Crash and Burn

by Michael Hassan

  Me: “Whatever.”

  OK, you’re probably thinking I didn’t sound all that concerned. Well, that’s because I acted that way in front of Burnett. But, I’m not going to lie, if any other kid had said that to me, I would have laughed it off. Kids say stupid things all the time and you let it go, or you fight over it. Either way, by the next day, you were best friends again and throwing the football or kicking the soccer ball around, no problem.

  But not so with Burn.

  His words plagued me. Worse. Tortured me.

  Because I knew that David Burnett meant every word with all his heart. And I also knew that he was smart enough to somehow come up with a way to do it.

  In the weeks that followed, I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, and most definitely could not concentrate on anything at school, even though Burn was not in my class and even though I mostly didn’t see him. I couldn’t tell my parents about his latest threat because they had already warned me not to talk to him. I couldn’t tell my teachers because they couldn’t be trusted not to somehow get me into deeper trouble with him by telling his mom. I couldn’t tell my friends because they would make fun of me for taking Burnett seriously. Plus it would definitely get back to him. I couldn’t tell Lindsey, who never listened to me. I couldn’t tell Jamie, who wouldn’t understand.

  So by the time I met with the psychological doctor for my next appointment, I was a jittery mess. He talked to me for a while and then separately to my mom.

  And then, inexplicably, upped the dose of Ritalin again, this time with some other medication.

  Which only made things worse, because after a few weeks, still thinking about how Burn was going to kill me, my heart started racing and I always felt dizzy. I had stopped eating completely. And the only time I felt tired enough to sleep was when I had a headache so bad I couldn’t even see straight.

  And I didn’t know if it was the medications or the threat of being killed by Burn, with him coming at me when I least expected it. Maybe with a knife or another weapon. Maybe poisoning my lunch. I racked my brain trying to think how he was going to do it, which only made my heart race faster and my dizziness more intense. I couldn’t think of anything else. Because I totally knew that since he was some kind of supergenius, he was thinking about ways that I couldn’t think of, ways that I wouldn’t be able to even imagine.

  It got so bad that my parents must have noticed, because they gave me back my PlayStation. But I couldn’t even concentrate on the game, or any other video game for that matter. Plus I was afraid of running during recess, during baseball, during soccer for fear that my heart would explode in my chest.

  Which it felt like it was going to do practically all day, every day.

  And my mom called the doctor, who claimed that I was overreacting to the drugs and that it was a matter of time before my body adjusted to it.

  And even though she was concerned, she didn’t take me off them, so I continued to take them.

  Until the day I fainted during school.

  And then they still had to wean me off.

  So it took, like, a week before I started feeling like Crash again. And all that time, my father, in his infinite wisdom, accused me of faking it because he knew I didn’t want to take the medication in the first place.

  And then he wondered why I didn’t want to act all happy and sing him happy birthday with the rest of my family. Yeah right, happy birthday, Dad.

  Anyways, it was spring, and I was pretty much back to normal, back in the schoolyard, and Burnett came over to our group and asked to be included in our game.

  And me being a lefty and him being a lefty, someone said that he should borrow my glove, as we were on different teams, and of course, he didn’t have one of his own (what kind of kid doesn’t have his own glove?).

  I was literally shaking when he approached me. Was there a way for him to do something with my glove that would kill me? Sneak a poison into it that would eat away my hands or paralyze me? By then he had become, for me, a diabolical and sinister evil genius along the lines of Doctor Neo Cortex.

  So we played. And I watched him with my glove. And every inning he was out there, I never took my eyes off him, even as I was striking out inning after inning. On easy pitches, with Pete yelling at me, “What is wrong with you?”

  At the end of each inning, Burn would toss my glove to me, and I would examine it for the most insignificant changes. I even made Bosco try it on, just in case.

  Then, after the game, he came all the way over. His team won, thanks to me striking out, going 0 for 4, and he handed me the glove and said:

  “I got a copy of Star Fox for Nintendo 64. And GoldenEye. They’re awesome. Do you want to come over and play?”

  Chapter Four

  Another Night of Partying with Jungle Juice and Weed

  It was a week after the night at Pinky’s. We were back at the nature preserve, hiking to our special place deep in the woods, which had become a nightly ritual. Long ago we had built a campground between two giant boulders, where we could hide our stash and hang without anyone ever finding us. The perfect setup, with a circle of rocks that we had moved together and makeshift wooden benches that Newman and Kenny built out of half-rotted trees. There was even an overhang so we could party there on rainy Sundays when everyone’s parents were home and there was nowhere safe to go.

  On this particular night it was me, Newman, Kenny, Bosco, and Evan. Also this Spanish guy, Ruiz, who used to work at Target with Bosco.

  Kenny passed a bottle of a sports drink, which was actually his now-famous jungle juice, consisting of any fruit juice he could find plus a whole lot of supercheap vodka.

  I felt like I could celebrate, having just written my first chapters, so I took an extra-long swig and passed to Newman, who, for some odd reason, rejected, and passed to Evan, who swigged and screeched, “Sweeeeeeet!”

  Evan almost always said some version of “sweet,” like, over a hundred times a day.

  I flinched, not from the drink, which was completely smooth, but from hearing Evan’s mantra.

  “Sweeeeeeet” was really, really getting on my nerves.

  “It’s Urova,” Kenny said, acting all scientist-y, referring to a brand of vodka that was low-rent, kid-friendly engine fuel, didn’t burn a hole in your pocket, but possibly would to your stomach.

  “No way,” said Evan and Ruiz together. More from Evan: “Dude, this is smooth shit. Doesn’t even smell. Like, not at all.”

  “I filtered it,” Kenny said smugly. “I borrowed one of those water filters from Pete. We did a taste test against his parents’ Ketel One. Just as smooth. We made, like, gallons.” He lifted the lid of a cooler that he carried with him, exposing six huge sports drink bottles.

  Ruiz took a turn. “Fuckyeah.” Then he downed the rest of the third or fourth bottle and laughed. “You are a fucking genius,” he told Kenny.

  Kenny was a fucking genius, which we all knew. And this was not the first time that he presented us with another invention that revolutionized our way of getting trashed. A year ago, we were at Pete’s house, and Kenny showed up with a contraption that he had built himself, claiming that he got the directions off the internet. It was, in fact, a homemade vaporizer, guaranteed to deliver the most THC possible with every inhale without spending like $500 on the real thing. So like his current cocktail, you didn’t need to buy primo shit but could use shwag, and it would be just as effective as Cali medicinal.

  No question he was right; that vaporizer fucked us up big-time. Got beyond high, to superhigh, so fucking torched we couldn’t move. And Evan, swear to god, freaked out, said he could hear his heartbeat and then didn’t, which made him think he was dead. In fact, the vaporizer ended up freaking almost everybody out except me and Newman, so we stopped using it.

  Turned out that Kenny gave it away, to, of all people, David Burnett.

  So sitting there in our usual spot, taking another swig of jungle juice, it hit me that Kenny and Burn had a lot in common. Lik
e the math team and chess and the constant A’s in their AP courses. Like Kenny, Burn was always working on inventing something, not to mention developing the complicated devices that he set the day of the siege. I made a note to interview Kenny about what he remembered. But now was not the time.

  Newman finally started drinking even though he was supposed to be our designated driver, which didn’t matter much anyways because Newman driving drunk was better than most kids driving sober, which made him our designated drunk driver. He was laughing about something with Ruiz, who was pretty excited since he was going to one of our parties for the first time tonight, which would officially make him part of Club Crew.

  He was chill. Quit his job at Target after hanging with us and started working at a clothing store where he was constantly picking up girls. Almost every time he showed up to hang, he had some new girl with him, each hotter than the last, and he knew it, high-fived us behind their backs, shared stories of his conquests. Plus he always brought his own weed and had no problem smoking us down, as in sharing (no wonder Bosco liked him so much). Plus, after meeting us, he started making fun of Bosco at every opportunity, which was what we all tended to do.

  So he was most definitely chill.

  I was thinking about Kelly’s party, and I wondered whether any of the Herd Girls would be hooking up with him that night.

  I climbed into the front seat of Newman’s father’s Range Rover, and, passing a blunt to me, Newman finally asked me how it was going with the book. This time, I was all over it. In fact, all night I was preoccupied with what to write next, and I knew he would help me.

  I told him how things returned to normal for most kids after the fire, including Burn. Normal for everyone except me. Burn’s parents ended up going out for dinner a few times with my parents, which didn’t make sense to me, because my dad was one hundred percent crystal clear that I should have nothing to do with David, but my mom was, like, constantly on the phone with Mrs. Burnett. According to her, David was back to fine on his meds, not that that was going to change anything in my mind.

  And, being as Burn’s father was one of the coaches for Little League, Evan and a few of the other kids who were on his team would sometimes end up at the Burnetts’ house, enticed by Burn’s increasingly large collection of the latest video games. Even Lindsey was there a few times on homework dates, although she always came home complaining about how she didn’t like Roxanne at all.

  Still, whenever Burn invited me or whenever any of the other kids asked whether I was going, I always had an excuse. And even though the other kids thought Burn was superweird, they would end up there, being as Burn had the largest house in the neighborhood, with a superhuge pool, a tennis court, and a rec room with maybe the first flat-screen TV in the neighborhood.

  I never got to see any of those things. Truth is, I was still out-of-my-mind panicked, and increasingly certain that the invites were all part of a calculated plan to get me to go to his house where something terrible would happen to me. So I remained absorbed in my terror.

  But that was only for one spring.

  Because that summer, I started going to sleepaway camp.

  And Burn’s family moved away.

  Which made me feel pretty stupid, since I wasted most of that summer in a panic zone, wondering what Burn had planned for me when I returned to school.

  And then he was gone. Totally, completely, and permanently gone forever. As in moved-back-to-Chicago gone.

  So that fall I was set free, and my mind stopped spinning, and I started to do better in school. And I even got along better, at least temporarily, with my dad, who started talking to me like he didn’t hate me for a while. Of course, that didn’t last, because school got harder for me, and I was still out of control at home, bouncing off the walls when I had to study for tests. Or fighting with Lindsey or getting into trouble at some after-school event or religious class that I didn’t want to go to in the first place. Or getting yelled at on the baseball field because my dad decided to assistant coach and benched me during the final innings of more than one game for no apparent reason. Which, of course, caused me to lose my temper, more than once. What was the point of having a father who coached if he always benched you anyways?

  Which, of course, ended up in public displays of mutual hatred, which, of course, turned my dad against me again. He was constantly ragging on me about my room, or my schoolwork, or my lack of sportsmanship, or leaving shit in the den, and always with his own mantra, which was:

  “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  And then it was seventh grade, the fall of 2002, and we (me and Pete and Evan) were at the mall to see Jackass: The Movie with Pete’s brother. And there, on line for candy, right in front of us, was a tall kid who I didn’t recognize until he turned to us, started talking, and singled me out among my friends, and, in a deep, almost manly voice for a kid, said, “Yo, Crash. Are you still alive?”

  Newman swerved around a possum in the road and brought my attention back to the drive, which I guessed he was doing OK with, though I was pretty wasted.

  “Start there,” Newman said.

  Evan was asleep in the backseat, and Kenny was playing with his new iPhone, probably investigating the next great invention to get us fucked up. I turned back toward Newman, feeling dizzy, and all I could see was the empty bottle of jungle juice in my lap. I wasn’t feeling so hot.

  “That should be the opening for your next chapter,” Newman continued.

  “I guess,” realizing that I must’ve been thinking out loud, even though I had no idea I was actually talking.

  I tried to question him but instead belched up a vomitburp. Not a good sign.

  Kenny from the back: “Youwananotherhitdude?” as the smell of weed hit my nostrils

  “Notgonnamakeit,” I said, not sure if Newman understood me.

  Newman, being Newman, figured it out immediately. He pulled over, and I flung the door open.

  Just in time.

  I was feeling better by the time we got to Kelly’s house, back in form again thanks to a pure old-fashioned Gatorade (as in the alcohol-free version) and a pack of gum.

  Kelly’s parents were in Europe, just like always, and her older sister was gone. Pretty much everyone from our town was already there, so we had to park like ten blocks away. All for the better; the walk was helping me clear my head.

  Pete greeted us at the door with two redcupfuls of mix. Someone else’s version of jungle juice; this one tasted of Red Bull and Crystal Light.

  “Yo, ma’ brothers, time to get fucked up,” he says, handing us the redcups.

  Newman chugged a cupful down in one gulp, tossing the empty back to Pete. He remains completely indestructible. I had no choice but to follow. Ice cold, cherry, and deadly strong. It occurred to me to just pass on it, but I couldn’t disappoint. I had my own rep to live up to.

  “Christina’s been asking for you, dude,” Pete says, ushering us through the house. “She’s in the back, by the pool.” He stopped at the table for another drink, as did Newman. I had no choice but to take another as well.

  “It’s crazy back there, and she’s pretty wasted,” Pete added. Then, as he handed us our refills, he was already focused on the next people to enter the house. Two of the hotter junior girls were trailing behind Bosco and Ruiz, and the juniors were not seeing Bosco at all, as they were looking overly interested in Ruiz, who had changed out of his dirty LET’S GO METS T-shirt and was now dressed all South Beach: clean-shaven, hair slicked back, gold chain, halfway open Boss shirt.

  “Look at Tony Fucking Montana,” says Pete.

  Me and Newman are looking at each other. We don’t have to say it, but both of us are thinking, When did he have time to shower? Where did he get clothes to change into?

  I’m in my Abercrombie tee and a pair of Diesel jeans, as always, every night out, which is fine since I am pretty comfortable about looking good, which I definitely do well. Way better than the rest of the guys in the Club Crew. I
need to keep looking sharp, not just for me, but for them, as they usually count on me to get with the friends of the girls I hook up with.

  And so I was thinking I was looking pretty good now.

  But not, apparently, as good as Ruiz. I know I am going to have to keep him away from Christina, especially with her being wasted and all and me so close to tapping her, which I definitely plan to do this summer.

  “Looks like there’s a new celeb in town,” Newman said, and I understood that he was referencing my dwindling fame.

  It was mad crowded around the pool. Blunts were being passed around, and cans of Keystone with some bottles of Corona mixed in littered the lawn. Most of the faces were familiar, though I did spot a few that I didn’t recognize. Newman was talking a lot, which he always did when he drank, and he was going on about how everyone had their own celebrity, in the sense that there were one or two characteristics that differentiated each kid from every other kid. I was trying to listen but kept getting distracted, because there were so many people around and Christina was absolutely nowhere in sight.

  “Yo, dawg.” A hand reaches out toward me. Brian Hill.

  “Wrestler,” Newman whispers. “He’s defined by it. Scholarship and all.” I understood that Newman was doing this for my benefit, because he knows it’s hard for me to describe people when I write. His point is that you don’t have to say much. Say “wrestler,” and you think of a thick guy, solid neck. That’s all you need.

  He goes on as we walk around the pool:

  J.D.: Supernerd. No street sense whatsoever. He will believe anything. He will be a professor of physics and never get married.

  Robby Michelson: Two words—panic attacks.

  Akheel: If Apu had a son . . . (the only one of the three Indian guys I know who actually sounds like he’s Indian).

  Hartman: Multiple DUIs, sloppy belly to prove his love for keggers. Got kicked off the football team.