Just Wreck It All

by N. Griffin

  Bill picked up Stephanie’s Fancy Jim’s bag as she drank down her entire Coke in one steady stream of gulps, eyes on her brother the whole time. Bill made to crumple the bag but stopped when his hand encountered the little jar of Passion Petal lip gloss. “Oh, hell no,” he said. “You did not get lipstick there.”

  “It’s lip gloss, idiot, and yes, I did.”

  “So not only did you want to poison your insides with a Fancy Jim soda, but you wanted to complete the job by making sure your lips would dissolve with toxic shit, too?”

  “Shut up, Bill,” said Stephanie, taking a hopeless slice at the bag. But Bill was already running outside, and they ran after him, still in their boots but coats unzipped, Stephanie belching all the way as the ancient soda sloshed around in her stomach.

  “ ’Scuse me,” she said, but they were still running after Bill, who was headed down one of the icy Christmas tree fields studded with the stumps of last month’s cut-down trees to the bottom of a rocky hill, so Bett couldn’t answer Stephanie to tell her she was excused.

  Bett’s long legs let her catch up with Bill fairly quickly, but not before he took the lip gloss out of the bag and hurled it as far as he could up the steep hill at the edge of the field. It landed, not on the hill itself, but on a ledge formed by a rocky outcropping about a third of the way up.

  By the time Stephanie caught up with them, she was teary with rage and frustration.

  “That was my money,” she said. “MY MONEY! You don’t get to pick what I do with my own cash, jerk!”

  “You were going to poison yourself,” said Bill.

  Bett pretended to study the tree stumps around her. There were wet snuffles to her left.

  Bill sighed. “Fine. I’ll try and get your dumb lip balm,” he said.

  “Gloss,” said Stephanie.

  Bill rolled his eyes. “Gloss. But quit doing stupid shit.”

  Stephanie opened her mouth to retort, but, clearly realizing that Bill was about to risk his life for her lip gloss by climbing that ledge, she forbore as the three of them climbed over the fence and approached the steep foot of the hill.

  Bill scrabbled up the hill to the bottom of the ledge and stood still a minute, looking at the icy rocky outcrop. He scratched at his head as he tried to figure out a way to get up to its top.

  “Steph, I can’t do it. There isn’t any purchase!” he called down at last through cupped hands.

  “There certainly was a purchase. I purchased that lip gloss with my own money and I expect you to pay me back!” Stephanie yelled back.

  Bett, meanwhile, had been moving around the hill and studied it and the ledge from the other side. Stephanie followed her while Bill shouted back from above.

  “I mean ‘purchase’ like a grip, Brain.” Bill clutched his hair, making it look as Einstein-y as the picture in the ninth-grade science lab. Then he turned and half walked, half skidded back down the hill and around to Bett and Stephanie. “I’ll pay you your stupid money back. But by rights, I want it known that I saved your life from some debilitating disease by preventing you from putting that crap on your lips.”

  “I got this,” said Bett.

  “Thank you, Bett,” said Bill. “Some people here don’t seem to understand that I just was trying to save their life.”

  “No,” said Bett. “I mean I can get up that ledge.”

  “Bett, I basically just saved my own life as well as my sister’s by not being able to get up to that ledge. You just can’t. There’s no grip.”

  “Not on the face you were at,” said Bett, walking up the hill. “But on this side.”

  Bill and Stephanie trailed behind Bett as she began to walk steadily up the steep hill.

  “Bett, don’t bother!” Stephanie said. “I can live without the sweet taste of Mr. Fancy Jim.”

  But the notion of climbing that ledge, slick with ice and snow, had become a compulsion now, and there was no way Bett wasn’t going for it. Besides, Bett was eager to see an actual Fancy Jim product. She imagined a thick brown crust along the rim of the small jar, or maybe contents that had hardened like stone.

  “Listen,” said Bill, catching up with Bett once more, “it’s not as easy as it looks. You can’t tell from this angle, but that ledge is its own thing—there’s this big gap between it and the actual hill.”

  Bett nodded. “I got it,” she said again. And she moved purposefully toward the underhanging part of the rocky ledge.

  “Bett, stop,” said Stephanie. “It’s just a crap lip gloss. Bill can’t climb that ledge, and he’s way older and taller than us.”

  “Taller than you. Not me.” Bett had reached the littoral of hill and ledge and stood with her heart beating so hard it threatened to jump out of her chest and climb that ledge before Bett made it up there herself.

  And then she was already climbing, finding handholds and using her feet as ballast against her own weight. Oh my God, this is even better than running to school with four backpacks. Every piece of the stone was clear to Bett, and she knew where to reach almost before she had to think about it. The hardest part was coming up, though. The chunk of rock below the lip of the ledge was almost as thick as Bett was tall, and she had no idea how she was going to get past that.

  She looked up and saw the tiniest of handholds up and to the left. There was another one, a better one, higher up to the right. Could she do it? Could she use the small handhold long enough to swing her body up to the side and get to the good one? Her mother would never forgive her if she found out about this because Bett fell.

  There’s no way, said her brain. You will never get up on that ledge.

  Oh, I will get up on that ledge, asswipe, Bett told her brain, and she swung her body to the left hard, then swung harder and faster than a pendulum and caught that right-hand handhold and then she was up and over on the ledge like an eagle landing on its aerie. And there was the little jar of sad-looking lip gloss, practically right in the middle of the icy stone.

  “BETT!” Stephanie screamed. “WHAT THE HELL?”

  “Got it.” Bett called down and held up the lip gloss. “Catch.” And she threw it down to Stephanie, who did not catch it but watched it tumble down past her. Bill skidded down the hill and picked it up.

  The way back was much faster than the way up. Bett went between the ledge and the hill this time, which was a better way to come down, and then used the handholds she knew from the way up on the last part.

  Stephanie’s face was white when Bett reached her and Bill.

  “Are you okay? Stephanie. What’s wrong?”

  “What’s wrong? What’s WRONG? Only that I just saw my best friend climb practically to her death up to that ledge. I was terrified to even tell you to get down! I was scared that even my voice would be enough to startle you and make you fall! Bett, how dumb are you?”

  “Jesus,” said Bett. “All I did was climb a stupid rock. I could show you. Come on. How sure-footed are you?”

  “I am about one-tenth as sure-footed as you. Like, if we were rating people for sure-footedness and you were worth five Bettfuls of sure-footedness, I am at about half a Bett.”

  “More like one hundredth of a Bett,” said Bill. “Bett, that was a climb for the ages. You are badass! You—”

  But even as Stephanie and Bill were speaking, Bett could scarcely hear them for the joy that was pulsing through her. This was the best thing she had ever experienced in her entire life. She felt every second of the climb itself seared into her brain, every fear, every triumph of will. She had been given a glimpse inside a millisecond, inside forever.

  * * *

  “You scared the SHIT out of me, Bett!” Stephanie was done arguing about how many Bettworths of sure-footedness she had versus her brother.

  “I’m sorry,” Bett said helplessly. “I just wanted to help you.” Which was true. Partly. “I knew I wouldn’t fall.”

  “I didn’t!”

  “Well, I did. I live for stuff like that.”

  “Like wh
at? Scaring the hell out of people?”

  “No.” But Bett couldn’t find words for it that fit. “I just like, you know, physical challenges.”

  “Well, that was not just a physical challenge,” Bill said. “That was, like, a physical feat.”

  “Fizzicle feet.” Stephanie couldn’t help herself. “An ancient treat in the Fancy Jim’s freezer. Popsicles made out of old unsold sodas—”

  “—molded in the shape of feet?” finished Bett.

  And both of them were shrieking with laughter again.

  “This is where I leave you,” said Bill. “This is a little too treble for my manhood.”

  Stephanie and Bett meandered behind Bill as he picked his way back down the hill toward the house, Bett herself still feeling pretty fizzicle—like her very blood was carbonated. She knew she could never live without more Fizzicle Feets, ever, not for the rest of her life. Mere backpack running, goal scoring, and home-run hitting were nothing compared to this.

  When they had reached and climbed back over the fence, Bett took the little jar of lip gloss from Stephanie and turned the lid. There was the expected gritty scrape, and it was open. “Here’s your Fizzicle Feet, Steph. Your reward, too, for not dying of fright while I was climbing the ledge.” She extended the jar to Stephanie. “May you be the first to receive the kiss of Fancy Jim.”

  Stephanie shook her head. “I insist it be you, dumbass.”

  Their screams of laughter turned quiet, as they always did, as they laughed so hard no sound came out and their cheeks were streaked with tears.

  “I’m so glad you’re feeling so happy.”

  Bett swung around. What?

  And there was Bett’s mom, in uniform. Bett was mortified. Stephanie looked terrified. All laughter ceased.

  “Fingers broken?” Bett’s mother asked as she led the girls back toward Stephanie’s house, where she had parked her police car. “Some people have no fingers and yet still manage to place calls or text on their cell phones to let their parents know where they are. With their noses, I’ve even heard. Which may be the way you get to use your phone after you get it back in two weeks, my girl.” She extended her hand, and Bett, unquestioning, gave her mother her phone.

  “How did you know I was here?” she asked once she had said a weird, shamefaced good-bye to Stephanie, and she and her mother were in the car.

  “Bett, I am a cop. I know how to find a kid. I’m not letting you in on all my techniques at this moment. Not exactly seeing you like a buddy on a ride-along with me right now.”

  “Whatever,” said Bett.

  Her mother applied the brakes. She turned to Bett. “Would you like to say that again?” she asked.

  “Mom, what if someone pulls up behind us and needs to go forward?” said Bett.

  “I will direct them to go around my vehicle,” said her mother. “Well?”

  “No,” said Bett. “I would not like to say that again.”

  “Excellent,” said her mother, and home they went.

  Bett should have called her dad.

  10

  Thursday, Eleventh Grade, Off the Bus

  SOMEHOW DRIVING THROUGH CIVILIZATION ON the bus and arriving back at this slope that led up and home made Bett feel more than ever like the little house her mother had built for them was more shack than house. It wasn’t like her mother had even known how to build a house before about six months ago. She just got a bunch of library books about building one during Bett’s sophomore year and did it, starting in the spring and finishing it up right at the end of summer so they could move in before school started.

  Her mother was like that. Like Bett. Strong as a tank and very pragmatic, good at figuring out how things worked. Bett had worked on the house, too, until it felt too good, too Plus, but her mother’s solid competence made even that work mostly unnecessary. By the time summer came to an end all that was left for Bett to do was help with the insulation, which didn’t involve fat rolls of cotton-candy-looking stuff or spray foam as she’d expected, but books. It turned out that you could insulate a house with them. Bett’s mother had read about it. So they used all their own and ones they found on free tables at yard sales and boxes of books people sold for a dollar at the thrift store.

  “You know,” said her mother when they were done lining the walls, “I like the look of that. All those books. I think I’ll leave it and we can skip the drywall.” Which was the one thing Bett had been looking forward to, because she enjoyed drywalling, actually. But it was just as well. Even drywalling would probably count as too Plus. And Bett knew her mother was just glad to be done and able to get out of the house they had lived in after Bett’s father had left them.

  “Two years is a long time in a house you hate,” said her mother. Bett was glad to leave, too. It wasn’t like she was dying to see her father, ever, anyway, much less stay in the house they had all shared.

  Whatever. The new SIM card house looked weird, like a tiny crammed library, like Bett and her mother both read more than they really did. The racket of all those spines and titles jarred Bett’s nerves, and the books themselves, smelling like dust and mildew, didn’t make her feel like she was supposed to read or think much. The opposite, actually. It made it look like thinking was pretty well taken care of already, so Bett didn’t have to bother. So it was at once too noisy and a relief.

  Now, following the row of trees that lined the skinny path along the river edge to the right of the SIM card house, Bett pelted up the slope, away from Eddie, even though she knew she’d have to do something drastic later to undo the good feeling of this Plus run. To her left the river ran fast and focused toward the bay, its banks scrabbled with tough green-brown plants that stuck out, stubby and spare, over the rushing water and stones beneath. The river noise was just like the loud, ambient, chittery noise at the school, and exactly what Bett needed now. Numbed-out left ear and no thinking about the day. She ground the soles of her sneakers into the dirt and stopped short when she crested the slope above the river, breathing hard but completely still at last. Crows flew up from the river and landed on the path in front of Bett, crarking and arguing and making a din that only helped Bett not hear.

  There was a man in the water. He was a distance away but Bett could see him clearly, tall and brown in the foaming rapids. She couldn’t see his face, but his curly dark hair shook as he drew both arms across his chest and over one shoulder, like an old-time athlete cheering for himself. But no; he threw both arms up and in front of him and there was a glint of something arching over the gray of the water. From here it weirdly looked like a piece of the man’s own shoulder. Then Bett got it. He’s fishing. What for? she wondered. She hadn’t really thought about what fish lived down there in the river. Angling had never been one of her things. But it made sense that there were fish, and Bett knew cool weather was good for fishing.

  The man must have sensed her looking because he turned his face up to her and lifted his arm in a wave. Should Bett wave back? She bet he was the neighbor her mother talked about. Or what passed for a neighbor here. Her mother had built their new little house at the tip of a strip of land all by itself so there wasn’t any true “next door” like in town. Or “neighbors.” Well, there must be neighbors, because Bett knew that when her mother built their teeny house herself with her own two hands, the closest other person to their house lent her some kind of saw. So there were people here, but not many, and not exactly near.

  The man was still looking at her. He called something she couldn’t make out with her filled, numb ear.

  “What?” she called back.

  The man waved again. Bett wondered if he wanted her to pick her way to the water below, if it would be rude if she didn’t because he was their new neighbor or if maybe it would be stupid because she wasn’t so idiotic that she was going to talk to some man hanging out in a river in case he turned out to be a perv. Besides, she never went down to the river—not anymore. Though she couldn’t help seeing it, since it was everywhere in t
his town.

  The sun peeked out wanly from behind the pale gray expanse of sky overhead, and the man was smiling. The river was rough and fast, slate gray with little caps of white in places like hot milk.

  “Hello,” called Bett from where she was, as sort of a compromise, standing with her hand over her opposite wrist.

  “Hi,” called the man back, and smiled at her again. His eyes looked very dark from here. He was wearing an enormous pair of pants held up by suspenders. The pants were gunmetal gray and shone wetly in the water. What were those kind of pants called again? Bett couldn’t remember.

  The man followed her eyes and glanced down at his pants. He said something.

  “What?” she asked.

  The man repeated himself, but even though she was watching him closely she didn’t catch his words, what with the added racket of the river.

  He shouted again.

  “Whalers?” guessed Bett and he nodded. “Oh.” Was it possible there were actual whales in Salt River? That seemed insane, even if Salt River was called that because it was just that, a saltwater river. But it wasn’t deep enough for an actual whale.

  He said something else, about being her new neighbor, probably, introducing himself, but Bett’s attention was caught by the movement of his whalers as he shifted position in the rushing water to talk to her. The pants moved silently through the water, quiet and big and slow. The name made sense. Bett imagined the big, loose pants squeaking against the rocks underwater, crying like whale song.

  The man watched her and threw the line again.

  “I’m Bett,” she hollered suddenly. “You met my mother? She built our house.”

  “Yes,” the man shouted back, his words suddenly clear. “I know you’re Bett. And your mother worked very hard on your house.”