Crash and Burn

by Michael Hassan

  Point was, I was definitely going to have sex, real, actual sex, before anyone else in Club Crew or for that matter, as far as I knew, the rest of my grade.

  And it was all because of the beans that my father’s girlfriend, soon to be my stepmom, had given me. There was magic in those beans, after all.

  Thank you, Felicia. Good night.

  Chapter Seventeen

  How Burn and Roxanne Dealt

  It turned out that things went a little differently than planned.

  And yet. Not.

  First off, Maddy did finally deliver on the oral, right after finals, in, of all places, the back of my sister’s car, which was in the garage, with both of my sisters home at the time.

  I know, not particularly smart on any level. But if you’re a teenage boy, you gotta take what’s offered when it’s offered, especially the first time for anything.

  What made it even stupider was that while we were superquiet about it, sneaking out of my house into the garage and then quietly opening and shutting the door to Lindsey’s car, Maddy insisted on having music, and so I boosted up the stereo enough to make Maddy happy, but hopefully not enough to call attention to the sound. It would not, of course, be very good if Lindsey caught us. I wasn’t even supposed to touch Lindsey’s car, much less turn it into my own personal Vista Cruiser (thank you Eric Forman).

  I was not worried about Jamie, because Jamie was in the middle of watching an advance DVD of Eight Below, which I managed to get from Duncan because his father is in the business, being as it was Jamie’s favorite movie of all time, and McClaren was just about to slide down the embankment into the water and had to be rescued by the dogs, so no way was she getting up for any reason for a while.

  So it was 10:10 on the dashboard clock, and me and Maddy were making out in the car, which was all she was good for at that point, more or less, and her mom was coming to pick her up at 11:00, which gave me less than an hour if anything was going to happen, and unless everything happened, I was planning to dump her at, like, 10:55, figuring if I timed it right, she would be upset but wouldn’t be able to argue about it for too long.

  So given that she was wearing this skirt thing, which gave me easy access, I figured we could do this. I kept reaching up her leg and she kept moving my hand away and going back to the make-out thing like everything was fine until the next time my hand went up beyond her thigh. Finally she moved my hand up to her shirt, thinking that would be good enough, which was definitely not good enough, which I made clear when I reached into my pocket and pulled out a condom.

  “What’s that for?” she asked, and I could tell from her expression that it totally scared her. All the better, get it out in the open. This is what I’m all about now.

  “You know.”

  “Not now,” she answered.

  “Why not?” I was doing my reaching up her leg again, which I knew was going to cause a problem, but I was not going to stop so easily. She would really have to make a choice, as in her principles or her boyfriend, she couldn’t have both. I had to keep the pressure on, so I kept talking as I was massaging, looking into her eyes, all sincere and all: “We’ve been going out like three months, and so far all you do is make promises.” And even though nothing I was saying was actually true, it sounded good. As in, we weren’t actually going out for three months, not, at least in my mind, sure we hooked up in school and at a bunch of parties and because she wanted to, we held hands, and I let her call me her boyfriend, but all of that was, at least in my mind, part of the master plan.

  “I’m not ready.” She was saying this but not exactly moving my hand away.

  10:25.

  I was thinking this girl was too into me to make me stop. I could make it happen.

  Still, I was running out of time.

  “C’mon” was all I said. (I know, I know, in writing this, “C’mon” doesn’t sound like all that persuasive an argument, but you should’ve heard the way I said it.) Also, I was getting places with my hand and I think she was getting into it. At least I thought so, until she pulled my hand back.

  “OK, OK, I’ll do you, OK?”

  That immediately quieted me down.

  She made me raise the volume on the car radio, which I was supercareful about, given the risk of Lindsey discovering us and all. And then at 10:44 P.M., Eastern Daylight Time, on June 24, during “Hips Don’t Lie,” which was on the radio like a billion times a day at that time, I entered one form of manhood, even though I had still not accomplished my ultimate goal.

  She had definitely not done this before, this much I knew, even though I had never done it before either. Still, she was good enough to stay my girlfriend beyond the 10:55 P.M. deadline. She had no idea that she was, at one point, twenty minutes from losing her boyfriend forever.

  And at precisely 11:03 P.M., every member of Club Crew knew about my accomplishments, having received my text messages. Back at you, Bobby G.

  Turned out that keeping the pressure on the bigger prize made the smaller prize easy to get. As in, every time we were together, I took out a condom or suggested that we have sex, and she said she wasn’t ready and then went down on me. It got to where it became automatic for her, without me saying anything, during movies, in the bathroom stalls at Pinky’s, in some random room at like every party we went to. So while I didn’t really feel anything for her, I was becoming addicted to getting head, so no way could I actually break it off with her. And the problem was, while we were kind of a couple before, Maddy now thought she had bragging rights to me, so I ended up having to stay with her like all night at every party in order to get my prize.

  To give you an idea of the sacrifices I was making, there were these superhot girls showing up at different parties from different schools, and they all seemed into me, and just when I was doing good with one of them, Maddy would show up out of nowhere, stepping out of the shadows after spending some time with one of her girlfriends, and start hanging on to me, draping herself over my shoulder with that total “I own him” look.

  By July I was going out of my mind from her when I ran into Burn, or rather, he almost ran into me. Literally. He was driving his aunt’s minivan, even though he had no license or anything, and he pulled alongside me, on my bike.

  “Yo, Crash, I’m going to Pinky’s. You want lunch? My treat.”

  I told him that I was on my way to Maddy’s house, and he laughed and pulled the van in front of my bike, telling me to let her wait. Easily convinced, and most definitely needing a break, I lifted the bike into the back of the van, noticing that he had this wheelchair contraption, which took up most of the space.

  Then I slipped into the passenger seat and he shoved a half-burned joint at me, telling me to try it, that it’s Roxanne’s latest stash. “Purple haze,” he muttered, referencing a particularly strong strain of weed. “This stuff has quite a kick to it.”

  I honestly don’t know what made me get into the van, as I knew it was illegal for him to drive and never really trusted Burn in the first place. Plus I couldn’t believe it was pure co-incidence that he found me on my way to Maddy’s, so I had to believe that he was up to something. He still seemed like the normal Burn to me, just more subdued, but again, Roxanne’s purple haze was so fucking dank.

  We got to Pinky’s and he ordered seemingly every single thing on the menu, and then as we sit together, he starts in, first, for some reason, all about Arcade Fire, who I had never heard of, and he was telling me how great their album was, how he won’t listen to anything else. They were like the new Beatles, he said, even though he knew that I knew that every time he discovered a musical group he compared them to the Beatles, like they were gods or something.

  A tray of food came: a stack of Pinky burgers piled high, cheese fries, onion rings, desserts, milk shakes. I grabbed a burger and a chocolate shake before he started on the rest.

  He continued to talk, stopping only to one-bite the first burger, then on to the next, and that’s when I realized that he had been
bulking up. His arms were twice the size they were a few weeks before. So I asked him was he doing steroids, because he was too big for his own good. And he said no, just working out a lot and taking natural supplements, which, he added, he got off the internet.

  I had to wonder if he was into something dangerous without knowing it, except Burn, being Burn, never did anything without knowing every possible angle, which meant he probably knew the entire chemical makeup of whatever it was he was on.

  So I asked him about the wheelchair, and he said he was working on a new invention but he didn’t want to talk about it. What he wanted to talk about was my relationship with Maddy.

  “How’s that working out for you?”

  “OK.” Me, being suspicious. Did she somehow set him up to ask? What was his motive on this otherwise?

  “She seems a little too into you. Like a redonkulous amount.”

  “Kind of” is what I said. I finished my burger and started in on his fries, still hungry, but from the look in his eyes, I was actually afraid that he might snap at me like a wild dog if I touched another burger or even another fry.

  “And you still can’t get her to go all the way.” He laughed, demolishing another burger in another one bite. I considered lying, except that, like, everybody in town knew that if Maddy had gone all the way, everyone would have found out, and he would have found out the same way. Besides, he wasn’t asking, he was telling. “Which means you are still a virgin. . . .”

  “Like you’re not?” I said, sneaking more fries under his suspicious eyes.

  “Of course not,” he said, confirming in my mind, at that time, that he and Christina did it. It made sense, as they had been going out for months. I didn’t exactly know what to say, but what came out was “how was it?” and he answered, “which time?” and I said, “what do you mean which time?” and he said, “with which person?” So I had to ask, “how many?” and he said, “five, working on six.”

  Now five may not seem like a big number to a guy who was like a junior in college, but we’re talking a sophomore in high school. If it was anybody else telling me this, I would have known that they were completely full of shit, especially a guy who spent most of his time hanging with one particular girl as he did. But Burn never lied. It was a known fact that he was compelled to share the truth with you, good or bad. Whenever he talked, that was just the way he was. What he said next was: “Once you get out of high school, getting laid is like no big thing at all. Older girls want it just as much as we do. And so, in my case, all I had to do was find older girls, which is easy for me because I look older than you.” Which, no question, he did, as anyone walking into Pinky’s that afternoon could have taken him for my older brother or cousin, given that he was taller, more developed than I was. “And which is also easy for me,” he continued, “because my sister’s friends are all older, and whenever my mother wants us out of the house, I go with Rox on weekends into Manhattan. When you mix older girls and alcohol and X,” referring to ecstasy, which was as foreign to me, at that time, as actual intercourse, “you have a perfect recipe for a wild encounter, especially with one of Roxanne’s friends, because, I don’t have to tell you, Roxanne is out there, so you can imagine that her friends, well you know, birds of a feather.”

  I must have made a face like I didn’t know birds at all. So he got more explicit. “One of her friends wanted to train tigers, spent like a year in Thailand on a tiger farm, and she said that I had tiger in me, so I let her, you know, totally train me, and I did whatever she said to do, which was pretty much everything you’ve seen on the internet, and a few things even I never saw before. And then she introduced me to one of her friends, this girl Irina, who made me do things to her you can’t even imagine. Of course when they both found out I was only sixteen, it was pretty much over, which is why I’m working out . . . I need to look even older.”

  He demolished another burger in a second.

  I cautiously took another french fry. This was too much to handle. I was still trying to figure out whether there were such things as tiger farms at all, and finally coming to grips with the fact that Burn had approached getting laid as he did everything else. He had turned it into a science.

  Motherfucking genius.

  “And given the fact that you got April to go out with me back in the day, in case you thought I forgot, I do kind of owe you for getting me started on the process.” And I was thinking he’s finally getting down to it but having no idea what process he meant.

  “Follow my instructions and I can pretty much guarantee that you will get what you want.”

  Which made me ask the obvious, “You mean . . . ?”

  He nodded. “Absolutely,” as I took another fry with him staring again.

  “Crash,” he said, “don’t fucking touch the onion rings. They’re mine.”

  He went on to explain that the only way to get what you wanted from a high school girl who liked you was to go out with her, then after you’re sure that she really, really likes you, you have to dump her unexpectedly. Then after that, call her, and get back together on your terms. This way, she’ll deliver on the expectation of getting you back. He said that that was what I had to do if I wanted to get with Maddy beyond oral.

  To be honest, by that point, it didn’t matter if it worked or not, the concept of not having to deal with her for a few days was incentive enough. So I agreed to try his plan.

  “Call her now,” he said, “with me here to guide you.”

  Suddenly I got skittish. I mean, she was taking care of me whenever I wanted, and she wasn’t all that bad as a girlfriend, just overly clingy. She was actually pretty good to me. Plus I didn’t exactly have a tiger trainer in Manhattan waiting for me if his advice turned out to suck.

  But he was adamant. “Trust me on this, Crash.” He grabbed my phone and punched in her number without hesitation, then handed the phone back. Before I could even ask how he knew her cell number from memory, she was on.

  “Steven? You were supposed to be on your way over. I was getting worried about you.”

  I looked at Burn. He stared back, picking up one of his precious onion rings and pointing at me with it. Do it, he mouthed.

  “It’s not working out,” I said to her. “I think we need to stop seeing each other.”

  On the other end of the phone there was complete silence. Then, faintly . . . “Why?”

  OK, I started feeling immediately terrible. I hadn’t actually broken up with a girl before, and this girl didn’t do anything wrong.

  And there was Burn, mouthing Just do it.

  “It’s not working out is all,” I said, and as I started searching for more things to say, Burn snatched the phone out of my hand and snapped it shut.

  “You will thank me,” he said.

  The phone immediately buzzed on vibrate. I knew it was her. Burn held on to my phone, letting it dangle like one of his onion rings. “If you don’t talk to her for the rest of the week, by Friday, you will get what you want.”

  I could not believe what I had just done. But I instantly felt something else, which was extreme relief, not to have to talk to her, even for a few days.

  “One more thing,” he added. “Now that you’re not seeing Maddy anymore, I need you to call my sister. She’s been depressed lately. I want you to fix her, like you did the last time.”

  This startled me. My brain processed three bits of information at the same time. (1) Was Roxanne suicidal again? (2) Why did Burn, someone who was all about logic, even consider that I could have somehow made his sister better? And (3) Did he know about the magic beans?

  All of which he answered without me having to ask.

  “I mean she’s not going to kill herself or anything, not like that, but she doesn’t laugh lately, Crash. The one thing you have to say about my sister is that she knows how to laugh, like when she does it, she totally commits herself to the utter and complete joy of laughter. I have never seen anyone do that, Crash, not like her. I have watched pe
ople laugh all my life, and it’s nothing like the way Roxanne does it. To be honest, I don’t even know how to try.” Which was probably true, as I didn’t think I ever actually saw Burn even crack a smile, much less actually laugh out loud.

  “And you”—he was shaking his head up and down, all excited, like he was a jockey on a winning horse—“you, Crash, make my sister laugh.”

  Point was, it wasn’t about the hospital or the magic beans at all, but he was making me feel like I was the only one who could snap her out of a major funk, which made me feel like a hero, so of course I agreed to call her.

  I had to ask, why did he care, as he never seemed to pay that much attention to Roxanne, or so it seemed to me. He explained that he always loved his sister, but resented her for not sticking up for him when he was younger. So after she got out of the hospital, they started talking and she told him about how much she hated things, people mostly, how nothing made any sense to her. And he told her how hard it was when they sent him away, and he admitted to her that he didn’t understand why nobody loved him, sending him so far from what wasn’t actually home but was the only home he knew and so far from his family.

  And they would go out to the garage at nights, to talk about how devastated he was about the fox, which wasn’t just about the fox, but about everything in his life, even though she was the one who was supposed to be sad. And sitting in the garage, facing each other so they could only see each other by the light of the flashlights, Roxanne cried for him, because, she told him, she didn’t know then, and never knew, what it felt like to be him. After all, they told her he was crazy, so she believed it.

  And so, Burn explained, when Roxanne tried to commit suicide, he was sure it was his fault, because he knew how sad he made her.

  “Which is why I need you to call her now,” he told me.