Everything Beautiful
Simmone Howell
Contents
Cover
Title page
On the Fifth Day
1 Outlaws
In the Beginning
2 The Palace of Suckdom
On the First Day
3 Safe Fun
4 Black Ball
5 A Rare Bird
6 Poetic and Condemned
7 Orientation
8 The Idea of Kinship
9 Breaking and Entering
10 Bad-Weird and Jesus-Freaky
11 Lucky Smoke
On the Second Day
12 Drama Queens
13 Capsized!
14 Healthy Animals
15 The Tail of a Q
16 Fatal Flaws
17 Field Recordings
18 The Geek Shall Inherit the Earth
19 In the Thick
20 Wildlife
21 It Is All Good
On the Third Day
22 Spiritual Development
23 A Pig’s Ear
24 Wheelchair 101
25 Period of Adjustment
26 A Basically Hostile Environment
27 God’s Great Hearth
28 Assorted Guys
29 She’s So Satan
30 Fond Farewell
31 Walkabout
On the Fourth Da
32 Nevermore
33 Involved
34 The Story of February 2
35 Crazy People
36 Are You Rampant?
37 Healing Properties
38 Yesterday’s Girl
39 Petition
40 A Little Salvation
41 Aces
On the Fifth Day
42 Wonderfully Made
43 Past Life
44 Cultural Anthropology
45 Conversation Without Words
46 Dressed!
47 Accidents 1 and 2
48 Parallel Lines
49 Wanting
50 Repent, Repent
51 Trust Games
On the Sixth Day
52 Everything Beautiful
53 Suckingfish
54 Contact High
55 A Different Movie
56 Que Sera, Sera
57 The Girl I Was
58 End of Faith Discussion
59 This Way Utopia
60 Hootenanny
61 The Appeal of Wrongness
On the Seventh Day
62 Sir Thomas More’s Prayer for the Maybes
Also by Simmone Howell
Manifesto Revised
Acknowledgments
Imprint
For my parents
On the Fifth Day
1
Outlaws
I am the maniac behind the wheel of a stolen dune buggy. Dylan Luck is at my side. We are tearing up the desert, searching for proof of God. My driving experience amounts to a few stuttering laps of the Safeway parking lot. That was supervised—Dad blanching and clutching his seat belt. This is something else; something beginning with Freedom.
While the rest of the campers were singing their thirty-fifth Bottle of Beer down on the highway, Dylan and I made our escape. We had gas siphoned from one of the counselors’ cars. We had supplies—snacks and Band-Aids and bottled water—all hauled to Fraser’s garage, where Delilah was waiting under a dirty tarp. Delilah started life as a 1967 VW Beetle, but she’s had work done—her body stripped back to a shell. She has bucket seats and sand tires and a “demi” windshield that sits like reading glasses on her hood. We didn’t build her, but we did christen her—after some dispute.
“It has to be a girl’s name,” Dylan had said. “Cars and ships always have girls’ names. It’s a macho-sexist-transport thing.”
“What do you call your wheelchair?”
He thought about this, then smiled. “My Bitch.”
There’s nothing like going so fast you have to squint; so fast your cheeks wobble, and the wind plows through your hair and judders in your ears like a tattooist’s drill. Delilah has no floorboard, just pedals sticking up. My feet stay on them waiting to stomp. Clutch in, gas out. I do the dune buggy two-step, wild and gleeful. Shrieks fly out of my mouth like bats.
Dylan roars, too, mocking Neville, our twee camp counselor—“I feel so ALIVE!”
He rattles his chair, which is folded and fixed to a bar in front of his knees. In the corner of my eye I can see the chair’s Playboy mud flaps. They’re homemade and have a wonky charm—like their maker. Five days ago, when I first saw Dylan, I felt sorry for him. I never thought he’d make me laugh so hard or act so crazy. First impressions are crap.
As we zoom along the fire road I think about topography. Twenty thousand years ago the Little Desert was underwater. I close my eyes for the briefest of seconds and see ridges and reefs and whirlpools. Then: CRACK! The world tilts and Delilah starts to skid. She’s lost a wheel, and I’m losing my footing. There is swerving and swearing and shuddering and then there is the tree—one of those fat red mallee bastards that a week ago I wouldn’t have known the name of. We hit the trunk on my side. I lurch into the steering wheel. Time stops. When I fall back against the vinyl, my face feels stiff; my arm hurts something ferocious. Dylan has hardly moved. He had the chair as his buffer, plus he has superior upper body strength. Not that you’d know it to look at him—his chest is more crushed beer can than buff six-pack.
Our first reaction is to look at each other and balk. Then we laugh.
I say, “Are we dead?”
Dylan checks his legs. He lifts each one and lets it drop down with a thunk. “If this is heaven, I want a refund.” For Dylan, heaven is where his legs work. I don’t know what heaven is for me—unless maybe it’s us, here, this.
I hear something. It sounds like the first car slowly climbing a roller coaster, or a parrot pecking at a bush apple. But the noise is just my teeth chattering.
“Are you okay?” Dylan asks me. “Your head …”
I touch my forehead. When I bring my hand back, my fingers are wet with blood. “Oh.” I check myself in the side mirror. I have a cut, dead center—a perfect red spot.
“You look like one of the Manson girls,” Dylan jokes.
I’m too fuzzy to summon a comeback.
“I always thought you’d look cute with a third eye.” I try to laugh and feel myself slip a little in the seat.
Dylan brushes his thumb across my brow. I press my head into his hand.
“It’s okay,” he says, stroking my hair. I stay down. I feel woozy, flooded. I have an insane urge to tell him that I love him. I want to say that if we really are dead it would be sad in a way, but in another way it would be the perfect outlaw ending. I picture the sand turning into a sea again, rising and rising, folding over us and preserving us forever. But talking takes too much effort. So I close my eyes. The sky stays blue behind them and there are no clouds for the longest time.
In the Beginning
2
The Palace of Suckdom
The first sign that we were entering the Palace of Suckdom came as we passed under the wooden arches. They had a shipwrecked look and were etched with this: He Hath Made Everything Beautiful in His Time.
“There’s a challenge,” Dad said. He winked at me in the rearview mirror. “Someone’s got their work cut out for them.”
“Ha-ha.” I made a face. It was high noon. Outside the window was a wilderness of dust.
“Ron!” Norma cried. She turned to me. “Don’t listen to him. You’re gorgeous.” Then she trilled, “And we’re here! Are you excited?”
“I’m so excited, I need the toilet.”
“Riley,” Dad’s voice was like a jab in the ribs.
“What?”
“You know.” He mouthed, Be nice. Be nice to Norma—that old refrain. Well, I didn’t want to be nice. He couldn’t banish me and still expect sunshine smiles. “Here” was Spirit Ranch Holiday Camp. The Web site boasted “an oasis of fun and learning on the edge of the Little Desert: from Pomponderoo Hill to the southern crater—nowhere is God’s work more in evidence.” From where I was sitting it looked like a horror movie set: closed up and quiet—too quiet. I wasn’t excited. I was banished. The closest town was called Nhill, and that’s exactly where I set my expectation levels.
It had been a long drive, made longer by Norma’s New Age soundtrack—fern gullies, waterfalls, the tranquil sounds of whale sex. I couldn’t stop staring at Norma’s hand planted on Dad’s thigh. The traveler’s hand. Mom used to do that. But Mom’s hand was a salve; Norma’s was like a falconer’s mitt.
My mother, Lilith Maree Rose, died two years ago, when I was fourteen. Of all of the facts of my life, this was the one that wouldn’t change. If I ever chanced to forget about the Mom-shaped hole in my life, the grief would come back like a wrist burn on my heart.
It was cancer—fast and ugly—and it left Dad and me gasping for air. Pain ends —if you believed the grief guides. Apparently visualization helps—close your eyes, imagine you see your loved one laughing. Open your eyes. Breathe. Now cue me: sweet sixteen and still gasping. I felt incomplete, cut up, and I couldn’t talk about it. Insert life change here.
Six months after Mom died, Dad moved us back to the town were he grew up. He had all his old friends, and I made precisely one: Chloe Benson. Dad started going to church again, and not just on Sundays. He got involved. It was months of church-activity craziness. He even auditioned for Moses: The Musical. Dad is a terrible singer. His breathing is all over the place. He sings like someone’s chasing him—and it turns out someone was. Norma. Her name is onomatopoeic, which means it sounds like she looks—all soft and droopy-drawly. And she’s kind. I didn’t want her to be kind.
When the school year ended Dad sat me down to tell me that he and Norma were “pretty serious.” And even though the rest of me was numb, I still managed a smart mouth because that’s my best defense. I said, “Pretty serious? Pretty? A qualifier is like a seed of doubt.” Dad squeezed my hand and that squeeze cut the qualifier out.
My smart mouth is one of my defenses; my size is another. I am Chubby con Carne, 182 pounds and rising. The whole Norma Trauma Kit came with free counseling. “Do you think, Riley, that your weight is the moat around the real you?” Or, “Would you say, Riley, that you only feel good when you’re being bad?”
All year I’d been hurtling toward catastrophe. First there was the thing with the bong, then my almost failing midterms, and my schizo MO—hugging Dad one day, railing at him the next. But the tipping point was when a group of us broke into the local pool for a night swim. Your Honor, I admit it. We were drunk on vodka Jell-O shots. My mascara had run in Vampira streaks down my face, and I was delirious-happy because I was just about to kiss Ben Sebatini! He of the inky hair and that smile that made me steady myself against stair rails. I still can’t believe that for nine hot minutes—until the cops busted in and ripped us asunder—the boy had been mine.
Dad picked me up at the station and we drove home in silence. In the driveway, he killed the lights, hung his head, and said, “Riley, Riley, Riley.”
I went, “What’s up, Mr. Potato Head?” but he didn’t laugh like usual.
“You don’t take anything seriously.” His voice was so quiet I had to hunch to hear it. “You don’t seem to understand that there are consequences in life. You’re messing up. And I don’t know what to do with you.”
“I’m sure Norma has a few ideas,” I said under my breath.
That night I put my ear to the heating vent and listened to Dad and Norma plot my course. They had their first vacation coming up. A winsome week of B and Bs. I was supposed to stay at Chloe’s, but there was no way Dad was going to let that fly now. It was Norma who suggested Spirit Ranch. A friend of a friend from the parish had sent her daughter there and she’d come back Saved. She’d gone from shaving her eyebrows to reading The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. Camp was booked solid, but Norma was connected. All it would take was a phone call.
Dad wavered. “I guess it would get her away from Chloe …”
“But?” Norma prodded.
“I don’t want her to feel like I’m dumping her.”
“Ron. You’re too sensitive.”
“I don’t know …”
“Honey, you have to take something for yourself here. It’s like teaching a baby to swim. You have to just throw them in the water. Once they get over the shock, they love it.”
Norma’s never had a baby. I know this for a fact.
The next day I debriefed Chloe.
“Talk about pussy-whipped!” she crowed.
“Norma doesn’t have a ‘pussy.’” I popped the p. “More like an old box with creaky hinges.”
Chloe and I made creaking sounds at each other and then fell apart laughing.
Chloe’s like an ancient Vegas pole dancer trapped in the body of a sixteen-year-old. She has lax parents, a disposable income, and a serious guy habit. My first sleep-over at her house featured her then-boyfriend Matt, his friend Andy, and a bottle of Jägermeister. The morning after, she said, “You know, when you’re wanking a guy, sometimes it helps if you spit on your hand.” Everyone at school was scared of Chloe, but I, as her protégée, was safe. I liked her bent wisdom, but I couldn’t picture us after high school—sharing an apartment or going to college or having any adventures that didn’t include body shots and bohunks.
We took turns punching her faux-fur pillow.
“Wahh,” she cried. “You’re going to miss Ben Sebatini’s party.”
“I know. It’s like every time I get close, the cruel hand of fate rips up the set.” I hung my head. “And I’m left on the stage … alone and forsaken.”
“The cruel hand of fate is a bitch.”
I showed her the Spirit Ranch brochure.
Chloe’s eyes glittered. “Will there be nuns? Make sure you take photos. I want to see wimples and control pants. Just think of all that slob couture …”
“I’m not allowed to bring my phone.”
“What?”
“No phones, no gadgets.” I sighed. “It’s totally Mormonic.”
Chloe laughed.
“Don’t,” I said. “This is terminal.”
“My friend, my friend …” She pressed the pillow to my face and then flung it on the floor. “I think you’re fucked.” She uncurled her long brown legs and stood up. She did one of her power yoga poses—the tree—closing her eyes and breathing out through her nostrils, short, fast, and furious. Then she opened her eyes and declared, “I’m going to get you out of this.”
“How?”
“Leave it to me.”
The day before I left for camp, I cut my hair. This was hair-chitecture. One side fell in ascending steps down my face, the other was straight, shoulder-length, civilian. Then I dyed it ultraviolet. I looked like an old new waver. Shocking but compelling.
I decided I would only pack frivolous things: eyelash curlers and costume jewelry and little jars of antipasto. If I had to go to Christian camp, then I would go as a plague. I would be more like Chloe: outrageous and obnoxious—a plus-size glass of sin! It wasn’t until Melbourne was wavering behind us like a bad watercolor that reality hit. As the kilometers ticked by I sank in my seat and practiced holding my breath. On a silo just past Horsham someone had painted an escape button. ESC—ten feet high against a concrete sky. I almost asked Dad to stop the car so I could press it.
On the First Day
3
Safe Fun
Counselor Neville’s office was small and smelled like coffee and leftovers. For the first few seconds after our introduction he ignored us, and shifted papers around his messy desk. I kept quiet. The ch
air I was sitting in squeaked if I even breathed. Dad and Norma sat on either side of me, like henchmen. Finally, Counselor Neville looked up and blinked at me. I blinked back. He was thirtysomething, neat, and nothing much to look at until you saw his glass eye. Then he took on a creepy character actor aspect, the guy with the sissy laugh and the knife taped to his ankle. He was wearing the standard shirt-tucked-into-jeans-and-“bonkers”-tie combo. On his pocket a badge proclaimed God Is Awesome in bubble writing.
“Riley Rose.” He crossed off my name, my stupid name that sounds made-up or backward, or like something I’m definitely not: Riley Rose—Romance Novelist. Riley Rose—Yodeling Cowgirl. Try Riley Rose—Defective Daughter. Unhappy Camper. Castaway. I stared at my palms like a kid on acid, counting the cracks in my love line while Neville rattled off the contents in my Spirit Ranch goody bag: “One guidebook featuring map, information, your all-important schedule, and a little local history. One name tag…” He tossed me a reddish button. My name was written on it in a primitive hand, underlined by a yellow feather. I turned the button over, accidentally puncturing my finger on the safety pin. There was no way I was going to wear it. In the first place, it was hideous, and in the second, my top was made out of the finest fishnet. Like I would violate it with that monstrosity.
Neville smiled wetly. “Roslyn made them—out of resin, I believe. Roslyn is our art-life-spirit counselor—she’ll explain about the feather at orientation. We’d like you to wear your name tag the first day or so, until you get to know your group.” He went back to the bag. “One Spirit Ranch pen. Test it, please—last year’s batch was faulty.”
I scribbled on the cover of the guidebook, dumbly, dutifully. It was already too hot, and Neville’s air conditioner was all noise and no action. I checked the sweat patch under his arm. Since I’d been there it had grown in size from a quarter to a small pool.
“Sunscreen. Water bottle. Insect repellent. Visor.” Neville was winding up. “You’re in cabin three with Fleur and Sarita. Orientation is at four, then activities, then dinner. It’s all on your schedule.”
Norma leaned forward. “Sarita—what a lovely name. Is that Indian?”
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