Dear Life, You Suck (15 page)

Mother Mary’s face is expressionless, but I can tell she wants to pick up her desk and smash it over my head. “I told you to watch your language, Cricket. I won’t stand for it.”

“Well, you’re acting like dudes who lived two thousand years ago are more important than Andrew Pendleton.”

“I’m not saying they’re more important than Andrew. I’m just saying Jesus didn’t go around beating people up to get them to accept his beliefs. And neither did his disciples.”

“Well, maybe they should have. I mean, they got stoned and burned to death and crucified. You saying you’d let someone burn up little Andrew if you saw it happening?”

“No, I’m not saying that, and you know it.”

“So you’d defend Andrew if someone tried to hurt him?”

“Of course I would. Just not with violence.”

“With what, then? A fucking prayer?”

“Watch your mouth, Cricket!”

“Well, you’re being a hypocrite. You’re saying you’d help Andrew, but not if you had to use violence. What if violence was the only way?”

“Violence is never the only way. Jesus was very clear about that! He never laid a hand on a living soul! Not even his worst enemies!”

“Yeah, and they nailed him to a fucking tree on account of it!”

Mother Mary’s face is beet red. “Jesus’ death was ordained by his Father. Jesus said so himself.”

“Then Jesus’ father was an asshole!”

Mother Mary pushes herself to her feet and slaps me across the face. Hard.

I stare at her. My cheek stings.

She’s huffing like a bull.

“What the fuck you do that for?”

“You want me to do it again?”

“I don’t give a fuck.”

“Leave my office right now, Cricket!”

I overturn my chair and head for the door. “I thought violence was never the way.”

I hear her fist slam the desk. “Sit down, Cricket.”

“Screw this. I’m outta here.”

“Sit down right now!” she screams.

I pick up my chair and sit.

She pushes the pad of paper aside and rubs her forehead for about a month. “Cricket, you have to understand something. You are the only male role model these kids have. What you do and what you say resonates with them. They look up to you. They learn more from you by example than they will ever learn from books and speeches.”

“Good. Then they can learn that you don’t mess with other people just because you’re older or stronger.”

“Cricket, violence is a temporary solution.”

“Oh, really? You think Pitbull will ever come after me again?”

“No, I don’t think Pitbull will ever come after you again.”

“See?”

“But he will come after someone. Someone weaker than you. He will exact his revenge on someone.”

“He knows what he’ll get if he does.”

“You won’t be around forever, Cricket.”

A knot clenches my gut.

“You’d be helping the Little Ones a lot more if you tried to teach them real-life solutions to real-life problems.”

A few years back, I took a baseball bat to the vegetable garden one night. I’ll never forget the looks on the Little Ones’ faces when they saw the plants all busted up the next morning. Turns out they helped plant them. Made me wanna puke. “The Little Ones ain’t my problem.”

“I know that, Cricket.”

Jesus, she has a way of saying shit that twists my insides.

She rips the yellow sheet off the pad and slides it to me. “By the way . . .” She pauses.

Oh Christ, what now?

“I spoke with the Diocese. They have denied your request to remain living here after you turn eighteen.”

My chest tightens. I twist my ring. Guess I’ll have to deal for Grubs. Or fight for Caretaker. Or grow a set of nads and take the not-so-easy way out.

“Perhaps if you had taken my essay assignment a little more seriously instead of choosing to be a smartass, Monsignor Dobry would have been more open to the idea. Your Virgin Mary hypothesis did not go over well with him.”

My face must be movie-reeling my thoughts.

“Don’t worry, Cricket. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

Don’t you mean jump off that bridge when we come to it?
An image of Colonel Saito from
Bridge on the River Kwai
flashes in my mind.
“A word to you about escape. There is no barbed wire. No stockade. No watchtower. They are not necessary. We are an island in the jungle. Escape is impossible. You would die.”

I pick up my to-do list and leave.

I don’t have much time to mull over the historically bad news I just received, because when I walk out the front door, something stabs me in the eyes sharper than Mother Mary’s dagger in my back. It’s Wynona Bidaban. Gliding up the driveway like a daydream come to life. So much for getting any chores done.

She stops when she sees me. Just like in Principal LaChance’s waiting area. Except today she’s
sans
scowl. She isn’t smiling, but she isn’t snarling either. She looks nervous. Like she’s worried I might hurl a Japanese fighting star at her forehead. She’s got her bike with her and she’s wearing tight denim cutoffs that remind me of a
Dukes of Hazzard
poster Grubs has hanging in his apartment. Her white cotton tank top has trouble written all over it. Trouble with a capital T. Two capital Ts, actually. How the hell am I gonna keep my eyes off those puffy marshmallow delights?

I stroll toward her like a suave, no-cares movie star. I have no idea what’s propelling my legs. I must have a goofy expression on my face, because she giggles and shakes her head.

Once I’m beside her bike, my suava guava melts to grape jam, so I swipe some dead bugs off her reflector. She’s staring at me with her mouth open like I just pole-vaulted over the Prison.

“What?” I ask.

She wrinkles her bunny nose and squints. “You look different. Way different from at school.”

I am different. Way different. It’s about time you noticed
.

She looks down at the gravel between us like she’s reading a message.

I’m glad to see you
.
I’m glad you came
. “What are you doing here?”
Shit, that came out wrong. Cold and rude.

“Well, I just, uh . . . I was riding around and I . . .”

“I mean, it’s cool. People come here all the time. To tour the gardens and stuff.”
Shit, now I sound like a friggin’ tour guide. The Prison was built in 1854 to house retarded, never-gonna-get-laid high school vampires.

“Oh, that’s cool. I didn’t know.” She erases the message with the tip of her pink sneaker.

Come on, Crick, pull it together.
“You want me to show you around or something?”

“Oh, sure. That’d be nice.”

I start walking toward the trail between the giant rhododendrons.
Shit, maybe I should have let her go first. Now she definitely thinks I’m a dickhead. No, she can’t go first. She doesn’t know the way
. I wish she did. I wouldn’t mind hankering a hypnaughtyc stare at the back of those huggy Daisy Duke shorts. That’d be one hell of a sweet view. Sweeter than anything I’m gonna show her on this pussytoe trek. (It’s a plant, dirty birds.)

Her footsteps sound tentative, like she’s tiptoeing on Cheerios.

When we get to the end of the trail it opens onto a flat boulder at the edge of the cliffs and she gasps like she’s stepped on a nail. “Oh my God, what a gorgeous view.”

I gawk into her happy face. It’s glowing like there’s a five-hundred-watt light bulb inside her head.
This one’s pretty spectacular too
.

She steps to the edge.

“Don’t jump. The nuns will think I pushed you.”

She giggles.

As she gazes at the awe-inspiring panorama, I ogle her erection-inspiring assorama. It’s breathtaking. Stimulating. Surreal. The most uplifting God Art I’ve ever seen. I don’t get to enjoy the view for long because I notice a trickle of blood on her calf.

“You have a cut on your leg. Want me to run to the house and get some hydrogen peroxide and a Band-Aid?”

She turns and smirks like I asked her if she wants a lollipop. “No, that’s nothing. Happens all the time. Just a flesh wound.”

I raise my eyebrows. “You are indeed brave, Sir Knight.”

“Oh my God, you got that? No one ever gets my Python references.”

I try to think of another funny Python line, but her big smile and happy eyes have me tongue-tied.

She turns and steps closer to the edge. My stomach tingles. No one ever stands that close. No one except me.

She sits and dangles her legs. I sit on her right, not too close, my chest buzzing like there’s a swarm of bees in my lungs.

She’s not talking, which is cool. Most girls would be jabbering a mile a minute. I can’t hear her breathing over the crash of the waves, but I can see her chest rising and falling out of the corner of my eye. Like the sea’s tugging at her, and she’s tugging back.

She’s breathing deep and smooth like she’s doing yoga or preparing for one final high dive into the great unknown.
What the hell? That’s my gig
.

“I didn’t come here to tour the gardens.” She hurls the statement at the waves like she’s trying to lasso something.

My heart dangles from her words like a chimp on a tire swing.

She looks at my face. “I came here to see you. To apologize for yesterday.”

I raise my right hand and pretend to scratch an itch on my cheek.

She looks down at her hands, so I stare at her face. She looks different today. Like maybe she cut her hair or isn’t wearing makeup or something.

“I feel terrible about the things I said to you. How I called you those names and stuff. I didn’t mean any of it. And then that little kid came running out and started hugging you and I . . .” She turns her head, like something in the ocean has caught her attention. She pulls on her ponytail and sniffs. “Well, it just made me realize I don’t know you.
Know you
know you, I mean. I don’t know anything about you. I feel so bad about what I said. The mean stuff. That’s not me, I swear. I don’t know what came over me. Well, I sorta do, but still that’s no excuse. I think it was just the whole fight thing, and I was looking for someone to blame, so I didn’t have to face . . . some stuff . . . I’ve been avoiding. Boyfriend stuff. Buster stuff. I mean, you said it, but I wasn’t going to listen to you, the guy who just bashed up my boyfriend.” She freezes like there’s an interruption in her Internet connection. “Why do I keep saying that?
Boyfriend
.
Paaahh
. I think I was madder at myself than you, but I wasn’t ready to admit it. This is stupid. I’m sure you don’t even care about this, and why would you, but I’m usually pretty good at being straight with myself and not playing games and not caring about popularity and what people think and stuff, but recently I . . .” She sucks in a bunch of air and holds her hands up in front of her like she’s ordering the ocean to stay back.

All I can think about is the
paaahh
. She
paaahh
ed Pitbull.

“I swore I wasn’t going to do this. I swore I wasn’t going to get emotional.”

Chicks are funny. They’re always saying stuff out loud that they’re supposed to keep inside. It makes me feel like I should say something out loud. Something I’m supposed to keep inside. “It’s no big deal. I wasn’t mad or anything. Everything you said is true.”

She looks at me and grabs my arm. “No, it wasn’t. It wasn’t true at all. It was stupid and mean. You’re not a freak or any of that stuff I said.” Suddenly she sounds like Mother Mary.

Her hand is warm on my goosebumpy skin. “How can you be so sure? Like you said, you don’t know me. Maybe I am a freak.” Her gaze warms my cheek. I wonder how she’ll respond. Honest or nice.

She lets go of my arm and turns her head away. My cheek cools.

“I guess you’re right. I don’t know you.” She lowers her voice to a goofy, guttural growl. “Maybe you’re like some psychotic murderer.”

My throat constricts.
Maybe is right, babycakes
.

She snaps back to perky and pleasant. “But I think I’m right. Seeing you yesterday with that little kid and seeing you here today, in your own element. I don’t know, call it a woman’s intuition.”

A tingle tickles the back of my neck.

“It must be cool to live here. To have all this in your backyard,” she says.

Wynona is like a tiny door in my Great Wall of China. “Yeah, it’s pretty sweet. I come out here a lot. Especially at night.”

“That must be awesome. And the wildlife must be killer.”

“A lot of African swallows,” I say, quoting Monty Python.

“Oh, really? Carrying coconuts, I presume.” Cool. She gets it.

“Migratory coconuts.”

“A swallow carrying a coconut?”

“It could grip it by the husk.”

We both laugh.

She tilts her head and stares at me with a different kind of stare. Maybe I look different to her too. Or maybe . . . I scratch my cheek and turn away.

I feel her fingers on my chin. She tries to turn my face toward her, but I jerk my head away.

“It’s not that noticeable. Honestly, I’m not just saying that.” She raises her fingers.

I block them with my hand.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers.

I have this weird feeling she’s about to ask me about it. Like how it happened. “We see whales here in the summer. It’s pretty cool,” I say.

“Wow, that must be awesome. I’ve seen them from boats but never from shore.”

“They’re pretty far out and you need binoculars, but it’s still cool. You should come by during the summer, and I’ll show you.”
It’s September, retard. She’ll hate you by Halloween
.

She doesn’t say anything, which convinces me that what I just said was totally stupid. She’s staring at my face again, but I can tell she’s not looking at me. She’s looking beyond me. Like I’m one of those 3-D drawings, and she’s waiting for a hidden fairy-tale castle or werewolf to emerge. As much as it feels like she’s not seeing me, I have this itchy sensation she’s seeing more of me than anyone ever has. Even me.

Wynona’s really pretty, but not the kind of pretty you see in magazines. It’s not like she’s goofy-looking or anything, but her face is long, and her eyes are far apart, and her eyebrows are thick, and her nose is skinny, and her lips are puffy, and her chin sticks out. I know I’m not describing her good because now it sounds like I’m lusting after an orangutan, but she really is pretty, just in a not-so-perfectly-balanced kinda way.