Read Everything Beautiful Online
Authors: Simmone Howell
Fraser’s books were old and battered and really, really read. Some had leather covers and gilt lettering; others were barely bound. They were mostly science, religion, and natural history. I gasped when I saw the same copy of
Utopia
as the one Chloe had given me.
“What?” Dylan spoke around his cigarette.
I held it up. “I have this book.”
“Oh yeah, I’ve seen you reading it. What is it?”
“It’s good. You should keep it.” I tossed it to him. Dylan ducked and
Utopia
landed on the dust bowl. He picked it up. “Always throwing things at me.”
I looked at him. “Are you even going to help?”
“What can
I
do?”
“Clear out those papers.” I pointed to the desk. “And nix the cigarette. This is tinderbox country.”
Dylan was miffed. “You know, we don’t
have
to do this. Neville only put us here because he doesn’t know where else to put us.”
“I know.” I pulled down a handful of books and started stacking. “But I tried to take the low road, and look where it got me. If I don’t keep busy I’ll go nuts. I never thought it would be so difficult to just
leave
.”
“How hard is it? You’ve got legs.”
“Ha-ha.” I stopped stacking. Something had occurred to me. It was obvious, but I wanted to hear it from him. “Were you trying to leave?”
“I’m
always
trying to leave,” Dylan said.
“Here?” I was confused. I drew a circle in the air to signify Spirit Ranch.
Dylan pointed to his head. “Here.”
That was when I asked him how it happened.
He smiled for a long while. “You took your time.”
“Okay.” Dylan started slowly. “This is the story of February second. This guy Brett invited a few of us up to his parents’ farm. We were going to make a no-budget horror movie, then we found the beer. I’d never been drunk before. Really. I had a bit of a thing about it, like
My body is a temple
. But everyone else was . . . doing it . . . so.
“After we started drinking, the night had no order. I can remember lying out in a field and everything looked soft. I remember trying to out-stare the cows. I fucking hate cows. And then we all had a go on the tractor. I tried to do a donut. Stupid. I remember this noise—like a wave crashing over my head. And the sky and the ground came together. When it stopped rolling there was this silence and then there was just like . . . a flood.” Dylan opened his mouth and I heard white noise, the roar of a soccer crowd, the sound of a shell. “I remember the ambulance driver’s breath smelled like bananas and Brett’s dog wouldn’t stop barking. I thought the reason I couldn’t move was because I was stuck under the tractor. But then they got me out and I still couldn’t move.” He squinted and shook his head.
I swallowed. “Wow.”
“Yeah. Wow,” Dylan echoed. “And just before it happened I saw a shooting star.”
“Really?”
“Nah.” He smiled briefly and counted off. “Two months in the hospital, then four months in rehab, then back home with ongoing physical therapy. The doctors do this pinprick test—‘Can you feel that?’ ‘No.’ They go higher. ‘Can you feel that?’ With me the pin stopped here.” He sliced his hand into the top of his thigh. “I’m what you call incomplete. My spinal cord wasn’t completely severed, just partially. In mutard that’s a good thing—it leaves you some wiggle room. If you’re complete that means there’s no going back.”
My words were out before I could stop them. “Oh, Dylan.”
He gave me a funny look. “Don’t cry for me, Argentina. It was my own dumb fault. I’ve been living with it for ten months, twelve days, and seven hours. I’m almost used to it. Sometimes, usually first thing when I wake up, I forget. I go to get out of bed like I used to, and then I remember and it’s like a blind coming down or a slap around the head.” Dylan clapped his hands, and the sound echoed throughout Fraser’s house.
What would you have learned? Neville had asked me. That first morning at Fraser’s house I was getting a different kind of education. I learned that:
1. Domestic cleaning may result in mirth;
2. Only crazy people write things down;
3. Last summer, Dylan touched Fleur’s breast (the right one).
Fraser had gone for a horizontal-over-vertical stacking system, so it took most of our time to break down the wall of books. Right at the back, there were two shelves of uniform black notebooks. I flicked through one. There were maps and diagrams and equations. Fraser’s handwriting was cramped. He was big on underlining and spiral doodles. I passed the notebook to Dylan. He opened it up a crack and then slammed it shut as if it was cursed.
“Have you seen the movie
Seven
?” he asked me.
“I can’t watch anything with Brad Pitt in it,” I said. “He’s too smug.”
“He’s not smug when he gets his wife’s head in a courier box.”
“Mmm.” I wasn’t really listening. “It shits me how everyone’s so beautiful in the movies. The whole world wants to pay money to see beautiful people doing bad things. It’s sick. Brad Pitt gets paid a fortune just because he has good genes.” I shrugged. “He collects art. He makes films about people dying in Tibet or wherever and then spends thousands on a painting that some guy made by spraying paint out of his bum.”
Dylan gave me a strange look. “You know a lot about Brad Pitt.”
“My mom bought those magazines. Used to. Also, I hate the way you never see fat people on the screen unless they’re white trash or retarded or a criminal or all of the above. A fat girl on film is either there for laughs or to gross people out. Unless the film’s about the fat girl’s ‘journey’ to social acceptance through weight loss. Where’s the happy fat girl? That’s what I want to know. Hmmph.”
“Okay, you hate movies.” Dylan smiled. “What do you actually like?”
“Huh?” I was supposed to have a pithy “personals” answer.
I like sunsets and romantic walks on the beach and eating my own toe jam
.
I could say I liked trouble. Or whatever Chloe had lined up for the weekend. Actually, I liked reading, but that was my secret—I didn’t do it around Chloe. I used to read with Dad, but he hadn’t cracked a book since Norma—all they read was the back of food packaging. Then there was drama. I used to put on mini plays with Mom. I know she hoped I’d eventually study it, but the future was a long way away and all bets were off. Plus, it wasn’t cool to be passionate—every geek in the library knew that much. Once I used to wish it were the Middle Ages so I could run off with the traveling players. Now I just wanted to run. Mom said that words changed when you spoke them out loud. I had no words for Dylan. But he must have known I was feeling sketchy, because he didn’t press; after a few beats of silence he simply breezed back to
Seven
.
“What I was going to say was that the killer in
Seven
has notebooks just like these, row upon row upon row.” He paused to give me the crazy eyes. “Only crazy people write things down.”
I arched an eyebrow. “You think we’ll find a body in the next room?”
“Maybe.”
We both took a breath and bolted for the door. Dylan won. He blocked me with his chair, and I couldn’t get around him. I laughed and laughed—that crazy corpsing kind of laughter that actors get when they can’t say a line without convulsing. Eventually I dropped to the floor, and rolled from side to side. “I’m dying,” I groaned. “You’re killing me.”
Dylan pulled his crutch out and jabbed me lightly in the shoulder.
“Die, you crazy bitch! Die, die hence!”
Eventually I recovered. I sat up and regarded him seriously. “Why did you get me that notebook when you went to town? Do you think
I’m
crazy?”
“Hell yeah!” Dylan laughed.
“Why?”
“Well, most people try and avoid trouble. You go for it with open arms. Also, for someone who wears a lot of black, you’re very colorful. You’re like this . . . action feature where there’s so much going on that the audience can’t tell who they’re supposed to be rooting for.”
“You think I’m larger than life,” I cracked, puffing my cheeks out like a cane toad. “Blah.”
“I don’t mean it like that. It’s supposed to be a compliment.”
“Oh.” I was feeling strange flutters in my belly. “Oh.”
Dylan was staring at me, not smiling. I looked down and rearranged my shirt. He nodded at me in the deliberate-casual manner of a high school drug dealer. “So who’s the guy you were talking about?”
“What guy?” I remembered my rant. “Oh. Ben.”
“What’s Ben like?”
I shrugged. With Chloe I’d talk about Ben to distraction, but suddenly I was having trouble identifying what it was I actually liked about him. Ben was a beautiful face, a challenge. He was doing his electrician’s apprenticeship. He was nineteen but still lived with his parents. He put most of his wages into his Monaro. He liked beer and pot. I
thought
he liked me, but now that I was once removed, I wasn’t sure about that, either.
Dylan was waiting. I said, “Ben’s follically challenged. He bet his friends he’d grow a totally gay moustache for Mo-vember—the charity thing?”
Dylan looked baffled.
“Guys get sponsored to grow mustaches in November. It’s this collective Burt Reynolds fetish. Anyway, Ben tried and he couldn’t grow one. And now he has this”—I giggled again—“this
tuft
.” I put a finger under my nose. “Here.” I started laughing. “And he won’t shave it off.”
When Dylan was just about to smile his eyes went first, and the skin on his face seemed to lift and lighten. His mouth wiggled. “A tuft?”
“A tuft.”
Dylan and I laughed about the tuft even more than we’d laughed about the body. It was like Fraser’s house ran on nitrous oxide. If ever the wave of hilarity died down, one of us would bleat “Tuft!” and the laughter would start all over again. I put my head between my legs and remembered to breathe. When I finally looked up Dylan was leaning back in his chair, smiling lazily down at me. A lock of hair kept falling across his eye, and I pictured myself crawling over to him, placing my hands on his knees, putting my face close to his, and softly blowing. Where had
that
come from? My blood sugar levels must have been dipping.
“I touched Fleur’s breast once,” Dylan confessed. “The right one. We were doing a trust exercise where you have to sit opposite each other and ‘read’ each other’s faces with your hands.”
Dylan walked his hand down an imaginary face.
“I put my hand lower and she didn’t say anything. I traveled under her top, over her bra. Her breast felt like an ice pack—that kind of consistency—only it wasn’t cold, it was warm. And her nipple—”
“Stop!”
“What? We’re just talking.”
“Oh—as long as we’re just
talking
.” I grinned. “Have you touched any other
breasts
. . . since Fleur?” I liked the way he called them breasts. It seemed politer somehow.
Dylan shook his head.
“You could touch mine.” It was the strangest thing to hear myself saying something I hadn’t thought through. There was no laughing now. I was aware of our breathing, and how hot and clammy the room was. I moved toward Dylan and he moved back; he actually rolled backward in his chair to get away from me. He said, “Are you rampant or what?”
Just as my heart was imploding, a noise exploded from the garage next door.
“What’s that?” Dylan asked.
“Bird. I think.” I couldn’t look at him.
The noise settled down and was now recognizable as a car engine.
“Someone needs a muffler.” Dylan frowned.
I squeezed past him and ran outside, across the porch to the garage. The dune buggy looked shiny and tantalizing. Bird was under the hood.
“Holy spark plugs!” I said. “You did it!”
Bird shuffled backward and turned to smile at me, but his smile died as soon as he saw Dylan in the doorway. He did his fitty thing, brushing his chin into his neck, looking up at me. Dylan wheeled in. He was doing his flash push, where he just jammed his hands down once and let the momentum carry him forward. I guess it was the equivalent of strutting.
“What’s he doing here?” Bird’s voice was brittle. He was holding a wrench—it would have been menacing if it had been anyone other than Bird.
“Neville’s making us clean up the house.”
“What’s he doing with that?” Bird nodded to Fraser’s notebook. He came forward and snatched it from Dylan’s lap. Dylan held his hands up and murmured, “Whoa! White flag.” In that second he sounded like Craig.
Bird climbed into the dune buggy and sat in the driver’s seat. He rested Fraser’s notebook on the steering wheel and started flipping through the pages, occasionally glancing up to shoot Dylan a look that was half contempt and half fear and wholly intriguing.
I nudged Dylan. “Context please.” He didn’t answer. He just rocked a little. I couldn’t read his face. All I knew was that it was getting darker.
Bird kept his head down. He had a protective hand across his binoculars. I flashed to Olive saying
they trashed his binoculars
and instinctively knew who “they” were. Not “Janey and them,” but Dylan and Craig, the comedy duo.
“You like seeing me in this, don’t you?” Dylan hammered his hands on his chair arms. He was staring at Bird, and his chin was wobbling.
I touched his arm. “Dylan—”
He shook me off. “No, I saw his face at orientation. He was smiling.”
Bird flipped the pages of the notebook harder and faster. And a smile started to grow on his face. Dylan reached for his crutches.
“Oh, shit,” I whispered.
Dylan raised the crutch. Bird and I flinched. But then Dylan brought his crutch down limply to the floor and hung his head. He was silent for a moment and then he started head-banging, slowly. I crouched down to retrieve the crutch and put it back with its mate. Dylan looked up and his eyes were wet. He sighed audibly, and spoke in a heavy voice. “Whatever, whatever. It’s fair enough. I was a shit to him. I was a shit to him camp after camp. I was a shit to the lot of them. Fuck it.” He looked past my shoulder to his old victim. “Just don’t feel like you have to hide it, Bird. You know?”
Then he wheeled around and out. I opened the car door and got in next to Bird.
“He’s not a bad guy,” I said, mostly to myself. “He’s just upset.”
Bird gripped the steering wheel. I closed my eyes and put my head on his shoulder and imagined us driving out of the garage and into the dunes. I saw it like it was the trailer to an action film. But in the final image it wasn’t Bird sitting next to me, it was Dylan.
Bird passed Fraser’s notebook to me.
“Give him this.” I held the notebook loosely. “It shows where the salt lake is.” Bird was nodding meaningfully. “The salt lake that has healing properties.”
“I thought Trevor said Fraser was loopy-loo.”
“Fraser was a visionary.” Bird got out and resumed fiddling under the hood.
I studied Fraser’s map.
Bird’s head popped to the side. “Can you keep the rest of Fraser’s books for me? Hide them in here somewhere?”
“Sure. You don’t really think—” Bird slammed the hood and beamed at me. Life was not complicated for him. Things were either good or bad. Roslyn said that to be a good person you had to believe in God, and to believe in God you had to be open as a child. You had to be open to believe in anything. I wasn’t open. I was tight as a trap. I smoothed my hand over the notebook’s dusty cover. Five minutes ago “healing” was just a word in Norma’s New Age lexicon. Now it seemed like a good prospect.