Narc (5 page)

“That’s okay, thanks.”

“But you look so handsome with them on,” she said.

“Actually, I don’t.”

Mom sighed. “If you damage your eyes, it’s your own fault.”

I stared at the computer screen, watching the cursor blink in 4/4 time. Almost as if I’d willed it to happen, up popped another instant message from Morgan.

I like iChat better. Can you log on?

Okay. I clicked the icon at the bottom of the screen, a talk balloon from a comic book. Morgan IMed me at my listed screen name right away.

LadyM: I will refrain from using the phrase ‘what’s up’ cuz i use it too much and now i must atone.

I sat there, trying to think of what to say, but Mom wouldn’t stop bugging me about the merits of wearing glasses. I tuned her out and started typing:

Metroid: Sorry i’m not responsive … talking to Mom.

LadyM: No prob. Are you coming to Skully’s thing tonight? Should be memorable and destructive.

Metroid: Yes. I might need a ride, tho.

Mom’s voice screeched down the hall. “Are you on the computer? I can hear you pecking on the keyboard. It’s very rude when someone’s trying to talk to you, mister.”

“Geez, Mom. Don’t be so passive-aggressive. So what’s the deal with Haylie? Is she still having nightmares?”

“Your sister is fine,” Mom snapped.

Ever since Dad died, Haylie had been acting majorly weird. She distracted her brain with technology, vegging in front of the TV, just curled up in the blue glow. Mom tried to monitor our computer time for a while, but Haylie pitched a fit about it. Eventually, my sister got her way.

“Haylie keeps having nightmares,” Mom said, “because she stays up late, watching those Japanese cartoons with all the blood and guts.”

“Well, maybe if she wasn’t left alone so much, she wouldn’t watch that crap,” I said. “She’s only fourteen.”

“What do you want me to do?” Her voice rose a notch. “I arranged my shifts at the hospital so I can be home in the morning.”

“Whatever.”

“I’m doing the best I can, Aaron. It might help if you talked to her more often. That goes for me, too. You only talk when you want something.”

“Mom, please.” I felt like I was trapped in my own personal rerun, the same conversation repeating over and over.

“How are you doing … really?” she asked.

“Cool. Everything is cool.”

She knew nothing about my life.

“All right then,” she said and shook her head. “Talk to you later.”

Mom always got the last word. When she finally left, I waited until the door shut and I could breathe steady again. Then I checked the computer. Morgan had sent me an IM so slangy, it should’ve come with a decoder ring.

WTF? Bummmmer. Wots up w/ ur wheelz?

I smiled, even though she couldn’t see me. Why bother typing a
z
instead of an
s
? Does it really take that much longer to move your finger over to the
s
key?

Mom needs it for work tonight.

Which was the truth. I couldn’t expect Morgan to offer me a lift on her dilapidated bike, but she offered something better:

Let me pick u up. Where do u live?

Crap. No way could let her see our place. I needed to lie my way out of this. If I asked her to pick me up at school, she’d wonder how I got there. Technically, I wasn’t supposed to be attending Palm Hammock anymore, but Mom lied about our address. I guess being a good liar is in my genes.

Metroid: I’m taking the Metrorail. Thanx!

LadyM: Kewl. See u at the Library?

Metroid: ???

LadyM: It’s across from Dadeland Station.

Metroid: Library=the bookstore?

LadyM: Basically, yes.

Metroid: I see your logic.

LadyM: BTW … wot r u wearing? ;)

Metroid: Don’t know yet. Maybe nothing.

LadyM: Naked=good. Haha. Peace out. ((((((((((()))))))))))

Morgan signed off. I couldn’t get over her offering me a ride, and the naked comment. This never would’ve happened last year. The only party invites I got were spam:
“Greetings. I looking for honest relations with loyal man … ”

To Morgan, I was still a mystery.

How long could it last?

I opened my closet and jangled the hangers. Back in junior high, I used to dress so sickeningly preppy. It was laughable, once you thought about it. People made fun of me because my shirts matched my socks. Everything matched. Even my underwear matched, just in case I got hit by a car or something and ended up in the hospital. That sure changed when we moved to Miami.

I settled on my old-school kicks, oversized hoodie, and ripped jeans. I’d worn these faded Levis so often, there was a hole in the left pocket. No matter how many times I told myself not to slip quarters in there, I did anyway. But these jeans molded to me in a loose kind of way, blending in so I forgot they were there. They fit me perfectly, and they were great as long as you didn’t look too close.

5 :
Palm Leaves

The Metrorail rattled above US-1, carrying me south. A trampled McDonald’s bag slid back and forth under my feet. The little girl in the next seat was pressed against the window, watching the traffic slide by. She combed her toy pony with such determination, she almost ripped out its mane. I smiled and she smiled back.

My styrofoam cup of café con leche had gone cold. I chewed on the cup, chiseling half-moons in the rim, glanced out the bleary window and watched the strip malls whiz past. They were already decked out for Halloween: black cats and smiling ghosts, witches and scarecrows.

In elementary school, I learned the alphabet and multiplication tables. I learned about legends and mythology. I learned that motion is measured in distance and time.

I did not learn how to make friends. At least, none who stuck around long.

There was Mark Wienman, who taught me dirty words in Latin. Dave Brieske, who believed that the moon landing was fake. The kid down the street, Danny-what’s-his-name. We played Quake at his house a couple times before I moved. Danny had a bearded dragon for a pet. He fed it live crickets that he carried in a bag puffed with air. The crickets always escaped. You could hear them chirping in the downstairs den.

My teachers blabbed on and on about building the perfect track record: urging me to take A.P. Spanish, play the trumpet, try out for soccer, whatever looked good on my transcript. Except that I didn’t give a shit about college. That’s all I needed: more school, stuck in a dorm filled with wall-to-wall idiots, trapped in a place I couldn’t leave.

Dad used to march down the hall, storm into my bedroom, and launch into speech after speech about time wasted on the computer.

“It’s a nice day. Why are you spending it holed up in here?” he would say, sitting on the edge of my bed, gawking at the posters on the wall: Green Day’s heart-shaped grenades.

So I bought a lock for my door.

Dad didn’t get it. I sucked at sports, a fact that he was forced to acknowledge no matter where we moved. At one school, everybody worshipped the baseball team, like they were gods with lightning bolts instead of wooden bats. They wore jerseys to class on game days so everybody would look at them and stand in awe of their specialness.

The same thing happened at the next school, and the next. Replace baseball with football or basketball. Same deal. If you could kick a ball or whack it with a stick, everything was cool. This meant two things:

I had no social life.

I was a nonentity.

In ninth grade at Palm Hammock, I met Collin, who rode the bus with me. Collin kept a box of fireworks in his garage, and when he finally learned to drive, we cruised to the boat ramp at night and blew shit up. One time, we brought a bunch of old G.I. Joes. We propped Snake Eyes on a rock, stuffed a firecracker between his legs, and watched him sputter and pop. Collin documented the event with his video camera.

“That’s awesome, man. Nice and burnt,” he said in this lispy monotone. “Yo. Throw me the lighter.”

We dropped the remaining G.I. Joes in an empty Gatorade bottle. Crunched up balls of tinfoil and crammed them in, too. Doused the mess with Works toilet cleaner from the Dollar Store, shook the bottle until it melted and fumed. Then boom. We ran like hell. Collin would fling a Works bomb into the air at the last possible second, while I crouched behind a stump, plugging my fingers in my ears.

Collin wasn’t a jock, but he had this weird obsession with ultimate frisbee. As far as I could tell, girls mostly ignored him, although this one skinny senior chick, Ali Brewer, asked him to prom, and he never shut up about it.

I said, “So what? I heard she asked everybody in the whole damn school.”

“Yeah, well, the most you’ve done is … Let’s see. Make out with a girl you met on the Internet, thanks to the profile I set up for you.”

It was Collin who introduced me to weed. He got it from his brother, who got it from who knows where. We’d smoke up in the parking lot before first period. Collin said it would chill me out. Mr. Future Med Student could ramble on for hours about the molecular structure of marijuana and its effects on the brain.

It’s embarrassing to admit this, but I’d been having panic attacks at school. At least, that’s how Collin diagnosed me. I’d be sitting at my desk, staring at the back of Kelsey McCormick’s head, and then I would die in slow motion. That’s what it felt like. My chest would tighten, my lungs would explode as I struggled to inhale-exhale. Everybody was breathing my air. It felt like they were laughing at me, as if my thoughts were broadcast on the TV along with the morning announcements.

It was worse during PE. In the locker room, the jocks would pound me, leaving purple bruises that didn’t fade for days. I ducked into a stall when I had to change into my gym clothes. I was so freaked out, I didn’t even bother to shower. Just walked around smelling like ass for the rest of the day.

Guess I was having some kind of nervous breakdown. Between the stuff going on at school, my dad basically living in a war zone, and everybody else telling me to figure out my life in the next five minutes, I just couldn’t deal with it anymore. I’d talk a teacher into giving me a bathroom pass, then waste time hiding in there. I’d crank all the faucets and listen to the water spurting out just to block the noise inside my head.

After a while, I started smoking during school. I’d sneak off to the parking lot and take a hit during lunch. Then another the minute I got home. It was like I couldn’t function without it. Word somehow got out among the low-level smokers that I was the one to see if you needed a few hits for the weekend. I never sold much, just if I had extra from Collin’s brother’s hookup. Of course, nobody invited me to parties or anything, but some of the girls acted real nice. This one chick, Danica Stone, would stroke my arm during math class. It felt amazing, her long fingers sliding up and down.

Obviously, my social life was a joke. I used to buy these lameass books about magic and sleight-of-hand, hoping my card tricks would impress girls. I never got a chance to find out.

Collin wasn’t much help. The farthest he ever drove was the mall. I’d slump in the food court, watching him scarf frozen yogurt while he explained why I should cut my hair. He didn’t know the truth. The techno he blasted in his car made me want to vomit. When he dragged me to thrift stores and wedged my bare feet into a pair of broken-down boots, I smelled dead grandfathers in those places and my pulse jumped. Besides, nothing ever fit me.

We used to skate in the park together, until Collin said he was “too old” for it a few years later. Really, he was just lazy. We called ourselves the Two Amigos. He didn’t know that I only sat with him at lunch because we had gone through freshman and sophomore years together, riding the bus with those older boys, the ones that slunk around, looking for a way to break you.

When you’re little, everyone tells you to “be yourself,” as if these words could solve all your problems. They don’t tell you the truth: nobody really wants you to be yourself.

“So this thing about you joining the military. It’s bogus, right?” Collin asked, as we roamed the aisles at Walmart, our only source of amusement at three in the morning.

My family had been pressuring me to join the armed forces. Go directly to boot camp, do not pass go. Why the hell not? I came from a clan of military men. I had to live up to their standards, even if I secretly doubted that I could ever please them.

I inspected a Snackmaster All-In-One Dehydrator. “Check it out. You can make your own beef jerky.”