The Knockout Queen

by Rufi Thorpe

  To review: Bunny’s date with Ryan Brassard was in July, Donna Morse’s murder was August 28, the first day of school was September 6, the semifinals were going to be November 7, the anniversary of Bunny’s mother’s death was October 25, and Bunny’s eighteenth birthday was October 28.

  * * *

  —

  Bunny once told me about the day her mother died. This is what she said:

  “I was in second grade, and I got pulled out of class and taken to the principal’s office. I thought I’d done something wrong, but no one would tell me what it was, no one would tell me until my dad got there. I remember he was wearing sunglasses and he didn’t take them off, even when he was inside the office, even as he signed me out he kept them on, so his eyes were just shiny black bulges, like a bug’s. And everyone looked so sad, but I still didn’t know, I still didn’t know why, until we got out to the car, and I could smell the new leather of his car, getting in that hot car, and he didn’t turn on the engine right away, and I kept thinking: Please turn it on, turn on the air, roll down the windows. But he turned to me, and he still had his sunglasses on, and he said, ‘Your mother’s been in an accident.’ And for ten minutes after that, I still thought she was alive, because he was making it sound like that. I assumed we were going to the hospital to go see her, and I kept asking how bad it was, and he said, ‘Bad,’ and I kept asking, but he just said, ‘Bad, Bunny.’

  “But he didn’t drive us to the hospital. He drove us to McDonald’s, and he bought us milkshakes. We were sitting on a bench outside by the play area, which is a place we had spent a lot of time, and I wanted to go play but I knew I couldn’t, and I felt so creepy because I knew all of this was staged. He was taking me somewhere and making it be a certain way. He had planned that he would buy me a milkshake and tell me here, but I still didn’t know what he was going to tell me. As soon as he finally told me, I felt this strange hiss of release, because now they wouldn’t fight anymore. Now there would be quiet in our house.

  “And I knew that wasn’t the reaction that I was supposed to have, and that I was being watched carefully, that I was supposed to have a reaction and it needed to be the right reaction, because he had set up this whole scenario, this whole space that was designed to hold my reaction, but I had no idea what it was supposed to be. They had been fighting so badly for so long that I worried he would think I was siding with her if I cried, but of course I was devastated at the loss of her, I mean, she was my mother.

  “I know that’s stupid now. Obviously, he was expecting me to cry. I was seven, well, almost eight, but I was a kid. That’s why he had bought me the milkshake. That’s why he had tried to take me someplace happy. But at the time, I thought it was some sort of secret deal he was offering: If you accept her absence, then everything will be milkshakes between you and me. If you let go of her, then I will love you, and I will be fun dad, and everything will be okay. And honestly, it seemed like a great deal. A scary deal, but one I could not afford to pass up. So I snuggled into his arms and I asked him if Mommy was in heaven, and he said yes.

  “And the older I got, the grosser my reaction seemed to me. My mother had died, and I thought it was part of the war between my mother and father? And I had better side with the victor if I still wanted to get milkshakes. Because. You know. Look what had happened to her.

  “I had always thought that, on some level. That he had caused her to die. Not literally, like he had arranged the accident. But mystically. Psychically. Like the force of his personality had bucked her off like a thrown rider, to say: Life is for Ray Lampert. You must go elsewhere.

  “And every year, all day long, when it’s the day, when it’s her day, I feel like I’m trapped in that hot car, begging him to turn on the engine and start the air. So, yeah, that’s why I don’t really like Halloween or my birthday.”

  Indeed, Bunny hated Halloween. She hated everything about it. She hated the day itself, she hated movies about witches, she hated pumpkin carving, she hated costumes of any kind, she hated haunted houses, she hated fake teeth, she hated fog machines, she hated the song “Thriller.” She even hated the color orange. Because that year, her mother not yet buried, Ray Lampert took her trick-or-treating, and kept asking, “Are you having fun?”

  And Bunny had said yes. She’d said, “Yes, Daddy!” Because that was what she thought she was supposed to say.

  Sometimes I wonder: Did Bunny really say all of that to me? I have presented it here in quotations. But the memory is years distant now. I feel I can recall it so clearly. But was she really that insightful? Sometimes I wish she wasn’t. Sometimes I wish she was just a big dumb cow that all this happened to.

  On October 28 I knew it was Bunny’s birthday and so I had gone to Starbucks early and gotten Bunny’s order, which was a caramel macchiato and a pumpkin scone. (Bunny could not get fat no matter what she ate, and honestly, it was disgusting to watch.) I brought it to her house and rang the doorbell and she popped out, like she always did, and she was happy I had brought her a treat. We walked together, then parted ways at school: she had Spanish; I had AP English. “Don’t worry,” I told her, “soon it will be over,” and she nodded. The span of time between the anniversary of her mother’s death and Halloween was absolute torture each year, and she always felt like she’d escaped something if she made it to the first day of November.

  I saw her in the hallway before lunch, but she said she was going to the library because she had to finish her homework for sixth period, and I didn’t press it.

  About three p.m., right as I was leaving AP French and was going to head home and get changed for my shift at Rite Aid, I saw an ambulance pull up in front of the school. I had time, I wasn’t in a rush, and so I waited to see who the ambulance was there for. The paramedics took their gurney and scurried toward the gym. I thought one of the girls had probably passed out or something. That happened last spring when there was a heat wave, a girl had passed out during band practice because she stood with her knees locked for too long. When the paramedics came back, they were trotting and the girl lying there had the oxygen mask on, but her face was unmistakably bloody and already swelling in a way that looked fake. Her nose was under her left eye like a cubist painting. She was not awake or moving. It was Ann Marie.

  Half the volleyball team was trotting after her down the hall, and Coach Creely was working her way past them, yelling at them to go back to the locker room and finish getting showered and to go the hell home, except then Principal Cardenas, who wore a lot of pencil skirts and pendant necklaces, came out of the office and into the hall and said that no, all the girls needed to stay because they were going to be interviewed by the police, and she ushered them into the reception area of the main office, a fishbowl-style room paneled in glass. There weren’t enough chairs in there to hold them all, and the volleyball girls were all unusually tall and big anyway, so they looked positively crammed in there, a herd of giraffes. I kept waiting, thinking Bunny would come, or that she was already in the fishbowl and I would see her, but I didn’t.

  Then Naomi came, walking up the hallway all by herself.

  “What happened?” I asked her. She shook her head, like she couldn’t talk, wouldn’t. Like if she opened her mouth a frog would push out.

  “That was Ann Marie, right? What happened, I mean—did she fall? Like, off something? Or?”

  “Bunny hit her.”

  “No.”

  Naomi had reached where I stood in the hall and she closed her eyes and bowed her head and let out a big sigh. “Jesus, that was crazy, Michael. That was some of the craziest shit I’ve ever seen.”

  “What happened?”

  “We were changing, and Ann Marie was, you know, just talking talking talking, and I guess Bunny had enough because she—still in her bra and panties, hadn’t even finished changing—just goes over there, and grabs her, starts smashing her head into her locker. Boom, boom, boom
. Sounded like celery wrapped in meat, like, just crunching.” Naomi’s face was screwed up tight at the memory of this sound. She shook her head again.

  “Nobody could get her off, I mean, nobody tried, it all happened fast, and then she had her on the ground, and we were all yelling, stop, stop, you know? And it looked like she wasn’t going to, and she was just going to kill her? But then she suddenly leapt off, like, wham, she was off her, like Ann Marie’s body was electrified and she got shocked. And she starts going, ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, oh god, what happened?’ Like she didn’t even know. So.” Naomi shrugged.

  “Where is Bunny now?”

  “She’s still in there with Coach Eric. I mean, I think they’re gonna let her shower before they arrest her or whatever.”

  “But what was it about?” I asked. “What was Ann Marie saying that made Bunny lose it?”

  “Honestly, I wasn’t paying attention. I pretty much just tune that girl out, and I was thinking about this calc test I took earlier.” Naomi shrugged and then did an uncharacteristic thing, which was spit on the floor. “I hate this place,” she said to me very seriously and calmly.

  I did not ask Naomi to clarify, even though her comment bewildered me. What did her hatred of high school have to do with this sudden display of violence and what could only be a very bad outcome for our mutual friend? I did not understand, did not have the tools, the lenses and filters for understanding how all of this seemed to Naomi. Our collective whiteness. Our glistening safety. Our innocence displayed, as though it were a virtue instead of a collective cosseting. A sniveling softness. Children, wandering around in adult bodies, swiping their parents’ credit cards to buy sugary drinks at Starbucks. The kind of place Ann Marie could be queen of. The kind of place Bunny could be fool enough to lose.

  * * *

  —

  I didn’t want to barge into the girls’ locker room, but if it was just Bunny and Coach Eric in there, it seemed like my only chance to talk to her. I hesitated at the door, my fingers just touching the metal curve of the push-bar, listening. Did I hear voices? I heard something, but it sounded like a machine, rhythmic and low, like a pump system or a vacuum being pushed in a repetitive pattern. I pushed the door open a crack, and I could see down the hallway of lockers that led to the showers.

  I saw Coach Eric. I saw Bunny. She was in her bra and panties, and she had blood on her chest and on her stomach. She was sitting right next to Coach Eric on a bench. There was a puddle of puke on the floor between her feet. She was barefoot, and her feet were spread far apart to keep from getting in the puddle of puke. He was rubbing her bare back, up and down, up and down, with his big hand, and murmuring to her, like they were lovers. Bunny was the one making the noise I had heard, a kind of labored breathing in between sobbing and hyperventilation. Havroom, havroom. Like she was scraping something clean inside herself.

  Coach Eric was the one who saw me. “Hey, kid, get out of here!” he shouted. Bunny didn’t even look up, just puked again between her legs, her knees and ankles splaying dramatically, almost balletically, to get out of the way of her own bile. I jerked away from the door and ran down the hall, my shoes squeaking on the tile, as though I had been caught at something truly shameful.

  * * *

  —

  I called Ray Lampert and left a message, telling him what I knew of the situation. I called Bunny’s cell phone and left a message, begging her to call me. As I left the voicemails, my legs continued to carry me, walking on autopilot through our town, past houses where boats and RVs blocked the driveway, where giant trampolines took over the front yard, where happiness was a garage full of camping equipment and bins of children’s cleats in every size. Before I knew it, I was in front of Rite Aid, though I still wasn’t sure if I should go in, or if I should call in sick somehow in case Bunny needed me.

  I remember there was a massive magnolia tree across the street, like this was some other place, Georgia maybe, and not Southern California at all. That’s when I realized something odd. There were no palm trees in North Shore. The newer city plantings were slightly more adapted to the climate: orchid trees and succulent beds. But most of the plants and flowers were East Coast transplants. Deciduous trees providing the illusion of autumn. The thick almost-painted-looking leaves of cannas borrowing the humidity of southern summers left behind. And that’s when I started to feel really creepy. Because North Shore was a fake place, a manufactured town. I had always liked that about it, thought I accepted it. But now it was creepy the way a stage set is creepy after the show has ended. The way an empty costume is creepy. And I kept thinking of Bunny puking between her naked legs, Ann Marie’s blood drying brown on her belly, and about Naomi spitting on the floor, and about the mosaic of bone Luke had made out of Donna Morse’s head.

  I texted Anthony. I typed: I’m in love with you. Please say you love me too. Please just say those words because I need them.

  I saw that the message was read almost immediately. And there were three dots, which meant he was typing, and then they went away, and then the message came:

  I am wildly, passionately, truly, and deliriously in love with you, Michael.

  I texted: Oh fuck, thank god.

  He texted back a smiley face.

  And then I went to work.

  * * *

  —

  The first sexual fantasy I ever had, I developed when I was maybe eleven years old. I had known I was gay for some time by then, and I had crushes on boys, but I could not fantasize about them, and I had not yet figured out masturbation. I would just try to go to bed and develop a hard-on and sort of roll around, squirming, for hours. I did not dare to picture kissing one of the boys I liked at school. When I tried to imagine kissing one of them, they inevitably shoved me away or laughed at me. Instead, I imagined some kind of alternate reality wherein all men were gay and used other men as sex objects, almost in the same way that men use women in this world, only, for whatever reason, in my childish brain, I imagined the men being used as sex objects as being inside furniture. We were inside chairs and desks and tables and bookshelves, and there would just be holes cut out so that men could have sex with us while we were inside the furniture.

  That was the most I could picture for myself.

  * * *

  —

  Halfway through my shift, I got a text from Bunny. It said: At home now. I’m so sorry. I made everything worse. I know you can never forgive me.

  My first reaction was almost to laugh. Of course I would forgive her. I mean, wouldn’t I? How could I not forgive her? She was my best and only friend. We had made ourselves sick eating Funyuns and doing impressions of Johnny Depp together. We had written extended ode-like text messages about our favorite drag queens. I had let her meet Gabby and my mother. Just once, and for about twenty minutes, but it had occurred, locking us together in an overlap of worlds that could not be easily undone.

  Don’t be silly, I texted, hiding in the bathroom at work. I will come by after my shift.

  You really want to see me?

  I was baffled by this, but I knew I couldn’t keep hiding out in the bathroom forever, I wasn’t even on break, and so I didn’t respond, and just slipped my phone into my pocket. Toward the end of my shift, a kid I didn’t recognize, who was older, maybe in his early twenties, hissed “Faggot” at me as he left the store. I hadn’t even been the one to ring him up, I’d just been standing there, organizing my cash drawer so that when I had to count out it would go faster. Truthfully, I had never been called “faggot” in that kind of menacing fashion, though I had imagined being called “faggot” in such a way many times. It seemed almost like it was a common occurrence, so often had I mentally prepared for it to happen, but for it to actually happen seemed purely bizarre and theatrical to me. Like seeing someone dressed up for Halloween on a regular day.

  Terrence came up behind me.


  “Did that kid say something to you?” he asked.

  “No,” I said.

  * * *

  —

  At Bunny’s house, it was a bit like being let into the control room. They had their supplies and they were hunkered down. Ray had a glass of scotch going and seemed to be eating an entire pizza by himself. Bunny had an array of ice cream and chips around her on the coffee table, and there was an empty liter bottle of Mountain Dew next to the couch. The news was on at full volume, CNN, so national news, and its purpose seemed to be either to distract or else to just project an air of gravitas. They couldn’t watch a sitcom and accidentally laugh or have a moment of pleasure. On her stomach was a heating pad, and on her hand was an ice pack. Her hand was already swollen to almost twice its normal size and a weird magenta color. “I’ll go to the doctor in the morning,” she said.

  My impulse, since I was her friend, was to act as if this were something that had happened to her, instead of something she had done. “Your poor hand!” I cried, as though she had not hurt her hand bashing a girl’s head in.

  “I can move all the fingers,” she said. We both looked up as Ray answered a call on his cell phone and went into the kitchen to pace and talk.

  “How is Ann Marie?” I asked, because I didn’t want to ask why Bunny hadn’t been arrested. Or perhaps she had been and had already been let out on bail. I didn’t know how those things worked. We had not been able to afford bail for my own mother. In movies it seemed like the kind of thing you could do in a day, but movies were terribly inaccurate regarding the banalities of the court system.

  “She’s okay. My dad went to the hospital and kind of smoothed things over.”