Rotten (9780545495899) Page 3
I get up and take the lid off the biscuit jar. Sure enough, as soon as he hears the sound of glass clinking off glass, he appears like a drooling genie. I take out a red biscuit, because that seems like the coolest color. He starts twitching, and his eyes get wide and follow every movement I make. It’s like my hand is remote controlling his head.
But he doesn’t come any closer. He wants me to throw it to him again. It’s like an agreement between us: He’ll take food from me as long as I don’t get too close. I toss the biscuit high this time. He leans back and gathers his legs directly under himself like a kangaroo, then springs straight up and vacuums the thing out of the sky.
He waits to see if I’ll give him another one. I bet Mom gave him one too, so he’s already in the bonus round. It’s pretty clear that he’d eat these things all day long if he could find enough suckers to feed them to him. I sniff my hand to see if the biscuits really smell that good. They don’t, but they don’t smell that bad, either. By the time I put the top on the jar and turn back around, he’s gone. Still, I finish my cereal thinking that, technically, I didn’t have breakfast alone.
There’s a note on the counter: Let JJ out back if he needs to go. Don’t give him any more biscuits! I pull open the junk drawer and push through the tape and batteries and stuff until I find the marker. Then I cross out JJ and put JR. I’m not sure what to do about the “needs to go” thing, though.
I’m going to be gone all day, which Mom doesn’t know and doesn’t need to. I’ll be home before she is, and that right there is the main reason she has to trust me. She might not want me to hang around with those guys, but she can’t lock me in or really keep track of me when I’m out. It’s true now and it will be just as true once school starts.
I decide to leave the back door open a little. That way, he can go if he needs to. I guess it’s a “security risk,” but this is a pretty small town, so that’s not much of a problem here. People mostly know their neighbors and keep an eye on things, and if all else fails, a lot of them own guns. We don’t have one, but Mom got an NRA sticker from someone and stuck it on our door, right above a sticker for a security system that we also don’t really have.
Anyway, add it all up and there aren’t a lot of break-ins. The ones that make it into the always-entertaining Police Blotter in the Standard are mostly things like someone’s ex-boyfriend breaking in “under the influence” to take his bowling ball back. We don’t have any bowling balls to steal, and in addition to our fierce array of stickers, we have a shiny new Rottweiler. He’s been a total wuss so far, but I figure the barking and the sheer size of his jaws should be enough.
Anyway, I leave the back door most of the way open and the screen door open a crack. JR is curled up in the same place as yesterday, sleeping off all those biscuits. “Just push through if you need to go,” I say when I pass him. “Do not crap on the floor!”
He lifts his eyes but not his head, and I’m not entirely reassured.
I wait out front for the guys. I figure Aaron will be driving, and I’m right. I figure he’ll be a little late, and I’m right about that, too. At not quite a quarter past ten, his big boat of a Chevy Malibu pulls to a stop along the curb. I hop up off the grass and get in the backseat, alongside Rudy.
“Hi, girls,” I say, once the car starts rolling.
They each insult me in their own way. Rudy’s is the best. For a second, I’m not even sure what a “whoremonger” is, but I think it through and decide it means “pimp.” In these circles, that’s a compliment.
We have the windows up because the AC is on, but it’s barely working, so it’s still pretty hot in here. It’s the first time all four of us have been together in months, and you can sense the energy instantly: four dudes in a car, late summer. We steer clear of serious topics for the first few miles, but as we’re leaving town, Aaron says, “I ran into Janie the other day.”
“Oh yeah?” I say, “How, uh, how’s she doing?”
The car is silent for a few seconds. It’s just the sound of the wheels and the AC as they register the fact that I don’t know. I shouldn’t have said that.
“Seemed OK,” says Aaron, his tone even and unreadable. Aaron Vandever is always in total control.
“More like who’s she doing!” blurts Mars, like he can’t hold it in any longer. For a second, I wonder if he knows something. Then he says, “She was over at my place last night,” and I know he doesn’t. He doesn’t stop, though. “And it was a long night!”
“Drop dead, Mars,” I say. Sometimes Mars is really funny, but this isn’t one of those times.
“Don’t worry,” he says. “I gave her what she needed.” He turns back toward me and we make sort of glancing eye contact. I’m glaring at him, but his eyes are darting all over the place, and I’m not sure the message really gets through. If Mars hasn’t been officially diagnosed with ADHD or anything like that yet, I’ll do it right now. He’s always been a little out of control. He’s the opposite of Aaron, and in a weird way, I think that’s why they get along so well.
I can see Aaron in the rearview mirror: His eyes are on the road, but he’s smiling. He’s not going to do anything about this. Mars turns back around and I’m thinking: If he says one more thing about Janie, I’m going to punch him in the back of the head. I think he’s about to, but Rudy steps in. “So dick weed here got a dog,” he says.
“You got a job?” says Mars. Either he misheard or he’s still being a jerk. “That sucks!”
“Hold on, Mars,” says Aaron. “I want to hear this.”
Mars finally shuts up.
“You got a dog, man?” says Aaron.
“Uh, yeah,” I say. “My mom did, but he’s, like, half mine.”
It’s always dicey to mention your mom around these guys, but Aaron lets it slide.
“He?”
“Yeah,” I say, “he’s a dude…. Or at least, he used to be.”
We all grimace in fake pain, and Rudy sort of hisses through his teeth, because that’s not something you even want to think about.
“What kind of dog?” says Aaron.
“He’s a Rottweiler,” I say. “He’s built like a, I don’t know, a battleship or something.”
“Is that like a pit bull?” says Mars.
“Bigger,” I say. “And blacker.”
“Too black, too strong!” blurts Mars, who is neither.
“He dangerous?” Aaron asks.
“Only if you’re a biscuit,” I say, and everyone laughs. Mars laughs too, and not a fake laugh either. I feel sort of bad that I was about to punch him, but not too bad: I’m sure I’ll want to smack him again before the day is over. Anyway, I have one more thing to add. “His name is Johnny Rotten.”
“Nice,” says Rudy, even though he already knew that.
“’Cause he’s a Rottweiler,” says Mars, because everyone’s mind works at its own pace.
Finally, Aaron weighs in. “Cool,” he says, so that’s the official word on that.
Aaron turns the stereo on and up, starting with a good, seriously hardcore song, and at the speed he’s driving, we cover five miles listening to it. Once it’s over, he turns the volume down, and I think: This is it. Here it comes. My nerves spike.
I expect them to grill me about my summer, but they don’t. I don’t know why. It’s not like I have any way to escape. I have my story all set and ready to go, though, and I think they know that. We went through the same thing before I left, and I’m sure Rudy told them I haven’t changed my story. They’ve seen all the same war movies as me, so they know that you don’t make a direct assault on a defended position, not if you can help it. That’s just basic strategy.
Anyway, apart from a few words here and there, we just drive on as if nothing’s different, as if I’d seen them all yesterday instead of months ago. “Think we should crack open the windows?” I ask as we hit a wide-open stretch between towns.
“Yeah, might as well,” says Aaron, knowing that his AC isn’t cutting it.
“I’m amazed we’ve made it this far,” says Rudy.
The windows slide all the way down, and the summer air comes whipping in. That ends the conversation, at least until Brantley. If we want to say something now, we’ll have to yell. I lean back and relax a little. In the seat next to me, I’m pretty sure Rudy lets one rip.
We park on a side street near the 7-Eleven and climb out into another hot, hazy day. The air is different in Brantley. I can’t say exactly why, but then Mars says, “Smells like butt sweat,” and I guess that sums it up pretty well.
We fall into formation, two by two, as usual. Aaron and Mars are in front, and Rudy and I are hanging back a little. Mars starts clowning around and ape-walking. He’s actually really good at it. Instead of just bending his knees to get low, he bows his legs way out to the sides like a real ape. Then he leans forward and gets his knuckles nearly down to the ground.
We have this stretch of sidewalk to ourselves, and Mars starts giving it the full “Ooh-ooh-aah-aah” treatment. By the end of the block, Aaron is red faced from laughing, and Rudy and I are smiling and shaking our heads. From back here, I can really see the differences in size between us.
In ape terms, Mars is definitely a chimp: small and always chattering. Aaron is a gorilla: big, solid, and mostly quiet, at least when he’s not cracking up at one of Mars’s stunts. Rudy and I are orangutans, I guess: too tall for chimps, not broad enough for gorillas, and with stretched-out limbs we’re both hoping to grow into someday soon.
We turn the corner on to a busier street. Mars straightens up and our smiles flatten into hard, straight lines. Halfway down the block, we push through the doors of the 7-Eleven. I’m third in, behind Mars and in front of Rudy. The girl behind the counter is watching us file in. The place is pretty empty — midmorning — and we make her nervous. She sees the apes in us, too. I give her a little nod. I mean it like, Don’t worry about us, but I guess it could mean anything.
We fill our hands with cheap, sugary junk. Rudy and Aaron get coffees and basically make milk shakes out of them with sugar and half-and-half, and Mars and I get Slurpees, because that’s why God put 7-Elevens on this earth. I hang back and pay last. Mars shorts the girl. His stuff comes to $5.17, and he tosses a crumpled five on the counter and is out the door by the time she has it halfway flattened out.
“Hey!” she says, shouting at the closing door and the space where he was. She’s missing a tooth, off to the side.
“I got it,” I say and throw down a crumpled five of my own.
I’m the last one in the store with her, and she looks at me. She’s not much older than I am, but you can see she’s been through the wringer. Her hands and eyes move a little too much, with those extra flutters and twitches.
“Geez,” she says, flattening out the five. “I need an iron for you guys.”
“And seventeen cents,” I say.
She smiles with her mouth closed, hiding the missing tooth.
Mine comes to $4.67, and I tell her to keep the change. That’s the seventeen cents plus some.
“Wow,” she says. “Maybe I’ll close up early.” But I’m already heading toward the door. I’m not looking to make friends or anything. I just don’t want any trouble right now.
I find the guys out front. There’s nothing to sit on — no town in its right mind would allow a bench in front of a 7-Eleven — so they’re all sitting on a little square of grass alongside the store. I find a spot and get to work fueling up. We sit there, crunching and chewing and slurping. We do it fast because we really are like animals down here, sitting on the ground, eating crap.
I see Rudy fold a giant Slim Jim back on itself, doubling it up and eating it in three or four big bites. Mars has taken the top off his Slurpee and is drinking it that way, cherry-red clown lips forming around his mouth. An old couple walks by, and we watch them the whole time, sort of daring them to look over. They’ve been alive long enough to know better.
Five minutes later, we’re back up and moving. I can feel the sugar in my veins and the sun on my face, and it’s the same for the others. Rudy gives us a little bass line as we walk: “Waanta-waantaah-wakka-waaaah!” It’s like the soundtrack to the movie of our lives.
We hear the skateboards coming, two blocks away. The sound is unmistakable, and we sort of get ready. I see Rudy make a quick fist and let it go, as a little jolt of adrenaline hits my system. We were in a fight once: four of us, four of them. It was a totally fair fight, until it became clear that it wasn’t. Anyway, it started because of a skateboard.
But this time, it’s just two little kids. The electric charge fades from the air, and a wave of relief washes over me. The kids see us and slow down. Then the one in front speeds back up and the smaller one follows him. Ten or twelve feet away, the first one executes a halfway decent ollie.
“Yeah!” says Aaron.
“There ya go!” says Rudy.
Everyone who’s skated remembers their first ollie, their first board slide and boneless. I give the kid a little whistle and he rolls by smiling, his cheeks turning red as he goes. Then it’s the second kid’s turn. He’s younger, and he tries a board slide on the curb and totally eats it.
“Oh damn!” says Rudy.
It’s quiet for a few seconds. We’re all waiting to see if the kid’s going to get up laughing or crying or at all. I hear the sound of the first kid turning his board around. Finally, the second kid gets up and gives us this incredibly dorky thumbs-up. You can see the pain on his face — he’s just barely holding it together — but that thumbs-up is too much and we all bust out laughing. Then he makes a show of walking over to the curb. He leans down and touches some imaginary notch or bump, as if that’s why he wound up in the road.
“Keep it up, kid,” says Aaron.
“Next time I see you,” says Mars, “I want a three-sixty.”
We don’t really expect the kid to say anything, and we’re already moving again, but here comes this little voice: “Tre or pop shove-it?”
Those are the two main kinds of 360, and it’s just so hilarious to hear this kid say that after totally eating it on an easy board slide that we nearly end up on the ground ourselves. We laugh for, like, two blocks, but we pull it together by the time we reach the liquor store.
You might think a semiskeezy place like Liquor Mania — right on the main drag and exposed to every set of eyes this town can muster — is not the place for someone looking to avoid unnecessary trouble. Especially if that someone is sixteen. And you’d be right, but I don’t even have to go in. All I have to do is wait outside while Aaron goes in and tries his fake ID.
Aaron is seventeen already and looks even older than that. His fake ID is top of the line, too, but you don’t want the guy behind the counter to see a bunch of obviously underage dudes waiting outside for their friend. So we make ourselves scarce. There’s a bench outside the post office, just down the street. Rudy and I sit on it and plaster these responsible-citizen looks on our faces. The goal is to look friendly and positive without looking deranged or stoned. Rudy’s T-shirt features skeletons arranged in all the major sexual positions, so it’s a fine line.
Meanwhile, Mars goes into the post office to check out the wanted posters. They have, like, a wall calendar of the FBI’s most wanted in there. The post office in Stanton is too small to have one, so Mars likes to check it out when we come here. It’s not really a calendar, it’s just that it’s one page after another, so you have to flip through and look at them one at a time. It lists their names, their crimes, “known aliases,” and things like that. It’s actually pretty cool.
Anyway, Rudy and I take the opportunity to talk about him. “Man,” I say, “I was about to smack him in the head on the ride over.”
“Yeah,” says Rudy. “Saw that.”
“Was he this bad before?” I say.
“Before what?”
“Before, you know, before I went away,” I say
.
“Yeah, I know,” says Rudy. “I was just being a jerk.”
“Yeah, should’ve known.”
“How?” says Rudy, setting up one of our standard jokes.
“Your lips were moving.”
“Yep,” he says. “Anyway, the answer is yes, he’s always been like that. You just didn’t used to be so defensive.”
I nod. It’s true.
And then, speak of the devil, Mars comes bounding down the stairs, all full of secondhand criminality. “He out yet?” he asks.
Our eyes have been on the door of the store pretty much the whole time, so we don’t have to look over to answer. “Not yet,” says Rudy.
“Well, that’s a good sign, right?”
“Could be,” I say.
“Don’t be so negative, man,” he says.
“What?” I say. “I wasn’t.”
A minute later, Aaron pushes his way out the door, empty-handed.
“Dammit,” we all say, or words to that effect.
Aaron spots us and walks over. “Guy’s a jerk,” he says.
For a while, it seems like that’s all he’s going to say, and it pretty well sums it up. Depending on who you ask, there is either a special place in heaven or a special ring of hell for liquor store workers who do their job honestly. But then he adds, “They’ve got these sweet two-liter jugs of vodka, dirt cheap.”
None of us says anything; we are devastated by our loss. That is the absolute top of the charts for us: cheap, strong, and clear, so you can mix it with anything. Beer is in last place: bulkier, weaker, more expensive, and just try putting one in your Gatorade.
“I wasn’t greedy or anything,” says Aaron. “Just got one, stood up straight, did everything right.”
“So what? He didn’t buy the ID?” says Rudy.
“He just wasn’t sure,” says Aaron. “And he wanted to take my picture with that stupid little camera on a stick. I was like, ‘No way, man.’”