Spontaneous

by Aaron Starmer

  “It’ll get better,” he said, putting an arm around me. “And these help.”

  He placed two pills in my hand. I didn’t even look at what they were. I popped them in my mouth, chewed them, and let their bitterness burn the sides of my tongue.

  “You loved Cranberry?” I asked him.

  He shrugged. “I used to stare at pictures of her on my phone, but I deleted them because that wasn’t helping. I’ve already sorta forgotten what she looked like.”

  Whatever the pills were, they did the trick. For a little while at least. I felt a rush of numbness, then I passed out. Next thing I remember, Elliot was gone and Tess was in his place.

  “Honey, honey, honey,” she said.

  I stuck up my middle finger.

  “What’s that for?” she asked.

  “I want you to stay away from me. You shouldn’t be around someone like me.”

  “Honey, honey, honey,” she said again.

  There were other kids in the hall and I stumbled up to my feet and pointed at them one by one. “You will die, you will die, and you will die,” I said.

  Skye Sanchez shook her head. “We’ve got AP tests to take and then we will graduate and this will all be behind us.”

  “You still believe in a finish line?” I asked. “Fine. Then I’m crawling to it, blind and numb. Who’s with me?”

  They all stared at me like I was wearing a beard of bees, until an ally finally stepped from the crowd. Greer Holloway, who wore her affinity for drugs quite literally on her sleeve—marijuana leaf tattoos adorned both of her forearms—pulled a joint from her pocket, sparked it up, and said, “A-fuckin’-men.”

  Sometimes revolution starts with a single joint and a couple of pills.

  Or so said a wise woman once.

  Me. Right now, that is.

  While I couldn’t speak to each individual’s state of mind, I can say that once I broke the seal, the collective attitude of the senior class transformed. It became firmly entrenched in unfettered and indulgent nihilism, in an attitude of “really, what the hell can they do to us now?” The night of #ForBilly was sort of a teaser, but fire and vandalism weren’t gonna cut it anymore. Hedonism was the only answer.

  On Tuesday, in Mrs. Dodd’s Old Testament class, kids passed around a bottle of Jameson, compliments of Dougie O’Shea.

  “Is this okay, Mrs. Dodd?” Claire asked when the bottle ended up in her hands.

  Dodd lowered the Bible and said, “Wine blessed Abraham’s army, so why not whiskey for yours?”

  Good enough for Claire, and when Claire is swigging straight from the bottle in class, you know the worm has taken a distinct turn. The bacchanalia (a little Latin for you—hat tip to Spiros) started fast and only picked up steam. Our newest video—an hour-long edition brimming with Krook’s false proclamations and seven spontaneous combustions—was rushed into postproduction thanks to stimulants and adrenaline. When it had a special premiere that Wednesday, our sideshow suddenly delivered what so many had been expecting. If the comments were any indication, people were both thrilled and disgusted.

  About time! This touchy-feely shit was testing my patience.

  MY EYEZ! Can someone wash my eyez please?

  It goes without saying that Jane was instantly deified, deemed the most tragic loss since Billy Harmon.

  I ship Jane and Billy . . . in Heaven!

  Those particular words were probably typed about a billion times by frenzied tween fingers. I don’t mean to make light of her death, I really don’t, but I was having trouble trusting any of my emotions.

  For chrissakes, I couldn’t even cry for Dylan.

  that’s right

  I didn’t cry for my dead boyfriend. It’s a terrible thing to say, but it’s true. I shed my share of tears, of course, and people thought they were for Dylan, but they were really for myself. I grieved the loss of the girl I thought I was, which was a smart-ass but basically a good person. Turns out I was a smart-ass and basically an absolute and total shitstain of a person. I was a psycho who imagined people’s deaths and then—guess what?—those people blew up.

  Don’t believe me? Let’s run through the victims.

  Katelyn Ogden. I hated her. Sure, we were friendly, but deep down I hated her. Her shit was always so together. She could be a tourist on the dark side where some of us lived, then still go back to her sunny existence. I despised that. I’d wished her dead on more than one occasion.

  Brian Chen. He snubbed me once and that was enough to inspire my wrath. Then he went on to have this entirely lame catchphrase, while half the things I’ve said that should have gone viral never did. No love for “boom-boom bonkers” and so we got boom-boom Brian.

  Still not convinced?

  Consider Perry Love. I thought he was a homophobic and agephobic douche, and I wanted him wiped off the face of the earth. Ta-da! Wiped. Same goes for his teammates Harper Wie and Steve Cox. How about Cranberry Bollinger? I was jealous of her and she suffered the consequences. The Dalton twins? I was constantly annoyed by them, so they had to go too. Kamal Patel? Don’t get me started. Gayle Heatherton? I wouldn’t be the first person to think the world would be a better place without mean girls like her. Um, Jane Rolling? Um, duh. Becky, Taylor, Teresa, Karl . . . you get the gist. Even Billy Harmon, I even wanted poor little Billy Harmon out of the picture. Though when it comes to him, euthanasia is the nicest word I can hang my evil thoughts on. Basically, at one point or another, I’d wished all of them dead. And now they were. Spectacularly dead.

  All of which leads us to one clear and disturbing fact.

  I did the same thing to Dylan.

  The first night that Dylan and I slept together, he told me he loved me, and I told him the same thing. Then we did the deed, and when the deed was done, I felt spectacular. But each time we had sex after that, I didn’t feel as spectacular.

  I told myself it was typical, that first times are always the best. But deep down, there was more to it than that. Way down there in the darkness, I was hiding a secret:

  I had imagined my boyfriend dead and that had made me feel . . . well, alive.

  On the first night we had sex, it seemed quite likely that things would end very, very badly. Which sent a charge through my body. The possibility that Dylan could explode at any moment was, I hate to say it, a turn-on. But the more sex we had, the less likely that seemed. The explosions weren’t happening anymore, so my heart wasn’t thumping in the same way. I might not have been able to recognize it then, but I desperately wanted the spontaneous combustions to come back.

  Sex on borrowed time. Plummeting plane sex. That’s what I desired.

  Sex on schedule. Commuter sex. That’s what I got.

  Now, you tell me: Which sounds more invigorating?

  Okay, the latter might, that is if you’re a sensible and sane person who’s madly in love with your partner. But here’s the other thing. The more confident I became that Dylan was going to survive, the less confident I became that our relationship would. I had told Dylan that I loved him, but I had only told him once. There’s a reason for that.

  I’m pretty sure I never did.

  what I did next

  This was my fault. I had seen firsthand what I had caused. I had watched so many people, including my boyfriend, disintegrate in front of me. Now how the hell was I supposed to get all that behind me?

  What was better for me in the long run? To completely forgot the images, smells, and sounds? Or to remember them forever, like tattoos on my soul that I would notice along the cuff of my conscience whenever I got too happy with my life decisions?

  Big surprise: I chose to forget. I went easy on all things popped and puffed and I dedicated myself entirely to booze, because it seemed the substance best suited to amnesia. My incessant drinking was written all over my blotchy face and telegraphed from yards away by my rank breath, but my p
arents didn’t punish me. They consoled me. I could almost hear relief in their harmonies of “we miss him so much too.” I know they feared their time with me was limited. Now that I wouldn’t be spending it with some boy, they were probably a bit happier. I couldn’t blame them, but I certainly couldn’t tell them what I’d done.

  As for Dylan’s family, I didn’t have a clue what depths their heads and hearts were drowning in. Though on Thursday, I was given a chance to learn. That’s when I received a text from a number I didn’t recognize. It was a more formal message than I was accustomed to, but the subject wasn’t exactly a casual one. It read:

  Dear Mara, We know you must be going through a lot of pain right now, but we would be honored if you joined us for a short ceremony to remember Dylan. It will be held at noon on Saturday at the St. Francis Cemetery. Do not worry about dressing up. Simply bring your memories of my son. He loved you so. Kind regards, Denise Hovemeyer

  Denise was Dylan’s mom’s name, but I didn’t know it until that moment. As I’ve told you, in all the months we’d been together, I’d never been to Dylan’s house and I’d never met his family. That’s mostly on me. I’d never asked to visit, and the few times he invited me, I always told him it was easier if he came to my place. My parents were often at the deli, while his mom was always home.

  To be honest, I was scared of the woman. He hardly talked about her, so I assumed she wasn’t a pleasant person. I figured she was a mean old widow, a judgy old farmer’s wife. I certainly didn’t expect her to send such a devastatingly sweet text. I drank vodka and lemonade and read the words over and over until they were a blur. Soon, I was daydreaming about this ceremony.

  I pictured Denise as a solid woman with square shoulders and thin lips and I imagined Warren standing next to her at the St. Francis Cemetery, amid countless tombstones bearing the Hovemeyer name. The triplets wouldn’t be there because I figured the Rollings, in their grief, would want them far away from this cursed family. So it would be just those two, Dylan’s mother and brother, in a cemetery swirling with fallen apple blossoms and the odor of damp spring soil. Oh, I almost forgot! The ice-cream truck would be there too, parked in the grass—a rusty monument to bygone happiness.

  Then I pictured what would happen if I showed up to offer my condolences and crocodile tears. Denise would hug me, maybe ask me to call her some nickname, like Ducky or something. I’d sneak a sip from a flask and as all the remembrances were being remembered, I’d have to confess.

  “I remember the beginning,” I’d say. “Life was crazy and he seemed crazy and that seemed to fit. But seeming to fit and actually fitting are two different things, aren’t they? That’s why stores have dressing rooms, right? Dylan turned out to be a special boy, a sensitive soul. But he didn’t fit. And I didn’t love him. Don’t get me wrong. I miss him, I really do, but I also like having only myself to worry about. Now, I can’t exactly tell people that, so it’s better to drink and cry and appear heartbroken. Which is cowardly, I know. If only I had realized that my dark thoughts about Dylan were there for a reason and that they were dangerous. If only he had lived long enough for me to break up with him. If only in the throes of passion, when he was inside of me—”

  Whack.

  I pictured Denise “Ducky” Hovemeyer slapping me across my stupid face because that’s what my stupid face deserved. Then I pictured myself stumbling off, guilty of adding one more messed-up thing to the pile of messed-up things this poor widow has had to endure on a daily basis. And finally, being a villain and all, I’d be obliged to steal the ice-cream truck, to drive away in a cloud of dust, chewing gum, blowing bubbles, giving not a single fuck—all my fucks, in fact, flying straight out the window.

  It was better for everyone if what I pictured couldn’t ever possibly come to be. So I deleted the text and I blocked Denise Hovemeyer’s number from my cell. I drank more vodka until I passed out on my bed.

  out of hand

  What I had started the week before took a firm hold. Half the kids showed up to school drunk or stoned the following Monday morning. Dr. Wonderman had been out on bail for months and, while he was no longer facing murder charges, he wasn’t going to be straightening any teeth or tilting any minds anytime soon. So someone else swooped in and scooped up his business. Who? I don’t know and I don’t care. All I can say is that business was booming.

  We came to refer to the day that Dylan, Jane, and the others died as The Event, and it marked the moment when our experiment in free-form schooling fell apart, when our little utopia crumbled.

  “This isn’t going to make things better,” Spiros told us as the booze and dope were openly shared. “It’s only delaying the inevitable nuclear fallout.”

  “Fallout has already happened, dude,” Greer told him as she took a hit. “We’re living in a postapocalyptic—”

  And Greer blew up.

  That was late April into May for you. Spiros’s class was as spirited as ever, with blitzed teens saying whatever was on their minds. Occasionally blowing up in the process. Before long, Spiros was as battle weary as the rest of us. A splattering student became as innocuous as the bell between classes.

  Phones were always poised, capturing the sex, drugs, and spontaneous combustions. It was not uncommon to hear the phrases “Is this too snuffy?” or “Is this too porny?” in the video editing bay after school. The snuffy and porny stuff got in, more often than not. We didn’t even care if people were watching. We didn’t care if they were thrilled or disgusted. This was simply how it was and we weren’t going to sugarcoat it.

  Remember those virgins I knew? Unheard of now. Of course, we weren’t animals. It’s not like kids were having sex in class or in the hallways. But if the sand by the pool could talk, it would ask for years of therapy. And poor, poor Kylton Connors.

  “Why do I let every bi-curious future frat-boy convince me that he can give a decent BJ?” he confessed in one of the videos. “When did I become the crash-test dummy for your careening sexuality? There are other gay guys in this class, you know? Subject them to your confusion and teeth.”

  Careening sexuality pretty much covered it. Hunks like Clint Jessup were always conveniently shirtless, trouncing down the halls and hoping the sheen of their waxed torsos were enough to entice a few ladies behind a dune. It often worked, but not on me. As much as I craved arms around me, as much as I missed lips on me, I didn’t want what they wanted, which was fast and loud and stupid. Rodeo sex.

  And it should probably go without saying that there was also a lot of pent-up aggression. Consequently there were more than a few fistfights. When a brawl broke out in yoga and Jalen Howard punched Patrick McCoy and Patrick McCoy blew up and splattered all over Mr. Harmsa, Mr. Harmsa decided that maybe yoga wasn’t the answer. The next day he shifted to Krav Maga, an Israeli self-defense technique that was supposed to teach us focus and discipline, but primarily became an excuse for us to toss our friends and frenemies around in a controlled environment. Didn’t stop the explosions, of course, but they’d never again interrupt a nice quiet session of downward dog.

  Mrs. Dodd’s class was more or less the same—passionate readings from the Bible with little to no discussion—though her motives were suddenly clear. She didn’t object to any of our behavior, which seemed counterintuitive at first, considering we assumed she was there to save us. It turns out saving had nothing to do with it. We were the Sodomites. She was there to watch us burn, to make sure we burned. Every last one of us.

  When I use the words we and us, I’m talking about the senior class in general, obviously. There were teetotalers and prudes who refused to partake in the debauchery. Some of them had been among the most debaucherous in years past, but their conversion to priggishness didn’t mean they were immune. Sure, they could pass a pee test, but the Curse blew a few of them up too.

  Then there was me. One of the last things Dylan had said to me was that someone needed to tell the victi
ms’ stories. I promised I’d be that someone. It was a promise I most certainly did not keep. Because when things really went off the rails, when spontaneous combustions were so common that we hardly stopped classes for them, when my blood alcohol concentration reached whatever blood alcohol concentration is required to make blackouts a daily thing, I began to lose track of who the victims were.

  In just over a month, we had

  Greer Holloway, who I’ve already told you about on the account of her death in Livin’ 101, her association with the crack tree house and Kamal Patel, her pot-leaf tattoos, and her general flakiness. But she wasn’t a flake, not really. She loved animals. She was going to be a veterinarian someday, which I know is such a clichéd thing to say when someone loves animals, but she actually interned at a vet’s office and did more than hold dogs while they got shots. She had a passion for all things fuzzy.

  Patrick McCoy, who died during that yoga brawl and was one of the three. One of the three guys I slept with, that is, before I slept with Dylan. He was one of the inspirations for All the Feels, come to think of it. He had an infectious laugh and was damn good at guitar. A nice-enough guy, most of the time, though he did have a temper he bottled up and uncorked every now and again. That’s why we broke it off. Because he called me a bitch. Which, obviously, I often am. Though I hardly deserve to be called one because I overslept and missed a brunch date at Houlihan’s once.

  through 19 (I think). There was Poul Dawes, a skater who wore polka-dotted shirts and slept with a lot of girls. And Helen Reedy, a girl who was sleeping with Poul Dawes when he blew up, a girl who had a full forty minutes to bask in that horror—to pick the polka-dotted fabric from her teeth—before she was gone too. Rahul Sneed, a loner who almost never made eye contact except that one time I saw him working at Rosedale Assisted Living Center, handing out ice-cream sandwiches to patients, my ailing grandma included. Stephanie Stupinksi, the captain of the volleyball team who shouted shazam! every time she spiked the ball. Cole Hooper, a guy who was superhot but no one else seemed to notice he was superhot, so I pretended he wasn’t superhot because I didn’t want to be the girl who thought a guy was superhot who was so super not, if you know what I mean. Oh yeah, and he’s the one who made that suit of armor out of duct tape. Didn’t hold him together, obviously, but thankfully it made cleanup a lot easier. Then there were like . . . eleven others? Twelve? I’m not sure.