“Do you see a plastic bag?” he says. I look around, but I hope I don't find one. He wants to
transport his stash to some other hiding spot. I'm here to help pull off the heist and slow the goods
“Here.” He's found a ratty old garbage bag that might even have had a dead animal in it at some point. He puts the stuff in it and shoves it at me. “Come on, let's go.” I hesitate for a moment. He's already under the door. “Come on. You want to get caught?” No, I don't want to get caught.
If I am good, it's because being bad is such a hassle. You've got to worry about getting caught and you've got to hide things. It takes a lot of energy. Besides, there are way better ways to get in trouble than smoking and looking at dirty magazines. I could be getting in trouble for trying to fly midgets off kites like Moran. Now, there's something worth getting caught for.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
“Your place. Come on.”
Perfect. That's exactly what I need.
If Tom was here, he'd know what to say. What am I thinking? If Tom was here, we'd be halfway to my place already. He'd race us back for cigarettes and naked women.
I roll under the door with the garbage bag. Rico slams the door shut and whips down the alley. I have to run again. You hardly ever have to run when you aren't being bad.
I hope Elys isn't home.
“Elys?” I call out. The house is empty.
“Wow, that is a big TV set. You get cable?”
It figures that Rico would be interested in the television. Now it's going to take me forever to get him upstairs so that he can show me the dirty magazines, give me a cigarette and leave. I want to get the whole thing over with before Elys shows up.
He plunks himself down on the couch and grabs the remote.
What would Tom do? What would Lucy do? What would I do if I were someone else?
I walk over, take the remote from his hand and say, “Do you want to smoke or don't you?”
Rico follows me upstairs to my room. When we get there we open the garbage bag, pull out the mags and smokes and light up. We kneel by the window to blow the smoke outside and use my green plastic Viper Station as an ashtray.
The smoke itches my throat. It's like sucking warm dust. I want to cough, but I swallow instead. I won't give Rico the satisfaction. His cigarette smoke keeps getting in my eyes.
“You ever smoke before?” he asks me.
“Only second-hand,” I say.
Rico nods. “You're a smoking virgin. I just ruined you for life. You're addicted now, Ter. There's no turning back.” He grins so wide he loses his eyes.
Rico puts out his butt in my Viper Station. The plastic melts. He opens one of the magazines and starts flipping through.
“I found these under my brother's mattress. He's too embarrassed to say anything about them missing. I mean, what's he going to do, tell Mom? Ha.” He passes one to me. 1 go through it slowly. Fortunately there are a lot of pages with words on them. I want to see a naked woman, but I don't want to see a naked woman.
I've seen my mom naked a few times accidentally. It wasn't that interesting. It was kind of like seeing a baby naked. You just can't think of your mother as a woman that way. Other women, you just can't help but want to see them naked. I try not to think about it too much.
I watch Rico look at the centerfold. He's slouched against my wall and he has another cigarette in his mouth. I can't see his face. I can only see this naked lady with huge tanned tits and shiny lipstick on puckered lips on the back of the page he's looking at. She's upside-down.
I think about being a bat. Bats are mammals so they must have sex. I wonder if they do it upsidedown or flying? I think about bats doing it while flying.
Maybe I am interested in the magazines, but there's no way I'm looking at them with Rico here. I
don't think it's respectful to look at naked women when someone else is in the room. It's just not right. Rico did this to me. I can't help looking at that upside-down naked woman and thinking about bats doing it while flying.
I reach for another cigarette to make like I'm more interested in smoking than I am in naked women. I just sit there and smoke and it feels like my lungs are filling with car exhaust. My eyes are leaking. My mouth is pasty. I still can't stop thinking about bats doing it in mid-air. Then my mind changes the bats into naked women with wings and it just keeps getting stupider.
I'm trying to shake it out of my head when Rico looks up. He's got this startled look on his face.
“What time is it?” he asks and looks at my digital clock, which reads 2:41. “I gotta go, Ter.” He stands up and makes for my door. I haven't finished my cigarette yet.
He opens the door and Elys is standing right there. I whip the smoke behind my back, but I'm choking so hard trying to hold in the smoke that I start coughing and it blows out my mouth and my nose at the same time.
Elys is laughing.
“Gotta go, Ter,” Rico mutters and runs past Elys. She's seen me with the smoke already, not to mention the dirty magazine on my lap.
“Well, well, well,” Elys says. She walks in and takes the magazine from my lap. She lifts it up and lets the centerfold fall loose. “Hello, Miss March. Why, Miss March, what nice tan lines you have.” She turns it toward me and points at the picture. “Get a load of this.” As if I could do anything but stare at Miss March when she's four inches in front of my face.
“Airbrush city,” says Elys. I take another puff from the cigarette. She takes it out of my hand and walks to the bathroom with it. 1 hear the toilet flush. While she's in there, I stuff the magazines back in the garbage bag and hustle them under my mattress. She comes back in, scans the room and then sits beside me on the bed.
“You get away with this once,” she says. “Once, okay? I catch you smoking ever again, I rat to your mom. And I'll tell her about the girlie magazines.” She pokes the mattress beside her to let me know she's on to me. She has my number big time. Man, oh, man. She puts her arms around my shoulders. I wish like hell I'd stayed in the park this morning.
“I understand about you wanting to look at naked women, but I wish you would wait until you can see real ones.”
What is she talking about?
“I can see real ones?” I sputter. Elys guffaws in that smug, know-it-all way of hers.
“Yeah. In your future. Those magazine women aren't real. I mean, they're real, but⦔ I'm not getting her. They sure look real to me. Real naked. All smooth, tall and tanned with long hair and big lips. They look like real good women to me.
“I mean,” Elys says more firmly now, “you shouldn't be able to buy women the way you buy â I don't know â ketchup. You don't buy women off the magazine rack. Besides, those magazines are false advertising. You'll never date a woman who looks like that.”
Now I'm insulted.
“How do you know?” I say.
“Any woman good enough to date you is going to be way more beautiful than any of those Playboy bunnies and you'll know it whether your eyes are open or closed.”
I roll my eyes. Elys whips her arm off my shoulder, pulls the mattress up and gets the garbage bag. She pulls the magazines out and opens them.
“They are bottles of ketchup. They are commodities. How would you like to get paid for taking your clothes off? How would that make you feel about yourself? What if you weren't goodlooking enough to take your clothes off for money? How would you like to be treated like you were only valuable because of what you looked like? Because you were a certain height, or a certain
weight, or your eyes were a certain color?”
I think about Moran's airborne midgets and the Midget Employment Stabilization Board. Then I think “Naked Women Employment Stabilization Board,” and how there is way more employment for naked women than there is for midgets. I mean, small people.
“It's not funny to be funny looking,” I say, remembering Lucy's words. Elys looks at me like I'm whacko. I don't think I've ever seen her so angry She doesn't seem angry at me. It's the magazines she is angry aboutâthose naked women and a world full of Morans.
Mom and Farley are supposed to be going away this weekend. I have to play goody-good little good boy for Farley on Friday. Mom tells me this over dinner. Hot dogs. I put a ton of ketchup on mine. It is a secret joke with myself. Mom should notice. Usually I only have mustard.
I don't even like ketchup that much. I don't think you should put sweet stuff on meat â even pretend meat like hot dogs. Think of sprinkling sugar on steak if you don't believe me.
I get to the park and I'm looking for Rico so that I can call him a Moran. He is in big trouble for taking off so fast yesterday.
Nobody's here except Boobacious.
“Have you seen Rico?” I ask her. I just want information. I don't want a discussion. I don't want anything to slip out accidentally.
“Did you touch Lucy yesterday?” she asks. Man, oh, man, I'm in trouble. Lucy must've busted her head open or something.
“Why? I didn't hit her. Bats don't hit.” I know I'm blushing.
“What?” Boobacious asks.
“Her head touched my shoe. I swear, I didn't do anything.”
“Did your hands touch her head?” she asks. Now it's my turn to be confused.
“What?”
“I had to send Lucy home because she had head lice. Now, is there any way you could have it?”
“Lice?” I want to itch my head bad, but I can't because Boobacious will think I have lice. Just thinking about lice makes my head itchy.
“I don't have lice,” I tell her.
“That's not what I asked, Terence.” How does she know my name? I should know hers. Her real one, I mean. “All I'm asking is did you touch her in any way that you could get lice?” I wonder if lice can climb into your sneakers and crawl up into your hair. I just had the most horrible thought about where lice could go in a body.
“I didn't touch anything, I swear to God.”
“Are you sure?” It's like she's trying to get me to confess to some kind of crime, or, worse, maybe she thinks me and Lucy are going around. We might be bats, but it's not like that. Adults think everything is about sex or money.
“Look, she's not my girlfriend, if that's what you mean. I didn't touch her. I don't have lice.”
She looks at my head like she wants to touch it. I want to cover my head with my arms.
Rico's coming down the path toward us. He's got his hands in his pockets. One day he's going to fall right on his big round head.
“I took cootie girl home,” Rico says, like he's expecting some reward. I give him the evilest eye I have and he looks at me like he's all innocent.
“Where'd you go yesterday, Moran?” I say. Boobacious takes a walk around the wading pool.
“What are you talking about, dickhead?”
“I'm talking about you running home. I had to take the heat for both of us. Those weren't even my magazines. And my Viper Station is ruined. It's all melted.” I never get to say this much in a fight. If Tom were here I wouldn't get to say anything. I'm so angry, but it's not even about the Viper Station or the magazines. I hate Rico today. I can't even look at his face.
“I didn't see the point of me sticking around. What was she going to do? Yell at some stranger? You said you wanted to smoke.”
“I did not.” He practically made me do it. “It was all you, Rico. You pushed me into it. You think you're Mr. Big Man pushing everyone around. You nearly killed Lucy yesterday.”
“You're crazy. She was hanging upside-down already. Maybe she was trying to get the cooties to fall off her head.”
I am so mad, I can hardly see. I want to beat on
him, but he's, like, a foot taller than I am. And bats don't hit.
I can't stand to look at his face for one more second. I run out of the park.
I bet he didn't even check to see if Daphne or Lucy's parents were home. What is she supposed to do all day. Sit at home and have lice?
This car honks at me when I cross Bathurst Street. I give him the finger. Anyway, they should put a crosswalk here. Lots of little kids in this neighborhood want to go to the park.
I get to Lucy's apartment building, but I can't find the front door. I have to look all through the mall on the bottom floor. Finally, 1 find the apartment part of the building. I don't know Lucy's last name so I can't buzz up.
How can you be friends with someone and not know her last name? I'm looking down the list of last names to see if any of them ring a bell, when Russell the chess guy/pervert comes in.
“Hello,” he says. I think he recognizes me. I want to ask him Lucy's last name, but I don't want to tell him about the lice, so I end up not saying anything. He holds the door open for me and I follow him in. He obviously thinks I know where I'm going.
“You going to Lucy's?”
I nod. He pushes the button for the elevator. He is carrying a grocery bag. It has corn chips and Coke
in it. I didn't know guys his age ate junk food.
He sees me looking at his groceries and says, “Do you play chess?”
“No. I don't know how. I play Scrabble with my cousin sometimes.” The elevator comes and I get on with him. I think about Rico saying Russell's a pervert, and I make my way to the corner of the elevator. Maybe he uses the junk food to lure kids up to his apartment.
Russell pushes two buttons. I guess one of them is for Lucy's floor. I try to look interested in the floor numbers as they light up above the door.
“I could teach you to play chess, if you liked,” he says. Does he mean now? In his house? “At the park, I mean,” he adds, like he can read my mind. I can't believe Rico, man. He doesn't know anything. Just because a guy hangs out in a park doesn't make him a pervert. Then againâ¦