, still a bit dazed and jumpy.

  “So, like, maybe he’s somebody’s brother or uncle or something. I bet someone put him up to it. Shit, it was probably Randy. In fact, I’m sure it was. This is just his sort of sick humor.”

  “Randy doesn’t know anyone who owns a Hawaiian shirt.”

  “You’ve been screwing my brother for how long, and you haven’t caught on to the fact that he’s got some really loopy friends? It’s like he immerses himself in weirdos just so he can feel normal.”

  “Thank you,” I said, chewing nervously on the inside of my lip.

  “There’s reasons you’ll never be elected homecoming queen, but shit, it ain’t like I’m in the running either,” Willow added.

  “If it wasn’t Randy, then who?” I asked anxiously.

  “I’m telling you, it was Randy. It’s got his name written all over it.”

  As it turned out, Willow was right about Mr. Something-Nine Cents being saturated in Randy, but interestingly enough, Randy didn’t know anyone who owned a Hawaiian shirt, let alone a pair of white pants.

  “Since when don’t you like chicken nuggets?” my mom asked.

  “I said I’m just not hungry, all right?”

  I rolled around the small balls of breaded processed chicken on my plate. I would not look up to meet my mother’s gaze. If only she would just shut up and leave me alone, then I wouldn’t have to feel more nauseated than I already did, but I knew that there was more chance of an eleven-foot iguana falling out of the sky and landing on my dinner plate than there was of my mother keeping her peace.

  “Maybe you’ve been eating so many meals over at the Jenkinses’ that you’ve lost your taste for low-brow cooking,” she said.

  “They eat pizza and potato chips,” I said without looking up.

  “What kind of potato chips?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Look, you think because you’re seventeen you can get away with pulling this attitude shit on me. Don’t deny it. I know how your teenage mind works.”

  “It’s not an attitude,” I said looking up from my plate. I put down my fork. “I’m just not hungry. I don’t feel so great!”

  The last part came out as a shout, and I stood and left the room with haste, retreating to the seclusion of my bedroom where I could still hear my mother shouting at me.

  “You think I don’t know what it’s like to be seventeen? You think you’re the first teenager who ever lived? If you think you’re gonna throw this teenage angst shit at me, then I got news for you!”

  I flipped on the window fan and leaned in close, so that the breeze hit me in the face and the whirring noise blocked out my mother’s shouting.

  June

  Hey,” Willow said, “you think you could loan me like fifty bucks?”

  “Like I have fifty bucks,” I said. We were sitting outside on her back deck absorbing vitamin D and UV rays, trying to imagine we were just carefree high school girls working on our tans.

  “What, they don’t pay you at that place?”

  “I have to give it to my mom,” I explained. “She’s got this savings-account-type deal so I can go to school or buy a car or something.”

  “You don’t even get your own paycheck? What the hell is wrong with her?”

  I shrugged. I was pissed at Willow and I didn’t know why. Okay, maybe it had something to do with the fact that I spent my summer at some shit job and Willow goofed off while collecting a nice fat weekly allowance, yet she still had the nerve to beg money off of me.

  “Let’s go to the beach or something,” I said. I was tired of
moping around her backyard.

  “Why?” Willow asked.

  “We can go swimming.”

  “I need money.”

  “You could get a job,” I said.

  “You sound like my fucking father. Let’s go whip up some lunch.”

  A few minutes later, I lugged out the blender while Willow lined up a variety of alcoholic beverages on the counter. She pulled an entire six-pack of wine coolers from the fridge.

  “Midge told me I could have one anytime I wanted,” Willow said. “Do you think she’ll be pissed if we use them all?”

  “We don’t need them all.” I looked at the counter with the vodkas, the rum, the gin, and the daiquiri mix. “What about the solid-food portion of our lunch?”

  “You have absolutely no sense of adventure.” Willow began randomly pouring bottles into the blender. She tossed in some ice. “Let’s give it a whirl,” she said, reaching for the button.

  “You’ve got to put the lid on,” I said, but it was too late. A tsunami of pinkish drink spewed forth and sprayed over me and half the kitchen. Willow stayed clean except for a few drops. She poured the remaining blender contents into plastic cups, and we drank while we cleaned. The cabinets, the countertops, and the floor needed to be scrubbed. My shirt and the kitchen curtains got thrown in the washing machine.

  “You can borrow one of Randy’s shirts,” Willow generously offered.

  I waded through the mess of his bedroom, feeling slightly guilty at the idea of violating his personal space. The top drawer of his dresser held socks and underwear. I shut it and yanked open the second drawer. I froze. Jesus.

  The second drawer of Randy’s dresser was filled—completely stuffed—with marijuana. I actually touched it, to confirm it wasn’t some sort of bizarre hallucination brought on by my liquid lunch. I stared at it, expecting to realize the ridiculous mistake I’d made. But the marijuana didn’t metamorphosize into a pile of T-shirts. It was one hundred percent real.

  What the hell was Randy doing with this much marijuana? Was he planning the mother of all parties, a party that he hadn’t yet bothered to invite me to? But I knew the answer. What other answer could there be? No way on earth this could be for personal consumption. Even a diehard stoner would be overwhelmed by such a bounty. As for parties, Randy had never been much of a social butterfly. If I was a member of law enforcement, I would have clearly identified this as Possession with the Intent to Distribute.

  “What are you doing up there?” Willow yelled. “Reading his diary?”

  I turned around and suddenly she was there, standing in his doorway. I couldn’t let her see this. She didn’t know it was here. I slammed the drawer closed.

  “What?” she asked. She walked into the room.

  “Nothing,” I said. I felt jumpy and nervous. I couldn’t let her see inside that drawer.

  She started walking over to the dresser. I remembered the original reason for my foray into Randy’s bedroom. Perhaps drawer number three held T-shirts, or perhaps it too was stuffed with pot or God knew what. I didn’t dare open it. I looked around and saw something vaguely T-shirt-like on the floor a few feet away. I grabbed for it and pulled it on. It smelled like pizza, but I didn’t care.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Willow asked. “You look like you saw a fucking ghost.”

  “Oh, it was just, um, some porn magazines.”

  “Whatever floats your boat,” she said. “Midge found one once under his bed when he was thirteen, and she thought the depictions were not very tasteful so she bought him this art book of erotic photography for Christmas. My father didn’t know until Randy opened it Christmas morning, and he blew a head gasket. They had a big fight. He took the book away and donated it to the library. Under the cover of darkness. In the bookdrop.”

  “She had good intentions,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Willow said. “Yeah. She always does.”

  June

  Stuck behind the counter of Johnny’s Quik Mart on a pleasantly overcast summer day, I had little better to do than ponder Randy Jenkins’ second dresser drawer. I wondered if he had a plan. If he sold it all, would he be able to buy that new life he had his eye on? Perhaps he could, in Mexico or Canada or someplace far more remote. I hated him and envied him at the same time. The bastard could have at least told me what he was cooking up.

  Who the hell did he think I was, anyway? Was I just some stupid accessory in his life’s wardrobe? I wanted to know where he was going. I wanted to go with him.

  No. No, that wasn’t it. I wanted to be a million miles away from Randy Jenkins. I wanted to be a million miles away from Johnny’s Quik Mart and this whole piece-of-crap life I’d been trapped in for so long, but it wasn’t as if I was doing a damn thing about it. Working at the convenience store would never earn me enough money to buy a new life, even if I didn’t have to fork most of it over to my mom for this mysterious savings account she had for me.

  Randy knew that playing by the rules was for suckers. That’s why the Comstock Lode of marijuana was sitting in his bedroom waiting to be turned into cold hard cash. If I wanted out, if I really wanted out, then I needed to step up and do something about it.

  “Pack of smokes.”

  The mumbling voice pierced my self-absorption. I looked up to see a young guy with tattooed arms and shifty-looking eyes. I’d never seen him before. He wore an oversized sweatshirt, which even with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows seemed like a strange choice in this heat. I noticed he had thrown down a crumpled wad of money on the counter. He was fumbling with something in the front pocket of his sweatshirt and nervously shifting his weight from one foot to the other. He radiated unease, and I, in turn, felt very uncomfortable. My fingers lingered near the panic button; maybe he was just an underage kid with a bad habit, or maybe he was working up the courage to blow my brains out.

  “What brand?” I asked.

  The guy glanced nervously over his shoulder. I didn’t like this one bit. I glanced through the nearly plastered-over front windows. There was an old beater of a car parked out there, a black teenage girl behind the wheel. This is not a part of New Jersey exactly brimming with diversity, so her dark skin alone was enough to make me think that whoever this pair was, they weren’t from around here. But whether they were Bonnie and Clyde or just two day-tripping young lovers from Passaic or East Hanover or some other place where the KKK would never even think of holding a rally, I couldn’t say.

  “Oh, Marlboros,” the guy said, still doing his little dance. Maybe he just had to pee. “Menthols.”

  I turned around to retrieve the requested cigarettes. My hand was shaking and it was hard to slide the box free. I didn’t like having my back to this guy. I didn’t like being so far from our panic button.

  “Prissy Scilla!”

  The shout sliced through the uneasy silence. I let out a yelp and dropped the pack of cigarettes. I spun around to see the would-be cigarette buyer running out the door, his crumpled wad of money still sitting on the counter, and Saint Joe Bullock jock-walking into the store with a harem of three cheerleader-slut hangers-on. I didn’t bother to acknowledge his greeting. In the parking lot there was a squeal of tires as the old beater pulled out onto the highway.

  “Is poor, poor Scilla earning her bail money?” Joe asked.

  No reason existed why anyone in their right mind should like Joe Bullock, and yet for some inexplicable reason, people did. In second grade, he dared Sandra Lane to kiss his little-boy dick on the school playground. She was branded a cocksucker almost instantly, the nickname and its connotations staying with her through eighth grade, when she disappeared from school either to enter an insane asylum or an all-girls school in the Midwest; the rumors were never clear. In sixth grade, Joe defaced a fellow student’s art project with a box-cutter, which led to the permanent dismissal of our art teacher on the grounds that she had no control over her students. The eventual result was that the school board decided to permanently cut art from our curriculum, claiming t
hat it was a waste of money. By the time we’d reached high school, Joe had acquired divine status, revered by fellow students and teachers alike. He remained an obnoxious prick.

  His little posse roamed through the aisles of the store, whispering and snickering amongst themselves. I ignored them to the best of my ability.

  “Hey dyke-breath!” Joe yelled from the snack-food aisle. “How about giving a school chum a five-finger-you discount. I’ll make it worth your while.”

  A few seconds later, Joe and the girls emerged, the girls giggling moronically. “Oh, Priscilla,” Joe moaned as he clutched his crotch. “I’m just burning with desire for you. I don’t think I can take it any more. Oh, Scilla.” He reached down his pants and pulled out a still-wrapped Twinkie. He stroked it suggestively. The girls giggled some more. I looked down at the cash register keys. “I’m gonna come! I’m gonna come right here in the store!” With that, he squeezed the Twinkie package and creamy innards burst forth, spraying, among other things, the side of my face.

  I wiped it off with my sleeve. Then I walked away. I walked into the back room, where Gill Ecks sat on a milk crate smoking a cigarette. I handed him my register keys.

  “I’m not getting paid enough for this shit,” I said. “I quit.”

  I didn’t give him a chance to respond. I walked out the back door and nearly right into a Lincoln Town Car, driven by a certain Hawaiian-shirt-clad man.

  When life sucks, it really sucks.

  Back in April

  The letter from the public defender’s office and the marquee on the office door listed my court-appointed attorney as S. Louise Killdaire. First of all, I wondered what the “S” stood for. Second of all, I wondered if it really could be more objectionable than “Louise” as a chosen name. How bad could it be? I spent a lot of time conjuring up loathsome “S” names but could only produce Sugar, Salsa, and Sable, which to my knowledge weren’t names at all. So I missed most of the introductory remarks that S. Louise made to us in our first meeting, and I didn’t ask her my one burning question.