Dear Life, You Suck (19 page)

“I don’t hear him complaining.”

“He’s too polite to complain. That’s why I’m complaining for him.”

“Look at him. Look at his face. That is not the face of a complainer. That is the face of a thinker. See? See that expression? He is seriously pondering what I just said. That is a sign of intelligence, Wynona. If Buster were here, he’d be scratching his ass.”

“Dad!”

“Of course, for Buster, that is a form of thinking, since that’s where his brains are located.”

“Dad, stop it!”

Mr. Bidaban’s rumbling laughter yanks me out of myself. I notice Wynona’s bowl is empty, so I suck down the rest of my deep-sea stew.

Mr. Bidaban wipes his mouth and stands.

I scramble to my feet.

He throws his napkin down with unnecessary force and extends his hand. “It was a distinct pleasure meeting you, Cricket.”

I shake his hand. It’s rough like tree bark. “Thank you, sir.”

“We’ll clean up, Dad.”

“Thanks, sweetie. I gotta make the rounds and check on my crew. Make sure they’re not sleeping on the job.”

Mr. Bidaban slaps his belly and leaves. Roxanne leaves the table without saying goodbye. She barely said a word during the meal. Just made weird sucking sounds with her tongue after each swallow.

After Wynona and I clean up, we head to the front porch with lemonade refills. I hadn’t noticed before, but it’s furnished with these ratty old chairs that look like they came from the Salvation Army. We sit down and I sink about ten feet into the cushion. Damn, this old hunk of junk is comfy. I could fall asleep in this bad boy.

From this hilltop elevation, I can see the whole town and the ocean beyond. It makes me feel like I’m looking at a miniature train set with Styrofoam hillsides, plastic train trestles, and tiny people I could pick up and plunk down wherever I want.

“Did you like lunch?” Wynona asks.

“Yeah, it was awesome. But I guess I coulda done without the octopus testicles.”

Wynona giggles. “Tentacles.”

“No, I’m pretty sure mine were testicles.”

“You’re gross.”

“Your stepmom’s sweet.”

No answer.

I look over. She’s staring at the town like she’s thinking about moving some people around.

Whoopsadaisy
. Back pedal engaged. “I was just joshing. What’s up with her?”

No response.

“I guess that’s the Roxanne you wrote about in your English paper?”

“Yeah, that’s her.”

I follow her gaze to see if I can figure out what she’s staring at. Her eyes are pointed toward the church steeple, but I think that’s just so her face will be pointed away from me. Maybe she’s crying. Jesus, what the fuck is up with this world? Even people who’ve got it all get stabbed in the heart for no reason whatsoever. This whole world ain’t nothing but one giant Kick in the Nuts factory.

It makes me realize what a waste of time hanging out with Wynona is. What a dangerous waste of time. I’m chasing my heart in circles like a stupid dog chasing its tail, as if I don’t know that once I catch it it’s gonna chomp me a molary malfeasance. What the hell am I doing here? Dragging my ass out of the mud to play tea party in Candy Land. My gut tightens. I stand. “Hey, I gotta go.”

Wynona whips her head around. “What? Why? I’m sorry. I was just thinking about my mom. I didn’t mean to be rude.”

“No, it’s not that. I was supposed to have the van back like two hours ago.”

“Oh.” She looks away but not as far.

“Thanks for the food. It was really good.”

She looks up at me and opens her mouth like she’s gonna say something, but then closes it.

I set my glass on the wicker table and leave. I wonder if she’s looking at me as I lumber down the gravel walk. Probably not. I wonder if she knows I don’t want to leave but have to. Probably not. She’s probably looking at that faraway place again and thinking the same thing I’m thinking. What a waste it is to spend time with me. What a waste I am.

I don’t look at her house as I drive away. I’m too scared the porch will be empty.

Mother Mary’s sitting in the foyer reading when I slip through the front door.
Shit, I forgot to go to the hardware store and buy a new rake
. I throw my hands in the air. “The hardware store was fresh out of rakes, so I had to drive around to a bunch of other places looking for one, but no luck.”

Mother Mary holds her giant paw out and I hand her the keys. “I understand,” she says flatly. “Surprising that Home Depot, which is only twenty minutes down the road, doesn’t stock such a common yard tool.”

“Oh, right, Home Depot. I didn’t think about going there.”

“Don’t think about going anywhere in the foreseeable future, Cricket.” She stands and clicks off the lamp. “When I didn’t find you in the backyard, I looked for you in your room. Not finding you there got me thinking. Perhaps it was premature to give you your own room. You are clearly not mature enough for such a privilege. Perhaps it would be easier to keep tabs on you if you were back in the bullpen with the boys.” She turns and walks into her office.

Shit, I hadn’t thought about her playing that card. Man, that would suck major league balls
.

Raking leaves with a good rake is bad enough. Try raking with a busted one held together with four rusty roofing nails and fifty feet of duct tape. I don’t care. Wynona Bidaban kissed me.

But man, this head-heart tug-o’-war is tussling me a rope-burning mischief. All I know for sure is, no matter which side wins, I’ll end up facedown in the mud.

I really like Wynona. I like being with her. But when I’m with her, I feel like I’m on a tightrope tethered between two skyscrapers about a mile in the air, and any second a giant gust of reality is gonna typhoon my clowning-around ass headfirst into Never Never Land. And I’ve been around long enough to know there ain’t no safety nets in real life.

It’s sad about Wynona’s mom. I wonder what happened. That snooty-toot her dad picked up at the Stepmom Swap Meet is a sorry replacement. Not that I’d know, but what could be worse than that shrivel-pussed prima donna?

Adults are wacky. Even the sane-seeming ones. Guess it could be worse. Wynona’s dad really seems to love her. Not like my crackhead creators.

Shitnuggets! What am I gonna do?

Sam and Archie come running up to me, pushing a wheelbarrow of weeds that’s teetering side to side because they each have a handle.

“We have a plan.” Sam gasps, panting. He’s wearing hand-me-down denim overalls that are three sizes too big, so the crotch droops to his knees.

“A plan for what, Mr. McGregor?”

“A plan for tag-teaming the girls we like,” Archie says between breaths.

I probably should have used a different phrase
. “Oh yeah, what’s your plan?”

“Tina Gopi plays on the basketball team, so Archie’s gonna try out for the boys’ team ’cause the boys and girls practice at the same time after school. Archie’s really good at basketball, so he’ll probably make the team easy.”

“Wow, that’s a smart plan.”

“Yeah, and since tryouts aren’t for a few weeks, we’re gonna steal a basketball from the gym storage room and Archie’s gonna carry it around school so Tina sees and knows he’s into basketball.”

“That’s an even smarter plan.” The boys beam. “Just make sure you steal a ball that doesn’t have the school name written on it so you don’t get caught.”

The boys look at each other. “Oh yeah,” Archie says.

“Don’t worry. If you can’t get one from the school, I’m sure we can get our hands on one somewhere.”

“If this works and Archie gets to be Tina’s boyfriend, he’s gonna ask her to talk to Emily Stemple for me about my microscope and the algae slides I made all by myself, ’cause she’s in Science Club.”

My head tingles and my eyes get watery. “That’s a damn good plan, boys,” I say, patting them on the shoulders.

They smile wicked wide smiles and run off with the wobbly wheelbarrow between them.

I wipe my eyes and wonder why I’m getting all emotional. I think it’s ’cause Sam and Archie seemed so normal just now. Just a couple of goofball kids scamming ideas on how to meet girls. They didn’t look like abandoned orphans at all.

I drop my rake and walk to the edge of the cliffs. I sit on a boulder and look out over the endless sea. I imagine the water turning light pink and spinning, spinning, spinning until there’s nothing left but a bright white porcelain floor.

I wish my baby brother, Eli, had lived so I could have been a big brother to him. I think I could have been a pretty decent big brother. Defending him from assholes and talking to him about girls.

I watch the dark waves roll toward me like they’re carrying years on their crests. I wish I had an older brother. Someone who could have defended me from assholes and talked to me about girls. Or even an older orphan. How come I have to be the oldest kid here? The nuns say everything happens for a reason. I don’t believe that. But someone has to be the oldest. Maybe when the Little Ones are older, they’ll be happy I was around to defend them from assholes and talk to them about girls. Any one of them could have died just as easily as little Eli. But they didn’t. They lived. And I lived. And now they’re here. And I’m here. At the Prison. The oldest orphan. Their older brother.

I roll onto my side. The stone is rough and cold against my cheek. I imagine my scar slipping off and slicing the boulder in two. The granite gash swallows me whole. I fall and fall until I finally hit the center of the earth and incinerate into nothingness like a feather in a furnace.

My Silky Jets jetty is extra windy tonight, the herbaceous puffdiddle is extra smooth, and the spiked lemon cider is extra sour. Just like I like it. I slide into my dolomite recliner and let the gravity of the sea drain my churning jambalaya. The moon’s shining bright on my inspirational
escritoire
. I grab a notebook and pencil from my backpack and scribble Reason Number Two of my Dear Life letter.

Dear Life, You Suck
Reason Number Two
By Cricket Cherpin

T
HINGS
A
IN’T
W
HAT
T
HEY
S
EEM.

This make-believe home ain’t a home. Plunking a pearly gate on Hell don’t make it Heaven. This place ain’t nothing but a wallpaper prison pretending to be a home on account of none of us have homes. But no one says that out loud. Everyone goes along to get along because what’s the alternative?

This make-believe family ain’t a family. Four dozen derelicts snoozing under the same rafters and extricating bran muffins into the same crapper don’t a family make.

See, here’s the thing. This ain’t normal. Don’t take no rocket scientist to figure that out. Like sometimes the nuns will try to sweet-talk you into thinking we’re a family, but the bottom line is, family ain’t the exterior stuff you can rattle off in a speech to a scared little dude who’s just been dumped on your doorstep. Family is the invisible junk only someone in a family can see. Not that I’ve ever seen it, but some stuff you don’t have to see to know it exists. Like wind and heat and cold and pain.

But home and family ain’t even the big stuff. It’s just the obvious stuff. The big stuff ain’t never talked about. Like why we’re still here. I know the score. Every kid in this place knows the score. Sure, we all play mind peekaboo and pretend the truth disappears when we cover our eyes, but we know what’s going on.

Life’s about getting picked. For kids and adults. By an apple pie mumsy or a musclehead quarterback or a moneybags boss or a sexytime squeeze. The game never changes. Only the prize. At some point, you just gotta accept that the milk jugs are nailed to the platform so no matter how many balls you throw, you ain’t gonna knock that Jug of Gibraltar off the shelf and win the stuffed leprechaun. ’Cause the game’s fixed against you.

It’s like the piece-of-shit foster whore they put me with in Boston before sending me here. Took the idiot social workers forever to figure out my new caretaker was a shorthair shaker. Took me nine seconds. She’d been hooking for years but had pulled the lambskin over Social Services’ eyes. From the way the crack-toking moms and dragon-chasing dads in the neighborhood talked, Social Services were the only folks in all of ASSachusetts who
didn’t
know Chastity Cocktrumpet didn’t reside anywhere near Innocent Street.

She tried to keep me from spilling the beans by spilling my genes with a little rub-a-dub-dub bald stiffy in a tub, but I never finagled that bagel. That’s messed up when you think about it. Not that I ever think about it. It wasn’t like she was my real mom or anything. Just another scheming grownup trying to score green from humans or clean from God by pretending to give a flying fuck about the miniature hostage tossing and turning on the pee-stained mattress in the basement.

Guess the canker sores on her lips and mannaise on her forehead didn’t tip the professional progeny-placers off. She said it was on account of the cold weather. Yeah, snow squalls will detonate a pussy eruption on Herpes Mountain. So will grease drippings from a rancid sausage.

I swear, I ain’t never seen anyone slower on the uptake than phony-baloney goody-two-shoes do-gooders. Especially when the intake is so close to home. They got no problem mind-juggling storytime tittle-tattle about life two thousand years ago, but good luck getting them to notice the dog shit on the bottom of their shoe. Never stops ’em from blaming the smell on someone else though.

So let’s be real. Is it really such a good thing the sun will come out tomorrow, or is Annie a lying ginger whore?

I have plenty of air pockets popping my gut a carbonated dysentery on my first day back at school. The tacked-on notoriety of being the only student at Naskeag High to ever be suspended twice in the first two weeks of school doesn’t help. I mean, that’s probably some world record in the
Guinness Book of
Dirtbag Records
. The kids at school already stare at me crooked-headed as it is, so I can imagine the FU glares I’ll get now.