The End of FUN

by Sean McGinty

  Dad was like, “We’re just so goddamn happy to have funded your vacation.”

  “What do you mean ‘we’?”

  “Half that money came from your sister!”

  “What?”

  “I chipped in after they cut Dad’s hours at work,” she said.

  “She’s been working extra hours at the newspaper,” he said. “Working her butt off so you could lie around and play video games.”

  I stood there kind of stunned. Taking money from my dad, that was one thing—but taking money from Evie, too?

  “Look, I’ll pay you both back. With, like, interest or whatever.”

  My sister just stared and shook her head. “I knew it. I just knew something fishy was going on.”

  “Sure, you did.”

  “Wow. Just wow, Aaron.”

  “How about this. How about I go to Grandpa’s?”

  “What?”

  As soon as I said it I knew it was the perfect plan. Anything to get away from Dad and Evie. Being around them suddenly made me feel really crappy. “I’ll go to his place. I can stay there while I look for the money to pay you back with. Maybe he hid the money somewhere else. Maybe there’s another portrait of Mary.”

  “You need to go back to school.”

  “Well, I can’t. Not to Sacramento, not to Antello High.”

  “Then you need to take the GED.”

  “Sure, but in the meantime I’ll go out to Grandpa’s and find the money.”

  “Question,” said my dad. “How do you propose to get out there?”

  “One of you guys can drive me.”

  “No way my Mazda could make it in that snow.”

  “What about Evie’s CR-V? It’s got four-wheel drive. It could make it easy.”

  “No,” said Evie. “I’m not driving you out there. You need to take responsibility for your actions.”

  “This is me taking responsibility. I’m on it. Your car could make it. Tell her it could make it, Dad.”

  “That isn’t the point,” he said.

  “So basically you guys are trapping me here.” I gave it some thought. “Know what? I’ll snowshoe.”

  My sister laughed. “All the way to Grandpa’s? That’s ridiculous!”

  “Says who? I’ll go right now.”

  “In the dark? Are you crazy?”

  “Look, I made a mess and now I’m trying to make it right.”

  I went to my room and returned triumphantly with my grandfather’s snowshoes.

  “You can’t be serious,” said Evie.

  “Let him go,” said Dad. “Let him try to walk ten miles in vintage snowshoes.”

  I was pretty adamant about getting out of there, but as I was gathering the rest of my supplies, including my broken bag, I realized that maybe they had a point about the whole snowshoe plan.

  Ten miles is a pretty long way to snowshoe—especially in the dark, and especially in Grandpa’s snowshoes, which were more like clown shoes. I could just see myself tripping over my bag, tumbling down a ravine, breaking my leg, and being eaten alive by coyotes. Dad and Evie would feel so sorry when they heard about that—but not as sorry as I would feel when I was being eaten by the coyotes. I decided to let the snowshoe plan drop. I was going to have to find another way.

  The answer came to me later when I was brushing my teeth: What about Katie? She had a truck.

  You go to look up a girl’s phone number and you end up downloading some porn. It’s a tale older than time itself.

  I knew her last name from the play: Ezkiaga, but when I inputted Katie Ezkiaga, and then Katarin Ezkiaga, the only numbers I found were these old ladies in Spain.

  > u ok original boy_2?

  u seem frustrated!

  “I need to find this girl’s number.”

  > ok for sure!

  is there anything i cannot do?

  “Give me Katie Ezkiaga’s number.”

  > i already did!

  “Those aren’t the right ones.”

  > there aren’t any others!

  “Fine. Go away, then.”

  > i know!

  can i show u another girl?

  “Nah. Go away.”

  Homie™ disappeared in a spray of pixels, and it was just me and my thoughts again, but that wasn’t any fun, so after a while I was like, “Hey, Homie™!”

  > hi!

  “Show me another girl.”

  > u bet original boy_2!

  guess what?

  u have 69 love matches!

  i can show u now!

  I scrolled through the profiles, and some of them were kind of cute, but none of them were real, and all of them charged points. So I started searching around until I found one that didn’t charge, this hot blond girl with long bangs. Her name was Bunny_luvr21.

  “That one there. Open profile.”

  > warning original boy_2!

  profile is from an unverified source!

  r u sure u want to open?

  “Yes.”

  > r u sure, original boy_2?

  bunny_luvr21 has not been verified!

  “Open Bunny_luvr21!”

  > profile opening…

  A loading bar appeared, long and blue. Words flickered across in quick succession—

  > loading bun_21.vis…

  loading bun_21.aud…

  loading bun_21.tac…

  The bar bulged and popped.

  > open bunny_luvr21?

  warning!

  file is from an unverified source!

  “Yeah, open it.”

  Homie™ flickered and disappeared, and another loading bar appeared, and then Bunny_luvr21 popped into view. Not a hot blond girl with long bangs. A rabbit. This shiny white hairless rabbit with big black anime eyes. Its voice was high-pitched and robotic.

  > hello sexy original boy_2

  i’m bunny_luvr21 only 99 per min!

  “Um. This isn’t what I thought it was going to be.”

  The rabbit bounced up and down.

  > lol

  i love when u talk so dirty 2 me

  say yay! and we can start hopping

  “Nah. Go away. End program.”

  > mm can we hop now?

  i want 2 hop so hard

  only 99 per min

  “Close Bunny_luvr21. End program.”

  > lol

  u r so hoppy funny

  i can’t end

  “End!”

  > hop me!

  No matter what I tried, I couldn’t get it to go away, and I couldn’t bring back Homie™, either, so I did an emergency Admin contact and got scolded for contracting an STD and was told to do a hard reboot. I should’ve known—that’s what the Admin always say: Do a hard reboot.

  You’re supposed to lightly touch your fingertips to your eyelids and say the reboot code: There’s no place like home. But—for me anyway—the self-tactility recognition is pretty terrible, and I practically had to cram my fists into my eyeballs for FUN® to recognize I was touching myself. (Ha.)

  “There’s no place like home!”

  > say yay!

  i know you want to hop

  so hard

  “THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME!”

  > oh hop…

  Bunny_luvr21 flickered and exploded, and everything went black, and after a while in the darkness a familiar face appeared.

  > hi original boy_2!

  i’m Homie™!

  r u

  ready

  to have

  some

  FUN®?

  :)

  The next day I successfully avoided my dad and sister (well, they had work) and spent the daylight hours trying to get my shoe back from Bones and brooding over what to do next and executing hard reboots. The stupid Bunny_luvr21 had infected my whole system. Every few hours, Homie™ would flicker and the hairless anime-eyed rabbit would leap into vision and start pestering me some more about hopping.

  Evening came. After a tense dinner with Dad and another hard reboot,
I finally heard back from Oso.

  unidentified: bro it’s oso sorry i can’t talk now glad to hear you’re in town can u meet me in the ballroom of the king cowboy in an hour? wear a mask if u can don’t talk to strangers or reply to this message i’m using a burner tell u about it later

  Awesome. It was kind of a confusing message, but I was happy to have an excuse to get out of the house. Just before I left, I tried one more time to retrieve my shoe from Bones. I went to snatch it from her, and she snapped up and bit my hand, and I yelled and dropped the shoe, and she leapt back like I’d hit her. She cowered on the floor.

  “Hey,” I said. “Easy. You’re the one who bit me. See?”

  Little pinpricks of blood were rising to the surface of my skin. It wasn’t bleeding all that much, but it still stung. I washed it off in the sink and wrapped a towel around it, and when I got back to the bedroom, Bones was there, ears flat against her head, all sad and angry at the same time. And she still had my shoe. I decided to let her keep it a little while longer.

  I headed to King Cowboy in my dad’s mocassins. The snow had melted some during the day, but now it was all an icy slick. I fell down four times. When I finally got to the casino, I saw what Oso meant about wearing a mask. It was a party. Not a Party™, but a party, a real party, with real balloons and everything, like some kind of Mardi Gras celebration, everyone dressed in feathers and beads and these glittery masks.

  The music was thumping and there was a fog machine going, and I wandered around looking for Oso, and then a big woman in a bird mask grabbed me by the elbow.

  “How do you know Tawna!” she shouted.

  “I don’t know Tawna!”

  “You don’t know Tawna?!”

  “I don’t think so!”

  “You gotta meet her! That’s why we’re all here, right? IT’S HER FRICKIN’ BIRTHDAY!”

  I told her I was looking for my friend, but either the birdwoman didn’t hear me or she chose to ignore me. Instead, she dragged me through the fog in search of Tawna. But Tawna was not going to be found. Not that night. From what I could gather, Tawna had run out the back door with a guy named Maury, or maybe it was Clarence. Terrence? Opinion seemed split fifty-fifty as to whether this was a good idea, seeing as it was in clear violation of her parole—and then in the other corner you had True Love.

  Eventually I peeled away from birdwoman to continue my search for Oso, and just about the time I was getting ready to give up, this dude in a bear mask put his hands on my shoulders.

  “Oso!”

  “Hey, bro!” He wrapped me in a big bear hug. “Anyone know you’re here?”

  “Just you and some woman in a bird mask. She wanted to introduce me to Tawna.”

  “You saw Tawna? Where is she? I been looking everywhere for her.”

  “I don’t think she’s here. I heard she left with some guy.”

  “What?” Oso whipped off the mask. Dark eyebrows all bunched together.

  “She went out the back with some dude.”

  “Lawrence? Was it LAWRENCE?!”

  “Maybe?”

  “Come on!”

  YAY! for Oso Sandoval, whose real name is Angel—Angelo, actually—and who is known among friends as El Oso, the bear, on account of how big he is. But being big isn’t what makes Oso cool. It’s his creative mind, positive energy, and mad art skills, which I’m sure would easily give him star status at any one of the more than 150 Art Academies™ of America, whose unique programs and flexible learning options make it the first choice for aspiring creative professionals. (YAY!)

  Here’s just one example:

  When we were in fourth grade, our teacher handed out these worksheets with a picture of a glass of water on it. And next to the top half of the glass it said 50% Air, and next to the bottom half it said 50% Water, and on the bottom it said, Technically, the glass is full. And what we were supposed to do was color in the water. That was the entire assignment. Maybe we were learning fractions or something. Mrs. Carlyle was nice, but she was a pretty crappy teacher.

  Anyway, while the rest of us fought over blue markers like a bunch of monkeys, Oso crossed out the word full and wrote imaginary. Then, where the water was, he drew a dragon in scuba gear eating its own tail and blew everyone’s mind. The guy has talent.

  I followed him through the crowd, down a hallway, and out the back door. We ran up and down the alley looking for Tawna. But Tawna was gone.

  “Well, she wasn’t the one I really needed to talk to anyway,” said Oso. “It was that sonofabitch Lawrence. They’re probably halfway to Reno by now.”

  “Who’s Lawrence?”

  “A shape-shifting son of a bitch.”

  “What?”

  “An evil spirit in human clothing, bro. He stole my pills. Swapped them out for duds. Now I’m wanted by a Mexican biker gang. I’ll tell you about it later. You wanna see my new truck?”

  I followed him down the alley to where his truck was parked. It wasn’t just any truck. It was like this giant almost-monster truck with skulls painted all over it.

  “That’s yours?”

  “Not bad, right? Dude I know gave it a twelve-inch lift. Then this OTHER dude, he works at a body shop out by Walmart, he let me use his airbrush. I was gonna put another creeper on the hood, but I didn’t have the time. Whaddya think?” He ran his hand lovingly along the hood of the truck. “Feel how smooth that gloss is. I buffed that shit with a diaper.”

  It was pretty nice all right. Oso had done it up in blue and white with his signature creeper skulls, which had evolved since the last time I’d seen them. They were even creeper-ier now.

  Oso grabbed my wrist. “What happened there? You get bit?”

  So I told him about Bones and my shoe. Oso nodded. “That’s awesome. Know what the Apache say?”

  “The Apache?”

  “The tradition is, in order to become a medicine man, you have to be attacked by a snake, an eagle, or a mountain lion!”

  “…And?”

  “And you got attacked!”

  “By a dog!”

  “Hey, it’s the modern world, bro! We do with what we have. Snake, eagle, dog—it don’t matter. That right there.” He pointed to the tiny bite marks. “That right there is a sign, bro. Big changes are coming your way. Mark my words.”

  We climbed into Oso’s big truck and started down the road.

  “You were saying something about a Mexican biker gang?”

  Oso glanced in the rearview mirror. “Right. Los Ojos de Dios. The Eyes of God, bro. They want to find me and hit me with a big stick. They may be following us now. Who can say?”

  I twisted around to look behind us. No one back there as far as I could see. Unless they weren’t using their headlights. It also occurred to me that we were not riding in the world’s most inconspicuous vehicle, a lifted Chevy with skulls painted all over it.

  “What happened?”

  “I got scammed, bro. The old switcheroo. I was slinging some stuff on the side for Los Ojos, just to make a little money, then they said they were getting a kilo of VPHPs. I didn’t have the money for that, but I had a buyer—Tawna—and so they loaned me the money. But then Tawna wanted to have Lawrence test the VPHPs for potency, so I stupidly let her have all of them for a night—that was my mistake and I will admit to it—and when I got the VPHPs back, they were no longer VPHPs. They were aspirin! And whaddya know? Tawna no longer had the money to buy them.”

  “Dang.”

  “Dang is right! Now Los Ojos de Dios say the money is due. There’s really only three of them—three brothers—but you do not want to be late with their payments. It’s part of the whole biker gang thing. But it doesn’t end there!”

  “No?”

  “Nuh-uh! My aunt, she works at the police station, and she said someone called the anonymous hotline and said I was slinging VPHPs for Los Ojos. So now I’m a person of suspect.”

  “What are VPHPs?”

  “Very Powerful Hallucinogenic Pills, bro. Tawna s
wears she didn’t switch them out, but I know they got switched. It was Lawrence! I knew he was of the darkness the first time I laid eyes on him. But my real issue is the bikers.”

  Wow. Oso had really stepped in some shit. But maybe I could help him.

  “Hey! I know what we can do. You’ve got a truck—let’s go to my grandfather’s. I think there’s money there. I can give you some to pay off the bikers.”

  Oso waved my words away. “No worries, bro. I don’t need your treasure. I’m gonna be fine. Los Ojos de Dios got nothing on me. I’m El Oso de Dios. I can outsneak and outlast them. On the other hand, I’m always down for a treasure hunt.” He turned us left toward the edge of town. “Let’s see what we can dig up.”

  At first the road was fine, but then we got to the part where they’d stopped plowing, and there were just these two tracks going off into the snow, and Oso’s truck began to fishtail. He stopped the truck and shifted the short stick.

  “Four-wheel drive, bro.”

  There was a grinding sound. Something was stuck. Oso grinded it some more.

  “Huh. Never made that sound before.”

  “What is it?”

  “I think it’s the four-wheel drive, bro.”

  It was true. Something was stuck or broken or I don’t know, but Oso couldn’t get it to work. He put the truck back in two-wheel and stomped on the gas and we swerved in a wide arc and slid off into a snowbank. Thunk.

  “No worries, bro.”

  He slammed it in reverse. The wheels spun, and the truck rocked up and down.

  “OK, hold on,” said Oso. “We need some weight in the back to get traction. You wanna be the weight?”

  I climbed into the back and he showed me where to kneel. “Yeah, right over the axle just like that. Here’s what I want you to do, bro. I want you to take a deep breath and summon all the matter in the universe across all space and time within yourself. Just take it all in. Got it?”

  “All the matter in the universe?”

  “Suck it all in like you’re a giant black hole, bro. Yeah, like that. You are now infinitely heavy. BELIEVE IT. Here we go….”