The Best Night of Your (Pathetic) Life

by Tara Altebrando

  8

  AT THE EMERGENCY ROOM ENTRANCE, I STUDIED the sky again. It seemed to be slowly draining of blue as the sun’s angle had begun its shift toward evening, and I felt drained, too. I wiped away tears with two hands, palms full on cheeks, and turned to Dez. “Ready for your close-up?”

  “I can’t believe this is happening,” he groaned, his eyes wet.

  “You guys go in with Dez,” Patrick said. “I’ll park.”

  So we got out and went through the ER doors. At the main desk, a nurse about my mother’s age, and with the same hair color and style—a short brown bob—looked up and studied us for a second. I said, “We think my friend’s wrist is broken.”

  She looked over at Dez’s wrist, unimpressed, and said, “Sign here and have a seat.”

  “Right handed,” Dez said, lifting the injured wrist with his left, and the nurse shot me a look, so I picked up the pen attached to the sign-in clipboard with a piece of string and wrote Dez’s name. We backed away and shared a look that said, What’s her problem?

  The waiting room was otherwise empty of emergencies, though I was pretty sure I could scare up a few if I tried.

  The Virgin Mary’s been kidnapped!

  My heart is breaking!

  I’m going away and I’m scared to death!

  We sat and waited and I texted Jill to say: DID YOU GUYS TAKE THE MARY STATUE FROM OUR CAR?

  She wrote back right away: NOPE.

  “Jill says it wasn’t her,” I said, and Winter looked at me like I was some kind of monster.

  “Really?” Winter said. “That’s your concern right now?”

  “It’s worth a hundred points! And it’s the closest thing I have to an important family heirloom or whatever.”

  “Well, you should have thought of that before we took it!” Winter said.

  “It’s okay,” Dez said to Winter, and Winter folded her arms across her chest and looked off toward the TV screwed into the wall.

  To me, Dez said, “Let’s talk it through to keep my mind off this.” He nodded at his wrist.

  “I can’t remember the last time I can be sure she was there,” I said quietly so as not to disturb Winter and her current snit, though what reason she had to be in such a bad mood was beyond me. She probably wasn’t thrilled that everything seemed copacetic on Carson’s team, which meant still no breakup, but that was hardly my fault.

  “Me neither,” Dez said. “So it could have been taken at the hay bales—by Barbone—or at the bell or at Party Burg or Flying Saucers.”

  I said, “Well, that sure narrows it down.” We’d crossed paths with at least five teams, if you counted the ones who’d been spotted by the Shalimar while we were taking a dip.

  “My money’s on Barbone,” Dez said.

  “But we would’ve seen them near the car,” I said. “Right?”

  “I don’t know, Mare.”

  A nurse came out and called Dez’s name and he got up and said, “You guys should go. Bring me Barbone’s head on a plate.”

  And before either of us could say anything he was through a set of double doors and gone.

  “You’re not mad that I like him,” Winter said.

  “I’m not?” I think I guffawed.

  She shook her head. “You’re mad that he likes me.”

  Patrick came into the ER then and I stood up, ready to go, but Winter didn’t move and Patrick sat down next to her and put Dez’s backpack on the chair beside him with a thud. “Did anybody call his dad?”

  “I’m not sure that’s the best idea,” I said. “I mean, what if his dad calls Mullin or the cops and the whole hunt gets shut down?”

  “Let it go, Mary,” Winter moaned.

  I spoke slowly and deliberately, as if each word were its own sentence, when I said, “Dez just said we should go back out there!”

  “He did?” Patrick asked, sounding pleasantly surprised, I thought, and Winter and I both nodded.

  “Well, we’re not just leaving him here,” he said.

  “We can come right back after we get the second list!” I said.

  “I’m calling his dad.” Patrick got up and walked away, phone in hand.

  “I’m sorry he doesn’t like you,” Winter said then, but I could think of no reply, no words worth saying.

  When Patrick came back a few minutes later, he sat down, looked at the time on his phone and said, “So I guess we’re done.”

  I nodded—from my own phone I knew it was 5:25—and faced straight ahead at the TV. Looking up at it I read some headlines on the news channel’s crawl, each one more depressing than the last.

  3-year-old boy drowns in lake in Cleveland, Ohio, suburb….

  Mayor of Pennsylvania town accused of “sexting” teens…

  Victims of fire remembered in Maine.

  I pictured Girl fails miserably at scavenger hunt during senior week and Girl’s best friend steals her only romantic prospect and thought I was going to cry, again, and then I did. Not full-on but I had to wipe my eyes and Patrick said, “Hey,” and slid into the seat next to me. “I know you were all fired up about this, but I mean, who even wants to do the hunt with nothing but A-holes for competition?”

  “But why should they have all the fun?” I said. “We’re better people.”

  “Yeah, and we know that.” Patrick adjusted his suspenders. “We don’t need the Yeti to prove it.”

  “I hate him,” I said. “I really hate him. And I hate the way it makes me feel.” The tears were streaming steadily now, and I was powerless to stop them. I wasn’t even sure it was about Barbone anymore, but I couldn’t explain everything else, not to Patrick.

  He took a breath. “Let’s see what they say before we pack it in for the night, okay?”

  I wiped my eyes. “But we’re down one hundred because of the missing Mary and if we stay here and wait, there’s no time. And we never took a picture of Hayhenge, so that’s another sixty we thought we had that we don’t.”

  Patrick produced the Dixie cups from his bag and said, “I need a pair of scissors.” He got up and asked at the nurse’s station and the nurse who looked like my mom obliged.

  I nodded approval as he started cutting triangles from the cups, then I looked through the list again for the icosahedron’s point value—65, which seemed super low considering how complicated it was—then read looking for things that could add up to another 91 to get us to 1250. I stopped when I got to origami sheep.

  10 points per.

  Ten sheep.

  I checked the ER clock again.

  I had no idea if it could even be done.

  “How many copies of the list do you have there?” I asked Patrick.

  “Four,” he said, after a quick count. “Why?”

  I searched on my phone for “origami sheep.”

  I took the staple out of one copy of the list and started folding.

  “What are you doing?” Winter asked.

  “Origami sheep, ten points each so we’ll need ten.” I folded again.

  Patrick said, “Now that’s the Mary I know and love,” and the word love clung to the air like a spiderweb—fragile, delicate, and complicated.

  “I need tape,” Patrick said, when he appeared to be done cutting, so he got up again.

  Winter got up and said, “And I need to find a restroom.”

  “So what’s with you two?” Patrick asked when he came back, and I said, “Oh, it’s nothing. It’ll pass.”

  “You’re a terrible liar, Mary.”

  “Sometimes,” I said.

  “Hey,” he said. “What about that clue? In code?”

  “Oh, crap,” I said then found it on my phone.

  I read the numbers out to Patrick and he wrote them down and then wrote out the letters of the alphabet with numbers next to them. “It’s probably a pretty simple code,” he said, and he set aside his half-made icosahedrons and got to work. After a few minutes of scribbling he said, “Umlaut.”

  “Huh?” I said.

&n
bsp; “That’s the clue. Umlaut.”

  I must have looked entirely confused.

  “You know, two dots over a letter.”

  “I know what an umlaut is,” I said. And I typed into Google all three of the hangman clues—Godzilla, Winston Churchill, and umlaut—and it turned up gold.

  • Blue Öyster Cult—ArticleWorld

  www.articleworld.org/index.php/Blue_Öyster_Cult—Cached

  May 20, 2011—Two other well-known songs are “Godzilla” (1977) from Spectres,…by Winston Churchill’s description of Italy during World War II…. The addition of the umlaut was suggested either by Allen Lanier or Richard Meltzer….

  • Blue Öyster Cult—Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Öyster_Cult—Cached

  Their next album, Spectres (1977), had the FM radio hit “Godzilla,” but its sales were.…from a phrase used by Winston Churchill in describing Italy during World War II…. The addition of the umlaut was suggested by Allen Lanier,…

  • Blue Öyster Cult Artistfacts

  www.artistfacts.com/detail.php?id=196—Cached

  …“Soft White Underbelly,” after a Winston Churchill quote describing Italy in World…The band’s name is properly rendered with an umlaut over the letter o…. They did the most incredible version of Godzilla (no drum break)….

  “Blue Öyster Cult,” I said, heart already racing. “It’s the Yeti’s favorite band!”

  “Send it in!” Patrick said. “Wait. What’s Godzilla have to do with the Blue Öyster Cult band? Or Winston Churchill, for that matter? Or an umlaut?”

  “Don’t know, don’t care,” I said, and sent this to the Yeti: YOUR FAVORITE BAND IS BLUE OYSTER CULT.

  Then I studied my search results again and said, “There’s an umlaut on the o” and texted: (WITH AN UMLAUT ON THE O)

  I unfolded one fold of my sheep-in-progress to confirm it was 100 points, minus ten for that one wrong guess. “Ninety points!” I squealed and the Yeti wrote back and said, THE YETI IS BURNING, HE’S BURNING, HE’S BURNING FOR YOU!

  Patrick held up a hand to me and said, “Dude!”

  We high-fived but he grabbed my hand as we did and held on a little bit too long. We had enough points to qualify. We had 1269, if you counted my two origami sheep. And Patrick was putting the last piece of tape onto his icosahedron.

  Dez’s father came in a few minutes later, winded, and ran a hand over his fine hair. “What happened?”

  We exchanged looks and Patrick said, “You better let Dez tell you.”

  Mr. Mahady walked off to speak to the nurse then, and she took him through the double doors. I watched their heads bob and then disappear down the hall, and I started to gather our things. But not a minute later, he came right back out and he said, “He wants to see you all.”

  Patrick led the way and we found Dez sitting on a bed with his wrist propped up on a pillow. “What are you still doing here?” he pleaded.

  Patrick set Dez’s backpack on the chair beside the bed. “What did they say?”

  Dez said, “They have to do an X-ray, probably an MRI.”

  “Crap,” Patrick said.

  “Yeah.” Dez nodded. “Now get the hell out of here and bring me Barbone’s head on a plate. And, you know, the Yeti.”

  “Don’t you mean Fitz’s head?” Winter asked, and I had been thinking it, too.

  “I’d take his, sure. But mostly Barbone’s.”

  “At least he sort of tried to protect you,” I said, surprising myself. Was I defending Jake Barbone?

  “By calling me a fag?” Dez punctuated the question with a laugh of disbelief.

  “I didn’t mean—” I said, but now I didn’t know what I meant.

  “You know,” Dez said, “sometimes I wonder whether any of you are any better than guys like Barbone and Fitz.”

  “What are you talking about?” I said, feeling suddenly very tired.

  “You’re not going to get it,” Dez said, shaking his head. “And I’m too tired and doped up to deal with you all right now. You’re not going to make it back by six unless you leave like this second.”

  “Dez,” I said. “We can’t leave things like this.”

  “Yes, we can,” he said. “Because you’re quitting this thing over my dead body.”

  “We can’t just do it without you,” Winter said sadly. “It’s not right.”

  “It is, too, right,” Dez said. “If you can’t win it with me, win it for me.”

  A wave of excitement started to swell somewhere deep down in my gut because I could see it in Winter’s and Patrick’s eyes that they seemed to be warming to the idea. And there seemed to be a sort of skip in time in which we were all frozen and then, just like that, we tore off running out of the room, then down the hall, then out of the hospital and around the corner to the parking lot, where Patrick fumbled with his car keys and I said, “Hurry, hurry, hurry.”

  We were maybe a five-minute drive from school and Patrick drove faster than he had all day and the radio was still on and the car was filled with fuzzy guitar licks and drunken sounding notes and a guy singing, Things weren’t going my way…but I feel luckier today.

  The moment felt suddenly imbued with meaning and some kind of universal import. Maybe it was some kind of message from the fates, an encouraging omen to say that things—the hunt, our rattled friendships, college, life—were going to work out fine after all. Because even if I couldn’t win Carson away from Jill and Winter, I could still win the hunt, the Yeti.

  I turned and looked at all my local landmarks whirring by—just Laundromats and parks and paint stores and Party Burgs—and wondered about what lie ahead for us that night. What other teams had made it? What would the second list be like? Would there be anything illegal or sexy or scary on it? Did I want there to be? Was there really any way that people like me could beat people like Barbone? And who on earth had taken Mary?

  It was Patrick who got a text right then and he looked up at me, confused. “What?” I said, thinking something awful must have happened—something else awful—and then he put his phone down and turned into The Pines and said, “Carson just asked if he could join our team.”

  9

  WE WERE BACK WITH EXACTLY TWO MINUTES to spare, so we got out of the car and waited. Nobody really knew how eliminations would work—how long they would take—but I hoped for a few minutes, at least, to investigate the fate of Mary.

  “So?” Carson appeared, all jolty like a puppy. “Can I be on your team?”

  “I guess!” Patrick said. “But why?”

  I held my breath, feeling a little excited and a little scared, too, the way I felt during the handful of times in my life when it felt like something was actually happening.

  “Wait,” Carson said. “Where’s Dez?”

  I said, “Barbone said something obnoxious and Dez called him a douche bag and Fitz pushed the hay bales Dez was standing on and he’s in the emergency room with a broken wrist. Or possibly broken, we don’t know yet.”

  “And you left him there?” Jill asked, having appeared, wide-eyed, next to Carson.

  “He said to!” I protested.

  “His dad is there,” Patrick added, and that seemed to satisfy Jill.

  “What total assholes,” Carson said, looking over at Barbone’s team, who were whooping it up across the lot. Then he looked back. “But you’re going to do the second list?”

  “Dez wants us to,” I said.

  “Okay, now you have to let me be on your team.” Carson was nodding fast.

  “But”—Patrick shot a confused look at Jill, who was already walking away—“I’m confused.”

  “Jill and I broke up,” Carson said.

  “What?” Patrick said. “Why?”

  I stood perfectly still and tried not to look at Winter.

  Carson said, “It’s been coming for a while.”

  “Wow,” Patrick said. “Sorry. And, I mean”—he looked at me then and I just raised my eyebrows dumbly
—“of course you can come with us.”

  “Is that cool, Shooter?” Carson asked me then, and the nickname felt all wrong and it was like he knew it—it sounded hollow—and I regretted ever having allowed him to use it in the first place. I said, “I don’t know. I mean, we might be going back to get Dez and there’s not a ton of room in the car.”

  Winter looked at me like I was not only a monster, but a two-headed one.

  I wasn’t proud, but that’s how I felt.

  I did not want Carson on our team.

  I didn’t think I should have to watch whatever was going to happen with him and Winter play out right under my nose.

  “We can make room,” Patrick said.

  “Fine, then,” I said. Because what else was I supposed to do? I could join Jill’s team, I guessed. Or quit all together, but I didn’t want to abandon everything I’d already worked so hard for, and didn’t want to abandon Dez.

  “Winter?” Carson said then, and she uncrossed her arms and said, “Sure, I guess.”

  “I’m going to try to find the Mary statue,” I said, not caring for a minute what anyone thought, then I went straight over to Barbone, and stood hands on hips. “All right, Barbone. Give me the Mary statue.”

  Barbone’s eyes found mine and he smiled. “I have shucked a few virgins in my day, Mary, but yours was not one of them.”

  “I don’t believe you,” I said.

  “Believe whatever you want,” he said, and he pulled a statue of Mary—not Eleanor’s—out of his car. “But why would I need yours if I have this one? Hey, how’s Daphne?”

  “He’s in the hospital.” My hands tightened into fists. Seeing Barbone here, so smug, was making it all so much worse. I wanted to scratch his eyes out. So when he said, “Wasn’t me,” with wide eyes and hands spread, palms out, I said, “I’m going to try to get you disqualified.”

  “Knock yourself out,” he said, then he said, “Tell Dez he’s got to toughen up before college. And you, my dear, need to get over it.”

  Then he walked off and shouted, “GO HOYAS!” and I was standing there stunned and ashamed and thinking, How do people get to be like this, like human cinder blocks? And how are people like me supposed to deal with them?