Nothing Special

by Geoff Herbach

  Smoke means fire.

  I could barely concentrate on the road because I was so nervous that his lit cherry would fly back into the backseat and turn the piles of newspaper and food wrappers and crap he had stuffed back there into a raging death inferno. I swerved around a little, keeping my eye on Gus’s cigarette.

  “You’re a pretty crappy driver,” he said. “I always thought good athletes were good drivers because they have a good sense of physics. Guess I was wrong on that count.”

  “I’m a great driver. Ask the lady who gave me my driving test. She said I’m fantastic.”

  “I believes what I sees.”

  “I believe you’re going to start your car on fire.”

  “More with the smoking? Jesus. Fine.” Gus whipped his cigarette out the window.

  “Litterer.”

  “Felton, you’re going to drive me freaking nuts.”

  “Who do you think is going to pick up after you?”

  “I don’t know, Jerri. The cigarette fairy?”

  “You called me Jerri?”

  “Yeah. Because you sound just like Jerri when we were kids. All preachy. And that’s no good, Felton, because she went crazy, didn’t she?”

  “Why are you being such an ass?”

  Gus paused for a second. He turned toward me and tilted his head down so his eyes were covered up by his hair wad. “I honestly don’t know, Felton. Maybe I’m pissed at you?”

  “Please leave my poor mother out of it, okay?”

  “Will do,” Gus said. “Mind if I smoke?”

  “Whatever.”

  He lit up again, Aleah.

  Then, thankfully, he went to sleep.

  There was a time—I guess through the first sixteen years of our lives—when Gus and me never fought. Not once. We were like synchronized swimmers on display in the dipshit tank at the freak show.

  Still, he was never the social freak that I was. Kids sort of liked him even though he liked me. He was rebellious and an underhanded troublemaker and funny and dangerous (even though he was good in school).

  While I drove, I eyeballed him sleeping there, his hair wad covering his eyes. This is what I thought: He hasn’t changed a bit. Of course he smokes and listens to punk music and acts all obnoxious and belligerent and shitty, even when he’s really not such a freak. If he could’ve gotten his hands on cigarettes when he was ten, he would’ve smoked then. He was always on the way to being this rebel dude. He hasn’t changed. At ten he was naturally cool. Really. You? At ten you were on the fast track to a mental institution for jelly-brained children. But he still liked you. Why?

  And how did you pay him back?

  You changed.

  Of course he’s pissed at you for becoming Mr. Monster Jock out of no place. Of course…

  We were just getting to the Quad Cities, where, according to Gus’s map, we were to hit this major interstate (I-80) that would take us to this other major interstate (I-74) that would start us totally rocketing toward the Dangling Sack of America (Florida), when I reached over and nudged Gus awake.

  “Are we lost?” he mumbled.

  “No. We’re cool. Hey, do you sort of hate me because I’m popular now?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “I’m popular, because…because of…” I realized maybe popular wasn’t the right word.

  “Jesus, Felton.” He shook his head. “So arrogant. Popular? Jesus.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Do we need gas?”

  “Oh. Yeah. We’re almost on empty.”

  “Well, pull over, man.”

  “Now?”

  “When we get to an exit with a gas station. Duh.”

  “I didn’t mean popular, exactly.”

  Gus didn’t say anything. In about ten seconds we came to an exit and we pulled off and got gas, which I think smells great. I love that gas smell. Then we pissed, bought some chicken, and got back on the road. I stayed driving, because it hadn’t really been that long since Maquoketa and McDonald’s.

  Already felt like a long day, though. (Not as long as today!)

  “You know one reason I do like you?” Gus said, as I pulled onto I-80.

  “No.”

  He gestured at me with a piece of fried chicken. “Because we go into a freaking Flying J truck stop like back there, filled with these redneckers who look like they’d like to stab me in the neck and cut me up, and crap, they see you and they just back the hell away.”

  “They do?” I hadn’t really noticed.

  “Yeah, man. You look like you could tear a rednecker to pieces and eat him for breakfast. Should come in handy in the Southland.”

  “Please don’t cause anything in the Southland, man,” I said.

  Gus took a big bite of chicken. “Nop!” he said.

  I wasn’t sure what “Nop!” meant, but I felt immediately very concerned for our safety once we hit the Southland, wherever the hell that was. I didn’t particularly like him calling people redneckers either. (Not honkies, not dirtbags, not redneckers…right, Aleah?)

  Do you know what I mean by underhanded troublemaker? This: Gus causes trouble but the trouble he causes never causes him trouble. For instance, I was suspended in eighth grade for taking a bathroom stall apart with a screwdriver. It was Gus’s screwdriver and Gus’s plan—I was his worker.

  Was he suspended? No.

  Would I end up being beaten stupid by someone he called a rednecker in a truck stop? Probably.

  • • •

  Speaking of the Southland, the plane is going down. (Landing.)

  Charlotte, North Carolina.

  August 16th, 5:03 p.m. Eastern Time!

  Charlotte

  Holy balls. This is it. This is really it. I can’t believe this. I can’t. I can’t freaking take it, Aleah. The flight for Fort Myers left at 3:55. I’m done. There’s another flight out tomorrow at 3:55 p.m.! What the hell? What the freaking hell? I can’t take it anymore.

  “Oh, honey, you’ll be fine. Just fly into Atlanta and catch the early bird to Fort Myers in the morning,” the desk lady said.

  I’m going to fly to Atlanta, which I could’ve done yesterday, to catch a flight into Fort Myers tomorrow, two days after I was supposed to get there?

  Aleah. I’m going crazy. Oh my shitting nards.

  Bus Travel

  August 16th, 6:12 p.m.

  Leaving Charlotte

  I am with the Zombie Girl.

  We have just boarded a fugly Andrew-style Greyhound bus, which was suggested to us by the airline after I threw a fairly giant hissy fit, which I’m not entirely proud of, but sort of proud of, because at least I spoke up for my rights.

  I’m a crazy man going all crazy on your airplane butt! Ahhhhh!

  The Zombie Girl missed her flight too.

  But she’s going to Tampa, Florida, which is a bigger airport.

  She could’ve gotten an 11 p.m. flight to Tampa but decided she’d rather take a bus that will get her into Tampa at 11:30 a.m. tomorrow?

  Okay. Seriously. She is doing this for fun, Aleah. Why? To be with me?

  I’ll get to Fort Myers at 4:15, seventeen hours before Andrew and I are supposed to be on a flight back to Wisconsin. If I waited and flew, I might get there at 10 a.m. tomorrow, but I no longer believe that airplanes will fly when I need them to fly, so…

  (Is Coach Johnson right about Kirk needing to learn my position? Will I get back to Wisconsin for our game against Lakeside Lutheran and my archenemy Roy Ngelale? Crap. I’ve never felt so far away from home, Aleah. My Jewfro is crazy in the wet Southland air…Sort of looks cool, I guess.)

  Me and Zombie Girl shared a cab from the airport to the bus station. Zombie Girl made the arrangements. I followed. We saw the Car
olina Panthers football stadium. That, I must say, was quite awesome.

  We are sitting together on the bus.

  Zombie Girl has a name. Renee.

  Now she wants to talk.

  I told her I’m working on a school project.

  Astutely, she asked, “In the middle of August?”

  “Uh-huh,” I nodded. “Summer school.”

  Thank God Grandma Berba got me this computer for my birthday. I have about 80 percent charge, which, if I keep the Wi-Fi off and the screen dim, should give me about nine hours to not talk to Renee, because I think she wants to have sex or something. I’m serious. Or at least make out. She told me I’m sweet. She has a nose ring. Not that I don’t like that. I don’t trust myself to be true to you, because of my bad sex genes. (Dad cheated on Mom.) Who are you with right now, Aleah?

  Don’t panic…Don’t panic…

  Jesus. Okay. Renee is reading her book, not watching what I type.

  Rolling out of Charlotte on a stinky bus.

  • • •

  Oh…I have covered so many, many miles this summer. I’m a rambling man, Aleah. Charlotte is hilly.

  You know what’s flat? Illinois. I know that from my trip with Gus.

  The rest of Illinois is not Chicago. Did you know that? Illinois is huge and totally empty and windy like a hot blowtorch (when the windows were down because of smoking Gus). And it goes on and on and on. Illinois starts just a few miles from Bluffton. Then, because it seeps all the way into the south, Illinois goes on until the end of the great big flat world.

  Around Peoria, which is not even halfway through the giant dead-zone Illinois, I started swerving a little because I couldn’t keep my eyes focused anymore. Gus took over and smoked his bunghole Parliaments and drove, all slid way down in his seat.

  We were on this stretch of I-55 that clearly made us both super crazy with anger, because after not talking for like an hour, Gus suddenly said, “Do you find it pretty weird that you weren’t elected prom king?”

  I shook my head to wake myself up. “Uh, no. I wasn’t even on the prom court, so no, I don’t find it remotely weird that I wasn’t elected prom king.”

  “Did it totally hurt your feelings, though?”

  “I had other things to worry about, obviously, since I didn’t even go to prom.” (I watched TV that night with Jerri.)

  “Like bagging Abby Sauter?”

  “Shut up, man.” (Abby is just a friend, Aleah.)

  “Have you tried to bag her? She’s so pop-u-lar,” Gus sort of sang the pop-u-lar part.

  “No.”

  “Well…Just seems like the greatest athlete in the class, you know, especially because you got to be so popular last year and everything, would have his feelings hurt by not getting elected prom king.”

  “Jason Reese totally deserved it. He’s a good guy.”

  “He’s a fat-assed idiot.”

  “You don’t even know him.”

  “He doesn’t know me.”

  “He’d like you if he knew you.”

  “Everybody would. I’m great,” Gus said.

  “You’re great?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “So you should be prom king? How come no one likes you?”

  “Your honky friends are idiots. I don’t want them to like me.”

  “You don’t know crap about my honky friends. Anyway, Cody thinks you’re cool.” (Sorry about saying “honky,” Aleah. I know you hate that term, but I’m just reporting the facts, okay?)

  “I haven’t ever said more than a sentence to him.”

  “That’s because you’re mean to everyone,” I said.

  “I don’t even talk to people, man!”

  “That doesn’t make you nice.”

  Gus started driving really fast. “You’re my prom king, Felton. Oh, I totally voted for you. You’re the best looking jockstrap in the bunch too. And you only smell half as bad.”

  “What the hell, Gus?”

  “I’m your chauffeur. I’m so lucky to be the king’s chauffeur!”

  “Jesus, shut up!”

  “I should really turn this stupid car around, Felton. I should drive you home, you arrogant prick. What did you do to Andrew anyway? Probably told him about how the whole freaking honky world hates his guts and so he should just run the hell away, right? Because he has no social future, right?”

  “No.”

  “You tell him he’s the jerk for being picked on? Did you tell him it’s all his fault? Because he’s the idiot for being smart and great at music?”

  “No one picks on him.”

  “Yes they do, you idiot.”

  “No. Anyway, I didn’t tell him he’s an idiot. I told him he should quit music and be a pharmacist.”

  “Oh. Whoa,” Gus laughed.

  “I know. Terrible,” I said.

  “Punched him in his tender acorns, hey?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “His musicality not up to your professional standards?”

  “I guess not.”

  “Did you say, ‘Andrew, you and your gang of fourteen-year-old musicians should throw in the towel, because there’s little hope for you ever being as great as me.’ Something like that?”

  “No.”

  Gus laughed, shook his head. “I’m laughing at you, you understand. Not with you.”

  “I get it.”

  “Wow, Felton, who died and made you king of the jerks?”

  “I don’t know, Gus. Maybe my dad?” I said.

  “Oh,” Gus nodded.

  At least that shut him up. For a while, anyway.

  Silence…Silence…during which I wondered if people picked on Andrew. I’d never seen it, but apparently I only see what I want to see, you know? This spring, Andrew did get in that weird fight. While in the car, Gus stewing and silent next to me, I wondered why Andrew had fought, what it was about. (It hadn’t even occurred to me to ask him what happened—jackassed narcissist.)

  About two hours after Gus and I fought about Andrew, the land finally began to give way around us. There were signs for St. Louis.

  The first words Gus said? “St. Louis, home of the blues.”

  “No it’s not,” I replied. “Chicago.”

  “St. Louis Blues?” Gus asked.

  We didn’t turn and go into St. Louis, though Gus suggested he’d like to take pictures of that big arch.

  No. I was angry. So, no.

  We got some gas on what I assume were the outskirts of the city (using Gus’s dad’s credit card—I wasn’t paying for this trip…Gus really wasn’t either, though). Then more truck-stop greasy food that boiled in my gut (peeing, sweating, noticing Gus’s redneckers back away from me). Then I took the next driving shift and nearly missed the exit for I-57 because Gus wasn’t paying close attention to the map. If we would’ve stayed on I-64, we would have ended up shooting due east to Louisville, Kentucky, a place I’d like to visit for some reason (maybe because of the baseball bats?), so that would’ve been fine, but Gus grabbed the wheel at the last second and steered us into the correct lane so that we kept up our mighty plunge toward the Dangling Sack.

  As soon as we got on I-57, there were actual sporadic clumps of trees here and there, some clumps pretty big and bordering almost on forest, which made me shout, “Hey, trees!”

  “Ooh, you know your stuff, Felton. Those are trees.”

  I smiled. I like trees. I’m used to trees. Much of central Illinois is without trees, or at least the big-ass clumps of trees I’m used to. We shot past a giant lake like I’ve never seen too (not an ocean lake like Lake Michigan, but a giant lake that’s still a lake).

  “Check that out, man!” I said.

  “Lake. Big lake,” Gus agree
d.

  We kept seeing the lake for miles and miles. “It’s really cool, huh?”

  By this time, though, Gus wasn’t paying any attention. He punched crap into his iPhone like a jackrabbit. “I didn’t even have to print out maps, man. I got us on GPS right here! We’re this little blue ball pulsing south! See?” He shoved the phone in my face. “Pull on back on the map…Hey, we’re going to be in Nashville by dark. Nashville!”

  “I like this lake,” I said. Nashville made me nervous.

  I was right to be nervous about Nashville, by the way.

  We drove. More trees and hills. He smoked. He played with his iPhone.

  Then he shouted, “Holy shit! Hazard Mountain is playing in Nashville tonight! At this place called the Basement!” He looked up from his iPhone, his eyeballs open, his cheeks on fire.

  I looked at him, then back in front of us. “What?” I asked.

  “Maddie is going to freak her damn mind, man! We’re going!”

  “Where? No,” I said.

  Then we drove through a storm that turned the sky green and fired lightning bolts into the big trees around us and cracked Gus’s Toyota with giant hail. I thought we were dead. Gus kept saying, “Amazing. Amazing.”

  As soon as we were through it, Gus took the wheel and I passed out (fried nerves).

  I awoke to him babbling at me about the big plan.

  What a brilliant guy Gus is!

  Not really. Not in this case.

  His plan: “I will use my fake (fake ID, which he had, which I didn’t know he had, which made me suspicious of him), and I will charm the crap out of the bouncer and he will look at you and you’ll say…what?”

  “I lost my wallet in the storm, officer.”

  “Hell no! You just lost your wallet. There is no officer.”

  Gus drove with his knee on the steering wheel all the way into the Nashville suburbs. With one hand he smoked (I was no longer nervous his cigarette would burn the car down, at least); with his other he kept flicking iPhone screens with his thumb (I was nervous he would kill us with his phone). His eyes were on the freaking phone more than they were on the road, and he was driving extremely fast because he was sure Hazard Mountain would sell out if we didn’t get there by ten. (He’d read some review of the bar.) He was swerving in between lanes, and cars were honking.