I Love You, Beth Cooper (9 page)

He only screamed at Beth Cooper once.

Rich was in the backseat then, too, with Victoria Smeltzer, when she still weighed over a hundred pounds. Coach Raupp was in his typical instruction pose, one fist balled in his lap and the other rhythmically pounding on the dashboard. Beth was driving with blissful confidence, as she always did, unaware she was about to kill them all.

“Yo, Munsch,” Coach Raupp snapped, “what is the speed limit on Illinois highways?”

“Sixty-five,” Rich answered, for once almost certain he was right.

“Then can you tell me
why the hell
Mizz Cooper is doing over
seventy?”

Rich's hopes of ever answering two consecutive questions correctly were dashed.

“I'm not doing seventy,” Beth responded. “I'm only doing—” She stared down at the speedometer: 71. “The flow of traffic.” The vehicle meanwhile drifted off the highway and onto the loose gravel shoulder; Beth tugged the wheel and popped the car back into its lane, more or less.

“Pull over!” Coach Raupp screamed.
“Now!”

Beth pulled over, now. She neglected to signal or to decelerate. Coach Raupp overcompensated for this by slamming on the instructor brake, sending the car into an uncontrolled skid. Beth tried to steer back onto the highway. The car slid sideways and began to roll, tumbling side over side several times before erupting into an enormous fireball.

“It did not,” Denis said at lunch that day, as Rich related the story. “You'd be covered in third-degree burns. Your nerve endings would be exposed. You'd look like this.” Denis held up his slice of school pizza. “Only more sauce.”

Rich took the slice, folded it lengthwise and funneled the grease unto his tongue. “I was thrown clear. Everybody else got crispy creamed.”

“Victoria is right over there.” Denis nodded furtively, so as to not attract her attention. Victoria was sitting with Patty Keck, his secret shame, eating her Diet Coke while Patty finished both of their lunches.

“Half of Beth's face is…just gone,” Rich said. “Like Mel Gibson as the eponymous
Man Without a Face
.”

He held the pizza over one eye.

“Is it this? Is this what you see? I assure you it is human. But if that's all you see, then you don't see me.”

Would Denis still love Beth if she were
The Girl Without a Face?

“Which half?” he asked.

“The good half.”

Denis decided he did not have to decide. “And this has been another Richard Munsch dramatic presentation.”

Rich swallowed the last of Denis's pizza. “Car did
almost tip over.”

RICH WAS IMAGINING
he was in the scariest, goriest, least educational driver's ed film ever made:

In it, Rich played himself. Treece was played by Shanley Harmer, the actress who starred in
Bitches
on the CW, and then went on to movie fame in
Holy Mallory
and that Internet mp4 with Licks' front man Brent Koz. He was mentally casting Denis—that kid from
Geek Camp?—when he suddenly flew forward,
bounced his face against the front seat and slammed back next to Treece. She buckled him into his seat.

Beth had overshot the red light by a couple of car lengths. Black SUVs coming in opposite directions very nearly crashed into the front passenger and rear driver's sides, tearing the little Cabriolet in half like two wolves fighting over a plump bunny. Beth gave a cursory
my bad
wave and rapidly backed out of the intersection, coming within five-eighths of an inch of hitting a third black SUV behind her.

Denis crawled out of his hole. The last few seconds had brought back Rich's Driver's Ed Tales (there were several) and so he was currently struggling with the conflicting emotions of:

1) intense joy that Beth had just saved his life,
choosing him over a former boyfriend;

2) fear.

“That was…with the car back there, but—”

“That wasn't for you,” Beth cut him off. “I don't want you to get the wrong idea. Kevin can't have another incident. One more, and it's court-martial for sure.”

Joy left and fear reigned.

“One more
what?”

THE LIGHT TURNED GREEN
and Beth floored it. Denis, perched between the two front seats, was thrown into the back.

“So,” Treece said when he landed next to her. “That was fun.”

“Some fun,” added Rich, partially recombobulated. His head lolled in Denis's direction. “Your dad would be so proud.”

Denis thought of the champagne bottle lodged in the wall, the Technicolor gooshes, the dead microwave and mutilated lawn. He leaned back through the front seats.

“Can I borrow your cell phone? I—”

“Good catch,” Beth said. She pulled her cell phone from her purse and tossed it out of the car. “GPS that, asshole.”

The phone flew through the window of a passing Honda Civic and hit Harold Angell, a thirty-four-year-old nurse practitioner who had no ironic connection to anyone in the car.

Denis sank back into his seat. He bounced off Treece and then Rich as Beth swerved along her merry way.

“Her driving's gotten a lot better,” Rich commented.

Denis felt around behind him for the middle seat belt, finally pulling out something that appeared to have been chewed on by several packs of dogs. The
buckle fell off.

“You can use my phone,” Treece said, reaching into a pouch that cost more than Denis's entire wardrobe. “Not this one.” She dropped a silver flip-phone back in. “My mom has it tapped”—meaning only that her mother scoured the bill for calls to men her mother dated. “Here.”

Treece handed Denis a hot pink phone encrusted with jewels and dangled charms that looked as if it had been decorated by a three-year-old but which had been custom junked up in Japan at considerable cost.

“Tell your parents I said hi,” Cammy remarked from the front seat.

“What makes you think I'm calling my parents?”

“Because you're you,” Treece said, much nicer.

DENIS'S FATHER WAS DRY-HUMPING
Denis's mother in the back of the Prius when his phone began buzzing.

“You're vibrating,” Mrs. C said.

“That's because I'm about to
explode,
” Mr. C moaned, grinding into her.

Mrs. C did not grind back. “It might be Denis.”

Mr. C sighed. Yes, it might be Denis. Their son could be calling to ask permission to download a movie off iTunes. Or perhaps to tell them to pick up some milk or a
Scientific American
on the way home. Some emergency of that sort.

Mr. C pulled a cell phone out of his shirt pocket. The screen read
CALLER ID BLOCKED
.

“Telemarketer,” he said. Mr. C slipped the vibrating phone down the front of Mrs. C's slacks.

“Mr. C!” Mrs. C growled.

ON HIS END,
Denis, thankfully, only heard the usual leave-a-message-at-the-beep and then the beep.

“It's me,” he told the phone. “Rich and I…went out. But we're okay. I can explain the kitchen. You can call me at…”

He looked to Treece. She grabbed the phone away.

“That's my
stealth
phone!”

Up front, Beth turned on the radio. In a quavering depressissimo, a future lesbian sang:

Beth frowned. She pushed SEEK. Synthetic drumbeats and electro-boops accompanied a future cartoon composer:

Beth turned the music off.

“Radio sucks,” she pronounced.

Denis remembered. He pulled the iPod from his pocket.

“Tune to 87.1.”

There was much groaning. Undeterred, Denis leaned between the front seats and turned the radio back on. “No, seriously, you'll like this,” he promised, tuning and hoping.

Music equally ancient but not the least bit objectionable began blasting out the speakers, a man named Alice repeating the words of a playground chant:

Beth's head banged to the olden beat. Denis was hugely relieved. Ordinarily, the declaration that school was out for summer made him anxious. But this summer, he thought, might be all right.

Beth sang along, with heavy emphasis on the last two syllables. Here, Denis begged to differ. School was not out
forever
, just until—

screamed Beth, taking both hands off the steering wheel and waving devil horns above her head.

“I
love
this song,” yelled Treece. “Who doesn't want to blow up their school?”

Denis was happy his song selection was a success, but he'd have been much happier if Beth was steering her vehicle. The car drifted toward the center line, toward oncoming traffic, toward a banner headline in the
Daily Herald:

Denis decided that if Beth didn't feel like steering she wouldn't mind if he did. He reached for the wheel, planning on nudging it just enough to prevent death. He got two fingers on the rim.

With one hand, Beth matter-of-factly executed a nearly perpendicular right turn at full speed.

Denis toppled forward and fell face first between Beth's legs.

THE CABRIOLET CAREENED
into the White Hen Pantry parking lot and skidded into the only available space, bouncing off the concrete wheel stop.

Denis's face remained lodged in Beth's thighs. The moment when he could have withdrawn his head without incident had passed. He couldn't get out now without a good exit line, and he was without one. He imagined Beth was appalled, hurt, violated, furious, fed up and,
oh, no, was she sobbing?

Beth was chuckling.

It was dark down there, Denis guessed. He took no chances and kept his eyes shut. He couldn't close his nose, however. It smelled musky, a little like butt, less pungent, more floral, and—was
spicier
the right word?

It took Denis a surprisingly long time to realize he was sniffing Beth Cooper's vagina.

His eyes opened involuntarily. It wasn't nearly dark enough down there. Beth's panties were white. They spoke to Denis. They said,

The lettering was hot pink. It clashed with the blue-green plaid of the skirt, yet somehow it worked.

Denis felt a hand tugging his hair. He wanted to stay.

I love you,
he whispered as Beth lifted his head out of her welcoming center.

“I'm sorry,” Denis said.

“Let's get some beer,” Beth said.

Beth hopped out of the car and Denis crawled after her. “Two minutes,” she called back to the others, reaching the door before Denis and opening it for him.

“Snacks,” Treece yelled. “Everybody wants snacks!”

“Everybody,” Cammy said flatly.

Treece acknowledged the insult with a grotesque smirk. “And a bucket for Cammy!” She mimed bulimic
fingers and then turned to Rich, palm up, awaiting her high five.

Whoa,
Rich thought,
catfight!

“LISTEN,” BETH SAID,
once they were inside.

Denis had not yet formulated a plausible explanation for the amount of time he had spent in her genital environs.

He went with implausible.

“I think I was knocked unconscious back there, for a minute.”

Beth had no idea what he was talking about. “I don't want you to think I'm a bitch or anything. What I said. I mean, I didn't want to see you get hurt, obviously. But I just wanted to be clear, you know, about my motivations.”

“Oh, sure,” Denis said. “I figured as much.”

They reached the beer display. Beth turned toward Denis, brightly, and then not.

“God.”

The convenience store fluorescence brought out the colors of everything that had befallen Denis's face so far that evening: ruby-rimmed right eye tucked in a billowing of black, violet and yellow flesh; newer plummy bruises on his ears, forehead, cheeks and chin; across the whole face a delicate lattice of crimson scrapes.

“Maybe you
should
go to the hospital,” Beth said.

“Your eyes aren't blue,” Denis responded. He had been staring at her as she gaped at him, and seeing things.

“What?”

“There's green in there,” he said. “And around the pupil, there's a hazel”—the scientific term came
first—“corona…” He sprung open his hand: “Starburst.”

“Yeah,” Beth acknowledged. “My grandmother said they were a real ‘dog's breakfast.'”

“Lucky dog,” Denis said, and on purpose.

Beth's lips twitched upward even as her eyes cast downward. She tilted her face away, and came back with a huge, sanitary smile.

“What kind of beer do you like?”

THE CATFIGHT WAS DISAPPOINTING.
Treece and Cammy traded a couple of cryptic remarks, references to previous and ongoing grievances, and fell into an uneasy détente. Rich figured that if it was not for Beth, these two wouldn't be friends at all.

“So,” Rich said, seeing if he could get them going again, “how long have you two been going out with Sean and—what was the other one?”

“That's weird.” Treece screwed up her face. “Something.”

“Fuck a duckling,” Cammy said, changing the subject.

Approaching the car were Henry Giroux and his buddy Damien, the only two guys from BGHS that Cammy wanted to hang out with less than Denis and Rich. Henry was the local purveyor of aftermarket pharmaceuticals, not quite a drug dealer though he played the part, replete with an embroidered urban dialect spoken only in the suburbs. What made Henry's lily-white gangsta act all the more sad was that he was African-American. He was a black whigger.

“Yo, yo, beautiful ladies!”

DENIS DID NOT KNOW
what kind of beer he liked. As far as he knew, he did not like beer.

“Microbrew,” he answered.

“What kind?”

“Any kind.”

Beth reached into the cooler and pulled out a six of Molson Dark, followed by a twelve of PBR tallboys. She dumped both in Denis's arms.

“Snacks!” Beth said.

Denis followed Beth through the salty snack aisle as she piled on, with seeming indiscrimination, bag upon bag of sodium and partially hydrogenated oils. He thought about what he would do when Beth had her inevitable heart attack. He would have to perform CPR.

Her chest: fifteen compressions.

Her mouth: two breaths.

Her chest, her mouth, her chest, his mouth.

His mouth on her mouth, her lips quivering, returning to life.

“Hey, Spaceboy!”

Beth was at the end of the aisle. She pointed to the left and went that way. Denis shook off his erection and waddled after her, the eighteen beers and eight bags exceeding his carrying capacity. In the next aisle, ten packages of sweet snacks awaited Denis's abiding arms. Beth had a preference for chocolatey coating, he noted.

“I love these!”

Beth held up a package of Suzy Qs, the Hostess snackcake that would be forever dendritically entwined in Denis's brain with the verb phrase
sucking each others'
. Seeing the labial cakes oozing creme only strengthened the connection, as did the way Beth flicked her tongue when she overpronounced the word
yum
. This freely associated with his mother's
yumming
earlier in the day, creating a gooey endocrinal mess.

Was Beth consciously trying to pop his pituitary gland, or was this kind of sexual sabotage purely instinctual, or was it all a figment of his anterior hypo
thalamus? One thing was certain: Denis knew too much about biology and not enough about women.

“How much money you got?” Beth asked.

“Oh,” Denis said, blinking back into the real world. “I, my wallet…” He nodded over his shoulder, to suggest he could not presently reach his back pocket, not that Beth should stick her hand in there.

Denis barely felt it, unfortunately.

“Money, money, money,” Beth said as she flipped open his billfold. Denis's mind flashed on its terrible contents:

his school ID, taken during a severe acne storm;

a Photobooth picture of Rich and him that could easily be misconstrued;

a video-game token;

his official identification card for the Starfleet Academy,
goddammit
, which he kept meaning to archive.

Beth plucked out the hundred-dollar bill.

“Thank you, Denis Cooverman!” she sang, and then noticing the lavender glitter pen inscription, “And thank
you
, Auntie Brenda!”

Or that.

“GO AWAY, HENRY.”

Rich was pleased with the cold shoulder Cammy was giving Henry Giroux. There was a limited niche for “characters” in the high school ecosphere, and Rich felt his Smooth-Talking Film Aficionado was going underappreciated due to unfair competition from Henry's Retro Ghetto Jivist. Rich chalked this up to the fact that Henry possessed drugs, albeit lame ones, and that he was nominally black. (The only other black person in their class, Lisa Welch, was in band and therefore invisible.)

Henry did not go away. He leaned a hip against the car and stylishly tipped the porkpie off his head and
sent it rolling down his arm. The hat bounced off the crook and tumbled to the pavement. Henry turned to Cammy with the same cocky expression he would have used had the hat rolled effortlessly into his hand.

“What do you
want
, Henry?” she asked.

“
Bumboklaat,
girl,” Henry shucked. “Jes' seeing if you wants to partay.”

“No.”

“Whaddya got?” Treece asked.

“We got the Ritz,” Henry said, using his own slang for Ritalin. “The ‘D' [Claritin-D] and some sweet Mercedez.”

“You don't have any Benzedrine,” Cammy said.

“Adderall, beeyatch!”

Treece was disappointed with the selection. “Don't you have any real drugs?”

“Fo shizzle my pizzle!” Henry said.

“Why do you talk like that, Henry?” Cammy asked.

“Jes' representin'.”

“Your parents are doctors and you live in Terramere. Why don't you represent that?”

“Salty!” interjected Damien, who looked like a pig with hair.

Henry was not about to let some ho dis him like that. “Why are
you
”—pointing ten fingers at Cammy—
“
rollin' with Dick Muncher and The Penis?”

“I can't answer that.”

Rich did not like the direction this conversation was taking.

“You too fine for candy cracker ass scrubs.”

“You'll get no argument from me.”

“Why don't you ice the bustas and kick it with a brutha?”

Rich stood. “I'm going to go check on the
cervezas
.”

“Adios, muchacha,” Henry dismissed Rich, and returned to Cammy and Treece. “Come on over to the Dark Meat Side.”

“I don't believe that's gangsta, Henry,” Cammy said. “I believe that's geeksta.”

Treece giggled, but Henry was unbowed. “Once you go black,” he Courvoisiered them, “you never-fo'ever go back.”

“That's not true,” Treece said with some authority.

RICH WAS MAD AT HIMSELF
for not going mano a mano, mouth to mouth, with Henry Giroux back there. At first, he had seen no need; he was enjoying, admiring, the way Cammy dismantled that little minstrel showoff. But then she turned and sided with Henry against him. Rich prided himself on not caring what the popular kids thought, feeling that their very popularity demonstrated their inferiority, somehow, but it hurt him that Cammy agreed he was a
candy cracker ass scrub,
whatever that meant, exactly.

And
Dick Muncher and The Penis?
Was that common usage? Rich had been called
Dick Munch
since the seventh grade and he himself had called Denis
Penis
earlier in the evening, but it never occurred to him that people would put the two together, turning them into the gaynamic duo or something.
Dick Muncher and The Penis.
More like supervillains.

Well, at least he got first billing.

Beth was at the candy rack, standing next to a giant pile of junk food with legs. Beth spotted Rich's approach and shooed him away. He kept coming.

“Back to the car,” she said as he arrived.

“Why?” he asked.

Beth was unaccustomed to having her orders countermanded. It became very cold in there.

“Just go back to the car, Rich,” the junk food said.

On his way out, Rich stopped to look at a magazine, mostly for spite. He picked up a copy of
American
Man,
the Magazine for American Men. On the cover was a lustrous male chest with impossible pectorals and a brightly feathered fishing lure dangling from one nipple.

read the coverline. “Cocktail Music: Which Tequila Goes Best with Beck?” was also promised inside, along with “Have You Forgotten Your Glutes?” As a matter of fact, Rich had forgotten his glutes, along with his abs, pecs, lats, and all three types of ceps.