Just Wreck It All

by N. Griffin

  “You got my dad’s name on there,” he said to Anna. “Good.”

  “Glad you care,” said Anna.

  Mutt didn’t respond. But he pulled a folded piece of paper out of his back pocket and taped it to the wall beside Anna’s picture. Mutt’s work was nothing beautiful. It was pure Mutt, a picture of a stuffed rabbit impaled on a tree with a sword. There was blood coming out of the bunny, even though it was clearly a toy. Disturbing in the extreme.

  “What the eff?” Bett asked Mutt.

  Mutt shrugged. “It’s just a picture.”

  “Dillhole,” muttered Bett. Lucky her, she was going to get to spend the afternoon with Mutt again for cross-country.

  “What do you think?” asked Dan, who came to stand next to her.

  “Did Ranger bring in a picture?” Bett asked him.

  Dan laughed. “No way,” he said. “The art gene missed us both by a mile. That’s why he spends all his time inventing new stupid shit to say.”

  “Cakes,” Bett couldn’t help adding, and Dan play socked her in the arm. Bett stepped back.

  “I brought one, though,” said Dan. “There’s this cheeseburger I draw. And a sun—with sunglasses.”

  Bett stared at him. “You have been drawing those since we were in fourth grade,” she said. “Mr. Thorne was always after you.”

  “I know!” said Dan happily, and he taped up his burger.

  “We are going to plaster this place with art,” Anna was saying now. “And who cares if that bastard slashes every single one. We’ll just bring more. Fists together!” And the whole group put its fists together, except Bett, because she was certainly not a part of this.

  But then Anna called out, “Come on, Bett!” Bett shook her head. “You’re a supporter,” Anna encouraged her, but Bett could only make a throat gargle noise and stepped farther back. Anna’s shoulders dropped. Then there was a great show of everybody bumping everybody else’s fists, shouting, “ART LEAGUE!” at the top of their lungs.

  It was a bit too much togetherness for Bett, but the art part was kind of cool. She had to give them that.

  28

  Wednesday, Day Five of Eleventh Grade

  “LET’S SIT OUTSIDE AT LUNCH,” said Paul in English class. Did he mean Bett, too, or just the other kids at the table? She didn’t want to look like a loser who thought she belonged where she didn’t. Besides, lunch with Hester was not high on Bett’s list of priorities. Still, it was a beautiful day, she had to admit, and while sitting outside was a privilege open to upperclassmen, Bett had not yet taken part because she was afraid being outside would start a chain reaction of Plus thoughts like walking then running then racing until she was panting with exhaustion and she had to fight that kind of impulse, fight it harder than ever.

  But nonetheless, at lunch Bett found herself trailing behind the group with her tray to sit on the steps of the school. She sat by the statue, just far enough away that the other kids could ignore her if they hadn’t meant for her to join them, and also so she could look like she didn’t consider herself a part of them, either.

  Bett reached out and fingered the coat of the man in the statue. She was sore from yesterday’s forced run. Even her arms hurt as she stretched them toward the hem of the bronzed jacket. There was a grackle on each of the man’s shoulders, but, surprisingly, they didn’t fly away at her gesture. More interested in the possibility of crumbs from her hot dog buns, Bett imagined. Her fingers ran over some of the names of the veterans on the coat, carved in so skillfully they just looked like part of the wrinkles and falls of the man’s jacket and the clothes of the men he was bearing. Bett hadn’t thought about those names in a while, not before Anna’s drawing had drawn her attention to them again.

  Now Dan came clattering outside and sat beside her in the space she had left between herself and the group. She dropped her hand from the man’s coat.

  Dan read her thoughts. “Think of the ones who were killed,” he said. “Can you imagine? Men and women in our town who would be, like, full adults now with work and families and stuff.”

  “Maybe divorced and bored of their jobs and closeted, too,” said Paul.

  “You’re ghoulish, Paul,” said Dan. “It’s a waste and . . . sad.”

  For the Stays, thought Bett. Twinklers didn’t enlist nearly as often.

  Paul shrugged. “It was cool of Anna to include some of the names on her picture. Damn, that girl has talent.”

  Dan nodded. “More than I ever could have,” he said.

  Bett took a deep breath and steadied her voice. “Me either,” she said finally. “But I think it’s good you guys are doing this.”

  “Anna’s idea,” said Dan.

  Above Bett’s head, the grackle on the man’s right shoulder flew away at last. She thought about Ranger and his wild gesticulations with his friends. He was up to something. She had to tell Dan.

  “Listen,” Bett said to Dan, lowering her voice a little. “I’m kind of worried about your brother.”

  “Ranger?” said Dan, cocking his head. “He’s the last kid you have to worry about. He’s, like, almost clinically happy. The only thing you have to worry about with him is that he might irritate the hell out of someone with his ‘cakes’ and wind up the victim of a swirly.” He looked at Bett. “Your bangs look nice like that.”

  Bett shrugged and shook her head at the same time. What to say to that without sounding like she thought she looked nice, too?

  “I don’t mean Ranger getting teased,” she said at last. “Ranger and his friends were running around inside the school the other day and talking at lunch like little maniacs. I think they’re investigating the fire slashing and the devil pictures. They’re racing around making theories and stuff.”

  Dan was quiet. Then: “Sounds like the little jerk.”

  “Well, I’m worried—whoever attacked the art must have brought a box cutter to school—”

  “Or an X-Acto knife,” added Paul. Bett glanced over at him. Since when did Paul pay any attention to what Bett was saying? Huh.

  But she continued. “And slashed the hell out of those drawings—I don’t want your brother in any danger.”

  Dan shrugged, but then he went still. “Okay. You’re right. I’ll keep an eye on the kid.”

  “I will, too,” said Bett. “Just to make sure he doesn’t detect the person and try to march them to the main office himself.”

  Dan laughed, but Bett knew he was concerned because his face stayed serious. “Thanks,” he said.

  Bett squirmed and said nothing.

  Luckily, Paul added, “I’m with you both on this one.”

  But they were interrupted by Anna running out of the school, frantic. “It happened again!” she yelled, fists clenched. “Again!”

  Immediately, she was mobbed by kids.

  “The art again?” everyone was asking—at least everybody who hadn’t abandoned their lunch trays to race inside to the foyer to see for themselves.

  “YES!” Anna cried. “My wings! Our work we brought in this morning!”

  Bett ran with everyone else back into the school. Green and blue and red paper feathers lay everywhere on the floor. Ripped and shredded to bits, along with torn pictures and shadow boxes smashed. And above the carnage of the wings, above the blue-green burn-curled scraps still stuck to the wall, spray-painted words on the tiles screamed:

  I’M GOING TO GUT THIS PLACE.

  “Oh my God!” cried Hester. “What kind of asshole would do all this?”

  Paul was incredulous. “And why? Why?”

  Bett looked at those artworks slashed and smashed into shreds and shards all over the floor, and as awful as it was, she shivered, not because of the horror of it, but because all she could imagine was what it must have felt like, smashing things and slashing those wings. It must have felt like punching the river. Like being free.

  29

  Wednesday, Day Five of Eleventh Grade

  AFTER SCHOOL, MUTT, DAN, RANGER, and Bett headed to t
he bus to be taken to I Know a Guy Field. Behind them, on Salt River K–12’s actual athletic grounds, the field hockey team was practicing with their sticks, passing small balls to one another down the field. A shot went wild; the ball went high, and Hester shouted, “Incoming!”

  Eddie dropped to the ground with a thud.

  There was a pause.

  “You okay?” asked Dan, puzzled.

  But Bett knew. “Reaction,” she said. “You want a hand up?”

  “Shut up,” suggested Eddie. His face was redder than ever and his baseball hat was askew. “Around for enough grenades, there’s consequences when a man hears a word like that.”

  They watched him struggle painfully to his feet.

  “Get the hell on my bus,” he told them.

  They got the hell on his bus.

  * * *

  Bett was so sore from yesterday’s practice she couldn’t even consider reaching down to touch her toes when Eddie shouted out the command.

  “Second day is always the worst,” Mutt told them. “Your muscles aren’t accustomed to being used again yet.”

  They’re not used to being scared witless by a psycho with an art vengeance, either, Bett thought. Her heart was still beating hard from what they’d seen in the foyer. Once was freaky enough. But twice . . . twice was another whole level of scary.

  Think about something else, she ordered herself. Like since when was Mutt an athletic instructor? Bett couldn’t shake her junior high image of him, out of breath during basketball games, passing the ball wildly away from himself whenever anyone passed to him.

  He must have wanted to get better, Bett realized. He is a good runner now. That can’t have come easy. Bett had to give Mutt credit for having had a goal to improve even though he was still a complete homophobic buttwipe.

  “You touch those toes,” Eddie warned her.

  “Yeah,” said Mutt.

  Shut up, Mutt.

  “And don’t make me get in my bus today,” said Eddie.

  “Nobody makes you get in that bus,” Bett said back, borderline sass, even though she did feel bad for Eddie, dropping to the ground like that. What must it be like to have been in a war, a real war, and have live grenades come at you? Things Bett remembered her father telling her about the Vietnam War came to her, like how the Vietnam War vets had come home to everyone being mad at them for having even gone to fight in the first place when it wasn’t their fault.

  “My plan is to stay in this I Know a Guy Field,” she muttered now, touching her toes.

  Ranger glanced over at her. “You aren’t the only one with a plan,” he said, making his voice low and mysterious.

  “Some plans are safer than others,” Dan started, pegging Ranger with a look as they stood back up.

  But Eddie interrupted.

  “If you think I can’t chase you around this field, Bett, you got another think coming.” The vision of Eddie in the bus, weaving behind her as she tried to zigzag out of his way filled Bett’s mind. She wouldn’t put it past him, not after yesterday’s practice and not after his just having dropped to the ground a few minutes ago, freaked out by a field hockey ball.

  So she touched her toes again. She couldn’t stop thinking again about the ruined wings and art. And the graffiti took it beyond the pale. That was some terrifying shit. The destruction, the devils, all of it.

  Who would destroy things like that? And why?

  Other than that wonderful feeling.

  No. Shut up about that.

  Bett had enough to worry about without being a perp sympathizer, because not only did her bangs look kickass, she was about to have another afternoon of Plus-running the cross-country practice course. Thinking about her bangs reminded her of her lunchtime blush at Dan’s compliment, which made her worry she would blush again about it now, but at least if she was red here on the field it would look exercise related. Why did she have to blush so much around Dan?

  “Two laps around the field,” said Mutt, stupid clipboard in his hand. “Then the same loop as yesterday, only turn and head back here after you hit Ridge Road.”

  “Boring,” said Ranger. “Can’t we add distance some other way?”

  “No,” said Mutt.

  “Don’t question my plan,” said Eddie. “I can chase you with the bus, too. Now run.” He gave Bett a look. “All of you.”

  Whatever. Bett ran. But not before she had stolen Mutt’s pen off his clipboard and written BURN on the bottom of her sole.

  Running. Ground pacing under her feet, speed increasing, breathing harder, muscles aching, and all of it too amazing. The nervejangle inside her head was partly undoing the pleasure, though, which Bett was glad about, because then maybe she wouldn’t have to punish herself so hard later.

  * * *

  “Move it,” Mutt groused at them as practice ended and they made their way back to the bus. “I gotta get home to watch my sister.”

  “You have a sister?” asked Ranger, surprised.

  “Yeah,” said Mutt. “She’s eight, so I have to be there when she gets home from being at her friend’s house and shit.” He disappeared into the bus.

  “Bett!” Eddie shouted plaintively after her when the boys were all on the bus. “Come here!” He paused. “I want to talk to you!”

  Bett stopped short. “NO!” she shouted. “You promised!” And she ran away from the bus and back across the field, faster than she had run the whole course today.

  “Bett!”

  Shut up! Bett screamed in her head. Don’t you think I already know I’m a thousand times worse than a wings destroyer?

  Crows were pecking their way among the grass and pebbles when Bett reached the opposite edge of the field. The ones to her left all flew away at her approach.

  30

  Wednesday, After Day Five of Eleventh Grade

  WALKING TOWARD THE SLOPE TO the shack after the bus ride home from cross-country, Bett’s phone buzzed. It was a text from her dad.

  I miss you, it said. Please call.

  Bett would not call. She did not call her dad, she did not go to visit him, even though he, Bill, Stephanie, and Stephanie’s mother had moved, too, two years ago, sold the Christmas tree farm, which was all grown over now and towering with too-tall trees. They lived just in the next town now. All her father’s texting and e-mailing and Bett would have none of that, either, she barely spoke to him when he called her on the landline her mom had had to put in because the little spit of land where the house shack sat did not have reliable cell service, not yet, anyway, through the summer and early fall, when there were so many leaves on the trees surrounding the path up the slope. At least that’s what they were hoping the reason was. But the front of the house was nothing but those grasses, and sometimes Bett’s phone worked there.

  Why does he keep trying? Why doesn’t he realize he’s an asswipe who does not deserve to talk to his own kid, the one he didn’t even bother to check on after the explosion (good old Bett, good old strong-boned Bett, she can take care of herself), the one he—

  She deleted the text but the familiar tide was overtaking her. She gave her head a shake. Please don’t go on with that train of thought. Please. And it stopped as, shifting her heavy backpack until she reached the SIM card house, Bett checked the river for the man.

  He wasn’t there.

  She was surprised to find herself disappointed. What was it about him that made her hope to see him, somehow? She thought of his strong arms, casting and fishing, and wished again he were here to see now.

  Mom wasn’t in the house when Bett went inside, but Aunt Jeanette was. “You should have one of those crates on wheels,” Aunt Jeanette said critically. “That knapsack is shit for your back.”

  Could you imagine? Going to high school with a crate on wheels like a stewardess or, even worse, a teacher?

  “I’m fine,” said Bett. “How are you? How was work?”

  “I’m just trying to prevent you from becoming a stooped-over old woman,” Aunt Jeanette said
. “But if you turn out that way, don’t come crying to me!”

  “If I turn out that way, you’ll be laughing as I change your diapers anyway,” said Bett, and Aunt Jeanette made a face as the landline rang.

  “Don’t answer it!” But Bett was already too late and after a brief “How’s the Floozy?” Aunt Jeanette handed the phone to Bett.

  Bett held it and was silent.

  “Bett?”

  Who else would be breathing over here in her own house?

  “Bett, please, honey. I love you. Stephanie—”

  Bett hung up and went to her room, half poised to escape. But she heard her mother come in in a whirl of grocery bags, her mom and Aunt Jeanette talking and talking and talking.

  “So guess what the construction jagweed story part two turns out to be,” said Aunt Jeanette. Bett could tell she was dying to tell Bett’s mother that Bett’s dad had phoned and she had called him out about the Floozy, but she wouldn’t dare right now, not in this tiny shack of a house with Bett four stairs up in a room the size of a teleporter.

  “He called the owner of the company,” said Aunt Jeanette. “And the owner told him to go eff himself. How’s that for justice?”

  “Karma’s a bitch,” said Bett’s mom.

  “I hate when people say that,” said Aunt Jeanette with surprising vehemence. “What karma? Who gets punished for the bullshit they do? Ted with the Floozy and Bett with her ear. Who got punished for all that?”

  “Bett,” said her mother, hoisting something big into the fridge, from the sound of it.

  “Tell me about it!” said Aunt Jeanette. “She has not one friend anymore. She won’t even talk to a girl her own age. How is that karma fair?”

  “It’s not karma,” said Bett’s mom, sounding tired. Over the police radio in the kitchen came a crackly voice.

  “Domestic disturbance on Field Road,” it said. “Marianne, you available?”

  “YES!” Bett’s mother shouted. Then, very softly but Bett could still hear: “Jeanette. Bett isn’t friends with girls anymore because she’s afraid she’ll kill them.”