Bad Kid (12 page)

“Bitch! Your face!” yelled Sylvia as she pushed me against the hallway wall. “It's a mess!”

“Why do you keep calling me
bitch
?” I screamed over the thumping industrial music. “My name is David. David Crabb!”

“That's a shit last name,” she yelled as she rummaged through her purse, which suddenly looked like a twenty-gallon grocery bag.

“Your purse is so big! Are you a bag lady?” I couldn't stop cackling as I rubbed my spine up and down against the wall. “I feel like a cat!”

“Honey, it's weed, not ecstasy. You're acting like you've never been high before.”

“I haven't. So thank you, Sylvia,” I purred, leaning forward to hug her.

“Now listen, snuggle bug,” she said, “you're a sweet boy, but you need to let me fix your face!”

“What do you mean?” I asked as Sylvia flipped open a compact in my face. In horror I screamed, “Ahhh!!! My face!”

While the black lights were bringing out the eyes, teeth, and lint on everyone else, they were bringing out the flesh-tone Clearasil on me. My face looked like a nightmarish galaxy of glowing smears. Each covered blemish was its own green planet floating on my face; a dozen dots shone across my cheeks, nose, and forehead. “Oh my God. I'm polka-dotted!”

“Honey, you're making a scene. Just stay still.” Sylvia spit on her hand and begin to rub her saliva into my face with a cocktail napkin. I shrieked and tried to move away, but I was pinned against the wall by her breasts. “Don't move, Mama's gonna fix you.”

“Oh my God. Your tits are huge!” I exclaimed as pencils, powders, and creams were applied to my cheeks and forehead. Completely stoned and terrified of this stranger who'd spit all over me, I went limp and let her work. Three minutes later she was done.

“Voilà!” she exclaimed proudly, dropping a handful of makeup tubes into her bag. “Don't ever say I didn't do anything for you.”

“David!” Greg yelled from down the hall. “Look who I found.”

“Oh. Hi. Hi. Hi . . .” I said repeatedly to Raven and her crew like a broken tape recorder.

“David, are you okay?” Greg asked. “You seem weird. Your face . . .”

Raven leaned in close to me and sniffed, her contact lenses floating on her eyes like blue stars. “He's high.”

“David! You smoked pot? Without me?”

“Yeah, he's baked,” said Raven. “And it smells like good shit, too. Skunky.”

“Skunky?” I asked.

“Yeah, skunky. It means you had some deep, funky shit. Where'd you get it?”

“Sylvia gave it to—” I turned to introduce her, but she was gone. “There was this girl. A girl we met out front who put her hands in our pants.”

“Ugh, her!” Greg rolled his eyes. “What a bitch.”

“No, no,” I said, petting his face, “her name is Sylvia and her purse is full of so much stuff and she did incredible things to a can with her earrings. And . . . this song sounds like razor blades underwater!”

“Um, okay, stoner,” Raven smirked as her friends snickered. “Now I want some.”

“He's kind of right, though,” came a voice from the dark. At the back of the group I saw a boy with shaggy brown hair, wearing a tank top. His eyes were so blue it hurt to look at them.

“This is Jake,” said Greg, excitedly bouncing up and down to the beat of the music.

“Hi, Jake. I'm David Crabb,” I said, and smacked my forehead with my palm. “Why do I keep saying my full name? Ahhhh!”

As everyone laughed, Jake reached forward and put his hand on my neck, chuckling. “Dude, you're so high!” He slid his arm around my shoulder as we walked down the hall. He smelled like a million amazing things all at once. As the six of us walked up to the bar, Greg shot me a look I'd never seen before.

“Greg, are you mad or something?” I asked.

“No!” He seemed uncomfortable, with everyone suddenly looking at him. “I'm fine. Jeez, you're so stoned!” Through the cloudy haze in my mind, a controlling idea made itself known:

Maybe Greg is upset and jealous because Greg likes me and I'm talking to Jake!

“Greg, wanna have a cigarette out back?” I asked him.

“I can't hear you,” Greg screamed over the music.

“Hey David,” said Jake, whose bee-stung lower lip was a few inches from my face. “Try this when you're talking to people at
a club.” Jake slipped his thumb over the little tab in the center of my ear, closing the canal. “See? Now I can yell and you can hear me without it being too loud. Cool, right?”

“Uh-huh,” I responded, feeling the warmth of his hand gripping the back of my head. His breath was heavy with tobacco and liquor.

“Want some?” he asked, and pulled a flask out of his jeans.

I leaned in close and ran my fingers through his hair, sliding my thumb over his ear before yelling, “What is it?”

“Whiskey!” He raised it to my lips and then passed it around.

Greg took a swig and then shoved it back between Jake's face and mine. “Here. Let's dance!” yelled Greg before pulling Jake onto the dance floor.

I leaned against the wall with Jake's flask and watched everyone dance for an hour, my head spinning a little faster with each gulp of whiskey. Greg was busting all those amazing moves I'd seen in his bedroom, but now he was doing it for everyone, not just me. He and Jake wrapped their arms around each other's waists as they screamed into each other's ears. It had only been an hour and I was already getting jealous, thinking:
I remember when Jake's thumbs were in my ears
.

Two hours later we all hugged good-bye around Greg's red Cabriolet. Whatever was energizing about the whiskey and pot had faded away, leaving only exhaustion in its wake. I turned to hug Jake, only to find him and Greg sucking each other's faces against a chain-link fence. And a new controlling idea took hold of my brain:

Greg doesn't like you that way. Greg likes Jake that way
.

In the car I was quiet, depressed that Greg was interested in someone else but excited about the prospect of meeting other
boys who would touch me like Jake did: intimately, comfortably, without shame. I pulled down the visor to fix my hair and was shocked by the person looking back at me.

“Oh my God, Greg. My face!”

“Yeah, it's amazing. What did you do in there when I was dancing?”

In the mirror I saw a face that wasn't mine. It was the face of an effeminate mime or the cruel queen in a Disney film. Both of my eyes were thinly outlined in charcoal black, as were my eyebrows. My skin was covered in a fine, ashy powder and looked like it was carved of bleached ivory. I had a beauty mark under my right eye, and my lips were a deep, dusty pink. Smelling a familiar odor, I touched my face and licked my finger. My face was covered in flour.

“You look fucking amazing,” said Greg, smiling and turning up the stereo. “Good job.”

“But I didn't do it. Sylvia did,” I murmured to myself. “And I never got to say bye.”

A
s Greg and I pulled into the Glenbrook subdivision, we saw them. In the grassy expanse between the main road and the backyard fences, they were easy to spot. Among the wildflowers and drifting clouds of dandelions, four dark figures swayed in the grass. The black-clad pack of teen depressives trudged toward us, a thick cloud of cigarette smoke trailing them.

“Is that them, Greg? Is this it?”

I pulled up a torn sleeve to read the smeared address scrawled on my forearm.

“Wait! That's Raven!” Greg pointed at the kids. From a hundred feet away I could tell it was Raven, her teased thicket of jet black hair magically defying the sweltering humidity.

She waved as the whole clan started running toward the car, a horrifying zombie-film motif most people would be driving
away
from. Jake's hair was in a loose little ponytail, his chin-length bangs dangling over his crystal-blue eyes. Hector was a new friend I'd met a week earlier at
The Rocky Horror Show
. He wore a tattered tuxedo shirt buttoned to the top and sported a freshly bleached platinum pompadour.

“Nice hair, Hector!” yelled Greg.

“I left the shit on too long,” he replied, parting his hair to show a cluster of pearly blisters on his scalp. Everyone groaned in disgust, their various bracelets and necklaces jangling as Raven hopped into the backseat and the boys onto the hood.

This was the motley crew whose ranks Greg and I had quickly joined. At FX we'd met more alternative kids who went to our high school, the largest one in San Antonio, where it was hard to locate and corral all these kindred spirits. But weekend clubbing had given us the opportunity to make plans to meet at school. There was a spot beneath an oak tree in the courtyard populated by a ragtag mob of fishnetted freaks and black-clad cadavers chanting Joy Division lyrics and reeking of patchouli. After school we'd meet in the parking lot around my little Mercury Lynx or Greg's Cabriolet, making plans to go to someone's parentless house to smoke weed or drive downtown to buy CDs from Hogwild Records. We'd effectively fused our Monday-to-Friday lives with our weekend lives at FX.

“Hey boys,” screamed Raven, hugging us around our seats.

Jake gripped the roof of the car and slid his torso up the glass, grinning as his crotch dragged the windshield wiper.

“Hey Davey,” he purred, reaching through the open window to tousle my hair.

“Uh, hi Jake.” I could feel the blood rush to my head as he began to hump the hood of the car. Greg shot me a death glare,
unhappy with this forward flirtation between Jake and me. Hypnotized by his blue eyes, I didn't realize that my foot was slipping off the brake. Suddenly the car jerked forward, almost sending the boys sliding off the hood.

“Oh, I'm sorry!” I yelled my apologies out the window, knowing that getting out of the car would reveal my slight erection.

“Onward, chauffeur!” Jake yelled, reclining against the windshield like it was a lawn chair.

“But you're on top of my car. What if a cop . . .”

“Be cool,” Greg demanded, slapping my arm.

“Yeah, David,” whispered Raven, pinching my nipples from behind. “It's my birthday!”

My car lurched forward with Jake and Hector on the hood, rolling along at five mph. People on their way to church services craned their heads as we passed, their mouths agape. Young families and elderly couples flashed their lights and honked, as if I might not be aware that a small horde of teenagers was covering my car.

As the sun beat down, Jake stripped off his shirt. He shook out his ponytail and stretched out on the windshield, his skin tan and wet against the glass. As he squirmed to get comfortable, his baggy jeans slid down his hips, showing the top of his butt crack.

“Take it off, baby!” yelled Raven, chugging Mountain Dew.

Jake slid his pants down and pressed his bare ass against the glass, turning to smile at me before licking the windshield.

“David, stop the car!”

I'm not sure how long Greg and Raven were yelling before it actually registered. Greg's knuckles rapped lightly on my forehead.

“We're here, crazy! Wake the fuck up.”

“It's okay, David,” Hector said, lingering behind to light his cigarette as everyone piled out. “His ass
is
kind of hypnotizing.”

To say that Raven's front yard was messy is an understatement. It was deeply unloved. Trudging through the plastic children's toys and knee-high grass, I wondered how the surrounding neighbors hadn't shut the place down. Inside, Raven's mother greeted us.

“I'm Barb! How are y'all?” she bellowed, a stream of Parliament 100 smoke streaming from her lightly mustached lips. Barb was no taller than five-foot-six and no lighter than 250 pounds. She appeared to be wearing a muumuu, but it could just as easily have been the floral fitted sheet from her bed, rolled up off the mattress that morning and stapled at either shoulder. She had long, dry hair that hung to her waist like graying streaks of hay.

“Have some snacks and shit, y'all!” She walked us through two dust-covered rooms full of yellowing newspaper stacks and ticking grandfather clocks. In the kitchen she presented a display of paper-plated food before lighting a new cigarette off the open flame of her stovetop. Raven rolled her eyes and hugged herself in embarrassment as Barb laid out the “snack station.”

“This is a pimento loaf I got at Piggly Wiggly. It's delicious. These are my mama's famous ‘ants on a stick,' which are celery sticks full of cream cheese and raisins. I got some butter crackers here and bacon Easy Cheese for y'all, but I think Jenny took it into the living room. JENNY!” she hollered past us with unimaginable force. A tiny face covered in orange spray cheese turned away from the massive television and smiled.

“That's my sister,” Raven moaned. “Don't talk to her, or she'll never shut up.”

“Don't you talk that shit about your sister! She fucking loves you!” Barb screamed.

The tiny, golden-locked girl giggled, liquid cheese streaming down her chin, as Axl Rose fried in an electric chair on the big screen in front of her.

“She's very cute, Mrs. Gunner. And your home is lovely,” I said, nervously trying to cut the noisy tension as Axl screamed, “Numma numma numma need-need. I wanna watch you bleed!”

“That's
Mizz
Gunner, honey. I'm divorced,” Barb huffed, softening as she looked at me. “Well,
you're
new. Where have you been hiding this one, Milly?”

“Don't fucking call me that, Mother!” Raven groaned as Barb pinched my face.

“David, you are just a little cup of sunshine.” Barb released my cheek and led us into the living room, her massive smock swaying from side to side.

I leaned against Jake and whispered, “She's like a walking duvet.” He chortled quietly and wrapped his arm around me. I could feel the warmth of his chest against my shoulder. As I glanced at Greg, he quickly looked away.

“Y'all can hang out in here or the backyard if you wanna smoke,” Barb said, furrowing her brow at Raven. “And by
smoke
, I mean cigarettes. Not weed!”

Barb lit cigarette after cigarette as she continued the tour of her home, each room containing a hidden stash of Zippos, matches, and butane lighters. Barb lingered in each room for several minutes as it filled with hovering shelves of smoke. Mid-sentence she'd stop and clutch her chest, shocked at the rays of sunlight suspended in tobacco clouds around us.

“Oh, good God,” she shrieked, reaching for one of an endless
array of air fresheners that were stashed all over the house. She doused each room in Vanilla Fields or Cinnamon Stick or Ocean Breeze, waving the air around her with genuine surprise as we followed her out.

“Does she not realize that she's the one filling this place with smoke?” I whispered to Jake, who buried his face against my shoulder to stifle his laughter. As Barb showed us a wall of family photos in the smoky den, little Sara began to hack like an elderly truck-stop waitress. Barb sprayed a noxious cloud of Tropical Summer through the gray haze.

“Mom, we want to hang out,” Raven interrupted. “My friends don't need to know the whole fucking lineage of our family!”

“Oh damn! I'm sorry, baby,” Barb said, retrieving Jenny from the coffee table. “Let your big sister and her friends have some fun.” Leaving the room, Barb grinned at Raven over her shoulder and winked. “Okay kids, I'm off to watch my
LA Law
. Mi casa es su casa.” Then she disappeared down a clock-filled hallway through a corridor of smoke, like a gorilla in the mist.

Over the next hour a half-dozen kids showed up, each covered in an array of rubber bands and metal bracelets, torn jeans and safety-pinned T-shirts. We smoked cloves in the backyard and Hector taught us a few Santerian love spells with Mexican candles. I thought of casting one on Greg or Jake, which made me realize that they'd disappeared. I looked around the living room as Raven brandished an empty wine bottle and declared, “It's time for Spin the Bottle!”

My stomach sank. I'd never kissed anyone, not even as a joke. I needed support. I needed my best friend.

I walked into the front yard hoping to find Greg and Jake smoking, but I saw nothing. Then I noticed my car rocking. The
windows were misted and hard to see through. Every few moments the car would shake, and then there would be a muffled laugh, followed by a quiet groan. I wanted to open the door and yell,
How can you
both
be doing this to me? You're the loves of my life!
But I wasn't going to be the uptight one, the jealous one, the prude. I marched back into the house to find a dozen kids gathered in a circle on the den floor. I took my seat in the group and began assessing the situation in a positive light. I thought,
I don't have to feel insecure about this. I'm sixteen years old. I'm practically an adult
.

“Where are you going?” I asked Hector as he walked outside.

“This shit is for little kids,” he deadpanned. “I'll be outside. Have fun getting mono.”

I wanted to escape with him, but I had a job to do. If Greg could make out with someone, I could too. I took a deep breath and looked around at the circle, reminding myself,
You can do this, David. You can kiss any of these people
.

And then the doorbell rang.

A shaft of blinding sun cut through the smoky room as the door creaked open. A massive silhouette appeared, with long, wavy hair and a bright-pink headband. She wore bifocals that made the top half of her eyes gigantic and the bottom half microscopic. A too-tight belt cinched the middle of her blubbery abdomen. She looked like a fat, upright-standing ant. Worst of all, at the center of her face, where a normal person's nose would be, was a complex network of bandages, like five or six thick slabs of bacon strapped horizontally above her mouth.

“Ooh, Spin the Bottle!” she squealed, revealing a mouthful of silver braces.

“Oh,” said Raven. “This is Pam.” As the girl shut the door behind her, Raven leaned in to whisper, “She's the daughter of my mom's friend. Ugh!”

“I'm Pam,” the girl repeated, breaking into the circle between Raven and another girl across from me. She lowered her ample bottom to the ground and sat Indian-style, adjusting her yellow plastic barrettes and grinning at anyone who dared make eye contact. And then she locked eyes with me, staring with her giant half-moon orbs as every ticking clock in the house came to a stop. A flirty smile stretched across her face, revealing an intricate network of neon-colored rubber bands attached to her dental work.

“Hi,” she whispered coyly, offering me a tiny, four-fingered baby-wave.

“Looks like David has a fan,” said Raven. Everyone in the group laughed, and Pam blushed. “Awww, cutie's first kiss.”

“I've kissed someone before! Don't be stupid!” I said, realizing too late that Raven wasn't talking about me. “Oh, yeah. Pam. Ha . . .” I mumbled.

The tension was palpable as we began, each person's spin nearly a death-defying risk. At any moment, someone would be kissing the gaping, metallic maw of Pam, whose loud mouth-breathing and laser-beam gaze remained focused in my direction.

Finally, it was her turn. She picked up the bottle, turned the spout toward me in midair, and then laid it back down on the carpet.

“You!” she beamed, baring her teeth and giggling. I looked around for someone to call foul on Pam's technique, to save me from mashing faces with this escapee from the
Texas Chainsaw
Massacre
family. But everyone looked away, relieved that I'd be taking one for the team.

“I just had sideus surgery,” Pam said, mispronouncing
sinus
through the deformed inner workings of her mangled head cavity. She closed her eyes and leaned forward. Before I could take a breath her lips were on me, chewing and gnashing against my mouth like a dog on a rawhide bone. I could barely hear the group giggling through the mélange of sensory overload.

First there was the metallic taste of her dental work, like licking the inside of an empty can of tuna fish. Then there was the odor. Her flesh and hair smelled like synthetic fruit, or the stale plastic innards of a Strawberry Shortcake doll. I could feel the delicate scraping of metal edges against my gums, each dart of her tentacle-like tongue holding the promise of some gruesome oral injury. After what seemed like a minute I tried to back away, only to feel the immense pressure of her bearlike paws on my shoulders, thrusting me back into her mouth.

At this point, the group's gentle snickering gave way to nervous laughter, the kind emitted before something brutal and life-changing happens to a victim who at first simply can't believe he is looking at a
real human head
.

“Come on, Pam,” Raven said, awkwardly chuckling.