Styrofoam Throne (14 page)

I didn’t take that shirt off for the rest of the summer. It was my new family crest. If I was walking around the pier or town and someone said “Nice shirt!” I could be like, “Yeah, I totally work there. No big deal,” and just blow their mind. No one ever said that, but I was ready if they did.

I did the Wolfman job for a couple more days and even though I repeated the same action over and over, I loved it. It was a cathartic loop, howling at a painted moon. But it made me restless after hours. I wanted to keep going, tearing shit up and screaming at people more than ever.

“You wanna go fuck shit up?” Renaldo asked with a secretive nod and a baseball bat in hand. I was still riding the Wolfman buzz after work and didn’t want to go home anytime soon.

“What do you mean?” I said.

“C’mon, let’s go.”

Renaldo took me down the Dunes coast to a new tract of homes on Sea Grave Road that were about seventy percent finished. They had windows, roofs, and walls without paint, but no carpet, doors, or any finishing details. The recently paved road was sporadically lined with Porta Potties for construction workers. Renaldo picked up a stray two-by-four and handed it to me.

“Here’s yours. Let’s go.”

I took the long piece of wood and followed him inside one of the houses. It didn’t smell like any house I’d been in before. There was no stench of Lean Cuisine, suffocating dryer sheets, perfumed laundry detergent, or stale cigarette smoke. It smelled like a hardware store and a lumber yard put together.

“Watch out for nails and shit, dude,” Renaldo said, bolting up the stairs. “Okay, check it out. See this wall?”

It was a freshly finished drywall in the master bedroom.

“Yeah,” I said, still unsure where this was going. Kind of.

“These walls are total shit. Take a swing, dude.”

“You first,” I said.

“Batter up!” Renaldo yelled and swung for the bleachers right into the wall. The bat pierced the drywall with a thud and stuck there.

“Ha! See, man? Now you.”

Fuck it, why not? I swung and ripped a hole into the wall next to Renaldo’s. I immediately felt the satisfaction of destruction.

“Good one, dude,” Renaldo said and took another swing of his own. I didn’t need to be invited twice. We were both attacking the walls of the master bedroom like they were closing in on us. We moved on to smashing up the whole place. We broke every single window, dry toilet, and mirrored closet in sight. We even poked holes in the ceiling, laughing our asses off as we got covered in powdery drywall.

“You look like a ghost,” I said, out of breath.

He held up a shard of mirror to his face. “I look like a fucking white dude,” he laughed. “Hey, there’s twenty-nine more houses. Wanna fuck up another?”

“Hell, yeah, man. This is way radder than I thought it was gonna be.”

“Right?”

We went into another house a few doors down. They were all exactly the same inside and out. My approach to house number two was more experienced and scientific. I ran around the first floor bashing out windows like I was being timed for it. I could hear Renaldo doing the same upstairs. Each time I broke something, I felt better. I don’t know what about, but it was good. And the more I did it, the more calm I felt. Proud even. Renaldo came downstairs.

“Nice work down here, I really like what you’ve done to the place,” he said.

For some reason, that was funnier than it should have been and I couldn’t stop laughing.

We went outside, and I viewed the Porta Potties much differently than before. I ran up to one and pushed it over. The door swung open and a flood of blue fluid poured out on the ground.

“Fucking sweet!” Renaldo ran to do the same to another.

We eventually tipped every single one over and sat down on the curb. Renaldo lit up a joint and we passed it back and forth.

“Dude, we should do this, like, all the time,” I said.

“Yeah, I know. But we can’t. It has to be random. Or else they hire a security guard and then you’re screwed if you get caught.”

“Have you, like, ever slept here before?”

“Nah, I don’t want to wake up with a gun in my face.”

“Yeah, no. Good point. I should take Melody here.”

“Chicks don’t like smashing things.”

“I mean . . . to, like, smash her.” After raging in the Castle all day and tearing up the neighborhood all night, I was ready to get more aggressive with everything.

“Ha! Nice. But I don’t think she’d dig it, bro. Plus, I don’t want everyone finding out and coming in my homes, fucking them up.”

I needed to book more time with Melody. The kiss was cool but I was going for a promotion. I figured it went well in the water last time, why not try again? So we went swimming before work. I had always avoided it in the past, but now with Melody, the beach started to make a lot more sense. We floated around close to the pier. Raised on the columns, the Castle was even taller when looking up at it from the water. You could hear the occasional scream as someone ran out of the Castle exit. The “Toccata.” People laughing on the pier. Bells ringing out of carnival booths.

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” Melody said.

“Shit, I’m doing it already.”

“You don’t want to do that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look at Colin, he’s been here for years. He’s fucked now.”

“Seems like he’s got it made.”

“Are you kidding? This is just a summer job. You know what he does the rest of the year?”

“I dunno.” Ever since I first laid eyes on the Castle, I hadn’t thought about any other future.

“He’s a busboy at Ye Olde Times,” she said.

Ye Olde Times was a Renaissance-themed dinner and tournament experience two towns over. I guess it was cool but not really.

“So what do you really want to do?” she asked.

“Make horror movies then.” It seemed like the same thing to me.

“Horror movies hate me,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“If drinking, smoking pot, and having sex means you deserve to die, then I’m screwed.”

We both laughed and started making out in the water. I kinda went from being the guy who survives in the movie to the one who dies too. Not kinda. I wanted to be that guy. It had become my goal.

“Up there,” she said, nodding to the Castle, “I can be the bad guy. I can scare the shit out of some big idiot and make him run. Well, you know.”

I remembered a night ago when I scared the shit out of a school bully by calling his name out. Harmless yet thoroughly satisfying vengeance.

“I wish I could invite everyone I ever knew that was a dick to me to the Castle, terrorize the living hell out of them, and make them pay for the pleasure,” I said. “I wouldn’t even need to scream in their face. I could do live Mirror of Death oracles that would make them cry.”

“Sounds kinda angry there,” she said.

“Nah . . .” I didn’t think it was my anger. It was the Castle’s. I would just be filling a role that wielded it. A perfect fit in my mind, but Melody’s eyes looked sympathetic.

“Anyways,” I said. “What’s the gnarliest thing that’s ever happened to you in the Castle?”

“I was playing a dead schoolgirl role and speaking in a little girl’s voice, when this older guy came in by himself and I went, ‘Daddy? It’s me. Why did you make me cry?’”

“Creepy.”

“Yeah, totally. And he grabbed his chest and fell to the floor. Had a heart attack right there. Oops.”

“Jesus Christ, did he die?”

“No, but how messed up is that? I don’t do that anymore. What’s the gnarliest thing that ever happened to you in the Castle?”

Should I tell her? Should I say it? Fuck it.

“You,” I said.

Melody smiled and went underwater. I couldn’t see where she was. After a dozen long seconds, I thought I might have sunk her somehow. Like, tell a girl how you feel and then they turn to stone. But she popped back up, right in front of me.

“Why are you so nice to me?” she said. She had her bathing suit bottoms in her hand and wrapped her legs around my waist.

“Whoa,” I said as she grabbed my dick with the most devious smile I had ever seen. Alright, the only devious smile I had ever seen. I immediately looked up to the pier and saw various people looking over the edge, taking in the view of the beach. And possibly us. I couldn’t tell, but some had to be.

She moved herself into position.

“We can’t do it in front of everyone!” I said.

“No one knows what we’re doing. We’re hugging.”

“You’ve got your bottoms in your hand.”

“Who gives a fuck what people think?” It was Melody’s theme song and I was starting to learn the words. She pressed herself down on me and I didn’t give a fuck what people thought.

Quickly after it started, it ended. We put our bottoms on underwater, swam to shore, and flopped down on the sand.

“That was awesome,” I said.

Melody kissed me again. We laid back and stared at the sun through our closed eyelids. My mind was still spinning over what just went down. I opened an eye and leaned on my elbow.

“Can I ask you a question?” I said.

“Uh oh.”

“How many guys have you slept with?”

Melody looked disappointed.

“Or, you know, swam with?” I clarified.

“Why does it matter?”

“Well, ‘cause if it’s a lot, then I probably suck compared to some of those dudes. And I’d rather you didn’t know I sucked.”

“You can’t go off that,” she said, nodding to the ocean. “Everyone knows fucking in the water sucks, but it’s better than not fucking in the water.”

I pretended to know.

“So you don’t think I suck?”

“If that were true, I wouldn’t be here.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I like you. Why are you trying to find a problem with that?”

It was assuring, but also a bummer to know that I could be poisoning the well for no reason.

“Thanks. I’ll hit the suck brakes. Forget I said anything.”

“What’s that?”

“Forget I said anything.”

“What’s that?”

“Ha, I get it.”

I wasn’t sure I was getting anything. Having sex wasn’t like turning a page or starting a new chapter. It was like setting the whole book on fire. I was becoming close with two people who were strangers to me just a month ago: Melody and myself. And I didn’t really know where either was going.

After that, I showed up early to roll call. Jack was there reading his clipboard and looked up at me.

“Fucking with the fishes, huh?” Jack said.

“What do you mean?” My cheeks went red.

“Think no one noticed? Ha!”

“Shit, how’d you know?”

“I saw you guys from the pier. Hey, I don’t care. You’ve got some balls to slay a chick in the water in front of everyone. Ocean sex sucks though, am I right? And how can it be so dry feeling when it’s in the goddamn water?”

“Yeah, it sucked.” No it didn’t. But him, and probably others, witnessing my devirginization did suck.

“Let me ask you something, Dono,” Jack said in a rare tone reserved for casual, non-Castle–related issues.

“Yeah.”

“I know you’re having fun, but you wearin’ a rubber out there?”

“No, I did,” I said. I didn’t want to disappoint him.

“Bullshit,” he said. “You know how I know?”

“Not really.”

“It’s impossible to fuck in the ocean with a rubber. I should know.”

“Sorry.”

“Listen, I’m not gonna lie to you. Wearing a rubber doesn’t feel as good as barebackin’ it. But you know what feels better than unprotected sex?”

I was listening to Jack but he expected an answer. There was no answer.

“Do ya?” he said.

“No.”

“I’ll tell you. Freedom. Freedom feels better than anything. When you use a condom, you maintain your freedom. Don’t use a condom? Knock a chick up before you should? Trouble, no matter what happens. You ready for that? No freedom? Now your life sucks and no amount of hot sex can make it better. Only worse! Wearing a condom is like raising a flag. Yours. Stock up on flags, Dono.” Jack slapped my back a little less harder than usual and walked away.

I really locked that into my head. Janice might have given birth to me and provided my partial survival ever since then, but somehow I could easily trust Jack more. I didn’t even know I had this freedom in the first place. But now in the moment, my mind began to race. Did I already sacrifice my freedom? Before I even knew what I was doing? It really didn’t even occur to me in the ocean. I didn’t plan it and she didn’t care, so neither did I. I promised myself I would heed Jack’s advice, but I needed to find out if I had already blown it.

I was supposed to report to Wolfman duty in the Haunted Forest but I had to find Melody. I caught up with her in the Witch’s Cauldron room.

“Hey, what are you doing here?” she asked.

“Hey. I’ve gotta talk to you.”

“Oh, jeez,” she said.

“No, not like that,” I said.

“Like what?”

“Like should I have had something on when we were in the ocean?”

“Sunblock?” she asked.

“No! Like a . . . condom.”

“Oh, it’s cool. Don’t worry about that,” she said.

“So you’re not pregnant?”

“Jesus, Donovan, how old are you?”

That’s right, I was eighteen to her. What would an eighteen year old say?

“Shit, just tryin’ to be nice. I’m really tired and work’s been grinding my ass.” I had reverted to Renaldo’s old-means-complaining advice.

“Yeah. Well, thanks. I guess we should get working,” she said.

“Yeah, see you after.”

She didn’t say anything. Maybe she didn’t want to see me after, so I extended the time range.

“I mean later,” I said. I was out of my league. Total amateur vibe. I really needed to provide some evidence that I didn’t give a fuck before leaving. I turned around, and while walking toward the next room, cut a huge cheek ripper of a fart.
Brrrraaaappppp!
Melody burst into more laughter than I’d ever heard. I kept walking as she kept laughing. Success.
 

After work, Renaldo asked me if I’d get him a Lotto ticket at the liquor store since he was banned from it.

“Can’t win if you don’t play,” he said when I asked him why he wanted one. “I’d buy so much shit.”