Save Steve

by Jenni Hendriks

  “Right? Of course, you’d have seen it. You spend all that time with him. Please, please, forget all those things I said on the beach. I’m so embarrassed. I can’t believe I was thinking of breaking up with him. If I had . . . God, I never would have known. He explained everything to me at the hospital. He’s really hurting, you know? It took so much courage for him to come out and do that.”

  “Collapse?” I couldn’t help myself. This was ridiculous. How could Kaia have fallen for a rose and a stumble?

  “What? No. To be so vulnerable in front of everyone. In front of me. But god, seeing him crumple like that . . . it made me realize how fragile life is.”

  Fucking. Cancer. Love story.

  “Have you ever seen Ferris Bueller’s Day Off?”

  “What? No. What’s that have to do with this?”

  “Nothing. I just . . . I mean, Steve got better kind of quickly, though.”

  “I know. The doctors were surprised. But he’s so strong.” She got a little misty on the last word. Like she was lost in a memory of Steve’s weirdly undiminished biceps being wrapped around her.

  “But, like, don’t you think it might have been a little, I don’t know, too fast?”

  “What? No. What are you saying?”

  “I’m not—”

  “You don’t think he passed out?”

  I should lie. I should bail on this whole conversation. “Not really.”

  “YOU THINK HE’S FAKING CANCER?”

  I retreated from Kaia’s death glare. “What? No! Of course not!” Heads were turning our way. “Of course Steve has cancer!” How could I take it back?

  “So what? You think he faked losing his hair?”

  “No!” I took another step back and held up my hands.

  She crowded close to me. “You think he’s been faking throwing up from chemotherapy?”

  “No! Of course not!” I took another step, and banged against the lockers.

  “Then what?” She crossed her arms and waited. She was at a rage level she usually reserved for oil companies.

  I wanted to crawl inside the locker behind me. I whimpered, “Nothing.”

  But I couldn’t erase what I’d said.

  “What possible reason would someone have to fake passing out?”

  “Toimpressyou?”

  She stared at me with disbelief.

  “I think maybe you shouldn’t share Best Person after all.”

  I didn’t see Kaia the next day or the day after. I’d checked my newly repaired phone a hundred times to see if I’d gotten a text from her. The only message I’d missed was from my mom asking me to pick up bok choy. I couldn’t text Kaia, because the idea of texting her and not getting a response was somehow worse.

  At least now it was the night of the city council meeting, where I would definitely see her. They were voting on our ordinance banning large marine animals, and Todd had asked me to speak for the group, for reasons of “youth culture,” “Gen Z,” and something about “being in the zeitgeist.” I could apologize to her right before I gave my speech. And maybe if I crushed the aqua park tonight, Kaia would start to forget our last encounter.

  That small sliver of hope propelled me to Main Street. Unfortunately, I was running a little late. Checking the Save Steve site, which had now been renamed the Cam Webber Hero Fund, had been a mistake. I had become distracted scrolling through the comments. There were hundreds of them, all praising Steve and his generosity. If the random girls had been bad before, it had been kicked up to a whole new level now. There had been poetry. Dirty poetry. And despite the fact that the fund had my name on it, not one single person had bothered to comment on me.

  A horn blared. I swerved my Prius out of the way as a pickup truck ran a red light. I skidded to a stop, breathing hard.

  “Asshole!” the driver yelled.

  My head snapped up. “Are you kidding me?” I shouted through my window. I’d been the one with the right of way.

  The driver gave me the finger.

  I rolled down my window. “No! You’re the asshole! Not me! You’re the asshole.” But the driver sped away and left me yelling at an empty street.

  “The aquarium has already poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into a state-of-the-art tank providing ocean access for the shark and putting our own economic interest at risk . . .” The lobbyist for Channel Islands Aqua Park stood in front of the city council and presented his case. On the projection screen behind him, numbers and data flashed.

  I sat in one of the old scratchy chairs that must have been in the city council chambers since the 90s and tried to pay attention. My backpack was on the seat next to me to save a spot for Kaia. She wasn’t here yet. I hadn’t worried at first. She was always running a little late. But when, an hour and a half in, the council called the representative from the aqua park to the front, it had finally occurred to me: Kaia might not be coming at all. For the hundredth time, I tried to subtly turn my head toward the back entrance to see if she had slipped in.

  “Still no Kaia?” Todd asked. I turned back and shook my head. “What’s up? She’s usually glued to your side.”

  “Oh, um, we had a fight.”

  Patrice leaned over from the row behind us. “Told you,” she singsonged. “Here on Earth.”

  “It’s not the same!” I hissed. I’d watched the movie now, so I knew. It was so not the same. For one thing, Steve would never wear a shirt as baggy as Chris Klein’s. I couldn’t take it. I had to finally text her. I couldn’t go up there with this hanging between us.

  Me: Hey, I’m sorry for what I said.

  Send.

  I waited, only half listening to the lobbyist spew his lies. My phone buzzed.

  Mom: Best son ever! I’m watching on the livestream!

  I thumbed a thanks to my mom, my heart sinking. Still nothing from Kaia. The lobbyist was wrapping up. Maybe she was on her way. If she was driving, she wouldn’t be checking her phone. I was sure Kaia wasn’t a text and drive type.

  Me: I’m up soon.

  That wasn’t too pushy. Even if she was mad at me, she wouldn’t miss this, right? We’d been working on it for months. One little fight couldn’t ruin it. True, she seemed to be more into Steve now than ever before, but that didn’t mean she was suddenly going to give up everything she cared about. She wouldn’t just forget about the shark.

  “Cam, brah, you’re up.” Todd nudged me.

  I stepped to the front of the room, feeling a hush fall over the crowd. The seats were about a third full. There was no sign of Kaia.

  Someone cleared their throat. I realized I’d just been standing there. I picked up my notes.

  “Members of the city council, this aqua park lobbyist tells you that the special habitat with ocean access has been a successful means of keeping sharks in captivity. But he didn’t tell you the context of the statistics he pulled. He said captive sharks were now living triple the length of time in captivity. But triple from what? From a wild shark? No, of course not! He means triple from the absurdly short lifespan that sharks survived in theme parks in the 90s. Those sharks often died within months. So best-case scenario, they live a few years? But a white shark in the wild can have a lifespan of seventy years!”

  My phone buzzed. I’d laid it on the podium. I could see it glowing, the little bubble of text on my lock screen. I angled it toward me so I could see the words.

  Kaia: It’s fine. This whole thing’s been crazy. Steve wasn’t feeling great so I’m over at his place. We’re watching on the livestream. Good luck!

  She was never coming.

  Because she was with Steve.

  Lying liar falling down faker who for sure felt just fine Steve. They were curled up on the couch watching me. I could practically see the smirk on his face through the public access camera.

  “Is that all?” one of the city council members asked.

  Hell no, that wasn’t all. I stared back at the camera. At Kaia. “Don’t you see? He’s trying to trick you to gain your
support. How can you even trust someone like that? This isn’t just about the shark. This is about what’s wrong and what’s right!” I slammed my fist down on the podium and shifted my eyes to in-camera Steve. “Aren’t we all tired of the bad guys winning?”

  There was a cheer from our section, and even a few of the other people sitting in the audience nodded and clapped.

  Feeling the energy in the room, I turned to the seated crowd. “Aren’t you?”

  This time the cheer was bigger. “Yes!” An old man in a Hawaiian shirt stood up.

  “Then we can’t let the bad guys win again! We’re sick of it!” I pounded the podium harder. This time everyone stood and cheered. I stepped off the stage and strode through the crowd, accepting back slaps and congratulations.

  “Thank you, young man, for your passionate remarks,” the city council member said as she shuffled the papers before her. “If there are no more public comments, we can commence the vote.”

  I took my seat, a little out of breath. My phone buzzed.

  Kaia: Great speech. Gonna win for sure!

  Take that, faker Steve.

  “No!” Next to me, Todd half started from his seat and sat down. I looked up.

  “What?”

  I turned around, taking in everyone’s reactions. They were muttering and frowning. Patrice sat in her seat, her expression closed off. “We lost.”

  “What? How?” Around me, the other protesters got to their feet and started to boo. The city council members called for quiet, but instead they just got louder.

  “The system’s rigged, Cam!” Todd shouted over the howls. “That’s what we get for playing by the rules!”

  “If you disrupt the meeting any further, we will be forced to bring in the police.” Near the emergency exit, a uniformed police officer stepped forward. The protesters didn’t quiet, but they began to disperse and move toward the exits. Todd shouted out a Nelson Mandela quote and something about this not being over.

  I bumped along with everyone else, but couldn’t find the energy to add my voice to the throng. I didn’t understand what had just happened. We were in the right. How could the city council not see that? Around me people began to chant, “This isn’t over.” In my pocket, my phone buzzed. I took it out.

  Steve: So sorry, good guy. Guess it’s time to let the shark go.

  And just like that, I found myself shouting along as we marched through the halls, down the front steps, and out onto the streets. “This isn’t over. This isn’t over.”

  Among his Instagram dumpster of Shaggy memes, Deadpool GIFs, and reposted videos mocking Marie Kondo was the real Steve. Steve in a car with his bros, giving the peace sign with their tongues out. Steve stealing liquor. Steve doing a keg stand with a Viking hat taped on his ass. Steve igniting his farts. Steve lighting fireworks on a wall that formed the word FART. Steve obscenely straddling the kiddie rocket ride at the mall. Steve writing “Jiz” over the “Sha” on a Shazam movie poster. “Best person, my ass,” I said out loud.

  Every few months he was seen taking a goofy-grinned selfie with another girl. Madeline Fields. Angelie Shishbangar. Nancy-Lee Nguyen. Brianna Stonebrook. Emma Napolitano. Emma Montoyez. Emma Chan. Emma Bumgartener. Emma-Grace Hurwitz III.

  Kaia was just another in the string. Or worse, she was only a pawn in his game. He just wanted to beat me. To prove he could get whatever he wanted. I bet he already had another girlfriend on the side. Oh man, I’d pay to see whatever Kaia would do to him if she found him with some random. Then she’d see who he really was. The real Steve Stevenson. Then she would drop him like an old gym sock.

  But I couldn’t just tell her to look through his Instagram. She’d say that was before and that he was different now. She’d say cancer had changed him. I needed to show her that he was still the same. Cancer Steve was still Asshole Steve. The thought of them going to prom together made me nauseated.

  Then an idea sparked.

  I opened a new browser, popped up the Save Steve site, and whizzed down to the comment section. Scanning feverishly, I searched for what I needed. This would work if I found just the right post. Not too crazy. No poems rhyming the word chemotherapy with come and sleep with me. Boom! StevesGirls. That was their login name. A photo of three very cute college girls underscored it. Their post read: Can we buy you a beer, Steve?

  “You can’t always play by the rules,” I said like an evil villain. But I wasn’t the villain. I was the Best Person. And I was going to show Kaia who was the Worst.

  16

  The sun went down behind Steve’s house as I sat in my car rehearsing. I had one shot at this. And I knew it was gonna be weird just showing up out of nowhere to see if he’d hang out with me.

  “Hey, Steve, I just wanted to thank you for naming the fund in my . . . uh . . . name. It was really touching . . .” No. He’d never buy that. Not after that wink. It needed to seem realistic. Maybe work related? KYET wanted to do a follow-up interview with Steve, Kaia, and me on the Cardi B thing. “I thought we could go over what we wanted to say in the interview?” I tried. Eh. We could do that standing awkwardly in the doorway. Why would he go out to do that? What possible reason would we go out at all?

  It was getting dark. I was going to have to wing it. Shit. Winging it was not my strong suit. But the trap had already been set. I needed to act now.

  A few uncertain knocks on his door later and it opened. For the first time, his dad answered. His chest strained his CrossFit shirt. But he seemed really happy to see me. “Oh, hey, Cam, buddy! Just the guy I wanted to see!”

  Caught even more off guard than usual, I stammered, “Really?”

  He grabbed my arm, just like Steve would, and led me into the house. “Come on, you got to see this. You’re gonna love it.”

  Four eighty-inch LED TVs mounted like a command center. A Sub-Zero mini fridge. A pulsing Pulp Fiction–themed jukebox. A row of neon gaming chairs. An electric Ping-Pong table.

  “Look what you got Steve!” his dad said as he ushered me into the newly upgraded man cave. Steve sat in the center of it all. Seeing me, he raised a confused eyebrow. His dad trotted over to him and shook him playfully by the shoulders. “We couldn’t waste all that money on bills. Look at how happy it makes my boy!”

  So instead of paying off their bills, they had just given their man cave a large dose of Viagra. This was what all my pain and suffering paid for? More than ever, I wanted to take Steve down.

  “Come on in, have a seat and kill something,” Steve’s dad urged.

  “Oh no. I just . . .” How was I going to get him out of this man-topia? “I, uh . . . I actually wanted to take Steve out,” I offered weakly. “To . . . uh . . . celebrate.”

  “Well, celebrate here,” his dad countered. “What could be better than this?” He fired up the electric Ping-Pong table, a Tetris-like light display cascading across the surface.

  “Cam’s a pacifist, socialist vegan. This isn’t his particular scene,” Steve explained.

  “I’m a pescatarian.” I felt the need to clarify even though we weren’t ordering food.

  Steve frowned at me. “We don’t need Cam judging our slaughter-fest, do we, Dad?” He was doing a good job trying to get rid of me. And I was at a loss for what could get him out of here.

  “No one ever had fun without someone else getting killed, Cam,” his dad joked, and slammed a Ping-Pong on the table, which caused a digital explosion.

  “I’m not sure that’s true,” I said.

  Steve bounced up from his chair. I was sure he was going to just take me out by force. But instead, he dropped his controller and smiled, “All right, Cambo. Let’s get out of here and get this celebration started.”

  A few minutes later we were in my car. I couldn’t believe how easy it had been. Too easy, really. But Steve hadn’t even known I was coming. How could he have plotted anything? Steve slammed his door closed and I strapped myself in.

  “So, what’d you have in mind?” he asked.

  “I
. . . well . . . I thought we could play mini golf.” I’d needed to find a fun place we could accidentally run into someone.

  “Mini golf? Isn’t Astroturf full of toxic chemicals? Are you sure windmills aren’t racist?”

  I resisted the urge to fire back. I needed to keep this thing friendly. “Come on, Steve. We don’t need to keep repeating the same dynamic over and over, do we? Isn’t it time for a fresh start?”

  Steve stared at me for a long, probing moment and then fell back in his seat. “Sure. Why not? Let’s fresh it up.” He clicked his seat belt in and turned up the radio that had been playing Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky.”

  The Golf N Stuff parking lot had a smattering of SUVs and family vans. Steve and I walked toward the entrance. A single go-kart whizzed by on the track that was adjacent to the parking lot. An eight-year-old literally screamed, “Wheeeee!”

  “All right. Let’s get turnt,” Steve mocked.

  We approached the entrance and a harried mom carrying a cake and balloons hurried past us. “Do you think Tyler will notice if we crash his seventh birthday party?” Steve asked.

  “Look, you’re not going to have fun with that attitude.”

  “Okay, Mom.”

  “You never know, something . . . exciting might happen.”

  “Doubt it.”

  Anonymous pop music thumped inside the dark, mildew-scented arcade. What was probably Tyler’s birthday party raged in one corner. To our right, some junior high kids banged on the token machine, hoping to score more tickets. A six-year-old murdered digital zombies by the ball pit. I scanned the room for the girls. I’d told them to meet us by the golf course, but maybe they were early.

  “You got any quarters for the claw game? I really need a new fidget spinner,” Steve deadpanned.

  “We need to get our clubs.”

  “You’re the boss, party man.”

  I found the cashier and saw that a group of girls was already in line. I stiffened, anxious about my plan. We got in line behind them and I tried to get a good look. The picture from the comment section only gave me a vague idea what they looked like. One blonde. Two brunettes. One had glasses. One had freckles. I leaned in toward them, but their faces were buried in their phones. I slid a little out of line but one of them stepped forward, blocking my view further, her tiny Totoro backpack almost hitting my face.