I Love You, Beth Cooper (14 page)

“She has lady parts, evidently.”

“Talk about your hot and spicy curry coconuts!”

“Coconut curry is Thai, Rich, not Indian.”

“I'll remember that the next time I have to write a term paper about international boobs.”

“Oh, no,” Denis said.

Rich saw it, too, but his reaction was less dread than uncontainable glee.

“Your secret shame!”

PATTY KECK
just happened to wander up, unconvincingly. She was with Victoria Smeltzer, or as she was known in the girls' locker room, Skeletori. Patty was wearing hip huggers and a belly shirt, neither of which was a good idea. Victoria had on a black shift and so much foundation it was disconcerting to see her upright.

“I didn't expect to find
you
here.”

“Patty.”

“I
loved
your speech, Denis,” Victoria said. “You said some
very perceptive things.
”

Patty redirected her friend at Rich. “Richard, you know Victoria?”

“
Certanamente,
” Rich said. “You've lost weight, Vick.”

Victoria bared her see-through teeth. She bowed her head shyly, and noticed Rich's stocking feet. “You're not wearing shoes.”

“Nobody wears shoes anymore,” Rich said.

Victoria swooned, though it may have been her blood sugar.

“Denny,” Patty said, using the special name Denis hated. “What happened to your poor face?”

Denis did not immediately answer. Patty, he knew from experience, did not require responses in order to keep a conversation going. Instead, he was thinking,
This is my rung
. This was where he was going to spend the rest of his life, in regrettable grapplings with women he was ashamed to be seen with, women who were his social and physical equals. Denis had dared to court the sun, and for this hubris he was hurtled back into the muck. He was the Icarus of love.

“—all purply and icky yellow,” Patty was yammering. “Greg Saloga beat you up, I'll bet. Did you see him here with that wheelchair girl? What disease does she have again?”

Denis had a horrible thought: What if Patty Keck was it? What if hers was the only tongue ever to enter his mouth, rooting around like a dog with his head in a bucket of chicken? Or, what if Patty got that stomach stapling she always talked about, and it turned out she really would be cute if she lost forty pounds? That would be the end of him, most likely. Patty would move up to average-looking guys, and with Rich spending all his time with Skeletori over there, Denis would be alone.

“Valli Woolly
paid
someone to beat you up! Is that what happened?”

Patty paused, meaning Denis could speak now.

“Uh, no,” Denis said, mentally sorting his accumulated wounds in correct chronological order. “First—”

“The Coove had a little dustup with Beth Cooper's boyfriend,” Rich interjected.

Patty Keck's eyes slat.
“Beth Cooper.”

“Yeah,” Rich casually falsified, “her ex-boyfriend, army, dark ops, couldn't stand the idea of Beth and the Coove together. So it came to blows. You think this is bad, you should see him.”

Denis liked this scenario much better than the truth. “I feel terrible about it,” he went along, shaking his head sadly. “He's at the hospital. I hope he makes it.”

“Actually,” Victoria said, “he's upstairs.”

“WHOA, THE TIME!”
Rich said, glancing at his bare wrist. “My female fiancée is getting off her shift, at Hooters, and we promised to meet her.”

Denis was struggling with the back door. It was locked, dead-bolted, to prevent any of Valli's so-called friends from messing in her father's authentic English garden with its valuable antique gnomes.

Rich grabbed the back of Denis's shirt and yanked him in the other direction. Denis waved noncommittally as he was dragged away. “Nice seeing you.”

“Me, too,” Patty called after him.

THE FRONT DOOR TANTALIZED DENIS,
three cliques ahead. He just needed to get past the French Clubettes, slurring the best French of their lives, some gearheads, not so surreptitiously casing the alarm system, and the mathletes who had made it just inside the door and stayed there. Denis could almost smell the safety of his home, of his bed, where he intended to spend the next ten weeks before leaving for Northwestern, where even the football players were his size.

Two large hands clamped his shoulders from behind, and spun him around.

“Will you remember me?”

It was the Big Girl, only she seemed bigger.

“I will remember
you,
” she said, and then sang it,

Then she remembered him, “Hey, you're that creepy dork who gave that creepy dork speech!”

Despite or perhaps because of this, the Big Girl cupped the back of Denis's head and mashed his face into hers, prying his mouth open with her strong, sinewy tongue. She pillaged his teeth and tonsils with a voracity that made Patty Keck's frenching seem coy.
Plus, there was suction. Denis once had a dream like this, involving Gardulla the Hutt, which did not end well. He tried to tear himself loose, but found that every move sucked him deeper inside her.

“Hwuwuw,” Denis said.

Rich interceded, wedging a forearm between their necks and jimmying them apart. The Big Girl undocked with a wet pop, shook it off, and then fastened onto Rich. Rich grabbed her by the ears, and through a series of tugs and twists dislodged her. He steered her groping maw away and tossed it into the French Clubettes, where it lip-locked onto Elizabeth Nagle, who protested only momentarily.

ALL THAT STOOD
between Denis and reaching adulthood was Ian Packer. Packer still had a wild hair up his butt about Denis's refusal to join in the mathletics program, which he felt had deprived him of a divisional championship. Denis declined participation because Packer made team members wear
YEAH
,
I
'
M A MATHLETE
T-shirts and even Denis had some status consciousness (named Rich). Packer contended the real reason was that Denis didn't have the
r
³
s to see who was the true Euclid of the class, Denis's barely more perfect SATs notwithstanding. So whenever the occasion arose, as it did now, he liked to hurl a fiery equation Denis's way.

“Riddle me this, Cooverman,” Ian Packer said, blocking the front door. “If
x
is an integer—”

“Not now, Packer.”

“Oh, come on, this should be easy, for the
valedictorian
.”

“
Seven,
okay?”

Tragically for Ian Packer, the answer
was
seven. He stood aside.

Through the open door, Denis saw the rest of life. It
was dark, and getting chilly, but there was Rich, waiting for him on the porch.

A SCREAMING CAME ACROSS THE ROOM.
It sounded inhuman, a car alarm or air raid siren, but very clear in its meaning.

“Asshole!”

The shriek was piercing enough to be heard throughout the house, even within the killzone of the MAXX 2s, even under the ear cups of Zooey Bananafish, who, sensing this party was finally happening, pushed II. The sudden loss of sound pressure popped ears across the room and created an aural vacuum; all anyone could hear was the persistent ringing they would be hearing for the next two or three weeks, if they were lucky.

Everybody looked to the staircase, the source of the scream. Valli Woolly stood about halfway down, in a stylish but easily accessible black tube dress. Lined up behind her on the steps were Kevin, Sean and the third Army Man.

Across the room, Cammy said what Beth was thinking.

“Choo choo.”

 

DENIS COULD HAVE RUN AWAY.
He could have crazy-legged it out of there, escaping under cover of ducks, humiliating himself in front of his entire class and for many classes to come. He could have done that. And he would have been happy to, but that bastard Ian Packer slammed the door on him.

Rich reopened the door just as Kevin's cavalry arrived, placing both him and Denis in elaborate and internationally unacceptable chokeholds.

Kevin took his time coming down the stairs. His fury had dissipated, having unleashed a good portion
of it on a thirty-four-year-old male nurse who would not tell him where Beth was or explain why he had her cell phone. Nurse Angell had also begrudgingly supplied Kevin and his troops with a deluxe assortment of pills he'd been skimming off invalids and the elderly. Accordingly, Kevin moseyed up to Denis with his pain killed, mood elevated, and erectile function greatly enhanced.

“So…” Kevin grinned, his vocal molasses thickened into a treacly drawl, “we meet again.”

Rich could not have been more delighted. “Blofeld in just about every Bond movie! Lon Chaney Jr. to Bela Lugosi in
Abbott and Costello meet Fr—”

With a minor adjustment of his left index finger, Sean paralyzed Rich's windpipe. As if to further punish him, Kevin's next line was:

“Shall we dance?”

Using the reserve air left in his upper throat, Rich got out, “Jack Nicholson to Michael Keaton in—” before passing out. Annoyed, Sean disengaged his kill finger and shook the boy back into consciousness. Rich mumbled something incoherent, something like
urton.

Denis had just thought of the perfect thing to say to Kevin, the thing that would keep everybody out of jail and the hospital, when Beth stepped between them. She had the saucy smirk and sloppy swagger of a person who thinks she has total command of a situation but really, really does not.

“Kevin. Stop this now.” She raised a finger, but couldn't keep it stationary. “Let's just get you out of here”—she eyed Valli—“and get you tested for gonorrhea—”

Kevin took Beth's whole face in his hand. “Lisbee,” he said, still quite friendly sounding, his thumb and forefinger digging into her temporomandibular joints.
“This isn't about you anymore.”

“Do you speak in
nothing
but clichés?” Denis blurted. (This wasn't the perfect thing he had been thinking of saying earlier.)

Kevin chuckled and roundhoused Denis in the abdomen, never letting go of Beth's face. Denis's arms were pinned back, preventing him from doubling over in pain but not the pain part, a sucking, searing, intensely special feeling that made Denis realize that he had never truly been punched in the stomach before, and that all the emotional setbacks he had previously compared to being-punched-in-the-stomach weren't all that bad.

“Oh, Denis,” Beth said. This was the first time she had not used the affectionate yet trivializing
Denis Cooverman
construction, which Denis noted but did not dwell on, given more pressing matters.

“Promise,” he said, “if he kills me, you'll break up with him.”

Kevin placed a valet ticket in Beth's palm and squeezed her fingers around it. “Now why don't you get that pretty little drunken butt of yours in my vehicle,” he gallantly ordered her. “And
sit
there.”

Kevin moseyed off, signaling his soldiers to follow. They frog-marched Denis and Rich with them. Beth hung her head as Valli Woolly wiggled past.

“Gonorrhea?” Valli sniffed. “You
wish
.”

ACTING ON PRIMAL INSTINCT,
the partygoers pulled back to open a killing floor. Denis was dragged to the far end; Kevin assumed the lion position on the opposite side. Everyone politely awaited the bloodletting.

“Are you just gonna let this guy murder me?” Denis asked his classmates.

They were.

“Wait.”

Valli Woolly wiggled over to Denis. She pushed into
him, her breasts poking his chest, her nose stabbing at his face. Adenoids quivering, she hissy-whispered, “I am
not
worthless. Look at this party. Look at all my friends.”

She smelled like masturbation.

Wiggling away, she waved regally and decreed, “Now you can kill him.”

It was official. Denis was to be executed and no one would save him. Beth was gone, doing what she was told. Rich was seriously indisposed, and would be lucky to survive himself. Cammy and Treece were off to his right, Cammy with an expression that said,
This certainly is an awkward social situation,
and Treece mouthing,
Good luck.
Across the room, Patty Keck watched with worry and potato chips. Skeletori, beside her, snacked on no-fat fingernails. The Big Girl was holding hands with Elizabeth Nagle, wondering who the dead kid was. Ian Packer and his fellow mathletes lined the staircase, at a safe distance should the proceedings devolve into a wider geek beatdown. To Denis's left, a few rows back, Divya Gupta sat on the shoulders of two Stevenson gymnasts. Denis had never seen her smile before.

Valli Woolly's party had accomplished something. She wasn't the least popular person in the class anymore. Her parents would be so prou—

Valli Woolly's parents!
Surely Mrs. Woolly wouldn't want Denis's common blood all over her Ethan Allen furnishings; Mr. Woolly wouldn't want Denis's skull smashed repeatedly into his thirteen-inch woofers and titanium dome tweeters.

“Help!” Denis yelled.
“Adults!”

He'd have to yell louder than that. Mr. and Mrs. Woolly were at their condo in Cabo. Adult supervision had been left to Valli's twenty-three-year-old brother, Willie, who had taken his heroin for the eve
ning and was in his bed passively participating in a threesome with Ryan Petrovic and Lucy Amo, who only discovered Willie after they were already deep into the proceedings, and were using him mostly for leverage.

Denis's call for adult help broke the tension. Everybody had a good laugh, especially Kevin, who kept laughing as he started toward Denis.

Denis's military escort shoved him into the killing zone.

“YO!”

DENIS KNEW THAT
YO!
He hated that
Yo!
He was so happy to hear that
Yo!

Coach Raupp muscled his way onto the killing floor, man-walked up between the predator and his prey and placed a smallish hand on each of their chests.

“Okay, ladies, some ground rules…”

“Wait,” Denis said. “You're not going to
stop
it?”

“All I want is a fair fight.”

“Fair? He's a
trained killer!
”

“You should've thought of that before you raided his cabbage patch.” Coach Raupp pistol-pointed as he said it. “Don't worry, Cooverman. Just remember what I taught you in boxing.”

“I opted out of that unit!” Denis protested.
“I had a note!”

Coach Raupp addressed to the crowd: “Let that be a lesson to you juniors.” Then to the combatants: “No biting, scratching, hair-pulling, any other sissy business…”

“Head butting?” inquired Kevin.

“Go crazy. But once your opponent loses consciousness, the beating is over.”

Coach Raupp stepped back, raising a hand.

“Aaaannnnd…
fight!
”

Kevin presented his fists, knuckles out. He hopped up and down, scissoring his legs back and forth, thrusting out his lower lip.

“Shall we dance?” he repeated for the benefit of those who had not heard him the first time.

The crowd loved it, at Denis's expense, as usual.

Kevin didn't seem very serious about killing Denis, not as much as he wanted to make the slaying fun to watch. Denis, unaware of the change in Kevin's pharmaceutical status, found this chipper villainy oddly disturbing, though not nearly as disconcerting as his opponent's rather noticeable hard-on.

“Yo!”
Coach Raupp snapped his fingers in Denis's agog eyes. “Dukes up, Cooverman!”

Denis kept his dukes down.

“I'm not going to fight.”

“Aw, Cooverman!” Coach Raupp screamed. “Don't be a pussy, you
pussy!
”

Denis was going to be a pussy. A pussy with a
plan.

“Look, Kevin,” he began, with the studied reasonability that had won him many worthless debate trophies. “You've won. You got the girl. I've been humiliated in front of all of my peers. I apologize and surrender unconditionally. Is that satisfactory?”

Kevin punched Denis in the mouth.

HE DIDN'T RECALL FALLING,
but warm liquid had collected in the back of his throat, leading Denis to conclude he was supine. He swallowed and was slightly surprised to taste blood. He ran his tongue along the inner rims of his teeth. None was outright missing but two incisors on the upper left were loose. That side of his face burned and stung and ached and felt wet and sticky.

Denis opened his eyes. Zooey Bananafish was star
ing upside down at him.

“Any last requests?”

“‘Here She Comes' by Very Sad Boy.”

Zooey's head exited and was replaced with a right-side-up Kevin face.

“Upsie,” Kevin's face said.