Dear Life, You Suck (10 page)

Pop
.
Pop
.
Pop. Pop. Pop.

He started it and I’m the one getting booted square in the blame sack.

Pop. Pop. Pop
.
Pop. Pop. Pop.

LaChance knows goddamn well what woulda happened tomorrow if I had stopped at one punch.

Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop.

How the hell can he leave the whole shithole world flipped upside down with all them truth bubbles trapped inside?

Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop.

While Pitbull strolls off into the sunset with his tasty squeeze.

Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop.

Fuck that! I ain’t living in that world. Screw Pitbull. Screw LaChance. And screw this whole friggin’ school. Go ahead, kick me out. See if I care.

Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop.

“I’m telling you right now, Cricket. You’re not leaving this office until I get an explanation. We can sit here all night for all I care. I want to know what this fight was about, why you didn’t walk away, and why you attacked Buster so viciously after he was down. I want some answers right NOW, mister!”

POP. POP. POP. POP. POP. POP. POP. POP. POP. POP. SNAP.

I jump out of my seat and push my hood off. I step forward until my thighs are against LaChance’s faux-wood desk. I stare into his fat, hairy face. It’s a hard stare. The kind of stare that tells him what I’m thinking without words. His bulging blue eyes tell me he gets my meaning. I turn and head out the door.

In the hallway, an old framed photograph on the wall catches my attention. I lean in. It’s LaChance standing beside two rows of smiling kids. Well, they’re not all smiling. A dirty runt at the far end of the front row is scrunching a tough-guy scowl under the hood of his oversize Salvation Army sweatshirt.

My chest tightens and my forehead warms. Memories of drop-off day eight years ago flood my brain. The wrought-iron gate under the giant Naskeag Home for Boys sign. The granite gargoyles guarding the foyer. The rows of metal prison beds. The stainless-steel bathtub that looked like a giant mixing bowl. The click-click-click of the body snatcher’s heels marching past my bed in the middle of the night.

My heart starts thumping like it’s being pumped with too much blood. It feels like it might explode. I run down the hall, kick open the exit door, and run, run, run. I don’t stop running until I reach the driveway to the Prison three miles away.

Just before I reach the wide granite steps, an invisible broadsword hara-kiris my gut, so I bang a sharp left down the rhododendron trail to the cliffs. I’m not ready to face Mother Mary Mortified. She’s bound to know about the fight by now.

I drop my body onto the last boulder at the edge of a hundred-foot cliff and suck in the salty air. After catching my breath, I slip out my wallet and dig into the secret compartment for a flattened funk stick. I pinch it good with the tiny pliers on my Priss Army Knife that the generous Sisters of Mercy gave me last year for Christmas. If they only knew.
Have mercy.
Classic
.

I fire it up and recline on the comfy boulder. No better pollution on the planet than the commingling fumes of ocean and herb.

I movie-reel the fight in my mind. The first punch. The first kick. The thud, thud, thud of Pitbull’s head against the cobblestones.

Wynona’s hair. Wynona’s glare. Wynona’s scream.
Fuck you, asshole
.

I suck another toke and close my eyes.

Pitbull’s not the only one I obliterated today.

I feel a hard shove on my back, and I start slipping down the boulder over the edge of the cliff. I lunge my hands out to grab something, but the rock is smooth, and there’s nothing to hold on to. Black terror explodes inside me. My mind goes blank. I scream.

A hand grabs my sweatshirt and yanks me back up the boulder. I roll away from the edge and scramble to my feet.

Grubs is laughing like crazy, pointing at me. “Oh my God, I got you so fucking good, dude.”

I charge him and swing a wild right hook at his head. It connects on his chin and he drops like a sack of rice.

My entire body’s trembling. “That ain’t fucking funny, you fucking fuck!”

Grubs is on his back, holding his chin, still laughing. “Are you shitting me? That was the funniest damn thing I’ve ever seen.” He mimics my high-pitched scream. “Ahhhhhhhhh!”

“Fuck you, asshole.” I grab one of his feet and drag him toward the cliff. He starts laughing louder.

I throw his foot to the ground. “You really wouldn’t care, would you?”

He stands up and wiggles his chin with his hand. “What do I care? We all gotta die someday.” He punches me on the shoulder. “Nice shot. I didn’t even see it coming.”

I try to light the joint with my shaking hands. “You scared the shit out of me, man.” I finally get it lit, suck a giant toke, and pass it to Grubs.

He takes a hit and coughs a laugh. “Man, that was friggin’ funny.”

“Fuck you. I thought it was Buster Pitswaller come to settle the score.”

“Yeah, I heard you pummeled that big idiot today. Good job. Should make collecting easier. No one will dare mess with you now.”

I look away. I can feel Grubs staring at me.

“You need help with this dude?” he asks. “You think he’ll come after you with the whole football team or something?”

That’s exactly what I’m thinking. “Nah, I got it under control.”

“Well, let me know. Hey, can you get out tonight?”

The herb’s starting to mellow me out, and my body’s not shaking as bad. “Is there ever a night I can’t get out?”

Grubs smiles. “Good, ’cause I’m tapped, and I need to collect some dough. A bunch of idiots ain’t paid up.” He walks to the edge of the boulder. “Damn, it’s beautiful out here.”

The sea’s dappled black and sparkly under the late-day sun. There’s no horizon. No end to it all. I can relate.

I walk to the edge of the cliff.

I call this God Art. Not that I believe in the Dude. Frankly, I’m a Skepticalian. Still, it’s a good name on account of no one knows shit about Him, and that’s how I feel gazing at this supernatural scene. God Art. As opposed to Man Art, which is the copycat shit hanging in big city museums and rich folk’s foyers. It’s funny to think about. Poor-ass schleps like me get to view God Art every day, while rich-ass hoity-toits dangle million- dollar replicas over their bidets.
A Girl with a Watering Can
.

Grubs pulls a bottle of Southern Comfort from his pocket and takes a swig. “Damn, I guess if you gotta be incarcerated somewhere, you could do a hell of a lot worse than this.” He hands me the bottle. “Just looking at it makes you think about shit. Like about doing shit. You know what I’m saying, Cricks?”

I chug some Comfort. “Yeah, sorta. It’s the paradox of it that fucks me up, though.”

“Speak English, dickhead.”

I hand Grubs the bottle. “Beauty like this ain’t right. It ain’t supposed to be here.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“When I see a scene like this, all I can think is, how can something like
that
have anything to do with something like
this
.”

Grubs chugs a gulp and crinkles his face. “Something like what?”

I try to think of how to say what I’m thinking without sounding like a total dweeb, but I can’t. “Nothing.”

Grubs passes me the bottle. “You’re high, dude.”

What I want to tell him is that me and Art have a problem. The same way me and God have a problem. I mean, this scene is so
out
of this world, so inhuman and infinite, so boundless, so worthy and eternal. And human life is just so
not
. Yet I can’t deny a connection. An intermingling. A gravity. A pull. I mean, it sucks at my soul. Probably so it can digest me and shit me out when it’s done. That’s how the infinite makes me feel. Like a hunk of beef it’s gonna process and return to the dirt as fertilizer.

Art is supposed to engage and uplift, not enrage and set adrift. It’s supposed to peekaboo a glimpse of the possible, not flaunt a mural of the enormous chasm between me and it. But that’s what it does, so it’s wicked depressing. Scenes like this bum me out ’cause the boundless makes me think of the bounded.

“Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask you something,” Grubs says.

“What?”

“You got plans for next year?”

I imagine myself scraping skidmarks off the porcelain thrones at the Prison. “Yeah, I start pre-med at Harvard next fall.”

Grubs smiles. “Seriously though.”

“I’m weighing my options.”

“Weighing your options. That’s a good one. Naskeag ain’t got a scale small enough.”

I shrug. “No, I ain’t doing nothing. I asked Mother Mary if I could keep living at the Prison and work off my eats and sheets, but she hasn’t given me an answer yet. She has to clear it with the higher-ups. Why?”

“I’m thinking of expanding. Maybe start selling up in Bangor and Bar Harbor. They’re big-ass towns, so I could make a shit-ton of bread. But I can’t do it alone. I’d cut you in on the action. Then you wouldn’t have to stay at Nun Central. You could get your own place.”

Shit. Dealing
. I never thought about that. I would hate to get busted, though, and end up in a real prison.
Squeeeeaaaal
. But Grubs is pretty well connected with the local cops on account of he rats out the competition, so I’d probably be okay. My own place. That would be friggin’ awesome. “Sounds good.”

“Cool.” Grubs hands me the joint. “I gotta roll. Pick you up at ten fifteen?”

“Yeah, sure,” I say, but he’s already walking away.

I fire up what’s left of the blunt and think about Wynona. Talk about God Art. So infinitely unattainable.

I suck the last toke of the dead soldier and consign his ashy corpse to the briny deep. I can’t get Wynona’s words out of my head. They’re bouncing off my eardrums like a lame-ass rock ballad.

You’re a fight magnet, you know it’s true
You fight with every boy in school, get a clue
No one gets in as many fights as you
That’s why you have no girlfriend
And your balls are blue

Don’t judge me, you psychotic geek
And stop staring at my tits, you ugly freak
Take a high dive into Fisticuffin’ Creek
While I scale to the top of Popularity Peak

Why do you hate everyone so much?
Your maniacal detachment is nothing but a crutch
You’re a psycho loser

A drunk-ass boozer
A fucking stoner
A pathetic loner
Nothing but a fight magnet, yeah
A freaky loser fight magnet, yeah

I’m not mad at Wynona. I’m not even offended. What she said is true. In an outside-looking-in sort of way. Besides, a lot of what she said was probably in response to my remark about her dating Pitbull. Deep down, she has to know he’s an asshole. That she’s lying to herself. I called her on it, so of course she’s gonna attack me.

It’s not like I haven’t thought about the stuff she said. I’ve thought about trying to be more social, more outgoing, to make more of an effort. But I can’t. And it’s not because I don’t want to. It’s really not. Some of the kids here are okay. Most of them are dickheads, but some are okay. There’s a handful I could hang with. Maybe even be friends with.

But here’s the thing. I have a wall. It’s not an ordinary wall. Everyone has ordinary walls. My wall’s the friggin’ Great Wall of China.

I inch my feet closer to the edge. A gentle breeze pushes me back. The ocean swells rolling over the rocks remind me of my favorite God Art. Hurricanes. I don’t feel disconnected from them. I feel close. At home. Alive. As alive as a dead person can feel.

Okay, enough talk of God and Art. As Sean Connery would say,
“Here endeth the lesson.”

I spot her shadow but don’t turn. The endless desert of sea grants me permission to pretend she’s not there. To imagine her voice. To detach from the g-force of guilt that’s kept my feet planted here all these years. To imagine my responses. To pretend none of it’s real. None of it.

“Come in for dinner, Cricket,” Mother Mary says.

My stomach backflips. I dig in my pocket and twirl my ring, bracing for her hurricane of words.

“Andrew has a seat saved for you next to him.”

What the hell’s she playing at? How come she ain’t screaming?
I picture Andrew trembling against my chest in LaChance’s waiting room. I slip my ring onto a finger of my non-punching hand.

“I must admit, Cricket, I’m at a complete loss. I simply don’t know what to say. It’s all been said so many times. Too many times. Just come inside. We’ll deal with this tomorrow.”

I step to the edge of the cliff. Closer than usual. Too close. The thought of jumping squeezes my skull. I twist my ring.

I feel her massive blackness beside me. “Kinda late in the season for cliff diving. Water’s pretty nippy this time of year.”

I speak to an emptiness that makes infinity look like a pail of piss. “Water temperature wouldn’t matter. Full moon. Tide’s way out.”

She glances over the edge. “Oh my goodness. I guess you’re right. That’s one thing you can always count on in this place. High highs and low lows. No way around that.”

Clouds drift overhead and the sky darkens. “There’s one way.”

A starched rustle like wind over dead leaves. “That’s not a way.”

“How would you know?”

“I wasn’t born this old, Crick. I was seventeen once.” Fabric flaps like a flag in a storm. “Teenage years are like the full moon. They push and pull much more powerfully than at other times.”