My Beating Teenage Heart (14 page)

His mother rolls her eyes, smiling in resignation as she faces Breckon. “Whatever he wants. He’ll be the one burping later, not me.” Her other son orders pepperoni flat-bread pizza, and when the order’s ready he snatches his pizza out of the bag and has it half-finished before they leave the store.

“Do you hear that, Uncle Dom?” Georgia kids after they’ve gone. “She said your meatballs made her son burpy.”

Mr. Baldassarre swats the air. “Eat too fast and anything will make you burp.”

“Anyway, the kid seemed to think it was worth the belching,” Breckon says. “That’s practically a recommendation. You should put the quote on a sign. You know: ‘I want meatballs—it doesn’t matter if I burp.’ Under that you have printed ‘Customer, age ten.er,ld put thex2019; ”

“That would be hilarious!” Georgia cries. “We could make up the sickest quotes about this place and hang them on the wall as publicity.”

Breckon’s eyes glimmer with a playfulness I haven’t seen in them before. “The barbecue chicken sub gave me salmonella … but if that’s what salmonella tastes like, I’m ready to have it again.”

“There was half a spider in my Caesar,” Georgia begins, “but the salad was so delicious that I didn’t stop to look for the other half.”

Mr. Baldassarre groans and shakes his head. “If I turned marketing over to you two, I’d lose all my customers by Monday.”

“Except the meatball kid,” Breckon points out. “He’d still want the meatball sub.”

That makes me want to smile, and I say silently to Breckon,
You can be funny when you want to, can’t you?
Clearly being here is good for him, like a flashback of his old life.

Over the course of the next few hours a steady trickle of mall shoppers and people leaving the gym drop in to buy meals ably assembled by Breckon, Georgia and Mr. Baldassarre. A third employee, a lanky tall guy named Takuya who can’t be older than twenty, shows up just in time for the movie rush Breckon was telling his parents about earlier.

Breckon’s the fastest worker of them all. Takuya gets cranky whenever there’s a line and Georgia is slow but methodical. Most of the people who stream in after the movie are teenagers. They’re loud and excitable and many of them are trashing the movie when they walk in. I hear at least three different guys, at different times, label it “weak-ass shit.”

“I don’t get why everybody’s so surprised that it sucks,” Takuya says to Breckon during a lull between customers. “When studios don’t screen for the press first, it’s a sure sign the movie’s a waste of money.”

To me it looks as though the teenagers are as happy to complain about the movie as they would be to rave about it if it’d been any good, so maybe it doesn’t matter about the money.

“Breckon!” Georgia yells from the cash register. “Your friends are here.”

Ty, Big Red (who it took me a while to figure out is really named Rory) and a couple of other guys I recognize from Breckon’s school saunter up to the counter. “What time are you on till, dude?” Big Red wants to know.

“Whenever it dies down in here,” Breckon says. “So was the movie as shitty as everyone’s saying?”

“And then some,” Ty says, puffing out his cheeks. “But hey, man, you want to catch up with us after this place closes?”

“I don’t know—where are you guys going to be at?”

div>eight="0em" width="1em" align="justify">Big Red shrugs. “Probably over at Denny’s getting shakes or hanging out down by the lake.”

“Excuse me,” the teenage girl next to him interrupts.

Big Red turns to look at her. “Yeah?”

“Where’s the Denny’s? Is that around here?” The girl has long blond hair and a perky smile, and Big Red’s gaze drops to check out her body.

“It’s at Richmond Road and Blakely—you know, that same strip mall that has a Home Depot and a Sport Chek in it?”

The girl, who’s traveling in a pack with three similarly attractive friends, listens to a brunette in a purple hoodie say, “That’s way too far to walk. My dad will kill us if I call him to pick us up all the way over there.”

“We can give you a ride if you want,” Ty offers. “Shuttle service. We’d have to make two trips, though. We’re driving a Corolla.”

The other brunette raises her eyebrows at the suggestion. “That’s either nice of you or serial-killer creepy,” she comments.

Ty laughs, showing his teeth. “Is that a
no thanks
then?”

Breckon’s watching the exchange from across the counter, same as I am, while Georgia and Takuya begin to take the girls’ orders.

“We better not,” the blonde who originally interrupted Big Red says. “We just thought if it was close …”

“Nah, it’s definitely not close.” Ty’s still eyeing the brunette who shot him down with the serial-killer remark, addressing her instead of her friend. “But why don’t you give me your number and I’ll give you a call sometime—unless that’s creepy too?”

The brunette’s mouth stretches into a grin for him. “Depends what you plan on saying, I guess. Give me your phone.”

Ty reaches into his back pocket for it and hands her his cell. “I’m Ty, by the way.”

“Anya,” she says as she keys her number into his phone.

“Anya,”
he repeats, keeping his eyes on hers. “Thanks. I’ll call you later.”

The second the girls have left with their sub order Ty hurls pissed-off glances at his friends and says, “What happened to you pricks? You just left me hanging in the wind there when I said we could drive them.”

Big Red and the other guys don’t have much to say in their defense. “I don’t think her friends were gonna go for it anyway,” Breckon ventures. “But at least you got her number, man.”

“Yeah, she was hot,” Ty says, and; Tt least just then another wave of customers hits. Breckon’s friends remind him to catch up with them later and take off.

Breckon’s spent so much time alone this week that I don’t really expect him to hang out with Ty and Big Red after work, but he does. He drives over to Denny’s to meet them and orders onion rings and a strawberry milk shake. In the parking lot a guy in a hoodie and a devil mask—but naked from the waist down except for a pair of Nike running shoes and sports socks—jogs slowly alongside a creeping Mazda crammed with howling teenage guys. They’re blasting the Pitbull song “I Know You Want Me” from the car, and the noise of that combined with their shouting prompts Denny’s employees and customers alike to stare out the window.
“Uno, dos, tres, cuatro. I know you want me …”

A vision of dancing to this song whirls through my mind. My teenage arms, hips, breasts, I see them all shake and swivel in time to the music.
“Uno, dos, tres, cuatro.”
Then, just as quickly, the memory evaporates into thin air, leaving me in a restaurant booth with Breckon and his friends. Outside the devil’s shielding his penis from public view, both hands clamped over it as he attempts a few simple dance moves himself.

Big Red chokes on his shake and he and Ty laugh so hard that they gasp for breath. Breckon smiles brighter than I’ve ever seen, drops the onion ring he was holding onto his plate and says, “Looks like he won the bet—I wonder how much it was for.”

“Could just be a dare,” Big Red guesses, still fighting for control of his lungs. “Or just for the lulz.”

The six of us peer out the Denny’s window and watch the devil pry his hands away from his penis to reveal—for the briefest second only—that he’s wearing a glow-in-the-dark condom. The devil’s friends have opened the back door for him and he dives in, a flash of his skinny white ass the last thing there is to see before the car speeds off into the night.

Breckon laughs out loud and Ty, who’s never really stopped, declares, “Damn, that’s the funniest thing I’ve seen all week!”

“Dude,” Big Red sputters as he holds his sides. “That’s going to give me a fucking asthma attack. That guy’s my hero.”

I wonder, if I was sitting there with Breckon and his friends in the flesh, what I would say. Obviously they find the streaker funnier than I did. It was stupid-funny but not in a way that would make me laugh out loud. Maybe it’d seem funnier if I was with my own friends, or even the girls Ty and Big Red were talking to in Zavi’s.

But I’m glad to see and hear Breckon laugh. I zoom in for a close-up on his cheerful eyes and listen to his breathing with my special hearing, but there’s nothing remarkable to hear. He’s just a boy having a good time with his friends and suddenly I’m happier in the moment than I’ve been since I woke up trapped and dead. Tonight I don’t need to say anything to him in my mother’s voice. Tonight my Breckon worries can simmer on the back burner, and it’s not God I have to thank for that, but the devil.

twelve
                            breckon

I drive Big
Red home and Ty takes Brett and Kostas. The devil’s inspired Rory and he thinks we should try to top him by doing some group streak, wearing Bart Simpson masks or Beatles wigs. I know he’ll never actually do it but I go along with the scenarios for a while instead of bursting his bubble. Rory can be like an Asperger’s kid when he gets really excited about something: he’ll talk about it until you’re bored to tears, but if you call him out on it he reacts like a kid too—all discouraged and moody—and I don’t feel like dealing with that. I was feeling good at the restaurant, but as soon as we left the emptiness was back like it’d never left.

When we get close to his house Big Red goes quiet for a bit and then says, “This is off the record, but remember what Ty was saying about leaving him hanging before with those chicks?”

“Yeah.” If Rory thinks he can get a bunch of girls to dance naked through a parking lot with us, he’s insane.

“So, the thing is,” he continues, “I’ve been hooking up with Isabel Castillo but she doesn’t want anyone to know. You know, her parents are hardcore Catholic and she figures that we should just keep it under wraps.”

Isabel Castillo is good friends with my ex, Nadine, so I know her pretty well. Their families have been close since preschool. Isabel’s nice but doesn’t go to parties or hang out much. You can see her flinch if you swear around her, like someone who’s lived a very sheltered life.

I guess the surprise is plastered on my face because Rory says, “Not sex, dude, you know … whatever …” He points his face out the window.

“So, like, no one knows about you two?” I ask.
“No one?”

“That’s what I’m saying, man. It’s off the record.”

“So why are you telling me?”

“I don’t know.” Big Red exhales in the same deliberate way you do if you’re smoking a cigarette. “I guess it just didn’t seem real if I couldn’t tell at least one other person.”

I get it. I don’t think they can last long as a secret though. Either someone will find out or sneaking around will become too big a pain in the ass to want to bother with.

“The thing is, there’s all this temptation walking around out there,” Rory notes. “Like that blond chick with the sweet body at Zavi’s. It’d be easier if everyone knew about Isabel. Then I wouldn’t have to police myself, you know? It’d be a well-known fact that I had a girlfriend.”

I shrug. “Things are what they are.” I don’t know what he expects me to say. This thing he’s thinking of as a problem is so microscopic that he should quit worrying and just be grateful for it.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” he says. “I just thought that you’d have some
words of wisdom
or something, seeing how you and Jules have been together for so long.”

Advice on how to stop yourself from wanting to fuck somebody else, that’s what he wants from me. I shoot him a tired look. “Maybe you should just break it off with Isabel,” I offer as we pull up to his house.

Big Red’s face jolts like he’s just been struck by lightning. “But I don’t want to do that. I mean … I really like her.”

Just get out of the car, man
, I think. Not long ago we were killing ourselves laughing and now I feel like I don’t want to waste my breath on him. There were a few seconds back at Denny’s when Skylar wasn’t in my head at all, not even the corner of my mind, lurking. It didn’t matter if she’d ever existed or not. The streaker dude caught me off guard and tipped everything out of my head except the stupid glow-in-the-dark condom he was wearing.

“If she’s that important you’ll figure it out,” I mutter.

“Sure.” Big Red’s foot jerks but the rest of him is still. “Catch you later.”

“Later,” I tell him.

He opens the passenger door and hops out of the car without looking back. Normally when I’m driving I plug in my iPod and listen to tunes, but I don’t bother with that anymore, so it’s quiet. I take a left out of Big Red’s neighborhood and turn onto Simcoe Street. It’s twenty-five minutes to two so there aren’t many cars on the road, even though it’s Saturday night. There’s really nowhere to go in Strathedine this late; your best bet for entertainment is running into the devil outside Denny’s.

Alone in the car with no one else on the road, the urge to keep my foot on the gas until I end up someplace no one will ever find me burrows back into my brain. I could get a job pumping gas in Saskatoon or busing tables in a restaurant in Halifax. I don’t need much, just food and a place to sleep at night.

There are people living like that right now. People who are floating free, not attached to anyone.

I follow this pared-down existence through in my head, wondering what Eva would make of my fantasy. I see myself waking up in an apartment with dirty windows and checking which of my clothes are clean enough to put on again because I’m overdue to go to the Laundromat. I see myself eating alone in a cheap diner or cooking spaghetti on a hot plate after working ten hours straight at some sweaty minimum wage job. There would be days and days of this and really nothing else. And if it would bring Skylar back, it’d be the easiest thing in the world to live like that, but deep down I know that I’ll feel the same way wherever I go as I do right now, that I’ll never be able to fool mysel tog inf into thinking she’s still around, no matter how far I get from Strathedine. I could make it all the way to Papua New Guinea and I’d still know.