Pretty Bad Things

by C. J. Skuse

  “You need a diversion,” said AC/DC, “and we can give you a diversion.”

  BEAU

  TWENTY-FOUR

  DIXIE REGIONAL MEDICAL CENTER,

  ST. GEORGE, UTAH

  Not for the first time in the last few weeks, I woke up wondering where the hell I was. I felt like I was juiced, like my head was being put through a pencil sharpener and my whole body was turning in circles. As my eyes focused, I saw white bedsheets. A TV on a shelf in the corner. Sunshine blazing in through a window between walls the color of a rainy day. It wasn’t the motel room. There was no other bed. It was just me and a TV and white bedsheets. A little red light blinked on the bottom of the screen. A remote sat on top of a nightstand to one side of me. I reached for it, but found I couldn’t move. My left arm was in a sling, plastered up. I tried to wrench my body over slowly so my other arm could grab it, but everything hurt. I couldn’t move. The door opened. A nurse came in.

  “Where am I?”

  “Oh, you’re awake. You’re in Saint George, in the hospital, sweetie.”

  “Where the hell’s Saint George? I was in Las Vegas.”

  “Well you’re not in Vegas anymore; you’re in Utah. Boy, you must have banged up your head pretty good.”

  “Utah?”

  “Mm-hmm. How are you feeling?”

  “I’m in Utah? I can’t be. Where’s Paisley? What happened?”

  “You’ve got a badly broken left arm, a sprained right ankle, multiple bruises, and a nasty head wound. From what I hear, you are darn lucky that’s all you’ve got. We’re keeping you overnight for observation, and then I’m afraid you’ve got some explaining to do.”

  “Are the cops here?” I asked her.

  “Here, there, and everywhere. One right outside the door just in case you try to pull a fast one, and a dozen trying to keep the crowds at bay out front.” She sighed, and went around my bed to the window to open it a crack. “Can I get you anything, a drink?”

  “I’m not allowed. I’m sixteen.”

  The nurse chuckled, pointing to the pitcher of water by my bed.

  “No, I wanna watch TV. Are we still on TV?”

  “Yep,” she said, reaching for the remote and stirring the TV into life. They were broadcasting live from outside the hospital, where there was some kind of riot going on.

  “What’s happening?”

  “I don’t know. Looks like your fans are going crazy out there. Fighting over who loves you the most.”

  There were all these kids on screen outside the front entrance, waving makeshift cardboard signs spelling out WE LOVE YOU BEAU AND PAISLEY in glued-on candy. Some kids had linked arms and were chanting. Others were throwing donuts at cameramen, others being restrained by cops.

  All for us.

  All ’cause we robbed some people.

  All ’cause of Dad.

  “Is my sister here? Is Paisley here?”

  The nurse shook her head. “No. Though I wouldn’t be surprised if she turned up. She’d better give them a wide berth, if she’s got any sense … but coming from the same family as you, I’m thinking maybe she ain’t got a lick of sense, neither. Jumping out of cars …”

  “I jumped out?”

  “You tell me. Some fisherman passing along I-15 found you lying by the side of the road. Like a bloody carcass waiting for the buzzards.”

  “Shit. Why don’t I remember?”

  “When are you kids ever gonna learn that roughhousing always leads to no good?”

  I smiled. “I did it. I jumped out.”

  “You need anything else, just give that cord a little pull, okay? When you’re feeling up to it, someone will be in to show you how to use those,” she said, and nodded to a pair of crutches leaning up against the corner by the door.

  “Okay,” I said as she wobbled out of my room.

  I really jumped. It was all coming back to me. I’d heard Virginia talking about us and how she’d do whatever it took to get the money. Locking me up for another two years. Killing Paisley if she had to. And I jumped. And between jumping and landing here in whatever middle-of-nowhere hospital I was in, I remembered nothing.

  The TV flickered in the corner. Girls were taking their tops off and parading around half-naked, cops trying to cover them up with their jackets. Girls were painting We Love You Buddy in melted chocolate on the hospital windows.

  How come they loved Buddy? I didn’t even know if I did, and I was his son.

  Was I thinking straight? Didn’t I love him? Didn’t I want to see him? Not as much as Paisley, I knew that. Not enough to get us both killed. Not enough for all this.

  Not enough.

  Amanda Peace was being accosted by a kid in a military-style coat and a big girl wearing an AC/DC shirt just like Paisley’s.

  And then I heard a little voice in the room.

  “Beau?”

  And Paisley was standing there in a candy striper’s uniform.

  “Oh my God!” I said, and she shushed me and came over, throwing her upper body on top of me in a hug. I groaned.

  “Oh shit. I’m sorry,” she said, drawing back.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I’m just a little bruised. How did you find me?”

  She nodded at the TV. “The news. God, I’m so glad to see you, Beau. I’m sorry, I don’t care if it hurts.” And she hugged me again.

  I laughed in my pain. “By the way, what are you wearing?”

  “Don’t ask,” she said. “We haven’t got long. The cop outside your room went to get coffee from the top floor. Coffee machine on this floor’s broken. Somehow. You hooked up to monitors or anything? One of those bags you piss into?”

  “Uh, no,” I said.

  “Good, ’cause we gotta get you outta here.”

  “Who’s we?”

  “Oh, I met some people. Made some friends.”

  “YOU made some friends?” I laughed. “You gotta be kidding me.”

  She eased me up to a sitting position on the bed and then gently swiveled me around. “Can you walk?” she asked me.

  “I think so,” I said, standing up. I stepped forward. My whole body was screaming with pain, throbbing in too many places, but I could walk.

  “Come on, we gotta get out of here before that cop comes back. I got a car waiting at a back entrance, but we got, like, a five-minute diversion before they start getting suspicious.”

  “Where did you get a car from?”

  “The fans out front,” she said. “They’re giving it to us. Like a gift. They said they’d be honored.”

  “They’re rioting for us? You did that?”

  “Of course. So we can get you outta here.”

  I was shuffling a little from all the pain, and she was urging me to hurry up. “We’re not gonna get very far like this. I’ll go get a wheelchair. I saw some old lady using one a couple of doors down. I’ll go and scam her.”

  As she opened the door, a man stood there in a red shirt with a white doctor’s coat over the top. A scruffy man with a thick brown beard.

  I felt my heart sink.

  “What’s the problem, Pais?” the man said. “Is he awake?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “But it’s slow going. I’m gonna grab him a wheelchair.”

  “I’ll carry him if I have to,” the man said, coming into the room. He stopped when he saw me, as though waiting for me to say something.

  She’d found him. I knew she would.

  “Dad,” I said without thinking. He was a little grayer and he’d lost some serious pounds, but it was still him.

  He walked over, smiling, though there were tears in his eyes. “Hey, son. You need some help there?”

  “No, I’m okay,” I said, making a lame attempt to cross my arms and just sticking out the cast instead. But I didn’t want him to hug me. Paisley must have hugged him half to death. My whole body was screaming in varying degrees of pain, but no way was I gonna show him that I couldn’t manage. I didn’t want anything from him. I didn’t need anythin
g from him.

  I took another step, carefully and purposefully, holding on to the nightstand with my good hand until I was sure I wouldn’t stumble.

  “You all right, Beau?” asked Paisley.

  “Yeah, I can manage,” I told her.

  PAISLEY

  TWENTY-FIVE

  DIXIE REGIONAL MEDICAL CENTER,

  ST. GEORGE, UTAH

  So here’s where you want us all driving off into the sunset, Dad throwing candy back at us like he used to, and me and Beau bundled up in blankets on the backseat. That’s what I wanted, too. But life’s not that kind.

  “Which car is it?” said Beau. Dad’s hand had been clasped around his good shoulder all the way out to the car.

  “Over here,” I said, opening the door of the Wonder Mobile. The sunlight was streaming across the pavement. Beau got inside.

  “Won’t they want it back?” he asked, squinting up at me.

  “Nope,” I said, holding the top of the open door. “And they’re gonna keep the cops away from this side of the building for us so we can get away. Pretty sweet, our fans!”

  “Yeah, pretty sweet.” He winced, his head obviously in agony as he leaned against the backseat. Dad took his doctor’s coat off and bundled it up for Beau to rest his head on. Beau lay down and closed his eyes.

  We could hear the fans chanting from around the front of the hospital, so we knew the cops would be busy for a while, but we still had to hurry. The only thing I could see for miles around was dust. Dust and desert and rocks, and beyond the rocks, mountains. Where the hell would we go now? Dad would know what to do. He always knew.

  But before either one of us could get in the car, there she was. The Skankmother. With her own private garden gnome, standing beside his pickup. She had a gun. It was pointing right at me. The gun looked exactly like the Eclipse.

  “Shit.”

  “Didn’t know I had another one, did you? They came as a pair. Two for one. Twins! If only you’d bothered to look harder, Jane, you might have found it.”

  “Maybe if you’d bothered to look beyond Beau, you might have seen me coming,” I said.

  She laughed and swept the gun across to Dad, her long red nails clutching the handle. Then I got kinda nervous. She hated me, but she truly detested my dad. Suddenly my heart was a madman slamming his head against a stone wall. I felt myself move over to Dad. I wasn’t going to lose him again.

  “Where’s the other gun?” she said.

  Dad looked at me and took the Eclipse out of his pocket.

  Virginia held hers with both hands. “No funny business. Empty it and put it on the ground. I’m warning you, Michael.”

  Dad did as he was told and emptied the chamber. Plink plink plink. The shells fell to the ground. He didn’t take his eyes off her. Then, keeping one hand raised, he placed the Eclipse down by his feet with the other and kicked the gun over to her.

  “Now you, Virginia,” he said, straightening up again. “We can settle this without violence. We don’t want trouble. We’ll just go, okay?”

  “Michael, you’re quite the unexpected irritation. They didn’t mention you on the news.”

  I’d never heard anyone call my dad by his real name before. He was always Buddy to everyone who knew him. But not to the Skank. Just like the way she insisted on calling me Jane. I hated that.

  Dad didn’t take his eyes from her gun. “Yeah, well, I fly under the radar these days.”

  “My lawyer tells me that in the sad event of your deaths, I am legally entitled to your estate as your next of kin.”

  “What are you gonna do, kill all of us?” he asked her, still staring down the barrel. “That’s what you want, isn’t it? To get us out of the way so you can lay claim to their money.”

  She shrugged. “I’ve got my future to think about.”

  I scoffed, starting forward, ready to wring her scrawny chicken neck. “Stop pointing that gun at my dad!”

  Dad held me back. “What if we signed it all over to you? Legally,” he said.

  I looked at him. “Dad?”

  “It’s okay. Let her have it, if that’s what it takes for her to leave us alone. What do you say, Virginia?”

  She shook her head. The gun moved over to me, and it didn’t waver. “No. We have to do things the hard way, I’m afraid. I was quite willing to take your children as a down payment until the time came. And I was more than happy to settle just for Beau, but then he listened to his pathetic excuse for a sister….”

  It was my turn to look down the barrel. “Aw, if it weren’t for us pesky kids,” I said.

  “Shut up!” Skank snapped. “Shut your dirty mouth, you pathetic little whore.”

  “Don’t call my daughter that,” said Dad, his hands still raised.

  I didn’t think I could love my dad any more than I did at that moment.

  Virginia was still spluttering her fumes. “Your brother could have died, and it’s all your fault. Anything bad that has ever happened to you two has been your fault. Beau was happy with me. You are the root cause of everything, do you understand me?”

  “You mumble a little bit, but I get the general idea,” I replied.

  “Vile girl!” she spat, the Eclipse gripped in her rock-hard grasp, still aimed straight at yours truly. I wasn’t worried. It kinda worried me that I wasn’t worried.

  “Don’t you dare talk to her like that,” said Dad.

  Yay Dad.

  “She’s said far worse to me,” said the Skank, holding the gun out farther in front of her, making the bullet’s flight an inch shorter. I watched her trigger finger. Dad moved across me.

  “So there really is no other option. I have to get rid of all three of you right now. Which one of your twins do you want to see executed first? The boy or the girl?” She moved the gun so it was locked on the rear window of the car, where Beau was, then back to me. Then back to Beau. Then back to me.

  “Eeny, meeny, Paisley, Beau. Ooh, it’s like Sophie’s Choice, isn’t it?”

  “There are hundreds of fans out front,” said Dad. “They hear a gun going off, they’ll be around here faster than you can scream. They’ll find you. You’ll be seen. How the hell do you expect to get away with it?”

  “Who’s going to miss you three?” said Skank. “A vagrant and two thieves?”

  “I take it you haven’t been watching the news, then,” he said.

  She cocked the gun.

  “You hate that, don’t you, Virginia?” Dad smiled. “You hate the fact that they’ve gotten more famous in a couple of weeks than you ever were in your entire career.”

  She squinted a little, pointing the gun at Dad’s head now.

  And with that, Matt turned and headed to his truck.

  She looked around at him. “Matthew …?”

  “I can’t handle this, Ginny. I’m sorry. I have to go.”

  “You stay there. You damn well stay there!” She aimed the gun at him.

  His hands flew up, his face twisted in sheer terror. “What, you gonna shoot me now?”

  “You’re in this up to your neck anyway, sweetheart. Even if you go and I do get caught, I’ll name you. Don’t think I won’t.”

  “You bitch!”

  “Bitch with brains. I want that money. And you are going to help me get it.”

  She turned back to Dad and cocked the gun again. “First things first. Let’s deal with the irritation.”

  There was no time. No time for anything else. My legs started moving, and I went with them. I can’t remember what I screamed. I ran toward her, and I got hold of the gun. I shook it. I pulled it away from her. I had it. A shot rang out. Dust flew up.

  And Dad went down.

  It was just like in the movies. Everything went all slow. My legs wouldn’t move.

  “DAD!”

  I dropped the gun. Dad was slumped against the back wheel of the car, blood pouring out of his shoulder. I went to him. He was crying in pain.

  “Oh my God, Dad. I didn’t mean … Dad,
I’m sorry…. Shit … SHIT … You need a doctor. Beau?! BEAU! Go get a doctor!”

  The sun disappeared behind me as the shadow of Virginia loomed larger than ever. Laughing.

  “You shot him! You shot your precious daddy! How awful. That’s so awful, I don’t think I’ll ever stop laughing.”

  Her words burned me slowly, but she was right. I had done it. I had pulled the trigger, whether I had been aiming at him or not. It was me. And she had the Eclipse again. It was poised to take my head off. I stood up. I stood up and looked at the face I’d only ever back-talked, bitch-slapped, or shouted at. And I begged her.

  “Please.” Suddenly I didn’t care anymore about our pathetic little war. I just wanted my dad to be okay. For Beau to be okay. I didn’t give a shit about anything else.

  “What?” she said.

  I held my hands out. They were shaking. Tears poured down my face like rain. “I’ll go with you. You can tie me up, whatever, I don’t care.”

  “Paisley, no, stop it. Get in the car,” Dad mumbled. I thought blood was gonna come out of his mouth, but it didn’t.

  Beau was getting out of the car.

  I turned to Dad, my hands still in front of me, waiting to be tied. “It’s okay. You go on back inside the hospital with Beau, and they’ll fix you up.”

  My chest thumped like a thousand marching soldiers. There was a horrible silence. I turned back to Virginia.

  She was still laughing. “You think I’d trust YOU, after all you’ve done? I wouldn’t trust you as far as I could throw your miserable body, Jane Argent.”

  “Tie me up, then!” I shouted. “I’m giving you myself on a plate. Gag me if you want. I don’t care. Just let them go. Dad needs a doctor.”

  She looked over at Matt. He still had his hands in the air. “Matthew?”

  “I’ll get the rope,” he said, and walked backward to the cab of the truck.

  She glared back at me. “If you try anything, anything at all, you know what will happen, don’t you?”

  I nodded. “You’ll let them go, then? Let them go.”

  The gun was still fixed on me. “Who shot your father?”

  I looked at her. I hung my head. “I did.”