Under the Sea

by Mark Leidner

  Afterward we were lying on his giant mattress staring up at the fan, the breeze evaporating our sweat, and like every dumb girl ever, I couldn’t help but wonder if he actually liked me, like maybe I’d been good enough to make him want me to come back on the sly. If I could somehow get him to be my boyfriend, then maybe I’d even be a bad-ass, the crazy-ass girlfriend of the hot shady guy who drove a Prelude and had his own house.

  The only reason I thought any of this was because it had been so hot in his room that I’d asked if we could open the window, and instead of just saying yeah, he went over to it and opened it. It was hard, but he finally got it open.

  “I don’t usually open it because it gets stuck,” he said, returning to the bed and sliding his arm under my head.

  He’d done me a favor, and I was drunk on the romance of it.

  “Can I ask another favor?”

  “What.”

  But then the words sounded stupid in my head, and I didn’t want to say them.

  “Nevermind.”

  “What?” he said. “It can’t hurt to ask.”

  “Oh,” I said, genuinely surprised by his encouragement. I rolled onto my elbow and looked at him. “Can it be that we did it… just because?”

  He rolled onto his elbow too, mildly amused.

  I took a breath. The words were hard to get out. “I mean, can it be just because… we liked… you liked me?” I swallowed. “And not that other thing?”

  He smirked. “You don’t want your weed back, Miss Cousins?”

  “No, I mean, it’s mine. It’s ours. I want it back.” I closed my eyes and tried to believe in something like God for the first time in my life. “But can’t you just give it to me?”

  He laughed.

  “You don’t wanna have to’ve ho’ed for it?”

  My eyes flew open, blazing in anger. He looked smug, still awaiting an answer. I looked away. I looked at the busted blinds on his open window and somehow calmed myself down enough to form words through clenched teeth. “Something like that,” I said.

  He laughed more. He sat up and lit a cigarette, still snickering like he knew some special secret I didn’t. I felt more naked and put my shirt back on. He offered me a cigarette, which I took. He tried to light it, but I took the lighter out of his fist and lit it myself and threw it back at him. It bounced off his chest and he glanced at where it landed on the floor.

  Then he leaned back, blew smoke over my head, and pointed at me with his cigarette. “You want to be girlfriend-boyfriend?” He laughed again, like he’d been thinking of that one awhile. Then he shook his head like he was trying to stop, but couldn’t help himself. He knew it was pissing me off.

  “Shut the fuck up,” I said. “You’re a piece of shit.”

  “I’m sorry, do you know me?” He was angry.

  I felt humiliated. I got up off the bed.

  “I wanted to ask a simple question. You’re a goddamn asshole.” I put my pants on. “How big a piece of shit do you have to be to steal something just to get some anyway?” I stepped into my shoes. “I’d rather be anything than something that pathetic.”

  I walked out of his room.

  “Hey!” He ran around the bed and came after me.

  I ran through the kitchen and grabbed our weed off his table. He let me get the weed, but he grabbed my knife off the counter before I could get to it. “Drop it,” he said, pointing the knife at the bag.

  “It’s mine, mother-fucker!” I shouted.

  “You think I wanted you in my bed, you skinny piece of shit? You’re dumber than you look.” He stepped forward, calm now, pointing the knife blade at his own chest. “I’m the only one moving anything around here from now on. You and that girl Sasha push more than a fucking nickel, I’m gonna hear about it, and I’m gonna get it again, you got me? And then you’re gonna have a lot more dick to suck than what you just done to dig your way outta that.”

  I almost exploded. I almost ran at him. I almost shoved the knife in his neck. Instead, I looked at the gun on the table. Tyler saw me look, and then he laughed.

  “Do it,” he said. “I would fucking love to have a reason.”

  “Fuck you,” I said, and I turned the doorknob.

  Before it opened though, Tyler pushed the kitchen table across the room and pinned me against the door with it. I couldn’t open it or move. Then he pulled the table back and grabbed my wrist and held it over my head. I tried to push him back, but he was too strong. Then the knife was at my throat, and I thought my life was over again, just like when I’d seen Rawls with the same damn knife in his side. My whole shitty little life flashed before my eyes. There was one good memory of me and Rawls and Mom and Dad at the beach, then the rest was mom’s face all fucked up from drugs, and the time I stole dad’s car and crashed it, and the summer I spent at Grandma’s where she tried to beat Jesus into me, and then this, and that was it.

  “Drop it,” Tyler said.

  I let go of our $600 worth of marijuana, and Tyler turned me around. With my back against the door, he poked the tip of the knife into my chest and reached down and picked the bag up off the floor and then dumped it all out on the table until there was about two joints worth left in the bag. Then he wadded that up and stuffed it down the front of my pants. “For your trouble,” he said. “Because that’s about what you were worth.” He raised an eyebrow. “Now you want anything else?”

  “My knife back,” I said.

  He smirked and offered it handle first. He jerked it back when I reached for it and swung it point down into the table next to the gun, where it stuck.

  “Get the fuck out and don’t come back.”

  Had I been born larger, or older, or a man maybe, maybe I would’ve done something different than I did. Maybe I would’ve gone for the gun. Maybe I would’ve gone for the knife. Maybe I would’ve just beat his ass with my bare hands. Maybe I would’ve got my own ass beat, or died. But I wasn’t born anyone but me.

  I turned the doorknob in what felt like slow-motion. I opened the door and took one step out, then I stopped with my hand still on the doorknob and turned around and said, “You think you’re a bad-ass, Tyler, but you ain’t.”

  “And what’re you? Think about that,” he said, “when you’re digging weed out your ass.”

  “You ain’t shit,” I said, letting myself cry. “As a matter of fact,” I wiped my eyes, “the only bad-ass around here is Casey Bentley, and he ain’t gonna like it too much when he hears how you done me and Sasha.”

  “Two dumb hookers? I don’t even know who he is, but I don’t think he’ll give a shit.”

  “Casey Bentley and I go way back,” I said. “I tried to tell him you was gonna come in here and fuck up his game, but he didn’t listen.”

  “His game?”

  “You don’t know nothing, do you. Tell you what. Go back to Florida, Mad Dog. That’s right. I know who you are. Everybody in Oak Park does, because I told them, and they already don’t like you. In fact, I’m gonna come back by here in the morning, and if you’re gone, with your little BB gun and your even littler dick, then I’ll keep my mouth shut and won’t tell Casey Bentley what you done to Sasha—that’s his girlfriend—and what you done to me too.”

  He busted out laughing. “You think I give a fuck about Casey Bentley? I never even heard of him.”

  “Well, he’s heard of you, trust me.” I pointed at his supply. “And he’s got ten times that in his fucking glovebox. He’s been moving weight since he was fourteen. By the way, I didn’t see no money around here neither. Casey Bentley’s got a money-counting machine on his coffee table you can hear from the street, and it don’t ever turn off. He’s a bad-ass for real, and he’s coming for you. Just you wait.” I glared at him like I’d just cast a hex, then I slammed the door.

  I walked quickly but resisted the urge to pull the bag out of my drawers until after I got to the highway because I didn’t want to give Tyler the satisfaction if he was still watching. I was past the church before any
kind of normal feeling came back to me.

  I didn’t know what would happen with Casey and Tyler, and I didn’t care. I hoped whatever might happen would end up bad for both of them. The rest of the walk home, all of that seemed to pass from my mind, and instead what I kept circling around was what story I was telling myself about why I’d slept with Tyler and whether it mattered. By the time I got home I decided it didn’t, just like everything else didn’t. Daddy’s car was gone and Rawls was in his room booming his stereo and studying probably. I wanted to hang out with somebody but I didn’t want to bother him. I took a shower and got high on the rest of me and Sasha’s weed on the front porch and thought about Momma.

  I GOT SUSPENDED FROM SCHOOL the next day. I had been pretty much failing algebra because I couldn’t see how it mattered, when old-ass Mrs. Randall told me to stay after school. She was a churchmouse and had been trying all year to make me see why algebra was so important. I think she wanted to talk to me about Jesus—they all did—but she was a coward so all she could talk about was math. I felt bad for her, like she wanted to fix me because she couldn’t fix her own sad life. Algebra wasn’t about numbers and math, she said, it was about solving problems, and if you could learn the formulas of algebra and follow them to solve the problems, you were teaching yourself discipline to solve the problems of life. I looked her dead in the eye and said, “That’s bullshit, Mrs. Randall, I’m sorry.” She jumped back like I’d slapped her. “Life ain’t got no solution. All problems do is grow, and then one day you’re dead. All you can do is roll with them. That’s why I know math is dumb as hell.” I crossed my arms, which were all bitten up by mosquitoes and which I knew seeing would make her squirm. When she started to tear up, I said, “I’m sorry, but it just is.” Then she left the room, and I told myself I wasn’t being a brat, I was saving her from wasting her time. It was Mr. Woodson, the vice-principal, who came back in and asked me if I’d cussed her out. “Sure as hell did,” I said. That’s what actually got me suspended. I think they wanted to cut me some slack, but I was tired of pretending to be somebody I wasn’t. Rawls was pissed at me too. I could tell he thought I was circling the same slow drain as Momma, only a hell of a lot faster, and he couldn’t do nothing about it. I wasn’t worried, though, because Momma had been twenty-nine when she left, so the way I saw it I had like eleven or twelve years before that. An eternity. I asked Rawls what he was studying.

  “I’m gonna be an electrician,” he said. “You know they make fifty an hour?”

  “An hour?”

  He nodded. “All it is is math,” he said, “and tools. That’s the only thing you gotta pay for. But if you can get on a good crew, you can use theirs and learn on the job. Only thing is, you gotta get that Associates.”

  “You going back to school?”

  “Luther Tech. I’m getting my GED at the vocational fair they’re having next week at the Chamber of Commerce, then I’m cleared to enroll. I’m gonna be making bank here shortly, April. We won’t even have to live here no more.”

  “You wanna leave?”

  “Hell yeah, I wanna leave! Don’t you?”

  I looked out the window at the rutted driveway and the bicycles flat on the ground and the power lines through the pines and the shit-ass ugly sky.

  “I guess,” I said. “But where would we go?”

  “Anywhere. We could go across town, or we could go down to Tampa where Momma’s folks are, or anywhere else. Florida’s big. The point is, you need to stay in school and quit fuckin up so when we do leave, you ain’t in trouble. And you ain’t caught up in nothing. And I don’t want you smoking weed or selling it.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do, Rawls.”

  “I ain’t telling you, April, I’m begging. I love you, and I don’t want to see you get drowned by this place.”

  “What happened to you? You used to be a bad-ass. All you do now is talk like a goddamn preacher.”

  “You know what happened to me. Casey Bentley happened to me.”

  “Casey Bentley ain’t shit, Rawls. He’s a pussy.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about, April, as usual.”

  “I know more than you think I do.”

  “You almost killed me,” Rawls said after a pause.

  “I was trying to help.”

  “You could’ve killed him! You know what would’ve happened? Jail. You think school sucks? Jail’s worse. You don’t come back the same, and I’d have probably gone too. You see what I’m saying?” He pinched his fingers. “We were this close to this family getting split up.”

  “I was protecting my brother,” I said defiantly.

  “That’s the point, April. You can’t protect me, and I can’t protect you. You think Momma and Daddy didn’t try to protect each other? You think Casey Bentley wasn’t trying to protect something? Everybody’s trying to protect everything and that’s what fucks us up. It’s a setup. The deck’s stacked. That’s why we gotta get out.”

  Suddenly there was a knock at the door, and we both spun around.

  “RAWLS! Get the FUCK out here!”

  Casey Bentley’s voice. Rawls looked at me. I shrugged.

  Rawls looked out the window, then instead of going outside, he went to his room. When he came out a minute later, he didn’t even look at me, he just walked past. Then he answered the door. I stood at his side. Casey was on the porch with a hat pulled low over his face.

  “I just got fuckin jacked,” Casey said. He was wheezing and looked like he was trying not to be seen.

  “Sounds like a personal problem,” said Rawls.

  “Look,” Casey said, “I know me and you got beef, but I come to ask you a favor. Dude named Tyler. Lives down the way. Mother-fucker thinks he’s a bad-ass,” Casey said. “Just got through waving a gun in my face. Took half my fucking stash.” Casey lifted his cap and his forehead had a large gash, and everything around his left eye was red and swollen.

  “Damn, son,” Rawls said. “At your place?”

  “Yeah.” Casey glared at me while he lit a cigarette, then he pointed it at me. “And I’m gonna leave it up to her to explain how she’s in the middle of this shit because I ain’t trying to get a fucking knife swung at me again.” He looked at Rawls. “But right now we need to talk in private.”

  Rawls looked at me. I didn’t do anything. I didn’t know what I was going to say. He looked back at Casey and lifted his shirt. I could see from the side the black handle of a gun in Rawls’ waistline. “Just so you don’t pull some shit,” Rawls said. “If you’re cool with that, we can talk in my room, and I ain’t gonna fuck with you.”

  Casey looked around the yard, then back at Rawls and nodded. Rawls walked down the hall to his room, leaving the door open. Casey flicked the cigarette he’d just lit into the yard, came in, and shut the door. When he passed me, he said, “I know exactly what you fucking did.” He held me with his eyes for a second, then went in Rawls’ room and they shut the door. I tried to listen, but they turned up the music. I went back to the couch in the living room and stared down the hall. I got worried for Rawls. I wondered if it was a setup to get him back for what I’d brought on Casey, so I went to the window and looked out at the neighborhood. Nobody else came. I watched it get dark.

  Casey and Rawls came out of Rawls’ room in a cloud of smoke, and for one absurd second I was worried what Daddy would do if he smelled it.

  TEN MINUTES LATER RAWLS WAS in basketball clothes and eating a bowl of cereal.

  “Where you going,” I said.

  “Nowhere,” he said. “And you ain’t coming.”

  “Rawls, talk to me.”

  “You talked enough,” he said. Then he just scooped mouthful after mouthful. His silent treatment was almost too much to bear, and I felt guiltier and guiltier.

  “What’d y’all talk about in there? What’re y’all gonna do?”

  He slammed a fist on the table, and milk jumped out the bowl. “What the fuck are you over at Casey Bentley’s for? That mo
ther-fucker is dirty. Always has been.” He clutched his own head. “I don’t know why I have to explain this to you! You were there when he beat my ass. And then you went over there? I don’t know who you are anymore.”

  “Rawls.”

  He got up and threw the cereal bowl in the sink, re-tucked the gun in his waistline, and walked out.

  I caught up to him in the yard and reached for him, but he grabbed my arm and slung me around and my butt skidded across the dirt, and I got sand all up my ass. I almost cried, but I fought it off. “I know where you’re going,” I said. “Why don’t you just let Casey go. Why you gotta get in the middle now?”

  “Because your dumb-ass stirred up a fuckin hornet’s nest.” He bit his lip and shook his head and jerked me up off the ground and pulled me close, and I could still smell the cereal. “You know what Casey told me in there?”

  I shook my head.

  “That you went over there and fucked Tyler.”

  He twisted my arm and I squirmed, but then I said, “So?”

  “So it’s true.” He looked down. “I knew it was. I guess I didn’t want to believe my own sister… was…”

  “Was what, Rawls.”

  He shook his head. Without looking up, he wiped his eyes. “I love you, girl,” he said, “but right now I can’t stand to look at you.”

  I was crying now, too, and I hated it. I wiped my face. “Stop,” I said to myself out loud.

  “You got two whole years til you’re done with school, April. Two years. That’s a long-ass time. There ain’t no way I can watch out for you for two whole years. If Casey’s after you, he’s gonna get you.”

  “But Casey ain’t after me.”

  “Until yesterday he wasn’t,” Rawls said. “He had a little theory that you went over there to start a fight between him and Tyler, and then he told me that if I didn’t help him take Tyler down, he was coming for you. That’s why I’m going over there. I’m gonna end this shit tonight. For you.”