Hissers (4 page)

“What’s she saying?” Nicole asked.

“She wants to know what I’m wearing to the party? God, she’s so ridiculous.”

“Why can’t she decide for herself?”

Amanita began texting to Alicia yet, true to teenage girl form, started talking about her at the same time. “Oh my frigging God, did you hear what she said about Mandy the other day? She’s such a bitch sometimes. But, that’s why I love her.”

Nicole was all ears. “Mandy Robinson? No, what?”

“So get this. She was IMing Danielle Riccard last week and Danielle said Mandy said that Alicia should go to the sale at Forever 21 because they had these tattoo shirts that are way better than the ones Alicia bought at Hot Topic, which she said look like they were found in a trash can, and Alicia got all pissed and called Mandy a fat, nappy-haired cow and—-hang on, she’s texting back—ok, so it turns out fucking Mandy was sitting right next to Danielle! So Mandy posted a comment on Alicia’s Myspace about how Alicia shops at the Salvation Army, which she actually used to do when she was young because her mom was poor because her dad left for some crackwhore—no offense to your mom, who you know I love, and I meant that for the dad-leaving part not the crackwhore part—and took all their money and Alicia had lice in her hair—I think I remember that happening in like second grade—and anyway where am I—oh yeah she put up a picture of Alicia in this totally ghetto outfit from when she was young but photoshopped her head on it now. It’s actually pretty funny but I think David Moore did the photoshopping because he’s like in love with her and would do it for her, which is sad because Alicia kind of likes David, too. So Mandy said she was gonna kick Alicia’s ass next time she saw her and I think she’s going to be at the party tonight. I’m telling her I’m wearing jeans and a tank top. Should I wear those black stilettos I got, you think?”

Only teenage girls can follow so many thoughts without getting lost and Nicole was true to form.

“Well, Mandy did gain some weight,” Nicole replied. “She eats those pretzels at the mall like it’s the end of the word. She has a bad carb addiction. And Alicia’s shirts really are kinda skanky. And I’m just wearing my Nikes so if you wear heels then I have to and I don’t want to. Plus we’re gonna be meeting with Connor first so I’d just wear sneakers.”

“Crap, I forgot about that. Way to ruin my mood again.”

A football suddenly landed in between them. One of the boys from the other end of the grass field came over to retrieve it. He was wearing running shorts and a gray t-shirt. Sweat ringed his armpits and neckline. “Hi, girls,” he said. Like most boys, his eyes seemed to linger on Amanita. “Sorry about that.” He hefted the football. “It got away from me.”

“Doubt it,” Nicole said.

The boy looked confused. “Excuse me?”

“We saw you playing earlier. The trajectory of your throw would’ve had to change a full ninety degrees in our direction with increased velocity to get the ball over here. Even with a strong gust of wind blowing in our direction, with the weight of that ball, the angle of difference would at most be ten degrees. Ergo, you did it on purpose.” She could see his friend walking over now behind him and knew she was right.

“My friend is all smart and stuff,” Amanita added. She saw the boy staring at her but made no attempt to cover up. Instead she lit another cigarette and blew the smoke at him. It dissipated before it got anywhere near him, but the gesture had been made.

“Just wanted to come say hi. Jeez, forget it.” He turned and intercepted his friend’s approach, said something under his voice, and they both went back to where they’d been playing earlier.

“He was kind of cute,” Amanita said. “Think he’ll be there tonight?”

“I hope not.”

The two girls laid in silence for the next couple of hours, letting the summer sun bronze their bodies. Nicole thought of what she’d say to Connor later. She really hoped he would come with them to the party. She’d had a crush on him for so long now, and she swore tonight she would finally muster the courage to tell him. Hopefully Amanita wouldn’t screw it all up.

Saturday, 3:40pm

The fort had been a town institution for generations. Built to the blueprints of a bad dream and haphazardly nailed together by what was no doubt a team of blind imps, the contraption made the House of Usher look like Buckingham Palace. A series of twelve palettes formed the main chamber, while broken pickets, bundled tree branches, a few squares of plywood and some torn-up rug created additional crawlspaces. Two leather bucket car seats that looked like they’d lost a fight with a panther were the prime accommodations. A wooden spool served as a table between them.

Over the years it had gone through some changes. Posters were stapled up and torn down, holes had been cut in the roof for smoking and then mended with strips of rubber tile, an additional chamber built of broken up bookcases had housed a couple of mattresses before someone realized they were infested with bugs and trucked them away before the CDC could get involved. That chamber had then been torn down in an attempt to create a fire pit, which was later lined with a tarp, filled with water and covered with twigs as a makeshift booby trap. The hole had long since been filled in, but bits of the tarp still poked out of the ground.

The surrounding trees were scarred with initials, marking the passage of the fort’s ownership over time. Many had plus signs and jagged hearts between them, but to this day no one knew who had first built the fort. Some believed hippies had erected it during the Vietnam War as a place to hide against the authorities after protests and sit-ins. Others claimed it was the hideout for satanic cult members in the 80s, who stole neighborhood cats and sacrificed them during occult rituals.

Connor’s dad said that it was just a place some kids he went to school with built so they could have a place to make out with girls, and that he should stay away from it because it was dirty and probably infested with diseases. Connor seemed to think this was the best explanation, and of course neither he nor Seth stayed away. In fact, they were the only ones in town who seemed to come up here anymore. It was the perfect place to chill and hide away from idiots like Jason Drake, who was always out looking to start trouble with other kids.

Besides, there was a collection of porno mags from the ‘90s still lying around so it was easier to view this porn than trying to bypass the parental controls on the computers in their homes. They knew the magazines were from the ‘90s because the women had a lot of hair down there, and they never had any hair on the Internet nowadays.

Seth sat in one of the car seats and took the batteries from Connor. He put them in the back of the PSP’s external charger (the internal one usually died right in the middle of a game) and started playing a World War 2 shooter. “I’ve got it saved on the battle of Bastogne,” he said. “I can’t get past the effing Panzer tanks.”

Connor made a half-hearted attempt to suggest a strategy but the truth was he didn’t really care. He’d been thinking about Nicole since they’d left the 7-Eleven. He felt weird around her. She was not bad looking but he’d never really thought about her in that way before, like a girlfriend. But today he’d sort of felt…different. He suddenly wanted to know what kind of stuff she liked. Did she like video games, too, and if so which ones. Did she know how to play first person shooters or online role playing games? Did she even have an Xbox or a gaming PC? He’d have to ask her later if she showed up.

That thought made his palms sweat. What if she really
did
show up? What were they supposed to talk about if she didn’t play video games or watch baseball? More importantly, what if she
didn’t
show up. Would that mean he pissed her off?

Man, girls are so frigging weird!

“Fuckballs!” Seth slammed his fist on his knee. “That stupid tank! Every time. Hey, are you listening to me?”

“Yeah. Panzer tanks. Can’t you find a bazooka or something?”

“No. All they give you is a BAR. They don’t even give you a sticky grenade. If I had something to take the tank’s treads out…but I don’t think the developers animated the treads to break. What if I use a claymore?”

Connor looked through the hole in the pallet that formed the south wall. He could see the woods around them, could see the edge of the hill that ran down toward the town park. It sounded like a game was happening on one of the fields.

“I wonder if Nicole and Amanita are down there. Think we could see them?”

Seth hit pause on the game and shot an angry look at his friend. “Who cares? They’re stupid.”

“No they’re not. Nicole is cool, at least.”

“Amanita is a bitch and I hate how she looks down on me. She looks down on everyone like her shit don’t stink or something. Tucker said she blew on his dick in the bathroom.”

“Blew on his dick?”

“Yeah, something like that. Who knows. Tucker also said she said that video games are for nerds. I mean, she’s an idiot. Does she even know what kind of dexterity it takes to play this game? I’d like to get her in an online death match and see how smart she in then. Why is Nicole even friends with her?”

Connor shrugged. “They used to live next door to each other. I guess they just get along. You can always ignore her.”

“So then you’re gonna go with Nicole tonight?”

Connor resumed looking through the hole in the pallet. All he could see were trees. He wanted to go out and make his way over to the edge of the trees and look down on the fields, see if he could see the girls down there. But he knew Seth would be upset. “No, I’m not going. We don’t need to go to some lame party to be cool.”

Seth returned to playing his game. “Actually, we do. But they wouldn’t let us be cool even if we went. I mean, I’ll understand if you wanna go. I know I’m the reason you weren’t invited in the first place. They don’t like you because of me.”

Connor turned back to him. “Don’t say that.”

“Well, it’s true. Seth the Donut Boy, Slim Seth, Waddle Butt, Spherical Seth…Fat Ass. I hear it all.”

“Nobody says that.”

“Yeah, I’m an idiot. I make it up. They all call me that, I don’t even care. I was born fat and it’s in my family genes, I can’t help it. But you know what, I kick ass at video games and when I’m a million dollar developer they’ll all be regretting it. When they’re working at Burger King and I have my own private jet, we’ll see who laughs.”

“If you get a private jet you better let me fly it.”

“Of course.” Seth kept his eyes on the game as he talked. “We’ll fly to Vegas for the world championship Halo tournament, we’ll fly to Los Angeles for E3,and we’ll have a hideout like this in a cave in Hawaii.”

Connor looked around the dirty fort, glanced at the torn and crumpled porno mags, black strips of rug that were once red, discarded batteries from a summer’s worth of handheld gaming, and yellowed bits of paper and God knew what else that had found a home here years ago. “Like this?”

“Well, not like this place, but a fort with defense systems and eye scanners and an emergency helicopter escape pad.”

“Sounds sweet. Sign me up.”

A silence passed between them for a minute and then Seth swore as his character was killed. He put the PSP down. “I’m serious, though, if you want to go tonight you can. I won’t be mad. I have this clan on Halo 3 I want to try out for anyway.”

It was hard to tell in the dim light of the fort’s interior, but it almost looked like Seth might cry. Connor sometimes thought about what it must feel like to be the butt of fat jokes all the time. It didn’t help that even he made cracks now and then. Hearing Seth now, seeing his downcast eyes, it started to really sink in.

“I said I’m not going. Maynard tried to run me over. I don’t care if Nicole is going, nothing could make me go to that party.”

“I’m sorry I make you unpopular. It’s not like I planned this when I met you.”

“Seth, you don’t make me—”

“
Yes, I do!
”

Connor could see Seth really was on the verge of tears now.

“All the girls talk about you, Connor. They like you. You score goals all the time in soccer, you get put on the front line, you’re a fast runner and thin and you’re in the honors classes. You’d be way more popular than you are if you didn’t hang around with me. I’m just a fat fuck who people like to throw food at. Everyone hates me.”

“No, they don’t.”

“Just stop. I know they do. I’m a joke. Even God hates me. Look what He did to me when He took my sister! He hates me!”

And there it was, the real catalyst for this sudden spiral into depression and self loathing. Like always, Connor didn’t know what to say when Seth started talking about his sister. What
could
he say? What did you tell a boy who’s sister had been kidnapped right in front of him. They didn’t teach this stuff in school, and it was not a topic generally covered by cartoons or MTV reality shows.

“Wasn’t your fault,” he mumbled. The words felt so hollow and meaningless.

Seth waved him off, picked up the PSP again. “Yeah yeah, I know. Eight years of therapy and all I know is it wasn’t my fault. It doesn’t make Mom and Dad look at me any differently.”