Calamity

by J. T. Warren

  “Hello Brendan,” she said.

  “Hi.”

  “How do you feel today?”

  “Good.”

  “Any trouble focusing today?”

  “No.”

  “You seemed a little lost when we were reviewing the states.”

  “Sorry.”

  He had been more than simply lost. He’d been off in another world completely. The pills were supposed to help with that. The pills did help him focus but not always on what he was supposed to be doing.

  Dr. Carroll had put Brendan on the pill, what Brendan called his Pillie Billy, in October after a horrible progress report and a teacher-parent conference in which Miss Tuyol made it sound like Brendan had some really serious problems, aside from poor factoring in math and weak memorization skills in history. Next year he’d be in seventh grade, so if he didn’t get his act together (whatever that meant), he’d end up in a far worse situation than he was in now. On the up side, Miss Tuyol complimented Brendan’s creativity and language skills. She said he was a very creative boy. The only reason he had done well in English was because he enjoyed reading and writing stories. He wrote his stories, mostly short things with lots of violence, in a black and white composition book. He wrote the stories during recess or at home in his room. He had left the book at home today but that was okay because he had a different one with him, a really special one.

  “No headaches?” Miss Toyul asked.

  He shook his head.

  He hadn’t told anyone that even before the end of the summer, his head had started to hurt every time he spent longer than a few minutes reading and he’d find himself inexplicably pulled away from the page by an annoying fly or the tree blowing outside his window or even random thoughts in his own mind. Pillie Billy had cured that, sort of. Every once in a while his head hurt but it wasn’t always unpleasant.

  “Your story,” she said and picked up the two-page short story he had typed on Dad’s computer. “Do you have a goldfish?”

  “No,” he said. The story was entitled “The Dead Goldfish.” It was a bout this kid who thought his goldfish was possessed by a demon and he kills the fish by crushing it beneath his bare feet. Brendan described, as best he could, the jelly insides of the fish filling the gaps between the boy’s toes. He compared it to snot.

  “You didn’t kill your pet fish, did you?” Miss Tuyol asked.

  “We had a dog once but it got old and couldn’t walk so we had to put it down.”

  Miss Tuyol looked like she had something really serious to say. “You’ve never hurt any animals before, have you?”

  He thought of how much fun it was to pull Lizzy’s tail. Lizzy was Delaney’s cat. The cat didn’t like it but pulling its tail didn’t really hurt it, not much anyway. Besides, he liked Lizzy and didn’t want to see her suffer.

  “Your story is very descriptive.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Gory.”

  “Thanks.”

  “That’s not always a good thing.”

  “It’s not?”

  “Next time, why don’t you try writing about something more pleasant?”

  “Okay.” Brendan stared at his sneakers.

  “What book do you have today?” she asked.

  Brendan held up the large, hard-bound book. It was titled Finding God: A History of Appeasing Higher Powers and Fulfilling Man’s Destiny. It was over three hundred pages with very few pictures and more than twenty chapters. Dad would have called it “heavy reading,” but Brendan never showed his dad, keeping the book hidden under his bed. Dr. Carroll had given it to him, said the book was just for Brendan, something to help him focus better and tap into his natural talents, whatever they might be. Brendan didn’t understand what Dr. Carroll meant, but he didn’t ask questions either. The doc wanted to help, he gave Brendan a book, so Brendan took it, read some of it, and kept it a secret. He was very good at keeping secrets. He had it with him today, however, because he had big plans for tomorrow.

  “That looks interesting,” Miss Tuyol said as if he were showing her that dead goldfish.

  “It’s just some boring history stuff,” he said with a shrug.

  Miss Tuyol smiled. “Okay. Get your coat and I’ll bring you outside.”

  On the playground, Brendan sat in a swing and opened the book. He turned to Chapter Two. It was entitled “Animal and Human: Sacrifices to Win Divine Favor.”

  While kids ran screaming all around him, Brendan read very carefully, as if trying to memorize every word.

  PART ONE

  “It is difficult to accept death in this society because it is unfamiliar. In spite of the fact that it happens all the time, we never see it.”

  Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

  1

  When Sasha returned from the bathroom, Tyler wondered for the hundredth time what her breasts would look like once he got her shirt off. Her T-shirt hugged her breasts—young, healthy, and firm—just enough, yet the shirt was not so tight as to remove all mystery. Tyler had spent enough time admiring those breasts in quick glances at school and more than enough time tonight peeking glances at them while he ate his cheeseburger and she picked at a salad. He had spent even more than enough time in bed at night thinking of those breasts—these breasts right in front of him across the table—and how they would feel in his hands or taste in his mouth. Imagining was one thing, but to actually touch them skin-to-skin would be like opening a Christmas present and discovering it was exactly what he wanted.

  And only one thing could be better, but he knew not to let his fantasies get out of reach. There was little chance he’d get past the threshold of her jeans and into her panties where the real thing that girls had and boys wanted dwelled like a treasure waiting to be excavated. The thing he had been waiting all of his seventeen years to unearth.

  “Well?”

  She had asked him something and he couldn’t think of what it was. Shit. She was assessing him, evaluating if he was good make-out material and missing her questions would not bode well for him when she made the final determination. He had been admiring those breasts again, of course. He knew only the vaguest details of the private lives of girls, but he had Googled bra sizes and determined that Sasha was in the C-range. Each breast was probably a handful once unleashed from the confines of the shirt and bra. But, of course, that brought up the tricky situation of bra straps and undoing them. He had Googled that, too, and found a site that instructed in step-by-step format how to unhook a bra strap—and with only one hand.

  “You seem weird,” she said. Her half-eaten chicken Caesar salad sat before her, oh, so ever close to those breasts.

  He fumbled a response that could have passed for the mumblings of a retarded person. She smiled at him, one jagged tooth protruding over the others in the upper corner of her mouth, her black hair hanging straight behind her like a curtain. At school she wore her hair up like all the other girls. Different hair presentation meant something, at least according to websites Tyler had read. It could mean the girl thought he was special enough to do something different; it could mean the girl was hoping for a special evening; or it could mean jack special shit.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “For … ?”

  Retarded mumblings again. Every time he tried to respond, his eyes ventured down to those breasts and an alarm went off in his brain: LOOK AT HER FACE, AT HER FACE! But that shouting command only fumbled up his words even more.

  “How’s your cheeseburger?” she asked.

  “Good,” he said without the slightest mumble.

  She glanced around; her smile faded. Cheerful Charlie’s Diner was fairly well-packed with the late-evening crowd. The diner was a 1950s throwback with plush red seats and booths, vintage signs (a Coca Cola advertisement featuring a green-haired elf-type person with huge, hungry eyes and a Coke bottle top for a hat always gave Tyler the creeps every time he ate here), and a giant juke-box that didn’t play music but lit up and flashed sometimes like a strobe light. The ol
dies music came from ceiling speakers. Tyler didn’t know any of the songs and, it seemed, neither did Sasha.

  There was no diner in Stone Creek, but Charlie’s was only a few miles out on Route 51. The place was open 24 hours and Charlie, the Charlie of the restaurant’s name, was a round-bellied guy who often played Santa at the Newburgh Mall in December, and who didn’t harass teenagers the way the staff and owners at many restaurants did, especially after dark.

  This place was a typical stop for kids from school. Tyler thought he recognized some kids in the back, but they were too busy shooting spitballs at each other to offer Tyler a frontal view. Tyler had known that other kids might be here, of course, and had weighed the potential awkwardness of some kids mocking him with the comfort Sasha might feel at going to a familiar place. He hadn’t read that advice on any website; he had reasoned that one out himself. The websites had suggested fancy dining; fine dining, they called it. Fine dinning, they asserted, was the easiest way to get a woman’s clothes off. Aside from getting her drunk or drugging her, of course.

  So,” she said when her gaze returned to the table. “That movie kind of sucked.”

  Tyler had taken her to a movie first in hopes that he could build his courage during the flick and then really put on the moves over dinner. The movie was a stupid horror flick about a girl trapped in a basement with a monster that resembled a toad. Tyler enjoyed when the girl stripped to her underwear before getting inside a sleeping bag with her equally hot, and equally near-naked, friend: did girls really do stuff like that? Sasha watched the movie with her body leaned away from him for most of the film, and didn’t want any popcorn, which left Tyler eating an entire bucket. The butter he had plopped on top of the popcorn had tasted so good but now, as it mingled with the ground beef from his burger, he felt the weight of it like a brick sinking into his bowels.

  When the toad-thing leaped out of the basement’s darkest corner with its huge mouth full of teeth and its scream echoing in the theater like an explosion, Sasha jumped in her seat and grabbed his arm. When the monster bit off the girl’s foot (gallons of blood squirting all over the girl and the monster), Sasha screamed and squeezed his arm, a genuine squeeze. Tyler smiled and stole another glance at those breasts.

  “Yeah,” he said. What could he say? You ever strip to your underwear and climb into a sleeping bag with another girl?

  Sasha’s cellphone was out and she was texting. She yawned. Though her salad was mostly uneaten, Sasha was obviously done with dinner and if he didn’t say something clever or somehow get her interested in him again this date was over.

  She snapped her phone shut and stared straight at him as if she hadn’t noticed him before. Her breasts—LOOK AT HER FACE!—jiggled when she placed her elbows on the table on either side of her salad and rested her chin on her folded hands. This pushed her breasts together and made them even larger.

  “I don’t have to be home for an hour,” she said.

  “Oh.”

  She smiled and her snaggletooth incisor seemed larger than before. Someone who has such a physical imperfection, even a slight one, is good at concealing it. Paul hid his braces for three years in middle school by never fully smiling at anyone. Tyler had been one of the only people who knew for sure that Paul had braces. That meant Sasha was smiling larger now, which was good. Or it meant her tooth was growing.

  The waitress, dressed in a blue apron with a cartoon fat man over her chest, one pudgy thumb up, asked if she could take their plates and they both nodded. Plates in hand, the waitress inquired about dessert. Sasha asked for the check.

  She turned back to Tyler. “I’m glad you asked me out.”

  “Me too,” he said.

  “You’re a sweet guy.”

  A sweet guy who has masturbated to thoughts of you for almost nine months, he thought and immediately scolded himself for being so perverted. If she sensed his longing, his desperation, she’d end the date right now.

  The websites stressed that women wanted “action” as much as men did, but women were always turned off by desperation. If a guy wants a woman too badly, the woman will often turn him down. Women want to know there’s interest, but they also want a challenge. A website also recommended jerking off before the date to help calm anxiety. Tyler found his favorite porn site and started but his father kept walking back and forth outside his room so he stopped. If Sasha went down on him, if that was even a possibility, it wouldn’t take long to finish.

  “There’s a place near my house where we can hang for a bit, if you want. Then you can drop me off.”

  Tyler nodded because he couldn’t swallow the lump in his throat to speak. He paid the bill, left five bucks on the table, and let Sasha give him directions to their next stop.

  Sasha lived in a mobile home that had been converted into a somewhat normal-looking two-story house with a concrete front porch and an extension off the back, which served as a game room and her mother’s bedroom. Two large perfectly pruned bushes stood guard on either side of the porch. A light was on upstairs and another, a red one, flickered in a downstairs window, probably from a TV.

  “Nice,” Tyler said and hoped he didn’t sound surprised or sarcastic.

  “Nice bushes, right?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Never mind.”

  The house was one among hundreds in the Hidden Hills community, a name contradicting the numerous hills and valleys that comprised the individual properties of the mobile homes. The kids at school called this place Trailer Trash Town, the homes Trashy Trailers. Even the students who lived here, and there were more Tyler suspected than those who admitted it, used the term. Better to acknowledge the shitty choices your parents made than to delude yourself into thinking you were normal.

  “Keep going,” Sasha said. “I don’t want my mother to see us.”

  They drove down a steep slope that curved to the right so suddenly that Tyler almost crashed into a pickup truck parked in the road. He narrowly missed an oncoming jeep and then rode his brakes the rest of the way down the hill, which reminded him of water swirling down a funnel. The mobile homes (trashy trailers) were set at odd angles to one another and ensconced into hillsides like pieces of litter in clumps of mud. Some of them hadn’t seen a moment of handyman attention in decades while others could have passed for pleasing, though small, additions to the community his parents had chosen: Sky View Estates. It was a gated community where Mexicans cleaned the streets weekly and repainted the homes every other year.

  Sasha directed Tyler to a small, empty gravel parking lot overlooking a lake. A sagging, rusted fence boarded two sides of the lot. Tyler pulled to the edge, facing the lake. On the other side of the dark water, the lights of more mobile homes glowed like tiny eyes on the hulking humps of hills. Those hills comprised a giant beast, a malicious creature forever guarding the still waters of a man-made lake—like in that Lovecraft story Mr. Stein had read to them. Tyler wished he could cover his windshield.

  “Beautiful,” Sasha said. She undid her seatbelt. Was that an invitation to make a move?

  “Sure,” Tyler said after a moment. He turned to her, barely aware that he was making a move; something inside him had seized the controls and wasn’t going to let him delay any longer. “But not as beautiful as you.”

  She smiled for a moment and then burst out laughing.

  Tyler turned back to the hundred-eyed monster. What did its laughter sound like?

  “I’m sorry,” Sasha said through dwindling chuckles. “You don’t have to try so hard. I’m the one who brought us here, after all.”

  “Sorry,” he said, though unsure why.

  “What about some music?” she asked.

  Tyler turned the car battery on and the receiver started with the last song that had been playing on his iPod: “Stay Don’t Go” by Spoon. She hadn’t made any comments about his music during the drive and she didn’t now. Did she hate it? Did it matter?

  “So?” she asked.

  “So?�
��

  She smiled again and moved toward him as if gliding like a ghost. Without barely any time for his brain to register what was happening, Tyler moved toward her, closed his eyes, and met her lips halfway across the car. The kiss lasted only a few seconds but it was long enough for Tyler to taste the Caesar dressing from her salad. She broke the kiss and sat back in her seat. Tyler stayed for a moment in a slant, his seatbelt stretching across his chest.

  “Why do you like me?” she asked.

  Tyler sat back, unfastened his belt. Though a smile still lingered on her lips, Sasha had turned more introspective all of a sudden as if the kiss had pried something lose in her mind. How was he supposed to answer this question? What did she want to hear?

  The song changed to “Paper Tiger.” Tyler said, “What do you mean?”

  “It’s not a hard question.”

  “You’re … really cool and pretty and … I don’t know.”

  “It’s just that you’ve barely ever said anything to me. Did you think I’d be easy or something?”

  In the faint glow from the radio receiver, Sasha’s eyes glimmered green and small shadows accentuated her pointy nose and the curve of her upper lip hiding that snaggletooth. Her pale skin absorbed the light and gave her a faint seasick aura.

  “I just … like you.”

  “You’ve been with many girls?”

  Tyler shook his head. Her breasts were ready to break through her shirt. His hand twitched. Just a touch, a caress, a suck.

  “I know what people say about me,” she said. “About my mother.”

  “I haven’t heard.” He thought of Aaron’s period-blood rumor.

  Tyler had only had one girlfriend prior, and that had been three years ago at science camp. He had experienced his first French kiss but nothing else. He didn’t think he was unattractive or weird or anything. He just never handled himself around girls the way he wanted. Paul had known this is what he needed. Tyler knew it, too. And now she was getting all serious.

  “I don’t care what people say,” she said. “I don’t. People are assholes.”

  “They are,” he said.