Some Kind of Suicide Mission
9:36 PM
“Sick? Really?”
“Yes,” she says, her hand to her mouth.
You look over to find the line to the bathroom nearly reaching the kitchen. “Come on,” you say, standing. “I’ll take you outside.”
“Okay.” she gets to her feet and grabs ahold of the back of your shirt. “Hurry.”
“Leaving so soon?” asks Luz, but you don’t answer because you are already on your way to the kitchen with Ruth in tow, pushing past people to get to the back patio. Outside, you cut through the line for the keg, dodge around the couple making out on one of the lounge chairs, and head straight to the darkened back yard. As soon as you reach the grass, Ruth lets go of your shirt and rushes ahead of you toward the citrus trees against the back wall. She is almost there when she abruptly stops, bends over with her hands on her knees, and begins vomiting on the grass.
The only thing you can think to do is put your hand on her back and keep it there until she finally stops retching.
“Here,” you say, spotting the end of a garden hose beneath one of the citrus trees. “I’ll turn that on.” You follow it back to a spigot near the edge of the patio and twist the valve open about half way. Ruth is already rinsing her mouth and face in the gentle flow of the water when you return. “Better?”
“Is there anything in my hair?” she asks.
You scan the dark curls surrounding her face, and shake your head.
She makes a weak attempt to spit, and has to reach up with her hand to wipe away the saliva dangling from her bottom lip. “Sorry,” she says, dropping the hose into the grass at her feet. “I think I need to sit down.”
“You wanna go back inside?”
“No.”
“Okay, don’t move.” You rush back to shut the hose off and then take a quick assessment of the available furniture, a pair of thick-cushioned lounge chairs at the edge of the lawn. One of them is still occupied by the kissing couple so you grab the back of the other and drag it off the patio and into the grass. Startled by the scraping sound of aluminum on cement, the couple briefly separate mouths and turn in your direction. It’s Rudy and CC. She frowns at you, tugs ineffectually at the high-riding hem of her denim skirt, and then goes back to kissing Rudy.
You drag the lounge chair all the way to the edge of the grass beneath the citrus trees.
“Thank you,” Ruth says, lowering herself onto the cushions. “This is perfect.”
“I think there was another one, but—”
“No.” She pats the narrow patch of cushion next to her. “There’s room.”
You squeeze together shoulder to shoulder with the side of the chair digging into your hip.
“Here,” she says, leaning forward, “Pick up your arm.” You do and she sits back, turns, and cuddles up to you with her head against your chest. “Okay, put it down now.” When you hesitate she reaches back, finds your hand, and pulls your arm around her shoulder like a blanket. “There,” she says. “Better?”
“Uh, huh.”
“What is that you’re wearing?” she asks. “I like it.”
“My shirt?”
“Your cologne.”
“Oh, uh.” You feel your face grow warm. “English Leather, I think.”
“It smells good.” She nestles closer. “You smell good, Matthew.”
You look across the dimly lit lawn at the people gathered around the keg, at the heads and shoulders crowded together in the kitchen, and at the bodies shifting about inside the house, and wonder how long it will take Tony Rodriguez to find you out here and beat the living shit out of you.
“Tell me a story, Matthew.”
“A story?”
“Like the one you’re reading, where the guy wakes up in another world.”
“Oh, that one.”
“You didn’t think I was listening, did you.” She lifts her head to peer up at you. “Well, I was,” she says with a self-satisfied grin. Then she lowers her head to your chest again as if listening to your heart.
“I, um, haven’t had a chance to—”
“Is there magic?” she asks with a sudden urgency. “There’s magic, right? It wouldn’t be any good without magic, would it?”
“No,” you say with equal gravity. “Not without magic.”
“I didn’t think so.”
She’s quiet for so long you suspect she’s fallen asleep. The night air is cool against your face and you breathe it in, slowly filling your lungs with the sweet, earthy smell of the damp grass, the woody-tang of the citrus trees, and the flowery warmth of this girl pressed softly against you.
When she does speak, her voice sounds fragile and faraway. “Wouldn’t it be nice to wake up somewhere else, Matthew? To be someone else? Just like that. Leave everything and everyone behind. Go where nobody knows you and just start all over?”
“What about your family?” you ask.
“They wouldn’t miss me.”
“Really?”
She sighs. “I doubt it. They have too many other things to worry about.”
What about Tony, you think, remembering the way she looked at him earlier.
“We ditched school today,” she says, as if reading your thoughts. “With Bobby and Joanne.”
“Oh?”
“Tony hit a dog.”
“On accident?”
“Yes, of course,” she says, and then with less assurance, “He was angry because they wouldn’t sell to him at the minimart. There were these trash cans. He didn’t see it until it was too late.”
“Did he … kill it?”
“I don’t know. He wouldn’t stop.” She lifts her head to look at you. “You would have stopped, wouldn’t you, at least to see if it was alright?”
Hell, yes, you want to say. What kind of low-life couldn’t at least do that? But that would be too easy. “I don’t know,” you admit. “I hope that I would.”
“Me too,” she says, lowering her head again “I hope so, too.”
A few minutes go by in silence, even the music playing in the house seems to have stalled. Then there is laughter, and voices, and the vibrating rhythms of a song you almost recognize. She takes a deep breath. You feel her chest expand against your ribs, then hear the air whistle softly past her lips as she releases it. “Thank you, Matthew,” she says, “for taking care of me.”
“Okay,” you hear yourself say.
She pushes herself up and slowly swings her legs around so that she is sitting upright with her sandaled feet on the ground. Her head is in profile, framed just right in the light of the kitchen window. You trace the silhouette of her face with your eyes, the loose curls over her forehead, the straight slope and rounded tip of her nose, the brief scallop of her upper lip and the fuller one below, the square of her chin, and the long curve of her throat. “I’m going to go back inside now,” she says, still not facing you.
“Oh.”
Now she does turn, and her dark eyes seem to be searching for something in yours. “I’ll see you in school?” she asks, as if this is somehow a choice either one of you can make.
“Yeah,” you say, and even manage to smile. “First period. Algebra.”
She holds your gaze a moment longer before standing and walking back to the house. Once she’s out of sight, you decide to get up and find the rest of your friends. But first, you really need to pee, and since you already know how long the line to the bathroom is, you make your way behind the citrus trees and go against the wall. Just as you finish buttoning the fly of your jeans, you hear Luz shout, “What the fuck, CC?”
Oh shit. Rudy.
By the time you get there, a crowd is already beginning to gather around the three of them.
“I couldn’t find you anywhere,” says Luz.
“Oh?” CC responds, arms crossed, hip cocked. “I’m surprised you even noticed I was gone.”
Rudy, still on the lounge chair, is watching, wide-eyed, like everyone else.
“Noticed?” shouts Luz. “I’ve been searching the whole house for you and you’re out here with this, this…” She flings her hand dismissively in Rudy’s direction, “pinche payaso? What the hell, I thought you liked me.”
“I like you, Luz,” says CC, stabbing the air with her chin. “But I also like to have fun.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” demands Luz, throwing her hands in the air. “What the hell, CC? What kind of person does something like that?”
“Oh, no,” says an older looking dude wearing an Iron Maiden t-shirt. “Looks like trouble in dyke paradise.”
Luz turns on him. “What the fuck did you just say?”
He smirks, “I said, looks like trouble in—”
Luz knocks his head sideways with a solid right hook to the jaw. He staggers backwards, sloshing beer down the front of his shirt.
“No fucking way,” he growls, tossing his empty cup on the floor with one hand and swinging for Luz with the other. Her head jolts back as his fist connects with her face and she stumbles past CC, trips over the foot of the lounge chair, and lands directly on top of Rudy.
CC lets out a high-pitched scream and leaps onto Iron Maiden from behind, clawing at his eyes with her fingernails. Now he’s screaming and spinning in circles trying to protect his face and throw her off at the same time, but her legs are wrapped firmly around his hips with her heels wedged into his crotch.
The immediate bystanders attempt to fall back even as more people crowd out of the house and onto the patio to see what all the commotion is about.
Someone grabs CC’s arms from behind.
“Don’t touch her!” shouts Luz, pushing herself off Rudy and rushing to CC’s defense.
Rudy jumps up from the lounge chair and begins pummeling Iron Maiden’s exposed stomach with both fists. Someone big shoves past you and you momentarily lose track of Rudy and the girls in all the pushing and screaming.
Eric and Gus appear from somewhere on your right. “What happened?” asks Eric. “Where’s Rudy?”
“Some asshole started giving Luz shit so she hit him, and then he hit her back, and then CC and Rudy got into it, and…” You pause to inhale just as a guy with his arm around Iron Maiden pushes past you, escorting his coughing, red-faced friend out into the yard. You decide it would take too long to explain the rest. “And now I don’t know.”
“Shit,” says Gus, “What happened to that dude’s face?”
“That’s the asshole,” you say.
Somehow, Iron Maiden hears this. “There!” he says pointing directly at you. “Right there! That’s them! Those are his friends!”
People are starting to turn and stare. Eric says slowly, “What the fuck?”
“Out!” shouts Iron Maiden, moving in your direction. “Get them out of here!” There are angry red welts crisscrossing his forehead and cheeks, some appear to be bleeding.
“Now, wait a minute,” says Gus, holding up his hands.
Someone grabs you by the back collar of your shirt nearly lifting you off your feet and begins pushing you forward through the crowd. When you twist your head around you recognize your escort as the big guy monitoring the beer keg when you arrived. Not until you are around the side of the house and in the front yard does he release you with a final shove past the two weightlifters standing arms crossed in the driveway. Eric and Gus are right behind you.
“Fuck you, asshole,” says Eric, as soon as he’s clear of the two bouncers.
Rudy is standing with Luz and CC at the bottom of the driveway. CC has both arms wrapped protectively around Luz. “Yeah,” says Rudy, stepping forward. “You can’t do that.”
“Fuck you,” says one of the bouncers. “We just did.”
“Fuck you,” says Rudy, continuing up the driveway toward them. “Then I want my money back.”
The bouncer smirks. “Come and get it.”
“Rudy,” you say, placing your hand on his shoulder. “It’s not worth it.”
He shrugs you away and steps right up to the bouncer as if the brute isn’t easily twice his size. The man uncrosses his arms and clenches his fists.
“Whoa, whoa!” you say, moving to get between them with your hands held up.
Rudy, though, is on some kind of suicide mission. “I said I want—”
The bouncer punches him so hard in the jaw it spins him around. Then he grabs Rudy by the collar of his shirt and the back of his jeans, lifts him like a duffle bag, and tosses him headfirst onto the lawn. Something falls to the ground near the bouncer’s feet. You swoop down to pick it up, expecting to be pounced on at any moment, and quickly shove it in your pocket.
“You,” someone barks, causing you to flinch. The second bouncer is pointing a thick finger in your direction. “Take your friend and get out of here.”
You nod and make your way to Rudy, but CC and Gus are already there helping him to his feet. “You’re insane,” says CC, brushing grass from the front of his shirt. “Insane.”
Rudy smiles crookedly at her as if he was the one doing the tossing. “You like that?” he slurs.
“What the hell, CC?” you hear Luz say.
“Foster Freeze?” asks Eric.
You nod and he and Gus begin to make their way up the street toward Eric’s car. Rudy is already moving in the opposite direction, leaning on CC for support. Luz is standing next to you, her mouth half open, watching them walk away. “Where are they going?” she asks.
“My car.”
“Your car?”
You shrug. “Coming with?”
Luz looks at you, then back at CC and Rudy, and finally at you again. She takes a deep breath, the front of her checkerboard blouse expanding with the effort, then sighs. “Sure, why not.”
THE MISADVENTURES OF MATTHEW VAN DER BOOT is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental … no matter how many times you ask.