I Love You, Beth Cooper (7 page)

“Ohhhhhh.” He moaned with pain and pleasure, which is how all the weird fetishes start.

“There.”

Denis blinked. His contact was back in. Beth came into focus, framed by a velvety crimson swirl.

“How's that feel?”

Denis didn't have to answer. Beth could see for herself.

Denis grinned shit-eatingly.

“Pretty good, I guess,” Beth said.

Beth bounced from her knees to her feet in a single cheerleading move. Denis's ascent was graceless by comparison, hindered by the need to keep a forearm wedged between his legs. He clutched the counter and hauled himself up. Leaning against the kitchen island, hips inward, he twisted his upper torso in the direction of the girls, and smiled. He was fooling al
most no one.

“You hurt your back?” Treece asked.

Cammy pointed at the ice cream.

“Chubby Monkey.”

Treece looked at the ice cream, then at Denis's crotchal contortions and back at the ice cream. The creamy banana taste in her mouth helped her put it all together.

“Oh,” it dawned on her. “The monkey is
chubby.
”

During the polite silence all around, Denis scooted the perimeter of the kitchen island, placing it between his erection and judgment. Rich slid the frozen waffles across the counter. Denis lowered them out of sight.

“You might've scratched your cornea,” Beth said. “Maybe you should go to the hospital.”

“Oh,” said Denis, who had been thinking the same thing, “Let's not spoil the party.”

“What party?” Cammy wanted to know.

Denis's tendency to answer sarcastic questions sincerely was short-circuited when he realized he was still gripping the bottle of:

“Champagne!”

“
La bebida de los
gods!” Rich yelled in support. He grabbed a stack of the Krazy Kritter Dixie cups and attempted to set up five in a row. This took a few tries.

“Delicious champagne,” Denis said, buying Rich time.

“Delicioso,”
Rich agreed. He finally accomplished five upright cups, and stepped back with a hand flourish, as if he had just done a magic trick.

Denis filled the first cup. The second cup started strong but quickly faded to a dribble. Denis considered filling the remaining three cups with squeezings from his rugby shirt, but took the high road.

“Even things up a little…”

Denis poured from the first cup into the final three, then some from the fourth cup into the second cup, and then a little bit more from the first into the third, producing five Dixie cups with approximately no champagne in them.

He distributed the cups, making sure to give Beth the one with Ally, the pretty giraffe, on it.

Treece squinted suspiciously. “Why'd I get the hippo?”

“It's all
good
fat,” Cammy said.

“That's racist,” Treece jabbed at Cammy.

“It's not
race-
ist,” Cammy mocked.

“It's fattist.”

“
You
said you were fat. Two minutes ago. And every two minutes before that.”

“I was
owning
it.”

Beth sighed. “You're not fat, Treece.”

“I
have
fat,” Treece said.

“Everybody has fat.”

“Not everybody,” Cammy said.

“A toast!” Denis yelled.

Usually when one proposes a toast, one has a toast to propose. This was one of the details Denis had neglected based on its infinitesimal probability of coming up. And yet, here he was, toasting Beth Cooper with a paper cup of champagne. He improvised.

“To the future!”

Rich had his friend's back. “To the future—and beyond!”

“Go future!” Cammy exclaimed with a tiny swing of her fist, suggesting less than complete sincerity.

“
Go,
future!” Treece exclaimed with the same tiny swing, signaling true enthusiasm.

“The future,” Beth simply said.

The girls micro-chugged their champagne splashes. Rich sipped his urbanely. Denis, who had left his own cup empty, made a show of guzzling it.

Treece crushed her cup and looked for someplace to shove it. She noticed something sticking out of Rich's shirt pocket.

“Party balloons!” she squealed, extracting the unfolding ribbon of ignominy.

“Um.” Rich raised a finger. “Those aren't—”

“I
know
what they are,” Treece said, tearing a foil pouch open with her teeth. She popped the condom into her mouth, breathed in deeply, and blew out a ribbed rubber bubble.

Beth turned to Denis, amused but also a little disappointed.

“What exactly,” she wondered, “did you have planned for this evening?”

“Oh,” Denis said, sort of maybe pointing toward the contraceptive Treece was inflating. “Those are my dad's.”

Treece stopped blowing. “Your dad's not hiding in a closet or something? I hate that.”

Beth then said with polite finality:

“Well, this was fun.”

Treece tied off the party balloon and flicked it at Rich.

HIS LIFE HAD CHANGED,
in some potentially tragic but no doubt important way, and Denis didn't want it to end.

“Not yet,” he said. “You can't go…yet.”

He needed a reason for them to stay. He had a hundred-dollar bill in his wallet, a graduation present from Aunt Brenda, but it might be awkward trying to split it three ways. Also, potentially insulting. His Diamond Series Extra-Extended Special Edition
Lord of the Rings
Trilogy Blue-Ray HD Box Set? If they started watching it now…

“We haven't drunk the wine!” Rich declared.

Of course! The forbidden wine!

“Twenty-three bottles!” Denis added, parallel-processing how much time it would take them to drink that much wine and how much trouble each successive bottle would get him into.

“I don't like wine,” Treece said. “Unless it's in a cooler-type situation.”

Denis hoisted a two-liter bottle of Diet Blackberry Sprite above his head. “We got coolers!” he said triumphantly, as the sweaty bottle slid out of his sweaty hands and exploded on the kitchen floor.

Goddammit.

Rich jumped into the social abyss. “And music!” He handed the iCube to Denis. “Wine, women, and 5,000 songs!”

“Well, I haven't loaded that many yet,” said Denis, shaking soda off his shoes. “But I did put together a special playlist for the occasion. A ‘Commencement Mix'—”

“DJ C's Slammin' Graduation,” Rich quickly saved.

“Or that.” Denis pushed
.From the iCube came 53Hz to 16kHz of seventies mellowness:

“Slammin',” Cammy said.

“That's more for chilling,” Rich said. “Ironic chilling.”

Denis pressed advance. Out came languid fifties harmonies:

“My mom helped me put this together,” Denis explained.

Denis ripped the iPod out of the cube and started scrolling through the list. “There's real music on here,” he said, spinning. “That Einstein's Brain song, Happy
Talk, the Licks…you like Very Sad Boy, right?”

Beth touched his elbow. He looked up. She gazed into his good eye.

They really could have kissed ergonomically.

“We do kind of have to go,” she said. “Thanks. It was a great party.”

She moved in to kiss him, hesitating.

Was it the smell? The smell of fear and pathos?

No, it was she didn't want to hurt him. She kissed the other, uninjured cheek.

“Bye.”

The simultaneous bursting and breaking of Denis's heart was drowned out by a tremendous roar. Blinding lights engulfed the front of the house. Denis's first thought was it had to be the Apocalypse, but it was something much, much worse.

“SHIT,”
Beth said. “Kevin.”

DENIS WAS DEAD.
This much was certain. The only real question was whether, as he was dying, would Denis cry, or beg, or scream like a girl, or lose control of his bowels, or in some other way abase himself, robbing his demise of the tragic gravitas he felt it deserved. Denis considered hitting the bathroom as a precaution, but Rich and the girls had already rushed to the front of the house, leaving him standing there alone, looking silly without even the simple dignity of being dead.

And his face hurt.

Reflexively, Denis reached up to touch his battered eye and poked it with the iPod he was holding.

“
Yiye!” he said in response to this relatively minor
amount of pain. He was not going to do well, being stabbed, or stomped, or whatever cause of death his killer had chosen.

Denis looked down at his iGouger.

 

Goodbye to You

Michelle Branch

The Spirit Room

 

So now his possessions were mocking him too.
Goddammit,
Denis muttered as he dropped the iPod in a pocket,
goddammit,
and joined the party to his execution.

THEY WERE GATHERED
in the living room, in violation of house rules, gawking out the front window at the tremendous roar. Denis slunk up and peeked out around Treece.

The source of the roar was a five-ton H1 Alpha Hummer, with 300 horsepower, 520 pound-feet of torque, a MSRP of $140,796 and seating for five assholes. The earth-killing machine was painted
black dia
mond
, murkier than pure black and slightly more frightening, named for the insane ski slopes and not, as Denis might have guessed, for the moon gem Eclipso used to possess Superman in Action Comics #826 (Denis no longer collected comic books, and hardly ever went through his sixteen boxes of meticulously Mylared back issues, arranged by publisher and title, but AC #826—who wouldn't know that?).

The Hummer was currently off-road, in the middle of the Cooverman lawn, on top of a Beauty of Bath apple tree Denis and his father had planted together that Arbor Day.

The monstrous vehicle snarled a final time and fell silent. Three doors snapped open and corresponding military figures disembarked synchronously. They wore civilian clothes, but identical civvies, a habit that was apparently hard to break. The uniform of the night was black khakis, black polos and black loafers, making the trio look like an elite unit sent into a downtown club to terminate a rogue DJ. None of them had enough hair to gel, but their heads glistened menacingly nonetheless.

Treece waved happily at her date-rapist. “Sean!”

Denis had hoped to go out with some class.

“Shaw-on!” Treece yelled much louder, waving in wide semaphoric arcs, signaling
I'm here! I'm here! Oh, and here's that guy you promised a penilectomy!

The lights went out on the upper floors of Denis's brain, leaving the lizard in charge.

“Get down!”

Denis hugged Treece and threw them both to the floor. Treece's body recognized this as foreplay and her lips parted in Pavlovian response.

“
Everybody
down!” Denis screamed in a barely audible squeak.

The three left standing regarded him with odd curiosity.

“Why?” Beth asked.

“He's going to kill me!”

“So?” asked Cammy.

“He's not really going to
kill
you.” Beth sighed. “He just likes to be scary.”

“He's scary,” Denis confirmed.

“The
most
he's going to do is maybe beat you up a little.”

Denis had been beaten up a little, thrice by Greg Saloga and once by Dawn Delvecchio, whose premature chest he had momentarily ogled in the fifth grade. Being beaten up a little meant bruising but no breaking, twisting but no tearing, and loss of less than a tablespoon of blood. Denis suspected Kevin would not adhere to these guidelines, or even, based on news reports, the Geneva Convention. Given what the military did not even consider
abuse,
Denis shuddered at what might constitute a
little beating
under the U.S. Army Code of Conduct:

As usual, Denis was letting his imagination run wild, shriek and knock things off shelves. Also as usual, he was allowing this to distract him from more immediate practical concerns.

“The door!” Denis eventually realized. “Secure the door!”

Denis scurried across the floor, frantic commando crawling, looking less like a Navy SEAL than an actual seal.

“Is he always like this?” Cammy asked.

“This is new behavior,” Rich observed. “But not surprising.”

“I think it's kinda cute.”

Cammy looked at Beth as if she had just insisted that
Zuma
was still a decent show.

“It is. He is,” Beth said. “Kinda.”

“Yeah,” Treece agreed, squeaking her nano mini back into place. “Like when a puppy gets so excited he pees all over everything. It's cute and funny, but then there's pee over everything.”

BY THE TIME HE REACHED THE DOOR,
Denis had two severely lacerated forearms (the sisal carpeting was environmentally friendly but otherwise vicious) and something wrong with his pubis, a hairline fracture perhaps or a hip dislocation. He pushed aside his everyday hypochondria in deference to the greater goal of surviving to obsess another day. He lunged upward, grasping the deadbolt and turning it with what could only have been a moment to spare.

Denis fell against the door, dry heaving with relief. He sat there, eyes closed, still breathing.

He opened his eyes.

He had a perfect view of the back patio door, which was presently sliding open.

Kevin did not look very happy.

A hand appeared in front of Denis's face. It was small and downy with sea-mint-lacquered nails; it wasn't holding a knife. It still gave Denis a heart cramp.

“Hey,” Beth said.

She was reaching down for him. Her hair fell over
her face in two silky sheets, swaying; it was lightly brushing against Denis's face. This was the most intimate he had ever gotten with a girl, if you didn't count Patty Keck, his secret shame, and Denis didn't. It was obviously the worst time to be thinking about sex, but Denis hadn't been given the choice.

“Don't be afraid,” Beth said, correctly reading his expression but not its cause. “I'll handle this.”

Oh, yes, this,
Denis was reminded.
My assassination.

Denis took Beth's hand and she pulled him to his feet—with ease, he noticed.

“I wasn't afraid,” Denis wanted to explain. “I was…” All the words his brain offered up were rough synonyms for fear, from
pusillanimous
to
shitting bricks,
and including
epistaxiophobia,
fear of nosebleeds, and
rhabdophobia,
fear of being beaten with sticks, two of Denis's more reasonable phobias, and ones he was soon to have the opportunity to face (along with his agliophobia, gymnophobia, athazagoraphobia, and a few others).

“Prudent” finally popped out. “I was just being prudent.”

“Well, c'mon, Prudence,” Beth said, pulling him toward the kitchen.

KEVIN WAS A MAN IN A HURRY.
He needed to get this killing done and not let it eat up his whole evening. He was flanked, in the strategic sense, by Sean, who had a bigger body but a much smaller head, and the other one.

Beth entered leading Denis by the hand.

Kevin snarled. A real snarl, like the kind a dog might make, right before biting your eyes.

Beth let go of Denis's hand. He didn't mind. It freed him to tremble on both sides of his body.

“Congratulations, you found me,” Beth said, asserting control of the situation with sarcasm. “Now let's just—”

“Shut up, Lisbee.”

“Kevin,”
scolded Beth. “Have you been doing coke?”

“Shut your goddamn mouth!”
he responded, louder than necessary.

In a high, tiny voice, Denis said: “He's coked up!”

Treece shook her head sagely. “That is
not
one of the good drugs.”

Kevin was not only coked up. He had also been drinking: vodka, bourbon, rum and a red liquid from Cambodia that came in a handblown bottle with a human tooth on the bottom. Since cocaine is a stimulant and alcohol is a depressant, the twin intoxicants should theoretically cancel each other out, but it never seems to work out that way.

The only sound in the room was Kevin's breathing. It probably could've been heard even if everyone hadn't shut his or her goddamn mouth. As it was, the seething hiss of a known killer, inhaling fear and exhaling hate, proved to be an effective mood setter.

Kevin picked up the champagne bottle on the counter and slowly upended it, tilting his head as he did so. He grunted. Denis half expected him to use a stick to try to extract ants from it. Concluding that the champagne had been consumed, and that this was an attempt to lubricate his mate, Kevin became 25 percent more furious. His cobalt eyes swept the kitchen for more anger boosters, and found one on the person of Rich, who was holding a large milky balloon with a reservoir tip. Kevin stopped breathing altogether.

Later, in Denis's dreams, Kevin's hair bristled like the hackles of a demonic dog, and venomous saliva streamed from his canines, burning a hole in the
kitchen floor. In reality, Kevin pointed a disconcertingly muscular finger at Denis and shouted:

“PREPARE TO DIE!”

Rich lived for openings like this. “Mandy Patinkin in
The Princess Bride,
Rob Reiner, 1987,” he rattled off. “Also, the same line was used by Emperor Zurg in
Toy Story 2,
1999, John Lasseter, and by Marshall Teague in
Roadhouse,
19—”

A heavy black object grazed Rich's skull and embedded in the wall behind him. (For an affordable sparkling wine, Freixenet sure made strong bottles.)

“
Kevin Patrick,
” gasped Beth, ratcheting up to the first-and-middle maternal reprimand. “Just
stop
.”

Denis stepped in to aggravate matters. “This is
completely
inappropriate,” he said. “We just had this kitchen painted.”

Ba-GOOSH Ba-GOOSH Ba-GOOSH
went two-liter bottles of Ocean Spray Cranberry Fizz, Blood Orange Faygo and Salted Mountain Dew as they burst around Denis, vividly staining the linen white walls cranberry, blood orange and morning urine.

“I need to warn you,” Denis continued in defiance of common sense, “this is willful damage to property; that's a legal term.”

Having exhausted his supply of hurlable beverages, Kevin picked up the next available object.

Denis finally shut up when he noticed a midsize microwave oven coming at his head. He felt something hook the back of his neck and pull him to the floor. The microwave, a week out of warranty, crashed through the plasterboard above him. A dry rain of gypsum dust fell upon Denis, followed by the microwave itself, which bounced nonfatally off his head.

“Ow,” Denis said. (He did not make a sound like “ow”; he said the word
ow.
)

Denis was crouched, lightly powdered, facing a lightly powdered Rich, who three seconds earlier had
yanked him from the path of a speeding appliance. Rich offered some advice.

“This time, truly:
RUN AWAY!”

Denis ran away. Rich stayed behind momentarily, covering his friend's retreat by heaving the inflated condom at his attacker. Kevin caught the balloon with one hand and began squeezing it slowly. Presumably he thought it would pop at some point, adding to his cool menace. When it did not, he took the thing in both hands and crushed, contorted and clawed it with diminishing menace.

Cammy to Treece, sarcastic casual: “What brand was that?”

Kevin's jaw rippled. He backhanded the condom away and marched forward.

DENIS REACHED THE FRONT DOOR
only to discover some moron had locked it. He stood for several seconds, blinking rapidly, formulating how he might pick the lock, or failing that, combine common household products into a plastique. Rich arrived at his side. “Dude, just—” he said, and reached for the deadbolt.

“Too late,” Denis mumbled, and ran up the stairs.

“You don't run up the stairs!” Rich yelled up at him. “Have you never seen a movie? You run up the stairs, you
die!
”

Rich was about to cite specifics when he saw Kevin marching toward him. Kevin growled, smashed an overhead light fixture with his bare fist, then kept coming in the ensuing darkness.

Rich ran up the stairs.

“¡Arribame!”

RICH BURST INTO DENIS'S ROOM
and crashed into a squadron of X-Wing Starfighters, not for the first time. He thrashed in the tangle of suspended
Star Wars
collectibles and, for the very first time, did
not hear Denis pissing and moaning that this or that one was made specifically for the Chinese market, making it extremely rare except for the 37 million other ones in China.