Mojo (3 page)

“Hey, dude! Way to go!”

“Dylan! That is, like, so surreal, man!”

“Hey, Dylan, what was it like?”

Some of these people I didn’t even think knew my name. Obviously, the story had blazed its way across the text-message universe like a renegade asteroid. Nothing so perfect to prick up the curiosity of the high school populace like the death of a classmate.

So there I was, surrounded by eager faces, some of them even belonging to some pretty decent-looking girls. They all wanted to know what it was like, sitting in a Dumpster with a dead body. Hector and I were suddenly famous. Too bad Hector wasn’t there to enjoy it.

I don’t know how many times I told the story that day. First in one hall, then another. At the beginning of class, at the end of class. In the cafeteria, the library, the parking lot. Everybody wanted to hear it. This one guy, the baggy-black-clothes-and-silver-chain-wearing Corman Rogers, kept coming back for more. I’m like, “Dude, morbid much?”

I got better with each telling. By lunch, it started to seem more like a movie I’d seen than something real that’d happened to me. And Hector, I guess, became more like a movie character than a kid who had walked those same high school halls. Maybe that was what I needed him to be at the time.

After lunch, my teacher sent me to the front office to have a talk with this special grief counselor they called in to deal with the student population’s feelings about the death. There wasn’t exactly a line waiting to get in. Apparently, Principal Chrome Dome, or whoever, thought if anyone needed to talk about it, Randy and I were it. But I didn’t have much to say. Nobody likes having someone they don’t know picking at their brain.

I was okay, I told the counselor lady, but she insisted I had some feelings I needed to sort through. Maybe she was right. Later, at night, when I was in bed in the dark, Hector’s face came back again, and the detectives came back, and it wasn’t like a movie. It was like doom itself had infiltrated my brain.

A couple days later, Hector’s family threw him a funeral. I thought it would be weird to go—maybe they didn’t want to be reminded of the condition I’d found him in—but Audrey was like, “No, you have to go. We’ll both go. It’d just be too sad for his family if, like, nobody from school shows up. Besides, don’t you want to remember him at peace instead of how you found him?”

So there we were on Thursday afternoon at St. Andrew Avellino, and what do you know—the place was actually pretty full. Sure, there were only a couple of kids from school—that’s all the friends Hector had—but apparently he had a pretty big extended family. By far most of the people there looked Hispanic to some degree. Audrey and I had to grab a seat in back, which was fine. I didn’t want to stick out as the guy who only spent time with Hector in the Dumpster after he was already dead.

I’d never been to a Catholic funeral before. My parents aren’t exactly into organized religion. On Facebook, under
Religion
, they entered
spiritual
. But I have to say this for the Catholics—they really know how to put on a show. And I don’t mean that in any kind of disrespectful way. I don’t usually call clothes
garments
, but the priest running the program had some
mega-cool garments going on. The hat alone made you feel like,
This is going to be serious
.

And then there was the light filtering through the stained-glass saints, and the praying, and the Latin, and the rituals. Even some Mexican songs. And on top of that, this huge crucifix staring down at you from the front of the sanctuary, all kind of sad and beat and worn out with humanity but forgiving you anyway. I’m telling you—as the thing wound down, I couldn’t help but feel Hector’s ghost or spirit or whatever was a long way from the high school trash bin.

It made me wonder what my funeral might be like. I’d probably have about the same number of friends from school show up but a whole lot less family, since I was an only child and our nearest relatives lived in Dallas. No fancy garments or elaborate rituals either. No big accomplishments to reel off in the eulogy. After all, my most noteworthy act so far was finding Hector. That wasn’t exactly eulogy material.

I’d be lucky to get a half-dozen flowers around my casket. The school probably wouldn’t even hire a special grief counselor to come in. Outside of Audrey and Randy, my other so-called friends would probably forget me in a week. I felt like Scrooge from
A Christmas Carol
when the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come showed him his own gravestone. The good thing was Scrooge had a second chance to do something, so maybe I did too.

After the service, we hung around so Audrey could snap some photos of the church and the crowd coming out for the school paper. I should mention that I submitted a story about Hector in the Dumpster to the paper, but Ms. Jansen, my journalism teacher, wouldn’t accept it. She said my writing style was too informal and the Dumpster stuff was too undignified. She thought a simple obituary would do.

Anyway, several of the mourners were standing around staring in our direction. I didn’t know whether they were staring at Audrey, this picture-taking chick with pink, blue, and green streaks wound into her brown pigtails, or if they figured out I was the guy who’d found Hector.

Then, on the way to the parking lot, this minivan of a guy in a black suit and a black hat with a red feather tucked into the hatband walked up and grabbed my arm.

“Your name is Dylan Jones?” he asked. He was probably nineteen or so—his goatee made it hard to tell. He was a good couple inches shorter than me but was so square and solid, you knew he could run you over and leave nothing but a dark spot on the road.

“That’s my name,” I said.

“Do you know the North Side Monarchs?” he asked, his eyes digging deep into mine.

I’m like, “The what?”

“One of my boys told me you’re the one who found Hector when he died.”

“Uh, yeah.”

“And you don’t know who the North Side Monarchs are?”

“No, I don’t have any idea.”

His face relaxed, and he almost smiled. “I guess it was just fate, then, that you found him.”

“Fate, yeah, that’s right.”

He put out his hand for me to shake. “My name’s Alberto Hernandez. Everyone calls me Beto. I’m Hector’s cousin. Thanks for coming to the funeral.”

I’m like, “That’s all right,” and introduced him to Audrey.

“You know,” he said, “it’s not like the cops and the news said—Hector didn’t take no overdose. If he had drugs in him, someone else must’ve dosed him.”

“I never thought he took any drugs,” Audrey said, and I go, “Me either,” though truthfully I wasn’t so sure. I mean, yes, he didn’t seem like a druggie type, but then you can’t really be sure what goes on with people after the last school bell rings.

Beto stared into my eyes again. “You be careful.”

“Never anything but.”

As he walked away, Audrey goes, “Wow, that guy was good-looking. I mean, if I liked guys, that’s the kind of guy I’d like.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “He kind of weirded me out the way he just came up out of the blue like that.”

Audrey nudged her shoulder against my arm. “Well, that’s just the cost of being famous, I guess.”

Famous. Yeah, right. Fame is fleeting, they say, and they know what they’re talking about. In my case, it lasted less than a week. And to be even more specific, it changed within five seconds. On Friday, I walked into first hour, and Jason “The Growth” Groethe—who’s a big loser idiot—called out, “Hey, check it out, here comes Body Bag.”

Body Bag
. What was that even supposed to mean? I didn’t put Hector into a bag. But the whole class erupted into laughter. Ha ha ha. How lame. But by the end of the day, that was all I heard—
Here comes Body Bag
. Even from girls.

It was all over then. A major rule of high school is that once you get a nickname, you’re stuck with it no matter if it makes sense or not. Maybe Jason figured he had to get even with somebody for his getting tagged as The Growth, but, hey, I never called him that. At least not before he came up with the Body Bag deal.

By the next week, I’d given up on getting a decent article about Hector in the school paper. Instead, I decided to interview Haley Pressler, the cheerleader’s cheerleader. Okay, yes, some people did call her “The Pretzel,” but apparently being super-hot is a pretty effective inoculation against the full-time
nickname curse. Anyway, I had this idea for an article about how new kids could adjust to school, and Haley seemed like a good expert to get tips from. Besides, like I said, she was ultra-hot.

So I met her by her locker right before lunch, thinking just maybe I’d talk her into doing the interview over a burger and some fries. But no, she wanted to do it right there in the hall. So I’m like, “Okay. I mean, it’s not the most comfortable way to do an interview, but I guess it’s cool,” and just then I heard footsteps and a rustling sound behind me. Before I could turn around, some of Haley’s stupid jock friends grabbed me and yanked a big plastic trash bag over my head and shoulders.

It was the worst. You cannot see when you’re stuffed inside a Hefty bag. I couldn’t move my arms, and I was stumbling around the hall yelling, “Get this thing off me! Get this thing off me!”

All the while these idiots were chanting, “Body Bag! Body Bag! Body Bag!”

And the worst part was knowing that The Pretzel had set me up for it. No, that’s not true. The worst part was that somebody caught a video of it and pasted it all over the Internet within probably fifteen minutes.

That was the last straw. I had to do something.

A couple days later Audrey and I were cruising to Topper’s for burgers. Like I said, I didn’t have a car, but it wasn’t so bad since Audrey had this pretty sweet champagne-colored Ford Focus, and we were together most of the time anyway, so it was cool. As we drove, I got the idea she might be getting a little tired of me complaining about the whole Body Bag situation because she’s like, “You know what? You need to stop focusing on that so much. Let it go.”

“How can I let it go? Next time I walk back into school, it’s going to be there again. ‘Here comes Body Bag. Let’s shove him in a sack and roll him down the stairs.’ ”

“You know why I think it bothers you so much?”

“Why? Pray tell, Dr. Freud.”

“Because it hits a little too close to home. Let’s face it. You’re built kind of like a bag. A bag with arms and legs.”

“What?” I glared at her. Sometimes her blunt-and-to-the-point act could get on your nerves. “How would you like it if I said you were built a little bit like a fireplug with pigtails and a Kangol 504?”

That didn’t faze her. “I wouldn’t care. I am built a little like a fireplug. I’m short and solid. Only a fireplug has two arms
and just one breast, so I guess I come out ahead on that part. I don’t care what anyone else thinks.”

So I’m like, “Okay, you can be a double-breasted fireplug, but me, I don’t want to be Body Bag anymore. Anyway, the bag-with-arms-and-legs deal’s not the worst part of it. The worst part is it’s like when I was at the police station—they take your identity away. They strip you of that, and all you have left is a stupid nickname.”

“So, you know what they say?” She smiled at me. “The best revenge is living well.”

“Really?
They
must not have been in high school when they said that.”

When we pulled into Topper’s, Rockin’ Rhonda was out front as usual. You might think Stan, the owner, would chase off a weird homeless character like Rhonda, but he didn’t. Instead, Rhonda became part of the Topper’s experience.

She was probably in her forties or so and huge, not only for a woman but for anyone. In fact, I thought she was a man the first time I got a look at her. You’d always see her out there in her faded army jacket, pants, and boots—with a frizzed-out pink scarf. The color of her hair I don’t know. Maybe she didn’t have any. She always covered her head with an orange stocking cap, even in the summer.

She got the name Rockin’ Rhonda because she played a beat-up guitar that had no strings and pretty much nonstop sang one golden oldie after another—or at least as much as she could remember of them.

As we walked up to the front door, it’s like:

So, yes, having Rhonda out front was a definite bonus, but the real draw to Topper’s was the burgers. The thing is, I’m pretty much an authority when it comes to hamburgers—a real connoisseur of the ground beef and bun—and Topper’s has the best burgers south of Twenty-Third Street. Not that I’ve tried every burger place in the metroplex, but I’ll bet I’ve been to most of the good ones. My personal menu involved about three burgers a week, more when I got lucky, and sometimes I wrote reviews about them for the school paper. The best place I’d tried was actually in Dallas, a place called the Stackhouse, but it’s not like I could make the three-hour drive down there every day. No, Topper’s was easily the best place within fifteen to twenty minutes of my house.

Audrey and I took our usual booth in the corner and looked over the menu. Of course, we knew everything on there, but it’s always fun to look at the selections anyway, especially since they have pictures of the food. Usually, I got the Number 11, which has pepper-jack cheese, bacon, jalapeños, and anything else you want. In my case, I went for lettuce, tomato, onions, and mustard. Mustard is key. Mayonnaise might be all right for a turkey sandwich, but please leave it off the burgers. Also, Topper’s asks how you want your meat cooked, which is a must for a really good hamburger, and I go for the medium well. No blood for me. Just a light touch of pink so I don’t feel like I’m going
to come down with
E. coli
poisoning or something, but not so overcooked that they burn the succulent juices out of it either.