Carter's Unfocused, One-Track Mind

by Brent Crawford

  I’m sweating buckets and my mouth is watering like crazy. I put my foot against the wall and pull with everything I’ve got. But the knob rips off of the door and I fall backward. Falling rarely feels good…but it’s way worse when you know you’re about to land in vomit, pee, and poop. I’m able to grab the towel bar on my way down, but it’s one of those decorative ones. A handicapped grab-bar might have saved me, but this one just rips out of the wall and whacks me in the face as I’m sliding across the slop.

  I spring up fast, but slip right back down. “Son of a—”

  Okay, calm down, but don’t take any deep breaths! You can either climb out the window or kick the door down! A second-story window seems a bit daredevil, and since Lou’s dad is already going to have the tools up here to fix the towel bar, I go ahead and draw my leg back to karate out of here. But as I do, the stick where the knob used to be rotates and the door slowly opens. Sweet oxygen drifts into the room. I’m able to drink in some of the air, but unable to recall the kick.

  A girl asks, “Is everything okaaa—?” just as my foot connects with the door, WHAM! And it smashes into her head with a BOOM and shoots her back into the hall. I should’ve gone with the damn window!

  “I’m so sorry!” I say, sliding out of the bathroom. I attempt to pick the poor girl up, but since I’m covered in fecal matter and regurgitation, my help is not appreciated. A group has gathered to see who was going Tasmanian Devil in the crapper, and more are coming up to see who kicked a door into a chick.

  The girl yells, “What’s your problem?!” as another guy steps into the bathroom and gasps, “OHHH, NASTY!!!”

  He notices the smushed turd on the tile and starts screaming, “This Merrian guy took a dump on the floor!”

  “No I didn’t!” I try to explain while heading for the stairs. Of course Abby and Jeremy are among the curious people coming up, so I dart into one of the bedrooms before they can see or smell me. Unfortunately, this room is already being “used,” and there appears to be a lot of activity happening on a twin-size bed.

  A guy yells, “Yo!”

  And a girl whisper/yells, “I thought you locked it!”

  It couldn’t get any weirder, so I say, “The locks in this house suck!” as I flip on the light. I remove my shirt and start rummaging through a dresser, where I find a tiny T-shirt that says, NORTEST STROLLING STRINGS…PLUCK YEAH!

  I try to find an alternative, but the guy on the bed interrupts my search. “Carter, get the hell out!”

  I spin around and find Nutt…buck naked, embarrassed, and angry. He’s next to what I think is a drill teamer. Fat Sal is attempting to cover her boobs and red face with a pillow. I stammer an apology, grab the shirt, and flip off the light before I dash out of the room and find twenty people…still looking at me.

  Abby seems shocked to see me. “Carter, what are you doing?”

  “And why aren’t you wearing a shirt?” Jeremy inquires.

  I wedge myself into the shirt as I say, “I’ll tell you later…but it’s not what it looks like.”

  “What does it look like?” he asks with a smile.

  Abby interrupts us to say, “Your stupid friends are about to get into a huge brawl with some Nortest guys.”

  I shake my head with frustration and finally say, “That’s it!”

  If the cops around here won’t do it, I’m going to have to break up this party myself. I use my theater voice to yell, “Fifteen cop cars just pulled up front!”

  A drunk kid yells, “OH, NOOO!!!”

  Abby and Jeremy laugh, but the girl I just kicked a door into backs me up like I’m her commanding officer. She screeches, “COPS!!! The police are here!”

  I shout, “Everybody out! Run for your lives!”

  The dude who accused me of pooping on the floor says, “He’s lying! That room doesn’t even face the front—”

  “What are you, an architect?” I ask him. “Get out!”

  Jeremy says, “Jeez, Carter!”

  Abby yells, “COPS!!! Five-O!!! It’s the po-po!”

  We laugh as the bedroom doors open and half-naked teens come flying out like startled bats from a cave. Nutt blasts into the hall with just his BVDs and Nikes on. He’s closely followed by a plus-size Victoria’s Secret model.

  “Sally?” Abby gasps.

  Fat Sal looks like she’s been caught stealing, and retreats back into the dark room without a word. Nutt looks like he’s been caught hooking up with a girl named “Fat Sal,” and he’s not sure how he wants to handle it, so I whisper, “The cops aren’t really here, dude. You can go back to…doing whatever you were doing. I owe you one…or two.”

  “Or, you could just keep this to yourself,” he whispers.

  I give him a wink and say, “We’ll see.”

  He darts back into the room, and I grab Abby’s hand and chase the crowd down the stairs. You can tell that there’s a confused tension in the air…between me and Abby and this whole dumb party. Andre and some Merrian dudes are still staring down some Nortest guys in the kitchen.

  Abby’s the best wingman ever, so she slams the front door and yells, “OH, NOOO!!! Everyone out the back!” And then in case anyone hadn’t heard, she booms, “COOOPPPPS!!!”

  Andre and the rest of my boys have no choice but to back away as panic rips through the herd and people run for the exits. Jeremy flicks the living room lights on and off to add some drama.

  Lou looks terrified, so I whisper, “The cops are not really here.”

  Once he gets what we’re doing, he looks up at me with total gratitude. I say, “You’re welcome, but I need to borrow this shirt.”

  He obviously doesn’t care about the shirt, so I continue. “There might be some kids having sex in your bed right now, and someone may have ripped a towel rod off of the bathroom wall…but I want you to know…no matter what you hear…that is not a Merrian dookie on the floor, okay?”

  “WHAT?!” he gasps.

  Abby pulls on my hand and says, “Come on, CARTER!!! If these cops catch you, they’ll throw away the key!”

  I wish Lou luck, and because I’m a total drama geek, I add, “I ain’t goin’ back to jail, man!!! They’ll never take me alive!”

  Abby might still be mad at me, but she loves to improvise. She cries, “Don’t talk like that, baby!”

  We squeeze out the back door. Everyone is ramming into each other, but we’re having a blast. “I’m sorry, sugar! I just love you too much!”

  Whoops! I used the “L” word again. I was just jacking around, and I said it in a Southern accent, but you can feel the vibe change for second…but then she screeches, “I’ll visit you every day, baaaby!”

  People are staring at us because they think there’s real drama happening in the front yard and they’re confused by the Telemundo soap opera going on in the back. Abby throws her arms around me and shoves her tongue in my ear. She’s just goofing around, but I’m totally aroused.

  I try to keep the scene going. “If I know you’s waitin’ for me…I’ll do twenty years, no problem!”

  “Twenty years?!” Abby asks. “What did you do?”

  That makes me laugh and kind of stops the scene. We step off the deck into the grass when Abby spits in disgust before she asks, “What is in your ear, Carter?”

  I don’t have the heart to tell her that she may have just licked someone’s vomit or poop out of my ear, so I pretend not to hear the question and hop the fence. I help her get down from the other side, and she asks, “Seriously, why do you stink so bad?”

  Thank God EJ rushes out of the darkness and motions for us to follow him past another house and across the street, to a McMansion with all of its lights off.

  We creep around back, and I pull my head over a wooden fence and see a hot tub! Bag is removing the cover, and steam shoots into the air. Bitchy Nicky obviously doesn’t see me here, because she’s taking off her jeans right in front of me. The pale moonlight is making it tough to tell what kind of panties she’s rocking. My brain go
es ahead and fills in the blanks: they’re hot pink hip-huggers (Victoria’s Secret, winter catalog, pages 4–5) with black trim, and they say, “Naughty” or “Juicy” or something suggestive right across the—

  “What is it?” Abby asks as she pulls herself up next to me.

  Abby notices me watching Nicky and gives me a judgmental glare, but I just shrug my shoulders like, What?

  We can hear Jeremy and a group of drama kids running down the street, screaming and singing. Neither of us make a move to tell them where we are, and it causes us to laugh.

  “There’s only so much room in the hot tub,” I say as I hop over the fence.

  Abby jumps down into the yard next to me. We approach the tub as Nicky slowly slides into the water and says, “Why am I the only one in this tub?!” EJ, Bag, Doc, Nutt, and I are admiring the stars with our shirts off, but still wearing our jeans. She doesn’t get that nobody wants to rock a boner in a friendly hot tub.

  After a minute or two, we finally start ditching our pants. I honestly started wearing boxer briefs just in case something like this happened. I knew whitey tighties would be embarrassing, and they are.

  “Are those Underoos, EJ?” Bag asks. “Did your mom lay those out for you this morning?” Nicky chuckles.

  EJ’s not that embarrassed, because he’s had sex with the girl making fun of him, and everyone is too busy gawking at the little scrub tree that Abby is disrobing behind.

  I embody my father and say, “Guys…come on.”

  After the bras are submerged, we calm down and start having a great time. They’re soaking, but I am actually bathing! I go under for a minute and scrub the crap out of my skin. My friends are mad because they had to ditch their cooler when “The cops burst in!” but I think this hot tub party is just fine without booze. I don’t tell them how Abby and I made up the whole thing just to get out of an embarrassing situation. I also keep Nutt’s Fat Sal situation to myself…at least for a while.

  I thought a neighbor would eventually call the cops for real, because we’re laughing a lot, but we hang out there for over an hour. The tub is so hot that we have to sit on the edge for a few minutes. Which is no big deal until Abby and Nicky do the same thing…and the conversation dies for a while. We splash around and talk about dumb stuff until our skin is prunier than raisins.

  We ditch the wet underwear and struggle to put our cold clothes back on. We pile into Aunt Jenny and crank the heat as we roll past Lou’s house. A few kids are putting trash bags on the curb, and a few more are picking up the house. They’re laughing and you can tell they’re having fun. I’m sure this is the original crew he actually invited. I’m glad they’re getting to have their “get-together” after all.

  We find Nutt and the rest of the boys at QuikTrip. Unfortunately, the cops show up a few minutes after we do, so people start scrambling around and jumping into random cars. Nicky stayed with us, so I didn’t realize that Abby was gone until I saw her wet butt squeezing into the back of Jeremy’s car. I open my door to follow her, but EJ grabs my arm and says, “Let her go.”

  I ask Nicky, “What the hell is going on?”

  “I honestly don’t know,” she replies. “Abby hasn’t been right since she went to New York.”

  17. WHO CASTS THE FIRST STONE?

  I left Abby a couple of messages, but she never called back, and she’s continued to blow me off at school, so I’ve decided that I am pissed at her. I just wish we could talk for a second so I could bitch her out! I cannot figure out how we’ve gone from moving to New York together to not speaking.

  The last message I left her was the first Friday night of winter break. My boys were partying, but I took the evening off to go to bed early. (It’s not quite break yet for Mrs. Trimmer and me. We still have to be at school before six a.m. on Saturday.) I really needed to talk to Abby because the New York Drama School called my mom and told her that I was being “seriously” considered for fall admission, and they were going to send a team of evaluators to my next performance. They explained that if they liked what they saw, I would receive an actual invitation in May. Mom didn’t tell them I wasn’t interested, because she was kind of crying during their talk. I’m not sure if I am or not, though. I’ve really been busting my ass at school, and I plan to keep busting it. I’ve continued to rehearse the songs from RENT, and I’m having a blast doing it. Most days I think I would go to the drama school if they invited me…but other days I’ll find myself in some new hallway at school and get all turned around for few minutes, and I’ll think, You are insane! You can’t handle New York City, dude! I wish I knew if Abby was rethinking her decision. I wish she would just talk to me.

  After Saturday School, I feel like a million bucks because most of my break homework is done. I still need to finish reading Slaughterhouse-Five, but hopefully I will be able to. It’s a good story, but so far it’s not as gory as the title suggests.

  My boys are too hungover to do fight club, which is fine with me because I’m getting a little burned out. We got a second pair of boxing gloves and everyone is getting really good. It’s cool to see the progress, but it sucks to feel the punches. So instead of going to EJ’s house, we’re headed to the Lord’s. A church on Merrian Lane just put in two sand volleyball courts beside their parking lot. We assume they’re planning to start a league in the spring, but we’re going to break in the courts for them. Nutt stole a volleyball from the equipment locker (he’s going to beg forgiveness while we’re there).

  On his way to basketball practice this morning, EJ got pulled over by the Merrian P.D. for “unlawful display of acceleration.” He tried to explain why he’d peeled out into the lane. “I’ve usually got a thousand pounds of dudes in the car with me!”

  But the cop bitched him out for five minutes and made him even later to practice. The guy was cool enough (or lazy enough) to not to give him a ticket, but he said he’d “throw the book at him” if he caught Aunt Jenny doing any more Tokyo drifting. Of course we keep encouraging EJ to burn out and take corners fast. But EJ’s taking the warning seriously and driving like Aunt Jenny would want him to (his actual great-aunt, not the car).

  Before volleyball we stop at QuikTrip to grab some drinks. When EJ creeps back onto Merrian Lane, I have to ask, “Seriously?”

  “You haven’t gone over fifteen miles an hour all day!” Bag says.

  EJ whines, “That cop’s looking for me!”

  “Well, you’re not hard to find!” Nutt observes as a grandma in a Corolla blows past.

  We keep dogging him until Nutt notices something coming up on the right side of the road. It’s an eight-foot-tall white tube that’s rocking from side to side.

  “Oh, snap!” Bag gasps. “It’s a new mascot!”

  Another unfortunate tradition in Merrian is throwing things at human advertisements. I don’t know how it helps profits to stick a clown out in front of your business and make him wave a sign at oncoming traffic, but teenage guys absolutely love to chuck things at them. We’ve never done it, not because it’s horribly mean, but because it’s not as effective on a bicycle and the CRX wasn’t much better. Aunt Jenny, on the other hand, seems to have been made for suburban terrorism. She’s got big windows and a powerful engine. She even has a rain gutter on her roof that you can hang on to while you’re crushing a mailbox or picking up trash cans on the go…or if you want to throw a Coke at a giant can of Pepsi (or something) and you really want to zing it.

  “What the hell is that?” I ask as EJ creeps closer to the curb.

  “It’s a quart of Pennzoil, made of rubber!” Doc replies.

  “Ooohhh, it’s brand new!” J-Low giggles.

  “You gotta go faster than this, E!” I suggest.

  Every roadside mascot must know the horror of a passing car slowing down. All he can do is watch as a skinny punk springs out of the passenger window armed with a Big Gulp and an evil smile. You can’t run when you’re yoked with a giant costume, and you can’t block a liquid no matter how big your sign i
s. Your only hope is that the cup isn’t filled with tobacco spit and you can wipe your eyes in time to see the license number as they speed away.

  Nutt rolls down the window and slides out so far that Bag has to hold his legs to keep him from falling.

  The mascot isn’t facing us. It’s just rocking back and forth, lazily waving its fat white hands at oncoming traffic. My heart is pounding as Nutt cocks his arm back like a major league pitcher. The can of oil seems to sense something is up, because it stops waving and starts to waddle around into the path of destruction. Even though I’m just smashed in the backseat, I wish I wasn’t here. I could’ve sat this tradition out. Some poor bastard is freezing his ass off to make a few bucks, and then he has to suffer this kind of embarrassment at the hands of pricks who barely know how to drive the car they’re terrorizing you with. It’s too sad to bear…even before we recognize the face in the middle of the “O” in the Pennzoil can. My eyes open as wide as Rusty Dollingsworth’s do when I realize that Mr. Lee has really outdone himself this time. He’s spared no expense in his quest to humiliate the boy who knocked up his daughter.

  Doc quietly asks, “Is that—?”

  “Don’t throw it—” I yell just as Bag whizzes his soda. The lid comes off in mid-flight, but Rusty keeps waddling toward it. He flinches when he sees the flying beverage, but relaxes just before it smashes into his “O” and splatters all over his costume. His jaw flexes in proud defiance as the cup rolls down his chest.

  We don’t cheer or laugh. Rusty has totally ruined it.

  Doc yells, “Punch it, E!”

  But EJ screws up his pedals and smashes down on the brake. Everyone hits whatever is in front of him, but none of us stops gawking at Rusty.

  We’re waiting for him to start kicking out the windows, but he seems too confused. He squats down and of course he makes eye contact with me, so I try to explain. “Sorry, Rusty, we didn’t realize…that it was you in there.”

  As defeated as I have ever heard a human voice, he mutters, “It’s okay.”

  EJ finds the gas pedal and we shoot dirt and sand all over him as we tear down Merrian Lane. At this point, I’d like to go home, but no one is saying anything, so we just drive. It totally sucks because we all know Rusty’s situation. He’s missing his senior year of high school so he can rock around Merrian Lane with “LUBE!” written up his back, and he’s going to be eating this brand of crap for the rest of his life for having sex with a girl who none of us were qualified to get with. And here we are, throwing fountain-drink stones and judging him like Judy because he didn’t use a condom or it broke or she wouldn’t get on the pill or she forgot to take it or whatever.