by Lex Thomas
“It’s a hydrangea.” Her tone was sharp, suddenly unforgiving.
“Sorry, this hydrangea. You’ve kept it alive all this time?”
“You think that’s stupid?”
“No,” Lucy insisted. “No way. I think it’s so cool. How did you do it?”
“I came up with ways…,” Maxine said. She stepped forward and put it on the scratched steel counter, next to the petal. “Do you want a closer look?”
Even with the invitation, Lucy made sure to move slowly, so Maxine could see everything she was doing. Lucy crouched, getting to almost eye level with the flower.
“Hello,” Lucy said softly.
“Her name’s Minnie,” Maxine said.
“Oh… I love that. Minnie.”
Lucy reached for the flower, she just had to touch it. Maxine grabbed the pot and pulled the flower away.
“That’s enough,” Maxine said. She held the flower close to her chest, and walked out of the kitchen, as Raunch and Sophia entered.
“What was that about?” Raunch said.
“I was just trying to be friendly,” Lucy said.
“You’re barking up the wrong tree with that one.”
“Maybe that’s because nobody talks to her.”
“Well, what’s there to say?” Raunch said with an awkward shrug.
Lucy didn’t answer. It was awful, but true. There was only so much to talk about with Maxine before you started thinking about the elephant in the room, that one way or the other, she had a terrifying ordeal ahead of her. It was what had kept Lucy, Sophia, and Raunch standing in awkward silence for the last thirty seconds.
“Hey, why don’t you come out with us tonight,” Sophia said.
“Really?” Lucy said.
An invitation to hang with Sophia was seriously flattering.
“We’re going to this,” Raunch said.
Raunch unfurled a single-page, black and white flyer that prominently featured a photocopied hand giving a thumbs-up and cut-up magazine lettering like a ransom note. It read: YOU’RE INVITED TO WILL AND GATES’S PIZZA PARTY.
Her mind flashed back to seeing Will in the market making out with one girl after another. Gross. Maybe it shouldn’t have bothered her as much as it did. Maybe she didn’t have the right to be offended that Will was getting so much female attention, but she was, and she certainly didn’t want to revisit those feelings tonight.
“Oh…,” Lucy said. “I don’t think so.”
“What do you mean you don’t think so?” Sophia said.
“They’ve been hyping it up like crazy,” Raunch said. “It’s gonna put every Geek show to shame. I’m freaking out, I can’t wait.”
“I’m sure it’s going to be great,” Lucy said. “But I can’t… Will and I, we didn’t leave on the best of terms.”
“Were you dating or something?” Raunch said.
“No… I just don’t think I’m ready to talk to him yet,” Lucy said.
“Sounds like you were dating.”
“No, we were… Ugh. He’s hooking up with girls all over the market. I can’t just go to his mega-party without a date, or I’ll look like a loser.”
“So we’ll find you a date,” Sophia said.
“If you could have any boy in school, who would it be?” Raunch said.
Lucy grinned. There was one boy. She’d seen him in the market a couple times recently. He was a Nerd. He had perfect teeth, and a really infectious laugh that always made Lucy smile.
“I don’t know his name,” Lucy said. “But he’s friends with that Nerd, Peter, you sometimes hook up with.”
“Which one?” Raunch said, getting excited. “What’s he look like?”
“The one with the big hair, slicked back.”
“Ooo, I know who you’re talking about.” Raunch clapped. “I’m on it.”
Sophia smiled a wicked smile. “Tonight might be your night, Virgin.”
Lucy opened the cafeteria door a crack, and peered out at the crowd of boys waiting outside the cafeteria for their Slut dates. It was a smattering of Freaks, a bunch of Skaters, two Geeks, and a Varsity who had a bad habit of letting his mouth hang open. Raunch was there too. She came walking up to the door, and slipped into the cafeteria.
“So, Peter said his friend’s got the hots for a certain Slut we know,” Raunch said.
“Me?” Lucy said. Her stomach fluttered.
“No, Maxine,” Raunch said, then shook her head. “Yes, you, dummy.”
“Sounds like love at first sight to me,” Sophia said.
“His name is Bart,” Raunch said.
“Bart?” Lucy said. She gave Raunch a skeptical look. “Really?”
“Oh, Virgin’s getting picky now?” Sophia said.
“I still have self-respect,” Lucy said, which made Sophia laugh.
“Whatever, I heard he’s huge,” Raunch said. “Lips said one of her friends saw it. She said it looked like a big snake, like it could eat hamsters.”
“Well, when you put it that way…,” Lucy said. What Raunch was describing sounded like a horror movie.
“Hey, if you’re not biting, I will,” Raunch said. “Big bites.”
Raunch laughed and elbowed Lucy. Suddenly, Lucy was nervous. The boy she thought was cute dug her. Did that mean she was going to hook up tonight?
“Quick, get wet. Here we go,” Raunch said, as she pushed the doors all the way open and they walked into the hallway.
“Why are you so gross?” Lucy said, laughing. Raunch flexed her pelvis with three quick pumps and gave Lucy an exaggerated growl. Lucy laughed harder, and it made her butterflies feel a little better.
Lucy spotted Bart. He was smiling softly. At her. He had slicked his black hair back in a pompadour. A homemade skinny tie hung from his collar. He’d put on a tie for their date. She liked that.
“Make him work,” Sophia whispered in Lucy’s ear, then pushed off to meet her date. Lucy made sure not to trip as she walked up to him.
“Ding-dong, I’m Bart. What’s your name?” he said and held out his hand for a shake.
Lucy looked down the lineup, praying that no Sluts had heard him and were about to scream out Virgin! None of them did, although Raunch pointed to his crotch and gave her a thumbs-up.
“Lucy,” she whispered.
“Bartholomew,” he whispered back.
“Oh, I like that better.”
“I knew you would. Girls always like it better. I like Bart. It’s kinda tough.”
“It sounds like Barf.”
“Hey-yo,” he said and smiled with his perfect teeth.
“Hey-yo? Ding-dong? Who are you?”
He arched one eyebrow. “Don’t blame me ’cause I talk cool.”
All things considered, Lucy felt like this was actually the most normal interaction she’d had in months. She felt like a regular girl, flirting with a boy.
Bart nodded. “You want to wear my skate and I’ll push you?”
Bart had a single roller skate hanging from his belt loop on his hip. He untied the roller skate with one pull of the lace. He handed Lucy the cream-colored, leather skate. On it, he’d drawn a miniature scene in blue ballpoint pen of an epic raging battle in the quad. A cartoon version of Bart soared over all of it wearing a single roller skate, while carrying a buxom girl in one arm and a blasting machine gun in the other. The girl held flowers and a heart-shaped box of chocolates. Lucy liked that he was a guy who even bought girls nice things in his drawings.
“You’ll have fun, don’t worry,” he said.
Lucy gave Bart a look, then twisted off her boot and pushed it into Bart’s hands.
“Carry this,” she said.
He smiled as he tied her boot to his belt loop. Lucy dropped the skate to the floor and fitted her foot in. It was loose on her foot. Without asking, Bart knelt down and laced it up tight for her. It was kinda hot.
He stood and took her fingers in his. It was to help Lucy keep her balance, but to her, it felt like a gentleman helping h
er into a carriage. It made her smile.
“Bartholomew. Push.”
She lifted her skate-less foot, turned away from him right after saying it, like there would be no discussion of the matter. But away from his view, she was trying not to laugh.
“Unbelievable,” he said, but he still pushed.
They went slowly down the hall, away from the cafeteria, and Lucy was wobbly. Her one foot still slipped around inside the oversized skate. She stuck her arms out like wings. Whenever she’d start to tilt too far to one side, his hands were there to stabilize her. He walked beside her, pushing her when she needed it. They wove their way down the halls. She loved the sound of his laugh. The more he laughed, the more she found herself laughing with him.
“You’re cool,” Bart said in her ear, as he pushed her into the quad.
Lucy didn’t answer. She was transfixed by the spectacle in front of her. In the center of the quad’s dirt lawn was the biggest bonfire Lucy had ever seen. It was bright and churning and tall. Like a giant Christmas tree set ablaze. All around the bonfire was what had to be the full roster of every gang partying their faces off together.
24
BOOZE WAS EVERYWHERE. IN THE TURBULENT glow of the bonfire, Lucy saw countless orange faces with ink black shadows, glugging it, pouring it, swaying from it. Falling, vomiting, and cheering. This was the real stuff. Not some homemade swill that tasted like gasoline and Pez. Beer in cans and bottles, wine, wine coolers, liquor, goofy alcoholic lemonades, the works.
The whole thing was a wonder, and Lucy, for one, was speechless. Bart returned to her, holding up a bottle of vanilla vodka. The skate dangled from his hip.
“I got this for you,” he said, and placed it in her hand.
The cool glass felt great in her hot palm. Lucy lifted it and took a big sip. It tasted wonderful. Pure vanilla sugar. A swarm of kids with lit sparklers ran past. She saw a lot of groping in her peripheral vision. The burn of the alcohol rolled down her throat, and then bloomed in her belly.
“Come on…,” he said. “Let’s find Peter and your friend.”
Lucy nodded with a smile, then took Bart’s hand. They pushed through the crowd, past a slip ’n’ slide made out of a greased-down roll of black trash bags. Slippery, shirtless people slid across it and crashed into a kiddie pool. There was a line of twenty or so microwaves, each on its own desk along the north wall, and they were all plugged into extension cords running into classroom windows. Kids would grab individual-sized, thawed-out, frozen pizzas from coolers nearby and cook them up, before moving on to hang with their gangs.
Lucy and Bart walked past a slurry of music made by the cell phones of stumbling, slow-dancing couples. Over the course of a few strides, they went from hearing Top 40 to country to R&B to metal. Beyond the couples, there were jam circles. Kids played new guitars and bongos and other instruments, while others lay on the ground, wrapped in blankets, and listened. It seemed like every sixth person was hooking up with the seventh. There was a circle of dudes standing around telling jokes. Lucy watched a girl eat chocolate espresso beans by the handful and then do a drum solo on her boyfriend’s back. A group of laughing Freaks chucked batteries at each other, and in the fire’s light it looked like they were throwing fireflies. She heard the faraway sound of a girl puking, and then the comforting words of her girlfriends. Footballs flew through the air. Frisbees too.
Lucy hated to admit it, but this party had lived up to the hype. There was a kind of joy and camaraderie in the air that dwarfed anything she’d seen at Geek shows. Even if she was wary of Gates’s tactics with the parents, what was happening here was good for everybody. Lucy looked up to the dark sky. She didn’t see any parents, but it was so dark. At least one of them had to be posted guard up there. They always were.
“Let’s go to the fire,” Lucy said, and pulled Bart toward the massive flames.
The fire was eating the tower of wooden pallets and lumber. It was pure destruction, but it was beautiful. Lucy walked two steps closer than everyone else. The heat pressed into her. Whipping, snaking, furious tongues of fire filled her field of vision.
“Can I get a sip?” Bart said.
He took the bottle from her and tipped it back. Orange light twinkled off the vodka that clung to the crevasses of his lips. A gust of wind blew clouds of sparks off the fire. The sparks spun past Bart. He handed the bottle to Lucy and smiled.
Diagonally across the fire from her, Lucy noticed a big crew of Sluts. Raunch was among them, hooking up with her boy. Lucy pictured herself cutting loose like that, just losing herself to the pleasure of the moment. It didn’t seem so farfetched.
“On a scale of one to ten,” Lucy said. “How lucky do you feel tonight?”
Bart’s eyes widened, clearly surprised by how forward she was being.
“Pretty lucky,” he said.
She laughed.
Movement in the crowd distracted her. The Saints were approaching. Kids from other gangs shook their hands and slapped them on the backs. They’d come a long way since their shaky start in the school. Now, they walked through the quad like they were a real part of McKinley. Like they’d always been there. They look excited, giddy even.
“Move back!” they shouted.
A really young-looking Saint girl, maybe thirteen years old, walked up and ushered the Sluts back. The Sluts complied since everyone else did, but they were surly about it. The Saints moved in two lines, pushing back at the crowd until the middle of the quad was cleared into one long strip, from one end to the other. The crowd had been split into two halves.
Gates came bursting out of the crowd, riding a wild hog. The animal was giant and muscular and ugly, and it didn’t like having Gates on its back. He held tight to a leash that was choking its neck and he smiled like he was on an amusement park ride.
“I love this guy,” Bart said.
Gates only made it about ten feet into the clearing before he fell off the snarling beast. The hog ran away, back into the crowd, squealing, and snorting. The crowd parted wherever the hog ran.
Gates got up, still grinning. From where Lucy stood, Gates was framed by the column of fire behind him. He wore a blue pinstripe suit with a crisp white shirt, although they were both stained with dirt now. He pushed back his long white hair.
“Welcome to the party, everybody. You guys like my new pet?” Gates hollered.
The cheering was immediate, and it hurt Lucy’s ears.
“That’s nothin’. Are you ready for the big surprise?” Gates said.
The party cheered again, but they were drowned out by a loud, nasty, echoing gargle that came from deep in the school.
“We got a special delivery last night. Top secret. And, it’s a good one,” Gates said.
The Saints laughed and nodded to each other.
The awful noise rattled like an angry chest cold, like a monster at the bottom of a well. It got louder. Closer. The crowd started to worry, and Lucy was right with them. The wretched, booming growl closed in on them. People backed up further, without urging from the Saints, making the gap in the middle of the quad wider.
Then Lucy saw it. A blur came ripping out of one of the hallways, and rocketed across the cleared dirt road, blowing a froth of dust into the air behind it. For a fragment of a second the speeding comet was right in front of Lucy, and she could see it clearly.
It was Will on a motorcycle.
The hallway was the barrel of a rifle, and Will was the bullet. He crushed his fingers around the Harley’s handle grips. He’d crossed the quad in a flash, and sped right into the opposite hallway. People scattered ahead. Terrified faces bolted past him, bodies leapt out of the way, kids flattened themselves to the lockers like they were standing on the slim ledge of a high building. The hallway ahead shook in his vision. The bike was alive, vibrating underneath him like a giant buzz saw.
The hall ended at a T-junction with another hallway, and the hard wall rocketed toward him. Will fumbled with the brake, but couldn’t get his
fingers around it. He strained, hooked his fingers around the brake lever and the clutch, and squeezed, but he turned the bar a little as he did it, and the bike began to wobble underneath him. He suddenly wished his motorcycle-riding experience was more than playing with his cousin’s dirt bike one weekend. He painted squiggles of rubber across the linoleum floor. The tires shrieked like a hurt animal. Will shifted his weight to right it, but the motorcycle was too heavy.
The bike bucked, angry with him, and threw Will off. He crashed to the floor and the bike crashed on its side right behind him. Will and the bike skidded down the hall like air hockey pucks. His hoodie and T-shirt ripped away and the slide should have torn his skin up too, but Will had wrapped his entire upper body in duct tape, down to one inch strips around each of his fingers and fingertips.
The heavy bike wasn’t slowing down. It caught up with Will and pushed him forward. The back wheel spun in his face. At least they’d remember him when he was dead.
Will felt the drag of the floor as his body slowed down. The bike cruised to a stop, and pushed him gently into the wall. On the wall opposite Will was a photocopied party poster with his face on it.
Will started laughing, it was just too funny. Not only was this whole idea bat shit crazy, but he started to imagine what the look would have been on David’s face if he had been at this party. He would have had a heart attack.
“Buddy, that was amazing!” Gates said as he ran up. “Are you okay?”
“Think so,” Will said.
Will gave each limb a turn, twisting it or bending the joints. Nothing felt broken, torn, or sprained. Gates grabbed his arm and helped him up.
“You are a maniac!” Gates said and slapped him on top of the shoulders. “People are going nuts out there.”
“It was insane,” Will said, still laughing.
Will pulled off his tattered sweatshirt and shirt. Blood seeped out from tears in his duct tape skin. Together, he and Gates lifted the bike upright. It was scratched and scuffed, and the gas tank was dented, but the engine still started.
“I wanna ride the handlebars!” Gates shouted over the chugging motor.
