I Love You, Beth Cooper (17 page)

THE GIRLS WERE AT THE BACK ENTRANCE,
discussing something, when Denis arrived. He was pinching his ruptured nose, to little stanching effect.

“What's ub?”

“We're fucked,” Cammy said, summing it up nicely.

Flashing lights directed Denis's attention outside, where a police car was parked next to the Hummer. A Buffalo Grove peace officer had a clipboard wedged against her belly and was writing down license plate information.

Denis was about to be arrested. He was trespassing in his high school, and he wasn't wearing pants.

“It's like that dream,” Denis said.

“Shush,” Beth said. She pointed. Fifty feet from the Hummer, its wheels half up on the curb, was her Cabriolet. Kevin had taken it from the party, after Sean and Dustin had persuaded a valet that he didn't need a ticket. Denis had never seen it with the top up; it was a crummy little car.

“Come on.”

“Come
what
on?” Denis asked.

Beth and the girls had slipped out the door and were darting between clumps of bushes en route to the convertible. Denis briefly balanced the positives and negatives of eluding the police with the positives and negatives of surrendering to the police multiplied by the exclusively negatives of the infantry men behind him, and followed.

BETH CRAWLED
to the passenger side, the one facing away from the crime scene. She discreetly opened the door and climbed in. The others bunny-hopped and monkey-walked into the car. The stealth was unnecessary; the police officer was on the phone with her husband, telling him where the goddamn diaper wipes were for the five-hundredth goddamn time.

“Fuck,” Beth whispered, finding no key in the ignition. She reached into the sun visor. “
Fuckety
fuck,” she said, “fucker took the fucking
spare
.”

Denis had never heard a complete sentence that was more than fifty percent
fuck
before.

“Listen,” Denis suggested. “Maybe we should just—”

“Shut the fuck up, Denis!”

Beth reached under the steering column and popped a panel out of the dashboard. She fiddled with some wires. Nothing could surprise Denis at this point, and yet this did.

“You also hotwire cars?”

“Just this one. Sometimes my parents take away the keys.”

The car started. Still hunched below windshield level, Beth put the Cabriolet into drive.

“Wait,” Denis said, “Rich!”

“Forget him,” said Cammy. “He's already dead.”

“I can't leave without my friend.” Denis reached for the door.

Beth grabbed his thigh in such a way as to not cause an erection. This was remarkable; Denis sometimes got erections from grabbing his own thigh. Beth was gritting her teeth and Denis saw something in her face he had never, ever seen before. She was desperate.

“Denis,” she said. “I could go to jail.”

You're going to jail anyway,
Denis thought,
and you'll probably go to less jail if you turn yourself in.
But he knew a little about Beth now, and a lot about desperation, and so he determined this advice would likely not be received in the spirit it was given. He also knew he wasn't leaving Rich behind, which meant letting Beth go. Rich wouldn't approve.

Nevertheless.

Denis tried to think of an appropriate exit line, something romantic and yet manly, like
See ya in the funny
papers, Funny Face,
except it would have to make some sense in this context and not use the same adjective twice. Ironically, if Rich were here he'd have the perfect line, only then it wouldn't be necessary. That was ironic, wasn't it? It was so hard to tell anymore.

Beth's desperation was beginning to take on exasperated and peevish undertones.

“I won't give you up,” Denis said finally, too late to have any iconic impact, even if it hadn't come out as
I woe gib oo ub.

Denis reached for the door again but the handle fell away. A long speckled creature clamored across his lap and into the backseat.

“We should probably go,” Rich said.

HAD THE POLICE OFFICER
been paying attention, she would have noticed the driverless convertible drop off the curb and slowly roll away. She was, however, dealing with a domestic disturbance. “Oh, well,
here's
an idea: you get a job that pays for more than your
goddamn beer
and then I'd be goddamn
delighted
to stay home and take care of
our child!
”

Through the rearview mirror, Beth could see the officer waving her arms and screaming into her cell.

“What's she doing?”

“She's calling for backup,” stated Denis.

“HEY!”

The yell came not from the police officer but from the entrance to the building, where Kevin, Sean and the one called Dustin had just emerged.

“Shit,” Beth said, and floored it. The police officer noticed this, sighed, “I gotta go, sweetie,” and hung up the phone. She did not leap into her patrol car, light the cherries and peel out while shouting into the radio about being in pursuit of suspects traveling west on Dundee Road, because this was Buffalo Grove.
There were no high speed chases in Buffalo Grove, especially of teenagers, because in Buffalo Grove, the teenagers, no matter what they had done, eventually went home.

She pulled out her clipboard and added a line to her report.

BETH HAD THE REMARKABLE ABILITY
to dress herself under a towel without revealing anything, while at the same time driving recklessly at high speed.

Clothing flurried about the backseat as two girls and a guy sorted out their wardrobes.

“That's my top,” Cammy accused Treece.

“I'm borrowing it.”

“You're going to boob it all out.”

Treece threw the top, hitting Rich on the face. He caught it in his teeth, and offered it up to Cammy, doggy-style.

“Drop it,” Cammy commanded.

Denis wasn't getting dressed. He was squeezing his nose and estimating his rate of blood loss.

“Where's your pants?” Beth asked.

“Your boyfriend has them.”

“Well, they're not going to fit
him.
” She glanced at Denis, frowned, reached behind him, and extracted something from inside his collar.

“Oh, those,” Denis explained. “They must've gotten there when I slid—”

“I don't care, Denis,” Beth said, pulling on her panties as she cut off an eighteen-wheeler and veered onto the on-ramp for I-53 North.

“Where are we going?”

“We broke at least nine,
ten,
laws. We've got to get out of town.”

“Let's go to my dad's cabin!” Treece suggested. “He lets me go there any time I want, as long as I don't tell Mom where it is.”

Denis shook his head vigorously, reopening the nasal bloodgates. “I can't ‘get out of town'!”

Beth angrily shook the splatter off her hand.

“Enough, Denis.
Enough,
okay?!
You
started this!”

“Me?”

“Yeah,
you.
You're the geek who stood up in front of our entire school, and all our family and friends, and declared your ‘love' for someone you don't know a
thing
about!”

“He knows a
lot
about you,” Rich defended Denis. “Quiz him!”

“He didn't know about Kevin,” Treece pointed out.

“There were lapses in the intelligence,” Rich acknowledged, then remembered: “He can do your signature!”

“You said it was sweet,” Denis murmured.

Beth snorted. It wasn't a nice snort.

“And you came to my house!” he countered her snort. “If you didn't think it was sweet, why'd you come to my house?!”

Beth didn't answer.

Cammy answered.

“What do you think, super genius? We thought it would be
funny.
”

“Oh,” Denis said.

Rich went for the face save: “Us, too. I mean, the head cheerleader and captain of the debate team? That's
always
hilarious…”

DENIS'S BRAIN PLAYED IT ALL BACK FOR HIM,
another hilarious episode of:

LEAVE IT TO PENIS

“THE GRAND DELUSION”

FADE IN:

INT. BUFFALO GROVE HIGH SCHOOL -- CAFETERIA

STANDING AGAINST THE CINDER BLOCK IS
DENIS “THE PENIS” COOVERMAN
. HIS GRADUATION GOWN DRAGS ON THE
GROUND AND HIS MORTAR IS TOO SMALL FOR HIS HUMONGOUS HEAD. HE FIDGETS AND TWITCHES AS HE TRIES TO ASSUME A “COOL” POSE AGAINST THE WALL. HE DOES A DOUBLETAKE AS HE NOTICES…

BETH COOPER
, HEAD CHEERLEADER AND PROM QUEEN, IS WALKING TOWARD HIM.

DENIS GYRATES AND CONTORTS IN AN EFFORT TO LOOK LIKE HE DOESN'T NOTICE. HE LOOKS LIKE A SPAZ.

SFX: LAUGHTER

BETH STOPS A FEW FEET FROM DENIS. SHE IS SLIGHTLY TALLER THAN HE IS.

BETH

DENIS'S MOUTH HANGS OPEN. A BEAT. ANOTHER BEAT.

SFX: LAUGHTER

BETH (CONT'D)

(BEGRUDGING) But it was so “sweet”,

I'll have to let you live.

DENIS

(VOICE SQUEAKING) Great. That's great.

SFX: LAUGHTER

BETH, UNCOMFORTABLE, LOOKS BEHIND HER. HER TWO FRIENDS,
CAMMY
AND
TREECE
, ARE LAUGHING. THEY URGE HER TO CONTINUE.

BETH

DENIS

(ACTING “COOL”)
Some junk. Little junk.

A modicum of debris.

BETH ROLLS HER EYES.

SFX: LAUGHTER

BETH

(CHANGING SUBJECT) Was it like 800 degrees in there? Like boiling?

DENIS SNORTS POMPOUSLY.

DENIS

(“PROFESSOR KNOW-IT-ALL”) Actually, the boiling point
-- of water -- is 212 degrees. Fahrenheit.

HE SWITCHES TO HIS “COOL” GUY.

DENIS (CONT'D)

(COCKS FINGER) One-hundred Celcius.

SFX: LAUGH
TER, CONTINUING, AT HIS EXPENSE

DENIS FELT LIKE
he had been punched in the heart.

He let go of his nose. The blood poured forth like tears, only red and disgusting.

Beth expressed some concern.

“Are you going to keep bleeding?”

“For about three days.”

“Tip your head back.”

Denis tipped his head back. He made a face.

“Now it's running down my throat.”

Treece's hand appeared next to his head, holding two tiny white cylindrical objects.

“Here, stick these up there. They're super absorbent.”

“Gah!” Denis said.

“They'll fit,” Treece assured him. “They're comfort minis.”

Denis batted her kind offer away. She dropped them in his lap.

“Fine,” she said. “Bleed to death.”

Denis quietly bled to death.

It was all a joke.

Or, more accurately,
he
was all a joke. A beaten, bleeding, pantless joke.

Denis picked up the tampons.

Perfect,
he chuckled, choked on some blood, and cacked it onto his lap.

THE ROAD WAS DARK,
lit only by fireflies.

They were headed north through Lake County, which was known for its lakes. Fox, Griswold, Nipersink and Pistakee Lakes. Lakes Catherine, Louise and Marie. There were a few hundred thousand others, according to the brochures.

Denis had never been to any of them, though he had snorkled in three oceans and four seas. His parents had wanted him to be cosmopolitan, rather than a child.

It was almost 4 a.m. In the backseat, Treece was asleep on Rich's shoulder, her mouth wide open. Rich, in turn, was leaning on Cammy, dreaming in wide-screen. Cammy considered shoving him off her. Instead she closed her eyes.

The radio kept playing DJ C's Slamming Graduation Mix. They had been through:

“Graduation,” by Third Eye Blind, “The Graduation Song” by Dave Matthews, and that Vitamin C song that wouldn't go away;

“Graduation Day”s by Head Automatica, Kanye West, Chris Isaak and Gym Class Heroes;

The Goo Goo Dolls' “Better Days” and 10,000 Maniacs' “These are Days”;

“Bittersweet Symphony” by the Verve or Semisonic or one of those;

“Blackbird” by the Beatles and “Free Bird” by Lynyrd Skynyrd and “Fly Like an Eagle” by Steve Miller and “I Believe I Can Fly” by R. Kelly and “Fly Away” by Lenny Kravitz, and Dropline's “Fly Away from Here (Graduation Day)”.

Now playing was the Calling's “Our Lives,” or the Ataris's “In This Diary”; Denis had trouble telling them apart.

DENIS AND BETH HAD NOT SPOKEN
to each other through any of it. It was possible that they would never speak again. Denis would never figure out if Beth was nice, crazy, sad or mean, or some combination and in what proportions. Beth would never learn that beneath Denis's geek exterior there was a far more complicated Denis, roiling with neurosis, obsession and fear, and if that wasn't enticing enough, beneath that lay a sea of undifferentiated rage, the kind women like. Beth and Denis would be like two ships, two ships that sideswiped, causing ugly but not irreparable hull damage, and then passed in the night.

What kind of fool was Denis to ever imagine it could have been any different? There was no fool like a high-IQ fool. He could calculate © two different ways, the Wallis method and the Leibniz Series, but he could not see what any idiot could see, what everyone saw, many of them idiots: Beth was beautiful, popular and had a peerless derriere, and he was just another dweeb with two bloody tampons hanging out of his nostrils.

“HEY,” BETH SAID.
She turned down the radio. She did not look at him, which was for the best.

“I wanted to say,” Beth said, “about what Cammy said.
She
thought it would be funny. I mean, we all thought it would be like a fun thing, and…I guess I did think it would be kind of funny. I'm sorry.”

Denis said nothing.

“But I—” Beth went silent for several seconds.

Then she said:

“Guys tell me they love me all the time. But that's usually when…they want something.”

Denis had not wanted
that,
not specifically, not right away.

“So I just…I don't know.”

She seemed finished.

“Well,” Denis said, “it was
kind
of funny.”

He took the ends of the tampons and strung them out, making a superabsorbent handlebar mustache.

Beth laughed, and gagged. “Is it possible that you could please take those out now?”

“Let's see.” Denis comically yanked the strings.

It hurt so much.

His nostrils had stopped bleeding, but now they burned like he had snorted fluorine. Denis dangled the assailants in front of his face. There were tiny hairs stuck on the end. Denis blinked back tears so as not to undercut the humor of his amusing mutilation.

“Voilà,” he said with brave insouciance. “Do you have, one of those, um…bags?”

Beth reached down next to her seat and pulled out a McDonald's bag. She looked away as she handed it to him.

“Thank you,” Denis said, debonairly dropping the bloodied wads into the bag. “You know, it's funny. Or interesting.
Tampon
is the actual medical term for the cotton plug they use to treat epistaxis, or nosebleeds…”

“Fucking Kevin,” Beth said, slamming the steering wheel with her palm.

Denis sensed the subject had changed. He didn't have a lot more on tampons anyway. “Yeah,” he said in support of Beth's statement. “Fuck that Kevin.”

“Have you ever been in love?” Beth asked Denis.

Denis didn't know how to answer that. He knew the answer, or thought he knew the answer, but this didn't seem like the appropriate time to bring it up.

“I mean, truly in love,” Beth continued, as if responding to what he thought. “In
true love.
”

A couple of weeks before, Denis had gotten an e-mail from Rich.

It was a quote from a movie, like most of Rich's e-mails were, and while Denis never figured out which movie, he found himself agreeing with it. That was true love. By that definition, he had not quite made it to true love.

Beth had a different definition.

“You know, where you love someone, with your whole heart, you just
love
them, and they can be mean to you, and hurt you, not physically, but hurt you, you know, make you feel like shit or worthless, but you still love him? You know what I mean?”

“I'm beginning to,” Denis said.

Beth smiled.

“It can really suck, huh?”

Denis could see what was happening here, what he was being repurposed as, but it was better than nothing, he figured.

“How long have you two been going out?” Beth's new friend who was a boy asked.

“Since Christmas. We met right after. And, you know, he's been away since then, but we kept in touch,
and the whole thing sort of happened through e-mail.”

“That's great.”

“He's a really sweet guy,” Beth said. “Online.”

“Sweet,” Denis repeated. So both he and an abusive whoremongering, child-killing cokehead were
sweet.

“You don't want to talk about him,” Beth said. “Let's talk about something else.”

Too tired, perhaps, Denis spoke without even overthinking.

“Can I ask you a personal question?”

“Is it about my boobs?”

“No, but I do have several queries in the arena, which I'll get to.”

“They're Cs. Bs during basketball season. Ms. Levitt doesn't like us flopping all over the place. Except Treece. She can't help it. I'm sorry. What was your question?”

“Oh, I was just wondering about your brother.”

“What about him?”

“I don't know. Like, what was his name?”

Denis had speculated that his name was Dennis.

“David.”

“What was he like?”

“I have no idea,” Beth said. “He was already sick when I was born. He died when I was two. He was twelve. I don't remember him at all. There's this picture of me visiting him in the hospital, but it's like he's just some sick kid.”

WHEN DENIS WAS TEN,
he told his parents he wanted a baby brother. Since he had never expressed any interest in a sibling, they asked him why. He said that he thought he might be coming down with leukemia, and that he would need a close blood relative for bone marrow transplants. He had read about the
bioethics of parents having a second child to provide marrow for an ill sibling in an issue of the
Journal of Juvenile Oncology
that he had been secretly subscribing to. He theorized there would be no ethical issue if his parents had the child
before
he was diagnosed, as a preventative measure. Only he used the word
prophylactic.
That's when they knew he was going to be a doctor.

Denis's parents said they would see what they could do, but they didn't, not really.

“LEUKEMIA,” DENIS SAID.

Beth was spooked. “How'd you know that?”

“What else do little kids die of?” Denis said.

“Oh, right,” said Beth. “You're the doctor.”

“I'm sorry. About David.”

“It's kind of stupid. My big sad story. It's like the dramatic tragedy of my life, and I wasn't even there. And it's not even an interesting story. Excuse me.”

Beth stopped the car, opened her door, and threw up. She closed the door, and continued driving.

“You okay?”

“That was shitty champagne.” She turned to Denis, smiling through watery eyes and lips glazed with vomitus. “Yours was much nicer.”

The radio was now playing Ataris's “In This Diary,” or the Calling's “Our Lives,” whichever the other one was.

“Um,” Beth said, “Can
I
say something personal?”

Please do.
“Uh. Yeah. Sure.”

“You kind of…reek.”

Denis sighed heavily. “It's the fear.”

“I think it's your shirt.”

Denis looked down. His rugby shirt was a goulash
of putrefying meats, molding cheeses, salmonelling creams and ptomaining tapenades.

“I kind of spilled some dip on it.”

“Take it off.”

Denis's pupils constricted involuntarily.

“I'm not going to
molest
you.”

“I wasn't terribly concerned about that.”

Denis removed his shirt in the manner of a girl at a strip poker game, maintaining maximum coverage until the last possible moment.

“Personally,” Beth said. “I hate hairy chests.” She put out her hand and snapped her fingers. “Hand it over.” Denis handed it over.

“Let's give it a little air…”

Beth held the shirt out of the window and shook it. Smelly bits and rancid ooze took to the wind and the whole operation went swimmingly until the shirt flew out of her hand.

“Oh, shit!” Beth laughed.

She slammed on the brakes.

In the backseat, Cammy woke up to discover she was cradling Rich like a baby. She flung him off like he was a severed head that had landed on her in a horror movie.

Treece, who lay in Rich's lap, jostled half awake. “Okay,” she mumbled. “Okey-dokey…” She started to unbuckle Rich's belt. Rich reached down and eased her automated mouth away from his fly. She happily went back to sleep.

Beth threw the vehicle into reverse and spun the wheel to execute a three-point turn in only two points.

“THERE IT IS.”
Denis spotted the shirt crumpled at the side of the road. Beth stopped.

Nobody said anything for a moment.

“I'll get it,” Denis said.

The cold gravel on his feet and cool breeze on most of his skin reminded Denis: he was a man in underpants. He crouched as he entered the high-beamed proscenium, reflexively covering his ass, and was further reminded: he was a man in
lucky underpants
.

These were the briefs his mother had begged him to burn: inelastic and threadbare with three or more holes conspiring in the rear. At least they were white(ish) and not star-spangled or Spider-Manned, styles he retired sophomore year after the Geometry Incident. He had worn this lucky pair to every debate tournament except State, when he let his mother pack, and look what happened there. He had worn them for his graduation speech, washed them, and put them on again with his party attire, feeling they would boost his confidence and possibly perform miracles.

His mother suspected as much.

“You're not wearing those awful underpants,” she asked.

“Mom,” he answered.

“What if you
do
get lucky?” his father argued. “Then you're wearing ratty underpants.”

His mother rejected both sides of the proposition. “He is not wearing those things. And he is not getting lucky, not like that. Not on my watch.”

Denis swiveled to remove his rear from direct view, sidling away from the headlights in nondominant primate fashion. He reached down for his shirt, intending to tie it around his waist like a big-assed girl, and discovered he was not alone.

He saw their eyes first. Four red circles, vibrating. Then he heard the high chittering sound. Two raccoons were inspecting his shirt, and finding it delicious. From inside the car, where Beth and the others
were watching, they must have looked awfully cute. But from Denis's perspective, low to the ground and close enough to see their rabid little teeth and razor yellow claws, they appeared as what they were: fierce competitors for a valuable resource.

“No,” Denis said. “That's not food, it's a polyblend.”

The raccoons switched from nervous trill to robust snarl with stunning alacrity. Denis was back in the car almost as quickly.

They all watched as the raccoons clutched the shirt, nibbling, and then scampered with their catch into the woods.

Cammy and Rich found this rip-snorting.

“Oh, Denis,” Beth said, utterly contrite. “I am
so
sorry.” And then she cracked up.