Fat kid rules the world (22 page)

“Dayle,” I start, but my brother isn’t saying what I thought he was going to say.

“If Curt goes to jail,” he says, “he won’t come back, will he?”

The question catches me off guard and I can’t tell if Dayle thinks this is a good thing or a bad thing.

“I mean, if he thinks we turned him over to the police, or the doctors, or something, he might do whatever they make him do, but then he’ll just go away and he won’t have anyone like he has now.”

Dad’s lips form a thin line.

“Right now, Curt’s got us,” Dayle says. “And he’s got Troy….”

I stare at my brother like we’ve never met. He shrugs.

“I’m just saying it wouldn’t do any good to turn him in, right? It wouldn’t accomplish any
long-term objectives
. But you’re pretty strict, Dad, and if he came and lived with us …”

I can’t help it. I break into a huge grin. Dad’s shoulders slump and I can tell he’s melting.

“Little brother has a point,” I say. “A good soldier keeps the long-term objectives foremost in his mind.”

Dad gives me
the look
. Then he looks at Dayle. Dad may be glaring, but I almost think he wants to laugh. I almost think he wanted to be talked into this from the beginning. I’m about to say something else. Something about giving people chances and bending the rules
every now and then so other people can fit through, but I don’t think I have to. I suspect Dad already knows.

No one says a word for a full minute, then at last Dad looks up.

“What is it you want me to do?”

I HAVE TO TELL CURT
the news. It’s four o’clock and he’s wondering why I’m back. He keeps glancing behind me to see if I’ve brought him a change of clothes or something.

“You’re not going to stay long, right?” he asks for the third time. I figure there’s no use avoiding it any longer.

“Curt,” I say at last, “we’ve got to talk.” His eyes narrow, then widen.

“What?” he says. “Did they cancel? They cancelled on us?” He pauses, then glares in my direction. “Do not even tell me you’re bailing out again. There is no way in hell after all I’ve put up with….”

He’s on a roll and I have to wave him off like one of those air-traffic controllers. “No,” I spell out with huge, sweeping arm motions. “I’m not bailing, and they didn’t cancel.” I pause, take a deep breath. “My dad knows about the medications.”

Curt’s expression does one of those 180-degree slides where you see every thought that passes through a person’s brain. His face goes from furious to blank.

“I gave him the plant …,” I say.

Blanker.

“He knows you were going to sneak out tonight….”

He is completely and utterly vacant. I sigh.

“Curt,” I say again, “I told Dad everything.”

In the blink of an eye blank turns to terror. Terror turns to panic and Curt sits bolt upright, then moves to jump out of bed, but I place my huge body in front of him. He stops, settles back, and coughs, but his eyes dart around the room searching for an escape route.

“He’s not going to call the cops,” I say. “If you agree to get help he won’t tell anyone about the pills. But you’ve got to come live with us. That’s the deal.”

I wait for his surprised relief, but it doesn’t come. There’s a long pause and I wonder if Curt really heard what I said. I want to shout,
I said you could come live with us
, but I don’t. I watch Curt’s eyes scanning the room for a way out, and when at last they land on me I involuntarily take a step back.

I recognize those eyes.
They’re the eyes of someone standing just over the yellow line when the subway’s coming
….

Curt stares at the door, then starts to laugh. He laughs quietly at first, then louder, as if I’m playing the mother of all practical jokes and he’s just figured it out. He laughs as if it’s funny, but we both know it’s not.

“You’re trying to save me?” he says at last. “
You’re
… trying to save …
me
?” He stops laughing and glares like he’s accusing me of a crime. “No way,” he says. “That’s not how it goes. I told you that from the very beginning. I saved you, remember? I saved you.”

I cringe. “Curt,” I say, slowly and cautiously, “I’m offering you the deal of a lifetime. No rap sheet. No hospital authorities. No more living on the street….”

Curt stops laughing and everything I thought he was melts away before my eyes. He doesn’t fidget or cough. He’s absolutely still.

“You can’t do this,” he says. He tries to look pleading, but it doesn’t help.

“It’s done,” I say. Pleading turns to fury.

“You betrayed me?” he says. “We have our last best shot at a gig, you bail on me
again
, and you think it’s the fucking deal of a lifetime?” He chokes. “Oh, man, T. The deal of a lifetime is a sweet gig on a Saturday night. It’s a fucking cheese sandwich and chocolate pudding. It’s a friend who doesn’t fucking … fucking … turn you in to the …”

His face is red and he runs one bony hand through his hair.

“Curt,” I say, “I haven’t bailed on you. I’m right here. I told my dad about the pills because I wasn’t going to let you
kill
yourself.”

Curt doesn’t even try to look at me.

“They weren’t killing me,” he says. “They were making me
feel better
. They were prescription….”

He’s getting louder and louder and every Fat Kid reflex in my body wants to bloat to the size of a helium balloon and float away, but I don’t. I take a step closer.

“
They weren’t your prescription
!”

My words ring out loudly and the tension in the room makes my chest constrict. I start to huff. I can feel Curt slipping out of my grasp. All this time I couldn’t see and now it might be too late. I have to convince him that he can
do
this. I take a deep breath.

“You don’t want to live here for the rest of your life,” I say at last. It comes out as a whisper. “You don’t want to run a low-grade temperature forever….”

Curt refuses to look at me, but I waddle to the other side of the bed so he’s forced to stare at my huge girth.

“Is that what you wanted?” I ask. I’m expecting him to tell me to fuck off again, but he doesn’t. He bites his lip and twists the needle from his IV. His hands clutch the hospital blankets until his knuckles turn white.

“I wanted a week,” he says at last. It comes out as a choked breath. “I wanted a week. Maybe two. I wanted a band when I got out. Those are things I could’ve had. I could’ve
had
that….”

He chokes midsentence and sounds like he can’t get enough air. There’s sweat on his forehead and his nose is running. He’s a fucking mess. I hand him a clump of Kleenex, forcing them into his fingers, but he drops them and runs his sleeve over his face.

“Curt,” I say gently, “you still have a band. You have a band and a place to live if you’ll just take them.” I pause, but have to say it all. “You think no one else can see it, but your whole life is this convoluted series of lies. You talk about playing into that space, that space where there’s nothing but real, but that’s the only time you ever touch it. The rest of the time you’re this big gaping wound you think no one else can see. You
pretend
everything, and then when someone doesn’t go along with you it’s time to bail
just in case
…. You think that’s living?”

I know I should stop, but I don’t.

“I may be this huge fat kid,” I say, “but at least I know when I’m trying to put up a facade. At least I know when I’m failing miserably. At least I can accept help from someone who offers it instead of being so fucking scared that something might go right for a change.”

I’m huffing loudly and I don’t even care. “At least I don’t look at people and use their vulnerability to manipulate them. At least I’m not
that
scared.”

Curt closes his eyes.

“Take the deal, Curt,” I say. I mean it. With every ounce of fat on my body, I mean it.

I wait for a long time, willing him to say yes, but Curt shakes his head.

“Why’d you have to tell him?” he says at last. “Why’d you have to do that?” His voice shakes. “You think you can have everything,
everything
, and just hand it over?” He wipes his nose. “Well, it doesn’t work that way. How long do you think your dad will let me stay? Until you graduate? Go to college? How long until you get sick of the band? How long until you’ve sucked every moral lesson from this
story and I’m left where I started?” He looks away. “Well, forget it. You don’t get to save me, Troy. I told you that from the very beginning. You don’t get to fucking save me. I saved you, remember? That’s how I want it.”

My heart pounds.

“Fine,” I say. “Then you go to jail.”

“Fine,” says Curt.

Only it’s not fine and we both know it. Curt is terrified and I’m sick.

“Dad won’t pay your bail, you know. Ollie either. If the cops come they’re going to put you in restraints until you’re out of the hospital, then they’re going to charge you with stealing … or possession … or something like that.”

I’m trying to sound all technical, but Curt shrugs like it doesn’t matter.

“Fine,” he says. “If that’s the way you want it. I knew you’d fucking bail on me. I knew it….”

I want to throttle him, but I have one last card to play.

“What if I could prove to you that I’m not bailing? That no one’s going to bail? What if I could show you everything you’re giving up by being too chicken to take the deal? If I could do that, would you give me one chance?”

Curt scoffs.

“Yeah, right,” he says. “And how exactly are you going to do that?”

I cross my arms over my chest.

“There’s a lot about me you don’t know, my friend.” I tilt my head knowingly. “Don’t mess with the Fat Kid.”

IT’S EXACTLY FIFTEEN MINUTES
until show time and I’m backstage at The Dump staring into the audience like a maniac. I look like a psychopath, but that’s not far from the truth, so I figure,
what the hell
. Everyone expects this to be a repeat of the Mount Vesuvius eruption, so the tension is thick. Piper and Mike keep walking past, shaking their heads. The girls jump every time I turn around. The stagehands make huge circles around me. They all think I’ve got stage fright, but it’s worse than that. I’m still waiting for my guitarist to show up.

Five more minutes go by and Ollie comes over to peer around me.

“Think they’re going to make it?” he asks for the tenth time in ten minutes.

I nod.

“They’ll be here,” I say. “I guarantee it.”

I hope that I’m right. All those stories about Dad’s glory days in the Marines, crossing enemy lines … What if he’s lost his touch? What if he changed his mind and decided he won’t take Curt out of the hospital without permission? He was pretty iffy about the whole scheme to begin with, but I thought I had him convinced. I thought …

Suddenly, the back door of The Dump swings open and there’s Dad. He nods at me, then backs up, maneuvering a wheelchair up the stairs. Huge Marine. Skinny kid who looks like an AIDS patient. Jock in a football jersey. The crowd backstage parts like the Red Sea.

The whole parade could not be more absurd and I can’t help but grin. I take one look at Curt and I can tell he’s having fun. He’s pretending to be pissed as hell, but
I know
he’s having fun. There’s no way he needs a wheelchair, but even that makes me grin. Leave it to Dad to keep the rules straight even when he’s bending them.

They reach the top and Curt ditches the chair. He stands before me, trying to pretend he hates my guts. “Your dad fucking kidnapped me,” he says at last, glancing over his shoulder. I shrug.

“We’re on in two minutes.”

“He made me leave the hospital and dragged me here while I still have a temperature….”

“You better start if you’re going to warm up, you know,” I say. “They’ve already called ‘time.’”

Ollie slides up behind me with Curt’s guitar.

“You’re late,” he says. “And there are A-and-R guys in the audience tonight. Saw ’em up front. Two old geezers trying to dress like the Sex Pistols.”

He hands Curt the guitar and it’s the moment in the movie when the music swells and none of the actors say anything, but everyone knows what’s going to happen.

Out front the announcer’s voice is whipping the crowd into a frenzy.

“Back from the dead, for one final performance, straight from the psych ward, in the custody of the military police, with one last shot at free expression before being dragged away to jail …”

I look at Curt.

“We’re going to be huge,” I tell him. “Fuck the weatherman, we’re going to be
huge
!” He gives me a weird look, but I don’t have time to explain. They’re calling our name. There’s a chant rocking The Dump and it’s our name—Rage/Tectonic. I nod at Curt.

“Let’s have this conversation.”

This time I lead. I slide in behind the drum set and let my huge ass sprawl over the chair. I’m the poster boy for obese drummers and I
know
I look funny. I lift my arms high above my head and hold them there, flesh dangling, waiting for Curt’s signal. I have two seconds to look out over the audience. A moment of time to see all the twisted, bony, warped parodies of hands reaching for me. A flash of timelessness
to see my father and brother standing backstage waiting to hear what I have to say. I have two seconds to look at Curt and see the wicked grin on his face.

Then my arms are crashing down and for the first time, live and in public, the drumsticks snap against the skins.

I would like to gratefully acknowledge the artists who inspired this book: Kurt Cobain, whose life and lyrics said, “come as you are,” and J. D. Salinger, who asked if we knew who the fat lady was. My special thanks to Mark Partridge, whose literary advice and musical expertise have been invaluable. I’d also like to thank my editor, Kathy Dawson, for her untiring enthusiasm, and my agent, Ginger Knowlton, for making all the phone calls. Thanks to all my fabulous readers, but especially Laura Blake Peterson, Nicole Kasprzak, Joanna Durso, Rob Pellecchia, Edward Necarsulmer, and Chris Celestino. Thanks to Kendra Davis for teaching me about the drums, and to Julie Litwiller-Shank, Dave Haldeman, Laurie Longenecker, and Mary Bettens for patiently answering my medical questions. Thanks to Maria Bedard, April Celestino, Al Smiley, and Carol Daley for their continuing belief in my work. Finally, my deepest love and appreciation go to my parents, Linda and William Going.