Brutal Youth: A Novel

by Anthony Breznican

  Lorelei shook her head.

  “Why?” Stein asked.

  She said, “A lot of reasons.” Stein said, “Give me one,” but most of them she couldn’t explain. Whenever Lorelei spent too much time with Stein in class, she noticed a coolness from some of the other girls, particularly the dark-haired soothsayer, Zari. Everyone thought Stein was cute—that was the problem—and Lorelei didn’t want to derail her budding friendships over some stupid jealously, like last time.

  “My mother doesn’t allow me to date. Not until I’m eighteen,” Lorelei said. That was one excuse she could give Stein.

  “Maybe your mom will change her mind if she meets me,” Stein said, flashing his eyebrows. “I’m pretty charming, you know.”

  Lorelei said no. Stein asked why again, but there were limits to what Lorelei was willing to explain. She hadn’t told anyone at St. Mike’s about her mother’s accident at the warehouse, and the missing hand, her mother’s sometimes explosive moods and … well, what could be called an increasingly serious dependence on self-medication.

  Ms. Bromine was standing inside the doors, watching the students flow back inside. When she saw Lorelei, she snapped: “Did you pick those from the school grounds!”

  Stein snatched the marigolds out of Lorelei’s hands. “I gave them to her,” he said.

  Ms. Bromine’s mouth tightened. She told him he could help replant those beds during his next detention.

  EIGHT

  The unofficial title of Miss St. Mike’s didn’t make Lorelei any new friends, but it made her some new enemies.

  “Hey, Miss America … You smoke?”

  She heard this after school while passing the Grough sisters—Mary, a senior, and Theresa, a sophomore—who shared the same Neanderthal brows and linebacker shoulders. They always hung out in the shadows of a cluster of yew bushes near the school’s side exit with another senior, Anne-Marie Thomas, who was masculine enough to be known by the other students as an “honorary Grough.” Lorelei had heard a little about them. The Grough sisters’ mother forbade them from shaving their legs. (“It’s what whores do. Be happy as God made you.”) So they wore thick stockings on even the most sweltering days, and sweatpants during gym instead of shorts, to hide their bristly calves and thighs. But they had to change clothes for gym, which always brought fresh taunts of “Sasquatch! Sasquatch!”

  The surly attitudes of the sisters reflected lifetimes of torment. Anne-Marie Thomas was just miserable by association.

  Mary Grough beckoned Lorelei over to the bushes, where she held out a crumpled pack of cigarettes, and Lorelei, who knew it wasn’t cool to smoke, but thought it might be cool to pretend to smoke, said, “Yes, sometimes I do. But not right now, thank you.”

  Mary turned the pack upside down, to show it was empty. “I wasn’t asking for your company, beauty queen. I need to bum some.”

  Lorelei grinned, embarrassed. “I don’t really smoke,” she said. “I was just … kidding.”

  Anne-Marie advanced on her, flicking the smoldering butt of her cigarette at the freshman and singeing a hole in her white shirt. “You playing games with us, Miss Congeniality?” she said, grabbing Lorelei by her collar and shoving her backwards.

  Lorelei’s head spun around, but no one could see her in the clearing between the tall shrubs. “No, I—I just…” Anne-Marie unzipped Lorelei’s book bag. The younger Grough, Theresa, stepped forward to dig through it.

  “Nothing here,” Theresa reported to her older sister.

  Mary Grough dropped her own cigarette and ground it beneath a thick shoe. “You prissy cheerleader types are all the same,” she said. “You tease, but you don’t put out, right? Maybe that works with your boyfriends, but it just pisses me off.”

  Lorelei said, “I didn’t mean to—,” but Anne-Marie shook her by her collar again.

  “We don’t give a shit what you ‘mean to,’” the older girl said.

  Mary Grough told her, “All we know, girlie, is you owe us a pack—each. Make it a whole carton. Ten packs. You got it?”

  Lorelei pursed her lips. “And what if I don’t?”

  Mary Grough opened and closed her middle and index fingers, like scissors. “You little bitch … I’m going to sneak up behind you and snip that ponytail off at the root.” Anne-Marie gave Lorelei a final shove, and all three Groughs were laughing. The sophomore, Theresa, giggled. “We’ve done it before, bitch. And we’ll do it to you, gladly.”

  Lorelei rejoined the flow of students heading toward the buses in the parking lot, her heart splashing in her chest. One hand found the end of her ponytail and held it close to her neck as she walked. Fast.

  * * *

  “Screw those hairy-assed smokestacks,” Stein said the next day. Screw them. Fuck them. Shit on them. That was Stein’s standard advice for most threats from the older kids. “I say give them one pack and inject each cigarette with a squirt of toilet bowl cleaner.”

  Murder by household chemical, however, was not a solution Lorelei would consider.

  They were sitting in Mr. Zimmer’s computer class, learning term paper format in Microsoft Word. Davidek was sitting at the computer behind Lorelei and interrupted: “Maybe you could find one of those cigarette-dispensing machines. They don’t check ID, right?”

  Stein insisted, “I wouldn’t give them anything,” but for Lorelei that wasn’t an option. To her list of rules, she had made a mental addition: No. 6. Don’t fight over anything.

  “I haven’t had any trouble before. And I don’t want any now,” she said, which made Stein turn away from her and back to his computer.

  “If you’re going to do what you want anyway, why’d you ask for help?” he told her.

  “That’s not why you’re angry,” she said.

  Davidek was confused. “Then why are you angry, Stein?”

  Nobody answered him.

  Lorelei leaned over to Stein’s computer and nudged his shoulder. “Don’t be mad,” she said. “Help me figure out what to do about the Groughs.”

  Stein didn’t look away from his screen. “Why don’t you ask your mom,” he said softly. “Since she’s so worried about who you hang out with.”

  Lorelei slumped in her seat, fingers resting on the keyboard but not moving. Davidek remained puzzled behind her. “Would your mom really help?” he asked.

  * * *

  Lorelei had learned about the dangers of cigarettes from the time of her first health class in grade school, and she had always worried about her mom, seeing the specters of cancer, emphysema, and heart disease floating in the white smoke that seeped out of her mother’s nose and mouth. Now her mom’s stash in the upper kitchen cabinet was her salvation.

  Even before her accident, Miranda Paskal despised being preached to about her bad habits, but afterwards, when she shifted from one to two and a half packs a day and began subsisting more on rums-and-Cokes than any other fluid, her guilt was the one thing certain to provoke her temper. The haggard woman’s once-thin face, sagging with extra weight from her now sedentary lifestyle, would tense whenever she sensed even unspoken judgment. Her eyes, usually bleary and lifeless, would flame to life. Once, after what had been an intensely unpleasant seventh-grade lesson on cancerous thyroids and blackened lungs, Lorelei made the mistake of saying simply: “I’m worried about how much you smoke, Mom.”

  Her mother had glowered at her. Her father, watching from the kitchen, had said, “Lorelei, don’t criticize your mother.”

  Miranda Paskal had moved carefully to place her lit cigarette in the stainless steel clasp attached to her prosthetic forearm. She knew her daughter hated to see it without the fitted latex hand. Sometimes she left it bare on purpose.

  Without Lorelei saying another word, her mother’s outrage snowballed into irrational fury. “Everything in this house, every thread of clothing you’re wearing, all the food you and your father eat—it’s all paid for by this. My accident. My hand!” Her mother had lunged forward, moving with one quick swipe that made the sou
nd of hard plastic connecting with flesh. Lorelei reeled backwards, holding her cheek. She never cried. It made her mother feel guilty when she cried, but that only made her angrier.

  “A lifetime of paths poorly chosen…” That’s something Miranda Paskal sometimes said aloud. She had lamented being a failure, long before she became one. She always said her parents should have been stricter with her, were right to be as harsh as they were, but did not go far enough. She had married poorly, settled too soon with a man who got her pregnant. She planned not to make the same mistake with her daughter. That was the source of her many random and unprovoked rules: no dating, and no driving until Lorelei was eighteen, either. No telephone calls after 8 P.M. (though no one ever called her daughter anyway).

  After her handicapping, Miranda Paskal had real misery to fuel her self-pity, which made her explosive. When her husband and daughter failed to tiptoe around her moods, a simple dropped dinner plate or a coy answer to a question could elicit a smack across the face, for either of them. Lorelei tried to interfere when her mother’s arguments with her father degenerated into thrown glassware or poundings on his back. He rarely did the same for his daughter.

  The worse part was that her mother often hit with the arm she lost, using the hard prosthetic as a weapon. It’s easier to hurt someone when you don’t have to feel it back.

  Lorelei never asked her to stop smoking again. Never mentioned the drinking, the overeating, the isolation of sitting in a dark house day after day, year after year.

  On the afternoon after she was threatened by the Groughs, Lorelei stood on a kitchen chair and opened the small cabinet over the refrigerator. There were two cartons in there, one unopened, the other half-empty. Lorelei took what she thought wouldn’t be noticed—two packs. The recycling bin by the trash was full of stale-smelling empty beer cans. When her mother drank that heavily, she sometimes forgot her quantity of consumption. Many times, Lorelei had seen her mom nursing a hangover and searching the couch cushions, demanding to know where her smokes went—ignoring the overflowing stinking ashtrays in the living room and back patio.

  For the first time, Lorelei was happy to see that recycling bin so full.

  * * *

  That had been Friday. On the next Monday, Lorelei opened her backpack and took out two sealed packages—Morley Lights.

  The Grough sisters stared at her. They were standing at their usual spot near the side entrance after school, shaded by the cover of the smoking bushes. Finally, Mary Grough spoke. “Morley?” she said. “And lights? What is this shit? I said I wanted Alpacas!”

  “No, you didn’t!” Lorelei cried back, holding the packages out like she was about to get an electric shock. “You said you wanted cigarettes. So here they are.”

  “Don’t tell me what I said!” Mary snapped, nodding at her younger sister, Theresa, who stepped forward to snatch the packs out of Lorelei’s hands. “And I told you I wanted a whole carton,” Mary added. Anne-Marie Thomas snagged Lorelei’s hair between her stubby fingers, yanked it once, and gave her a shove toward the sidewalk. Mary said: “You got till Friday. Either I’ll be holding a whole carton in my hand, or your pretty little scalp.”

  After Lorelei hurried away, the Groughs stared at each other blankly. Theresa held the unopened cigarette packs between them—undeniable proof of what had just happened.

  They menaced a lot of the younger girls. No one had ever taken them seriously before.

  * * *

  “Can we help somehow?” Davidek asked. He was hanging out with Lorelei and Stein on the second floor every morning now, glad to be out of sight of the Fanboys up on the third, where his homeroom group’s lockers were. He had gradually ingratiated himself with Lorelei, who no longer rolled her eyes every time he spoke.

  “Do either of your parents smoke?” she asked hopefully. Davidek shook his head. She looked at Stein, who was struggling with his locker clutter.

  “You spend a lot more time worrying about people who treat you like crap, Lorelei,” Stein said, his head in the metal box. “Not so much on the people who are actually your friends.”

  Lorelei crossed her arms. “My friends would help me instead of lecture me.”

  “How does giving those girls what they want make them stop?” Stein asked, still not looking at her. Lorelei groaned, scooping up her bag and stalking away down the hall.

  Davidek watched her go. Stein didn’t, but wanted to.

  NINE

  The next morning, Davidek failed to gather his stuff and move to the second floor fast enough. As a result, his face was now pressed against the fan grate again. His tie fluttered before him in the stainless steel drum, its tip nipped by the roaring whirl of the blades.

  “Almost there!” Morti cried. “Push a little harder!” Two of the larger Fanboys shoved all their weight against Davidek’s back. He felt the metal grate flex and shut his eyes, imagining the bars giving way and his face plunging into the gnawing metal.

  That’s when the tie caught. It drew tight on his collar, but only for an instant as the clasp popped open and the clip-on knot slipped easily through the bent grate, clattering around in a crimson blur before being ejected on the other side of the whirring blades.

  The Fanboys fell back, cackling, hooting, and high-fiving each other. Morti had confiscated a freshman girl’s change purse and opened the contents over Davidek’s head, and the pennies, nickels, and dimes flashed against the blades in metallic agony as the older boys ran away.

  Davidek slumped on the floor beside the fan, breathing heavily, wiping the dust lines from his face, spitting off the little bit that got between his lips.

  “Are you the one throwing coins in there?” He looked up at Ms. Bromine, her hands on her purple-skirted hips. Mr. Mankowski was behind her, in the same pose.

  “No, no,” Davidek said, but she had already drawn out a pad of detention slips from the binder she was carrying. “You’re out of uniform,” she said, pointing a pen where his tie used to be. “That’s a second detention.”

  When she was done writing them, Davidek walked down the stairs, down to the first floor, and slipped out the side entrance as the homeroom bell began to ring. He found his tie—a little ripped, but still intact—blowing across the long grass, whipped by the wind of the overcast morning. It was starting to rain.

  Davidek reattached the clip-on to his collar and went back inside, where he was greeted again by Ms. Bromine. She had two more detention slips already waiting.

  “For being late for class,” she said. “And leaving the school without permission.”

  * * *

  When Davidek got home that afternoon, the house was empty. His mother had gone shopping again, but that was good. In response to his begging, she had promised to buy him a proper tie. He heard the front door opening and ran to find her hauling six overstuffed Guess? shopping bags alongside her.

  “Did you get it?” he asked.

  His mother blew hair out of her eyes. “Get what?”

  Davidek dropped his hands, his mouth, and his welcoming tone. “Mom—the tie!”

  She groaned. “Peter, you’re like a broken record sometimes.…”

  “Mom!” he said, outraged, incredulous, infuriated. “Mom, you promised!”

  “I forgot! I’m sorry!” she screamed. “Do I have to repeat it for you? Do I?”

  Davidek sat watching TV that night, trying not to say a word to anyone, rehearsing his words, waiting to go off like a time bomb. Davidek looked at his mother’s new Guess? shoes, propped up on the leg rest of her easy chair. The fresh white turtleneck she wore was Guess?, too. Over by the front door was a brand-new Guess? purse. Davidek stared at everything around him like he wanted it all to catch on fire.

  “What’s your problem tonight?” his father asked.

  Davidek said, “Guess.”

  “I’m so tired of this attitude,” his mother said, marching into the kitchen rather than defend herself.

  “I’m still going to school with a clip-on tie!�
� Davidek bellowed after her. “I’ve asked you every day. And other kids make fun of me—every day. You’ve gone shopping, like, six times since school started!”

  His mother rushed back into the living room, frowning at him. She had no defense, and knew it. “You sound just like your brother when you talk like that,” she hissed, the ultimate put-down in their house.

  Davidek’s father suggested: “Don’t I have ties upstairs you can wear?”

  “Dad, freshmen have to wear red ties. It’s the rules. Sophomores have blue and red stripes, and upperclassmen have blue.”

  His father said, “I have red ties. Did you look?”

  Davidek sank deeper into the couch. “Yeah, they have Santa Claus on them.”

  His father turned up the TV volume. He was clueless about why any of this was relevant to him. “So, buy the stupid tie yourself and quit bellyaching.”

  “Can I have some money?” Davidek demanded.

  His father said, “Not with that attitude. Find it yourself.”

  * * *

  Davidek was telling this story at school the next morning, when Green said: “So it’s lost treasure you need?” He smiled. “Wait here a second, I’ll be right back.”

  When he returned, Green led Davidek outside. They were careful, secret-agent style, to avoid being spotted leaving the school without permission. Green didn’t have any detentions, and Davidek couldn’t handle any more.

  Soon the boys’ fingers were picking along the ground below the third-floor ventilation fan, overturning a penny, a nickel, two dimes. Black and gray clouds swirled above as Davidek crawled through the wet emerald grass of the empty church field, pausing to parse through the fistful of coins he had gathered. “Six dollars and thirty-five cents!” he called out to Green, who was bent over by the yew bushes where the Groughs tended to hang out, his arm searching the bare dirt beneath the shrubs.