“Really?” she asks sarcastically. “Don’t you have to go fight those Nortest guys?”
“Naw. Trouble seems to find me pretty easily. I don’t need to be looking for it.”
Round three of the kissing continues until people start cheering again. We look up as the Merrian basketball team is coming out of the gym. I yell, “Yeeeaaaayyy EEEJaaaay!!!”
He’s smiling from ear to ear as he slaps a few hands and tries to get his mom to stop hugging him in front of everyone. He worked really hard to perform so well, and I know he’s proud, but I can also tell that he’s a little bit jealous that he’s not wearing a dress and he didn’t get to be in a brawl during halftime.
Once the crowd separates a bit, I whisper in his ear, “I may or may not have knocked out Principal Banks.”
“Nooo,” he gasps. “That was you?!”
“Shhh! I’d get kicked out of school for something like that, wouldn’t I? If I did it.”
“I would think so!” he replies. “I’m not sure if I want a degenerate like you going to my school!”
“You wanna get knocked out too?”
We start laughing, and guys want to know what’s so funny. We tell them to mind their own business, and I add, “I gotta go.”
They obviously want to go to QuikTrip and put our fight club training to use, but I tell them I’d rather go to the Chopper’s party. They don’t call me a pussy and I don’t beg them not to get into a dumb fight. I feel bad ditching them, especially when EJ squeals Aunt Jenny’s tires as he tears out of the parking lot. The whole Merrian P.D. is here, so EJ looks like a total badass (I bet he just got caught up in the moment and forgot they were here).
I’m the only guy in drag at the drill team/drama party, but it’s not weird at all and a total blast. Except when the Chopper accuses me of stealing her shoes, and I explain that I got mine at Goodwill, and she takes it the wrong way and wants to fight me. I’m just walking out when Nutt comes in the front door, looking like a disaster survivor. His white cocktail dress has been torn to shreds and he’s covered in dirt and semi-dried blood.
Drama kids scream in horror. Fat Sal rushes over to him, and I ask, “What the hell happened?”
I guess my boys found the trouble they were looking for, (almost) right where they were told they’d find it. While I was dancing to Rihanna songs with the drill team, they were getting the crap kicked out of them by thirty guys. The Nortest guys were a no-show at QuikTrip, and the cops showed up and ran off all the Merrian kids, so my boys joined a caravan of cars prowling the streets, looking for someone to fight. But they had to fall out of line because Aunt Jenny needed gas and EJ had to pee. They pulled into a hornets’ nest when they turned into the other QuikTrip, the one right next to Nortest High School…the one that the Nortest guys meant when they told us to meet them at QuikTrip. They’d been waiting for more than an hour behind the convenience store. My boys didn’t even notice all the dudes waiting to beat their asses until that Corsica with the awful stereo boxed Aunt Jenny in. A little guy popped out of the backseat with a baseball bat and smashed out her windshield.
Nutt says they put up a good fight despite being so outnumbered. The fight club training must have helped them to an extent, because they knew how to cover up, but EJ, Bag, Doc, Levi, J-Low, and Andre are in the hospital.
Jeremy takes me up to the hospital, and it’s super depressing because it’s a hospital, but also because EJ’s mom is crying. His arm is broken, so he’s not going to get to play in the state basketball tournament. Everyone’s got a concussion. Bag broke his coccyx (it’s pronounced “cock-siks” so we manage to have some fun with that despite the somber mood). Andre’s nose is broken and he looks awesome. Their injuries will heal, but apparently Aunt Jenny’s a different story. All of her lights and windows were smashed out. EJ’s dad says she’s totaled.
I feel sooo bad that I wasn’t there, but I feel even worse that I’m so glad I wasn’t there.
Lee Auto Body wants two grand to fix Aunt Jenny’s glass…and since that’s two thousand times what she cost, Mr. Lee suggested that EJ’s dad sell her to the crash-up derby. They have to remove a car’s windows and lights before the competition, and with Aunt Jenny’s big engine, she will be the toast of the derby…until she gets too smashed up to continue and finally has to be dragged out of the arena or wherever they do crash-up derbies.
I can’t handle the thought of Aunt Jenny being crashed for sport. I actually had a nightmare where the old Dodge could talk and she was begging me for help just before a Corsica and a Cutlass rammed her. Unfortunately I had this dream the morning after the brawl and I was in Saturday School detention at the time. So Mrs. Trimmer gave me two more.
My boys have these big, nasty welts on their heads, and cuts and scrapes all over their bodies. Nutt lost a tooth…which is odd because I don’t remember him missing any teeth when he limped into the Chopper’s house. I’m not going to call him out, but I think Fat Sal may have knocked it out a few hours after the fight.
Andre’s broken nose is going to keep him from swimming in the state championships, so he’s assisting Coach Barker. I thought Andre was an annoying teammate, but he’s an a-hole of a coach! He yells at me for breathing and for resting more than two seconds.
“Come on, Carter!” he’s always screaming. “This is the only chance you’ll ever have to beat me! Don’t waste it!”
Despite all efforts to the contrary, I am kind of friends with Andre now. I’ve learned that his dad lives in another state and has a new wife and other kids, and he didn’t call Andre on his sixteenth birthday. I can kind of see that being disrespectful to women and weaker people runs in his family. I get that he’s messed up, but it doesn’t stop me from cringing every time he says something rude to a girl and then claims to have “made her day.”
EJ is super bummed he can’t play basketball anymore, but he’s really heartbroken about the car. Aunt Jenny was his pride and joy. Everyone knew it by sight, and you could hear her rumbling down the street from a block away. I know he regrets never getting to hook up with anyone in her backseat too. We think alike, so I know how frustrating it can be to not reach a goal. He told me that he’d gotten drunk by himself on a Tuesday night. He said it like a joke, but it really bummed me out.
I don’t have practice the Thursday before the state swim championships. Coach wants me to rest, but I ride my bike down to Lee Auto Body after school to visit Aunt Jenny. I see her parked out front looking like she got hit by a bomb. Rusty is sitting on her dented hood smoking a cigarette and looking equally miserable.
I haven’t seen him since we were throwing a huge soda at him, and that was before Abby broke the news that I kissed his pregnant girlfriend.
I squeeze my brakes, but he spots me. “S’up, Carter?”
I slowly pedal toward him. “Nothin’ much. I just came down to pay my respects to Aunt Jenny.”
He flicks his cig and says, “Yeah, she won’t be helping anyone throw no more sodas. Those Nortest boys really jacked her up.”
“I was supposed to have been there.”
“From what I heard, it wouldn’t have made any difference,” he replies. “You can’t do much against a baseball bat.”
“I just loved this car.”
He smiles…and I see why he doesn’t do it very often. “Yeah, she was a beauty. His parents can’t come up with the cash to get it fixed?”
“His mom kind of hates this car, and Mr. Lee wants like, two grand to fix it.”
He shakes his head and says, “He’s an asshole, and females always be hatin’, am I right?”
I go ahead and nod.
He continues, “Amber wants me to sell the LTD and get a Honda or somethin’.”
I don’t say anything because I don’t really see the problem.
“I got my eye on a little Civic Si,” he says. “I can get a chip that gives it an extra eighty horsepower. Make a pretty sweet drift car.”
“You could go on really fast diaper runs.�
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“That’s what I’m talkin’ about!” He laughs as he slides off the hood and looks Aunt Jenny over. “We could probably find all this glass and stuff at a junkyard. I’d install it as a favor to you, Carter.”
I didn’t even know Rusty knew my name, so I ask, “Why a favor to me?”
“Amber told me about that homecoming kiss. She said she threw herself at you but you didn’t take advantage, and I know you got a crush on her.”
I don’t feel the need to mention that if she wasn’t pregnant I would have been all over it.
He continues, “Nobody else found out about it until Abby blabbed. I respect that you didn’t tell anyone, and maybe I owe you something for last year’s dance as well.”
“You don’t owe me anything, man. But it would be awesome if we could fix this car. How much would the glass cost?”
He fires up another cig and says, “A few hundred, maybe.” But he tosses it quickly when Yosemite Sam comes waddling out of the shop with a welder’s mask perched on his head.
“What in tarnation is a-goin’ on out here?” Mr. Lee asks. “Nobody is a paying you to gab, boy!”
I swear he used the word tarnation!
Rusty sticks out a greasy hand, so I shake it. He says, “Get at me about fixing this car.”
Awesome.
22. FULL VOICE
The state championships were great. I didn’t win any of my events, but I didn’t disqualify, either. Once the final relay race was over, I shifted my thoughts and actions back into acting mode. For the past week and a half I’ve eaten, drunk, and slept RENT!
Auditions are tomorrow. That’s why I’m singing at the top of my lungs as I ride my bike down Merrian Lane. Baseball tryouts started today, so I have to pick up Aunt Jenny by myself. It was hard to keep the secret from EJ, but I think we managed it. We talked his dad into buying the car back from the crash-up derby guys, and we scrounged around three junkyards and found replacements for almost all of Aunt Jenny’s glass (some windows fit better than others). Rusty stole a windshield off a minivan or something, and it’s way off, but it was free so I’m not going to complain.
Mr. Lee hands over the keys and asks, “You got a driver’s license, right?”
“Just about!” I assure him.
I drive Aunt Jenny back to school and avoid the athletic fields so the baseball team can’t see or hear her. I pull up next to the bike racks beside the field house and wait. I put my headphones on and crank the original cast recording of RENT. I know I’m making an ass of myself, but I want this part!
RENT is so good. The play follows this group of young artists living the bohemian life in the late eighties in a scuzzy part of New York City (Abby says this area is gentrified [really nice] now). The characters are filmmakers, dancers, writers, political activists, and drag queens, but they’re all friends struggling to pay “the rent.” It’s not just what they owe to their landlord, but more like the toll of life and how much you have to give the world in order to make a living or just get through the day. The characters are all outcasts. Some are addicts or in recovery and some of them are dying of AIDS. The show is so amazing that the guy who wrote it…his heart exploded the night before its Off-Broadway debut (seriously)! It’s about living your life to the fullest and trying not to waste a second because you never know when it’s all going to end. The show covers one year in the characters’ lives. Some of them don’t make it, so it’s really sad in spots…especially when you think about the writer’s heart exploding.
Clint has tried to teach me how to play the guitar, but my fingers will not do what they’re told. I totally see why rock stars are always smashing these things. I got a CD of the original Broadway recording, and I love it (even though it’s really hard to sing)! My sister won’t let me listen to it in public. She thinks that show tunes are unacceptable even when they’re awesome. I use headphones, but I can’t stop myself from breaking into song all the time. The best place to sing is on the bicycle, after dark.
I used to love to lip sync in front of the mirror in my room, but singing out loud is the greatest. I think the difference between lip syncing and singing with your full voice is like jerking off and making love. I hope to find out for sure someday, but I’m pretty sure I’ve got this one right.
RENT is not like Guys and Dolls, where I played Sky Masterson and I could get away with just talk/singing. The character I want to play, Roger, SINGS! Like, full-on, Baptist choir, sell-it-to-the-back-row belting.
My favorite song from RENT is called “Seasons of Love.” The drama geeks are always singing it (I join them when no one else is around). The song talks about how a year is only, “five hundred twenty-five thousand, six hundred minutes.” That’s it. And it asks how you measure a year of your life. Is it the “sunsets” that you’ve watched, or is it the “cups of coffee” you’ve drunk? I don’t understand how those are units of measurement, but I’ve obviously never grasped the whole idea of time anyway. This song wants you to measure your life in “love,” and that’s even crazier than using cups of coffee, but I kind of get it. Sometimes my life is not great, and it’s usually my fault, but I’ve got these people around me all the time who are perfectly willing to make fun of me and pick me up (sometimes they’re the bastards who knocked me down in the first place), but if you step back far just far enough to get some perspective, you can see that we really love each other (in our own sick and twisted way).
By five o’clock, Abby, Jeremy, Nicky, and twenty other kids are gathered around for Aunt Jenny’s big reveal. We see my boys come out of the field house locker rooms, and EJ doesn’t seem to suspect a thing. He’s holding a bag of ice on his broken arm. Although they took the cast off, he’s not supposed to be using it yet. The coach is forcing him to try out for the team again even though he’s one of the best players. I guess he’s trying to prove a point that “fighting is wrong,” but his message is really, “I’m an a-hole who doesn’t understand that broken bones need to fully heal.”
EJ walks around the building and immediately drops his ice and backpack to the ground before falling to his knees. He hasn’t seen the car yet; he’s just rummaging around his bag saying, “Ahhh, farts! I don’t have the key to my bike lock!”
Thirty people are laughing at him, so I have to yell, “I’ve got ’em!”
He looks up at the crowd of people gawking at him. “What? How?”
“I stole them out of your locker.”
“Why?” he asks.
“So I could pick up Aunt Jenny from the hospital.”
He says, “Huh?!” just as Doc fires up the loud engine and revs her a few times. EJ’s jaw drops when the gang of drama kids parts like the Red Sea (they don’t call them drama kids for nothing) and reveals his awesome old car. EJ instantly starts sobbing like a little girl.
Bag pats his head like a dog and explains, “Rusty put it back together. Carter paid for it with his movie money.”
EJ looks up at me and starts crying even harder. Nobody wants to humiliate the guy, so a bunch of us just pile into the car like nothing’s wrong and we’re ready to go. The other kids peel off, and EJ pulls himself together and climbs into the driver’s seat. We slowly roll out of the parking lot, but then EJ guns it like someone’s chasing us. The seals on the glass are absolutely terrible, so when we get above thirty miles per hour you can’t hear a thing. Guys have to shout to make fun of Rusty’s handiwork, but we all appreciate getting to ride in this car again. I imagine this is the best three hundred bucks I’ll ever spend.
23. RING OF FIRE
I kicked ass at the RENT auditions. I was ready. I played all of my chords on the guitar without stopping! I knew every line and I sang every note almost exactly like I wanted to. McDougle actually clapped when I finished singing “One Song Glory.” But I didn’t get the part.
Clint got the role of Roger. So instead of playing the sexy rocker, I will portray Mark, the geeky filmmaker/narrator of the show. McDougle calls him “the witness” and tries to te
ll me that he’s actually the better part…even after she called him a “lovable loser.” One cool thing is I’m getting a video camera from the AV department so I can film some of the rehearsals and have people act out situations from the show; my little movies will play during parts of the show. Watch out, Spielberg!
Clint says that he’ll continue to teach me how to play the guitar, but I’m not sure if I’m going to be friends with him or not. I like to sing with him, but he and Abby kiss in the show, and that kind of sucks.
Shockingly, there’s all kinds of drama in the department because Abby is playing Mimi. The character is supposed to be Latina, and Abby isn’t. Maybe I’m biased, but I think everyone is too hung up on hair color. It says right in the script that Mimi has an amazing ass, and Abby’s easily got the best butt in our school. Of course the drama chicks won’t listen to my logic.
I’ve yet to see her booty without clothes on, but I’m confident that day is nearing. We’ve made out a bunch, but I’m taking my time. I’m not trying to steal any bases this year. If I keep getting up to the plate, I will hit a home run.
My boys knew I was bummed about not getting the part of Roger, so I’m missing a Saturday night make-out session with Abby to go camping with them. They think sleeping on the ground will take my mind off of it. I’m kind of stoked, actually! The Carters are not a hunting/fishing kind of family. I’ve never spent the night in the woods or seen a gun that wasn’t attached to a police officer. The only fishing pole I’ve ever held had SpongeBob on the side of it. We don’t have a Jeep or a cabin, and we sure as hell don’t pack up our stuff and live in the woods for a few days and call it a vacation.
Aunt Jenny is jam-packed with dudes, and the trunk is filled with sleeping bags and tents. We’re headed to a woodsy area behind Grey Goose Lake. Jeremy told us about the spot, but said he’d rather “pull my friggin’ eyelashes out than spend a night in the forest with your friends.” He says some developers are going to bulldoze all of the trees in June to build a neighborhood of McMansions.
Carter's Unfocused, One-Track Mind Page 17
