The movie starts out just as you’d expect. Cheerleaders are singing and dancing. Everyone’s happy to be alive and smiling all over the place. Zac-Michael Wienus is the lead guy, and he’s supposed to be the stud football player. (A hundred-pound gay-wad with a floppy hairdo and lip gloss.) On the Merrian High football team he’d get his ass handed to him if he shimmied under the center’s butt and started gyrating his hips around and rapping about “scoring.” I recognize all of the dudes from Kidz Channel shows. They’re doing cartwheels over each other, and no one is smashing into each other properly. They’re throwing guys into the air, and the opposing team is catching them to the beat. It’s completely unrealistic and totally ridiculous and . . . I absolutely love it! I wish
I
could be on their football team instead of mine. Practice would be so much more fun. I’d be the best singing, flipping, linebacker/kicker of all time! Abby catches me bobbing my head to this song “Go! Fight! Win!” so I make a face and mouth, “Sooo lame.” She laughs because she knows I’m a goof and she digs me anyway.
I guess I haven’t watched enough Kidz Channel lately because Hilary Idaho has blossomed in the bra! EJ’s busy right now, but we’ll discuss this development privately, at great length, very soon. She’s so hot! Tig ol’ bitties, long hair and tan skin, and the girl can dance her ass off. She sings really great except for when she belts out a word like “Win” and adds fifteen extra syllables, so it becomes, “Weeeeiiiiiaaaahhhheeeeeiiiiiaaahhhhhuuuuunnnna!!!” The movie finishes up in exactly ninety minutes (so they can stick it on TV in six months) with the football stud, Zac-Michael, joining the cheerleading squad and helping them prevail in the national cheer championships. He hooks up with Hilary (just kissing, of course), and then they wrap it all up with a jazzier version of “Go! Fight! Win!” The picture freezes on the cheerleading squad in mid-gayness, standing on each other’s shoulders and smiling like the happiest people on earth. Zac and Hilary are holding a trophy, kissing. The credits start to roll, but the first thing that pops up reads, “A Kidz Production!” Abby and I share a look of dread as the logo slowly rolls up the screen.
The lights come on, and EJ’s mouth is all red and swollen like he’s been assaulted by a vacuum cleaner. He has lipstick all over his face, neck, and ears.
“Jeez, Nicky, did you reapply?” Abby asks, handing EJ a Kleenex.
Parents with strollers are glaring at us as they walk out because of the lewd acts that were performed in our row. EJ still looks kind of lost as we step out of the theater. He points to a poster and suggests, “Yo, we should see
Fart Knockers
next!”
“No, we shouldn’t,” Nicky declares. “I have got to see
Cheer!
again!”
EJ’s eyes sadly lower, and I smile. Abby tells them that they’re on their own. “I need to see something smart, or my brain will fall out.”
“Yeah, good call,” I say as if I’m worried about my brain too.
Waiting in line at the snack bar, Abby summarizes the article I was supposed to read about C. B. Down’s film,
Genoa Eyes
. I think she was saying something about how rare it is for a first-time director to win the Cannes Film Festival, but she put her hand inside the back pocket of my Levi’s as she was explaining it all, so I got a little sidetracked. Anyway, she paid for popcorn, Cherry Coke, and Milk Duds for our next screening. How awesome is she?
We casually stroll into the empty theater, and I ask, “Are you sure we got the time right?”
But the lights dim a few seconds later and the opening credits say, “Written and directed by C. B. Down.” How cool is that? A guy that I’ve been in the same room with! A guy that went to my high school and saw me perform in the spring play . . . wrote and directed the most boring movie of all time! Oh my God. Most of it is in French or Russian, but they don’t type out what’s being said like they do in the other foreign movies that Abby has dragged me to. Ten minutes into the story, and I have a pretty good idea why we’re alone. Abby must have misread the article, because the only award this thing should have won was the Trash Can Film Festival. I wonder if she told me how bad this movie was going to SUCK when I was spacing off in the snack bar line. The only thing more depressing than the violin music that plays over everything . . . is the nonexistent story line. It starts out with a guy shooting up on the bathroom floor of a crack motel in some foreign country. Then it flashes back to a time before his life was so screwed up and he had a hot girlfriend, but she only speaks Russian . . . or French (whatever they speak in the Bourne movies) so all they can do is have angry sex. Which would be awesome if they actually showed anything. This movie is going to give art films a bad name because you only see the action for a second or two before they cut to a shadow on the wall or a bird in the windowsill or something. He gets drunk a lot, chain-smokes cigarettes, and out of nowhere . . . she leaves him and joins the circus! He tries to find her but doesn’t speak the Bourne language, and he doesn’t seem to know where he is, so he can’t find her. Then he goes back to the motel, and I think it turns out he’s been dead the whole time. Roll credits! Awesome movie; where do they give out the awards?
I only
think
the guy died, because after watching this non-entertainment for two hours and twenty-three minutes, a guy taps me on the shoulder, shines his flashlight in my eyes, and asks to see our tickets.
I look over at him with my mangled left eye and bark, “You gotta be kiddin’ me!”
He’s startled by my appearance and stumbles backward before mumbling, “W-w-we didn’t sell any tickets for this movie, so you obviously don’t have them.”
I jump up like I’ve been paroled from jail on a false arrest and ask, “Where the hell were you two hours ago with your ticket-sales info and flashlight?!”
“Sir, you have to go.”
“We’re gone,” I say as Abby grabs my hand, and we walk up the aisle.
I can tell Abby is pissed, too, because she squeezes my hand and sounds like a frog when she mutters, “Unbelievable!”
We step outside the theater, and I see that she really is crying, so I instinctively give her a hug and say, “It’s okay, it’s finally over.”
Her face is pressed into my collarbone when she asks, “Are you kidding?”
“Yeah, I’m joking. . . . It’s probably gonna keep going for another hour or two.”
She laughs. “Oh, for a second I thought that you didn’t like the movie.”
“Nooo, why would you think that? Who would
not
like it? I friggin’ hated that movie.”
She pulls back and asks, “Wait, are you kidding?”
“I do joke a lot, but I’m dead serious when I tell you that I’d like a two-hour refund on my life.”
Her face is a combination of shock and disgust that I’d only expect to see if she were watching me eat a hot dog out of the trash. “You are so immature,” she scoffs as she marches toward the ticket window.
Immature? Where the hell did that come from?
I follow her to the box office, where she demands a student ticket for the next showing.
Genoa Eyes
is rated R, so I make eye contact with the ticket guy and shake my head—“No”—flash ten fingers, then five, point to Abby, and mouth the words, “She’s FIFTEEN!”
He asks to see her ID, and she flips around too fast for me to drop my hands, so I shake both of them around and say, “Jazz hands!”
She doesn’t laugh, so I try, “There goes their last chance to sell a ticket for that stinker. W-w-what do you want to do now?”
Her eyes narrow, and she storms off through the parking lot. I rush to unlock my bike, but stop to laugh when I see EJ’s BMX still secured to the rack. I know that poor bastard is stuck in there watching
Cheer! The Musical
for the third time.
I roll up behind Abby, thinking about how I could seem more mature real quick, but she’s wearing short shorts and taking really big steps. Her thighs are really strong, and they’re jiggling provocatively as they rub together. . . . Anything intelligent I was thinking was just deleted. I don’t even know where I am. I’m sure I was brewing up something super insightful that would make her forget about why she’s mad at me, but maybe not. She’s certainly striding away from me . . . kind of strutting, actually. Her booty is bouncing to a beat that makes me want to dance!
Boom, boom, boom, boom
. That damn “Go! Fight! Win!” song is burned into my brain, and it’s burrowing into my loins, so I ride up beside her and bump her butt with my hip. I take my hands off the handlebars and start to ride circles around her. I clap my hands three times before cheering, “Y’all ready? OKAY! Let’s GOOOO! Fight! Win. . . !” (
Clap clap.
) “Say it a-gain! And then we GOOOO! Fight! Win! Until we . . .” (I don’t remember the words.) “Something, Gooo! Fight! Weeeeiiiiaaaaauuuuueeeeeiiiiaana again!”
From behind I see her back shaking, so I pull up to confirm that she’s laughing and not crying from embarrassment.
I keep riding, hands free, and act out the cheer/dance/clap routine as best I can. “Ready fo’ a show, let’s GO! With all ya might, let’s FIGHT! That’s the end and we WIN—”
Abby sings with me, “Until we Go! Fight! Win . . . again!” She jumps into the air and does the splits like it’s no big deal.
“Wow, nice herkie!” I laugh.
“How do you know what a herkie is?” she asks.
“Oh, I was forced to sit through an entire movie about cheerleading one time.”
She smiles.
“I’m sorry I didn’t like your movie,” I say seriously.
“No, I was upset and blew it out of proportion. I’m on my period so I’m all emotional.”
Uhhh, we have officially taken a step . . . a personal step, a gross step, one I could have done without, but
I
am able to have conversations about many different subjects and want to prove that I’m not so immature after all. I try not to make a face as I add, “Oh, I-I-I know all about periods and tampons and PMSD. My dad refers to my sister’s periods as ‘exclamation points.’”
She, too, seems uncomfortable with our current topic. She raises her eyebrows and says, “That’s a good story, Carter.”
After an awkward moment we bust out laughing, and she finally hops on my axle pegs for a ride home. I think we’re back on track so I divert our course through Merrian Park. The sun is going down and the huge park is almost deserted as she attempts to explain why she liked C. B. Down’s award-winning/terrible movie.
“They weren’t in a foreign country. . . . The language barrier was just a metaphor. He’d lost his ability to communicate.”
A lightbulb goes off in my mind, and I’m glad Abby is riding behind me and can’t see it. She is so much smarter than me! “So he was just losing his mind throughout the story? I get it, but I’m still not entertained by it. I wouldn’t see
Cheer! The Musical
again if you paid me, but it was at least amusing.”
She asks, “Could you believe Hilary Idaho’s boobs?”
“Yeah, where did those come from?”
“The silicone valley,” she replies judgmentally.
“You think they’re fake?” I ask, and offer up a reverse high five for the quick boob joke.
She slaps my hand and says, “Totally! I read all about her surgery in
US Weekly
. She was completely flat in her last movie and then all the sudden she’s a C cup? Come on!”
I don’t have much to say about Hilary Idaho’s movies, but I love the fact that Abby and I are discussing cup sizes. “Isn’t she our age?”
Abby replies, “She’s sixteen! What kind of message does that send to her fans?”
“Tits are important!”
She whacks the back of my head and says, “Exactly! It’s ridiculous, dangerous, elitist and—”
“Totally awesome!”
She whacks me again because she thinks I’m joking, so I add, “You can’t get too high-and-mighty with your boomin’ natural rack back there.”
She doesn’t have a rebuttal for that one. She may not appreciate having her breasts used against her in an argument. I’d like to stay on this subject for as long as possible, so I try to clarify my position. “I might actually agree with you. I happen to have a love/hate relationship with boobs. I’d probably get a lot more done if you guys didn’t have ’em, but then I think . . . would I even get up in the morning?”
She doesn’t say anything again. I believe that’s the typical reaction when someone says something super profound.
We’re rolling past the duck pond when she starts telling drama camp stories. She tells me how much fun she’s having and that two kids have already fallen into the orchestra pit (I’m not the only one). She’s really into the “coolness and maturity” of the college drama majors. She mentions one of her coworkers in particular a few times. She tells me, “His name is Carter, like you,” and how he’s “super funny” and “totally smart,” and how much I’d “love him.” Which is odd because hearing about the guy, and the tone of her voice, makes me think that I would not even like him, and I might want to punch him in his face if I saw it. But I don’t want to be one of those guys who’s always accusing his girl of stuff and acting immature and picking fights, so I just quicken my pace instead. She tells me about all the plays this College Carter Dumbass has starred in and how Ms. McDougle was talking to him about trying out for
my
part in C. B. Down’s movie. And how she’s going to rehearse with him too.
My legs are burning as we fly past the picnic area. I pant, “I thought it was a high school movie.”
She explains, “Yeah, but he’s such a good actor that he can easily pull off being younger.”
“Is he short?”
“No, he’s a bit taller than you.”
“You know I’m still growin’, right?”
“Why are you going so fast?”
“I don’t know. I just like to ride this way sometimes!”
I’m not jealous, I’m not that guy, and my legs are on fire, so I squeeze the brakes and skid to a stop. I’d like to change the subject off of this a-hole who’s moving in on my girl, so I just turn around and look her in the eyes. As she steps off the pegs to yell at me for stopping too fast, I give her a hard kiss that shuts her up. She may think another Carter is cool, but she’s
my
girl.
A bolt of lightning shoots through my body as my forgotten bruises collide with her open mouth. “Yeaow, awesome, cool!” I say, pulling away from the pain.
She asks, “What’s the matter with you?”
She seems confused when I reply, “Nothin’. Y-Y-You wanna go down the rocket-ship slide?”
My face is hot from riding hard, so the embarrassment shouldn’t be that obvious. My lips are throbbing with pain. I grab her hand as we stroll past the swing sets. I’m trying really hard to pay attention while Abby explains how all of this land was part of the Saur mansion until the nineteen sixties. She tells me why nothing ever gets fixed in this park. She thinks it’s because the newer suburbs have sucked up all of the money, but that’s part of why Merrian is perfect for shooting this movie; it looks the exact same way as when C. B. lived here.
The sun is almost gone as I set my bike down and we climb the rickety spiral stairs to the top of the old rocket-ship slide. I’ve been up here a thousand times but never noticed how beautiful the view was. The slide is on top of a hill that overlooks most of Merrian. It all seems pretty small from up here. You can see the top of the Saur mansion and my school and the pool. The streets make sense when you’re this high, and I can just make out Grey Goose Lake in the distance. I feel stupid for thinking it was so far away and for getting lost going out there. Abby tells me that this revelation is called “perspective” and that sometimes stepping away from something can give you a better look at it. I had no idea Merrian was in a valley. I was always too busy catching my breath from sprinting up the stairs in order to beat my sister or EJ to the top. The slide is super fun, long, twisty, and fast as hell, so I was always a little dizzy and too stoked about sliding down again to worry about perspectives or topographical appreciation. Or maybe it’s just that I’ve never been up here with Abby before.
We stare at each other for a while before I pull her close. Pain shoots through my face again as she feels the romantic situation and kisses me. Dang it. I pull back after a few seconds and look into her eyes. I’m begging her to stop with my gaze, but she must think those tears in my eyes are sexy, because she comes in for more. Whoever invented the phrase “love hurts” must have dealt with something like this. I pull away again and roll my head to the side. She kisses my neck, and I moan a sigh of relief like I’m a guy who’s really into getting his neck slobbered on. I grab her boobs because they’re there, and who wouldn’t? We’ve already established that boob is cool, but I’ve yet to try for more since our breakup/blowup last fall. Going up her skirt in a movie theater caused an uproar that rocked my school with scandal and wrecked my life for months, but I’d do it all over again in a second! I hope this rocket ship’s rusty bolts can hold it down, because Abby and I are commencing the launch sequence! I slide my hands down her torso and unbutton the top button of her shorts as she cleans out my eardrum. I pause to make sure a slap isn’t on the way before I go after the zipper. I give it a nervous tug and am halfway home when she aborts the launch and gives a chop block to my trembling hand.