“Hi,” I said. I felt kind of awkward.
“Hi,” Kate said. She didn’t even take her eyes off the TV.
The Archers’ basement was even tackier than their living room. There wasn’t any carpeting, just a cement floor with wood panelling on the walls, an ugly brown couch and chair, an old television, a ping-pong table, and a stereo inside a milk crate.
“What are you watching?” I asked, sitting down on the other side of the couch.
“Television,” she said. “You ever heard of it?”
“Um, yes. We have two. But one is black and white.”
“Chips are in the cupboard in the laundry room. Go crazy.”
“You keep chips in the laundry room?” I asked. “Isn’t that a little strange?”
Kate turned to me. “Have you met my mother?”
I grabbed three bags and came back.
“There are more chips in that cupboard than at the 7-11,” I said and sat down on the opposite end of the couch. I cracked open a bag of ketchup chips. I started to feel more comfortable. “Sour cream and onion is my favourite flavour, although ketchup comes in at a close second. What’s your favourite?”
“Do I look like I discriminate?” Kate asked and smashed more chips into her mouth.
We sat there, crunching away for a couple of minutes. I tried to think about topics to talk about.
“Do you have any New Year’s resolutions?”
“Yeah,” Kate said, “I’m aiming for a bigger ass.”
I could see this wasn’t going anywhere. I thought about asking her if she was always this perky when a loud crash came from upstairs. I heard Mrs. Archer saying, “You clean that up, young man! Do you hear me? Here, take this pill first.”
Then something came roaring down the stairs and the next thing I knew, Billy was standing in the basement doorway. He looked the same as the last time I saw him, but his hair was even longer and greasier. Billy looked at Kate and then at me, then back to Kate and back to me.
“Who’s your new boyfriend?” he asked and started to laugh.
“Screw off, asshole,” Kate said. “Can you act civilized for once? We have company over. This is . . .”
“Peter.”
“Right. This is Peter. His favourite chip flavour is sour cream and onion. And Peter, this vision before you is the antichrist.”
Billy really did look like the antichrist. He was wearing a black and white Def Leppard concert T-shirt, tight red parachute pants with black triangles, and had a red bandanna tied around his wrist. I also noticed he was wearing a gold chain with a shark tooth pendant. I wondered why all Bangers wear shark’s tooth pendants.
“Hi,” I said. “I think I met you once last year. At the Chemical Valley Christmas party?”
“That party sucked,” Billy said. He went over to the stereo and began to pull record albums out. “Where’s my Def Leppard album? Where is it? Did you take it, buttface?”
Kate didn’t say anything. She just kept eating her chips and staring at the TV. I didn’t know what to do, so I stared at the TV, too. I thought that maybe if we ignored Billy, he’d go away.
“All he wants is attention,” my mom had said to me on the car ride over. “He’s hyper-active, like a Mexican jumping bean. But if you ignore him, he’ll leave you alone.”
But Billy wasn’t going anywhere. He put a record on and turned it up full blast. I think it was Foreigner. Nancy has the same album at home. Billy started jumping up and down on the armchair, pretending to play the guitar.
“Rock it!” he kept yelling. “Rock it all night long!”
“You are such a moron!” Kate yelled. “Turn off the stereo! I mean it!”
But Billy didn’t do anything except scream “Rock it!”
“You are such a little shit! Turn it off! We have fucking company!”
Billy kept jumping. I stared at the television.
“You’re an asshole!” Kate screamed. Her face was purple. “A motherfucking asshole!”
She got up off the couch and stormed out, taking her big bowl of chips with her. That meant I was alone with Billy, who by that time was doing jumping jacks in the middle of the room.
I thought I’d make a break for it, but Billy shut the rec room door.
“Thank god,” he yelled over the music. “She bugs me.”
He sat down where Kate had been.
“You like my pants?” he asked.
I thought they were tacky, but I didn’t want Billy to beat me up.
“Yes,” I said as loudly as I could without yelling, “they’re very nice.”
“They’re my rocker pants,” Billy said and hopped up again, playing his fake guitar.
“Rock it! Rock it!”
I kept wondering how I was going to get out of there. If Billy went to my school, he’d be best friends with Brian Cinder. I thought about that day a few weeks ago when Brian made me tie his shoelace in the food court. Now, there I was in the basement with someone who could be the president of Banger Groups everywhere. It was a very scary situation. My palms were sweating buckets.
“You listen to Def Leppard?” Billy asked.
“Yeah,” I lied, “all the time.”
“What’s your favourite Leppard song?”
“Uh, the first one,” I said. “The first one on the album.”
“Yeah, that one rocks!”
Billy went over to the stereo and turned it off.
“I’m bored,” he said.
“Do you want to watch something on TV?” I asked. I looked at the clock above the television. It was only 10:00 p.m. I was stuck at the Archers for another two hours at least. I wondered where Kate had gone. Was she sitting upstairs in the living room with the adults? If so, why didn’t my parents come and rescue me from psycho Billy or at least call down to see if I was okay?
Or what if Kate had gone straight to her room and no one upstairs noticed?
Or what if the Archers were all crazy, just like Billy? What if other people had shown up for the party and the Archers had poisoned them and stuffed their bodies into the deep freezer? I sent my parents a mental telepathy message.
“Don’t eat the shrimp cocktail!” I screamed as loudly as I could in my head.
“TV sucks,” Billy said, sitting down beside me on the couch.
“You don’t watch TV?” I asked him.
I checked the clock. It was 10:01 p.m.
“TV’s boring,” he said. He picked up a couple of pencils that were on the coffee table. “I’d rather rock.” He started rapping the pencils on the coffee table like they were drumsticks. I was getting a headache.
Billy was very annoying, but at the same time, he was sitting very close to me. I started to feel a little sexy and snuck a couple of peeks at Billy’s pants, even though they were ugly.
I decided I should get out of there before Billy caught me looking at his pants or before he started spazzing out again.
“I think I’ll go upstairs,” I said. “My parents probably want to check up on me.”
Billy stopped playing the coffee table and looked at me.
“You drink?” he asked.
“I’ve got a Pepsi already, thanks.”
“No, stupid. Like beer and shit. I can make a couple of Jungle Juices. Stay there.”
Then he took off. I thought I should make a run for it while he was gone. I didn’t know what a Jungle Juice was. But I stayed there on the couch, because part of me was getting excited. It was just the way that Billy said, “Stay there.” It was almost like he liked me.
“Maybe Billy could be my new boy friend,” I thought. We could go to the mall together and to the movies. We’d eat in the food court and if anyone ever made fun of me, he’d walk right over and pound the crap out of them. And he’d always take his pill whenever I was around. In fact, he wouldn’t take it from anyone else but me.
Billy came back downstairs with two glasses. “Try it,” he said, handing me one, “it’s really good.”
I took a
sniff and almost barfed. “What’s in here?” I asked him.
“Everything,” Billy said and sat down next to me again. “Rum, some vodka, some orange juice, and some white wine. Squeeze your nose before you take a drink. That way, you can drink more and get drunk faster.”
I watched Billy pinch his nostrils and take a big gulp. I did the same. I almost gagged, but by the time I went for my second drink, it was a bit better. Besides, I didn’t want to disappoint Billy. He made the drink for me, after all.
After a few more drinks, I started thinking in a weird way. I felt like picking up the phone and calling Andrew Sinclair and saying, “I don’t need you anymore. I have a new boy friend.”
“Do you have a phone book down here?” I asked Billy.
“No,” he said. “Why do you want one? Man, I am soo bombed!”
“Yeah,” I said. “Me, too.” I think I really was bombed. I took another drink and snuck a peek at Billy’s pants. They were very tight.
“You got a girlfriend?” Billy asked.
“No,” I said. “Not right now, anyway. There’s a couple of girls in my class that like me, but, you know how it is.”
I’m not sure if Billy believed me or not. He just belched and nodded.
“You ever make out with a girl?” he asked.
“Um, not really,” I said. “I mean, not . . . y’know . . . really.”
“You ever suck on a girl’s tits?”
“Um, well, I mean, I think you’d have to kiss a girl before she . . . um . . . let you suck on her . . . um . . . tits and all, right?”
“Not necessarily,” Billy said. “Man, I’m bombed. I’m gonna pass out.”
Billy fell back on the couch so that his foot was touching my thigh and closed his eyes. I just sat there, looking at his foot. I’d never been this close to another boy before, not even the time I took mouth-to-mouth resuscitation in Cubs. Even then, you couldn’t practise on an actual person. We had to use a dummy named Sam, who tasted like plastic and rubbing alcohol.
I couldn’t move. Everything in the house got really quiet. I couldn’t even hear the TV anymore, only the sound of my heart. It was beating so loudly, I thought it would break through my ribs. My nipples started vibrating. I knew I should get up and go, that this might be my only chance at freedom. But I was still feeling dizzy. I was afraid of falling and cracking my head open on the coffee table or something. And I didn’t want to wake Billy up or make it so that we weren’t touching anymore. I just wanted to sit there on the couch all night long.
“Put your hand on his leg,” my nipples whispered from beneath the tape.
“No,” I said. “That’s wrong.”
“He touched you first,” they said.
“No,” I said again. My nipples were evil. “It’s wrong.”
But my nipples took control of my hand and the next thing I knew, it was on Billy’s ankle.
“Stop it!” I whisper/screamed to my nipples. “He’s going to wake up at any second!”
It didn’t do any good. My nipples had a mind of their own. I watched as my hand moved further and further up Billy’s red pant leg and past the black triangles. And then, my hand stopped over Billy’s dink. I couldn’t catch my breath and I was afraid I’d start coughing and then Billy would wake up and give me a knuckle sandwich.
“Take my hand away,” I told my nipples.
“But then he might wake up,” they said.
My nipples had a point. It was better just to leave it there.
“That’s my new boy friend’s dink,” I thought as I stepped out of the car. I don’t have time to stop and talk, Billy. I have a photo shoot to get to! But what choice do I have with a broken-down car? I run my fingers through my hair and lift the hot chocolate to my lips. Who put marshmallows in here? I said I wanted small ones! Why doesn’t anyone listen to me?
I couldn’t pinch my nose with one hand on Billy’s dink and the other one around my glass, so I just closed my eyes. But as soon as I took a drink, my tongue swelled up like a balloon and I felt something like a sneeze coming on, only it wasn’t a sneeze. I jumped up from the couch, yanked the rec room door open and made it to the laundry room sink just in time to puke my guts out. I could see bits and pieces of Nanaimo bars and chips.
“Oh Mr. Hanlan,” I whispered through my coughs. “Poison. How could you poison me?”
“I wanted you all to myself.”
“You didn’t have to kill me.” My stomach felt like an accordion. “I’m going to tell Andrew and he’ll get the Mafia after you.”
I thought I was going to die. But somehow, I managed to turn on the faucet and wash most of my puke down the drain. I stayed there for a few minutes, hunched over the sink. I’d never felt so awful in my life.
“Have to get back to Billy,” I said. “He needs to take his medication.”
I stumbled back into the rec room. Billy was gone. The couch was empty. I looked around the room to see if he was hiding somewhere, but he was nowhere.
“Kidnapped?” I wondered. I lifted the couch cushions, looking for a ransom note. Why would Mr. Hanlan do something like that?
“If I can’t have you, no one can.”
“Stop it! Billy is innocent! He’s my boy friend. You’re going to have to set me free, Dan.”
I slowly walked up the stairs to the kitchen and ate a haystack to try to get rid of the puke taste in my mouth. Then I went into the living room.
When my mom saw me, she said, “Oh my Lord, Peter,” and came running over. “What happened?”
“I think I have an idea,” Mrs. Archer said, waving her hand in front of her nose.
“I think we’d better take you home, young man,” my dad said. “We can talk about this tomorrow.”
“But I have to tell you what Dan did.”
“What?”
“He kidnapped him. We’ve got to find him.”
“He’s talking nonsense,” I heard Mr. Archer say.
Mrs. Archer went to the bedroom to get our coats. “I’m so sorry about this, Beth. Really I am. I should’ve been checking in on them. I thought Kate was down there with them.”
“Oh my Lord, Peter,” my mom said again, “you smell terrible.” She wasn’t even paying any attention to Mrs. Archer, who by that time was passing our coats to us.
My mom was pretty emotional on the way home.
“That is the last time we are ever going to that house!” she said to my dad. “I don’t care if we ever see those people again. Do you think it was a coincidence that no one could make it to the party, Henry? Do you? Hmm?”
“Now Beth . . .”
“Don’t ‘now Beth’ me, Henry! I don’t want Peter associating with kids like that.”
I was having problems sitting up because I was still so dizzy, so I lay down in the back seat, watching the street-lights as we drove by them. They seemed like stars to me.
When we pulled up to our house, I looked out the window and saw the shadow of someone in our front yard.
“It’s Billy,” I thought to myself. “He’s come back for me.”
I wanted to jump out of the car, tell him to run away, Billy, run away before they catch you. Then I realized that the shadow was only the Virgin Mary cut-out my dad and I had put up in the front yard a few weeks ago. The spotlight had gone out.
When I woke up the next morning, I had an awful headache and my mom gave me an aspirin with ginger ale.
“You just stay in bed,” she told me. “Better to sleep this off.”
But I couldn’t go back to sleep. I just lay in bed, thinking about the night before. It all seemed like a dream, like I didn’t really have my hand over Billy’s dink. What if he was angry at me? What if he told his mom about what happened?
“I was just lying there, sleeping. The next thing I knew, the pervert had his hand on my nuts. I think we should call the police.”
But maybe he didn’t feel that way. What if he knew what was happening? Maybe he was thinking about me, too. Maybe right at that
very moment, he was lying in bed, listening to Def Leppard and wondering if I was okay.
I knew one thing for sure. The Virgin had used my nipples to trick me. She told them to test me to see if I was worthy of being healed. And I had failed. Now, the Virgin would never cure me. I looked down at my nipples and squeezed them hard. I hated them. Why did they make me do these terrible things?
“You wanted to do it,” they said.
“I didn’t,” I said.
“Did too.”
“Shut up!” I said and before they could say another thing, I stumbled to my closet and grabbed the roll of masking tape from beneath my sweaters and taped my nipples up good and tight.
“Take that,” I told them.
“Mmph!” they said.
Before I put the tape away, I took my Yoda poster down from the wall above my bed and stuck it to my closet door.
I didn’t like the Virgin staring at me anymore.
BEDTIME MOVIE #4
I’m the most famous singer in the whole world.
“You’re the brightest star in the biz, kid,” my manager tells me. He looks like Jameson Parker, the blond brother from the TV show Simon and Simon.
“I’m still the same person I always was,” I tell him. I’m signing black and white pictures of myself. “Fame hasn’t changed me.”
One day, while I’m in the studio recording another best-selling album, Jameson comes in and hands me a letter.
“I think you should read this,” he says.
“Can’t it wait?” I ask.
“This one is different,” Jameson says. He sounds concerned, so I take the letter from him.
It’s from Mrs. Archer. She tells me that Billy is very sick and won’t take his medication. She says he’s my biggest fan and that if I could come visit Billy, he might listen to me and take his pills.
“You’re our only hope,” she writes. “Billy is depending on you. We all are.”
I sigh and run my hands through my long, thick hair.
“Book me on the next flight to Sarnia,” I tell Jameson.
When I arrive at the airport, there’s a huge crowd of fans waiting for me. As I step off the plane, they start screaming my name. I’m wearing a pair of black sunglasses and a long brown coat. I wave to my fans and stop to pose for a couple of pictures for the Sarnia Observer photographer. Then a limo picks me up and takes me to the Archers’ house.
Fruit Page 13
