Fireball (17 page)

Chris looked at him. He could say a lot with a look. Somehow he managed to say, ‘You're lucky she's here or you would be so fucking dead right now.' Then he took Karen by the arm and led her out. Me and Julian followed. At the door, as we were getting our shoes on, I saw that chick again. Linda. She waved from across the room to get my attention, then mouthed something to me across the room. I couldn't really make it out, but I think it was something like, ‘Don't leave me here on my own!' Whatever it was, I laughed and waved back. She was pretty cool, actually. It must be weird for her, a normal girl living among all those mannequins. She'll probably end up killing herself or drinking herself to death. Either that, or she'll get tons of plastic surgery and become one of them.

Growing up in West Van, you don't have a lot of options.

Outside, as we walked to the car, Jules kicked the bumper of this super expensive Landrover and set off the alarm. It was pretty sweet. Not like him at all.

‘That guy thinks he's such a bigshot.'

‘Yeah,' Karen said. ‘What a poser.'

Chris and I didn't say anything.

‘Whatever.' Jules spat on the ground. He was more pissed off than any of us. He'd obviously been looking forward to that party for a long time. ‘After the Crazy Dan show we'll be famous. Then he'll be begging us to come to his stupid parties.'

In a way, saving Mrs Reever had already made us famous. I didn't bother pointing that out, though. I assumed he meant we'd be even more famous.

‘One day,' Chris said, ‘I'm going to break that fucking guy's jaw.'

The weird part is, both those things turned out to be true.

29

‘Kids these days. Let me tell you. They're really something. They're always doing the craziest things. I'm Crazy Dan Oswald and I'm not half as crazy as most kids I meet. I heard about these kids the other day who lit themselves on fire for a home video. Talk about crazy! Maybe they're trying to put me out of a job!'

Everybody laughed like they thought he was hilarious.

The three of us had to wait backstage, where it was dark. If you stood a certain way you could see the studio audience: row after row of shadowy figures just past the lights. This guy dressed all in black kept an eye on us. He wore a fancy headset that had a built-in microphone so he could talk to all the other stagehands. He was supposed to tell us when to go on. We stood with him and listened to Crazy Dan make lame jokes that weren't even lame enough to be funny. The only reason everybody reacted was because there was a sign above the stage – this stupid sign that lit up and told them when to laugh or applaud or whatever.

If we'd known his show would be so shitty, we would never have gone on it in the first place. The thing is, they'd asked us when Mrs Reever was still alive. Jules was the most stoked, obviously. Chris was fairly indifferent to the whole idea, but at the time I'll admit I thought it might be pretty sweet to go on TV. So we agreed to do it.

Then she died, and by that point it was too late to back out.

The guy with headset turned to us. ‘You watch Crazy Dan's show?' he asked.

‘Uh, sometimes,' Jules said.

‘You like it?'

‘He's okay.'

‘He's a real dickweed.'

That made us laugh. I hadn't heard anybody say ‘dickweed' for about ten years. This guy with the headphones seemed all right. He had a pot belly and kept blowing huge bubbles with his gum. The whole scene was pretty surreal, actually. The backstage area was dirty and dark and smelled like the stairwell of a parkade. I kept bumping into things: rickety pieces of scaffolding, sandbags, light stands – you name it. Out on stage it was clean and bright and slick for the cameras, but back there it was like a shantytown.

‘I've told you about my son,' Crazy Dan said. I could tell this joke was going to be the lamest of all. ‘He just turned twelve, and now he thinks he's Crazy Dan Junior. Every time I talk about my next stunt, he just yawns. He says, “Dad – that's so played out, man.” Doesn't that kill you? Played out. I'm telling you.'

The sign lit up and everybody laughed again. Totally fake. What they really wanted to see was the stunt. At the end of every episode, Crazy Dan did a stunt. He'd started on late night doing stunts for other people's shows, and when they gave him his own show he kept up the tradition. People loved it. They couldn't get enough of those stunts, but I'd always been a little dubious about them. I mean, they weren't even real. He just used a dummy dressed up like himself. He'd put the dummy in a cannon and blast it halfway across a cornfield. Or he'd drop the dummy from a plane without a proper parachute. Then he'd film it and put his voice over­top, pretending it was him. The dummy would hit the ground or blow up or get smashed by a boulder and then he'd say something incredibly lame, something like: ‘Oh, man – I need an aspirin. My head is killing me.'

I have no idea why people liked that stuff, but they did. His show was super popular. He had a thirty minute slot on primetime. Aside from his stunts, he filled the half hour with B-list celebrity interviews, variety acts, and these cheesy ‘local hero' awards. That week, his celebrity was a soap opera actress and the variety act was this double-jointed gymnast.

We were the local heroes.

‘Yep. Kids are crazy. But tonight I've got a couple of great kids on the show. Crazy, maybe, but crazy in the best possible way. They stuck their necks out for somebody they didn't even know….'

The guy with the headphones nodded at us and held up his hand.

‘That's why, this week, they're our local heroes!'

The guy blew a bubble and motioned us through this fake doorway that opened onto the stage. Jules went first, then Chris, then me. People were clapping, and when they saw us they clapped louder. After the darkness backstage, the glaring lights stabbed straight into my eyes. I couldn't see the audience. All I could see was the set. Crazy Dan had red leather couches out there, and a big oak desk. He rose from behind his desk and shook each of our hands in turn. His assistant had walked us through all of this ahead of time, so we knew exactly what to expect. We were supposed to sit on the couches and tell our story.

‘Crazy Dan doesn't like surprises,' she'd told us.

He shook my hand last. I had the impression of a thin guy with a freakishly large smile, like a cartoon shark. On set, he always wore his stunt jumpsuit – this white jumpsuit with blue stripes running down the sides and a Crazy Dan crest on the front. That day, he was also wearing his crash helmet. It looked like a dirtbike helmet with a flip-up visor.

‘Have a seat, boys. Have a seat.'

We sat on the couches, just like we'd rehearsed.

‘Welcome to the Crazy Dan Oswald Show!'

Once the applause died down, the interview started. Jules did most of the talking. He looked slick, like always. He'd worn a green polo shirt and gelled his hair up in neat little spikes, like a magazine model. Me and Chris just sat and nodded and added a few details. It was pretty intense. The audience actually wanted to listen. The only one who didn't listen was Crazy Dan. He kept cutting Jules off, trying to make more of his lame jokes.

‘That sounds crazy! So who had to break the window?'

‘I did,' Chris answered. ‘I cut up my hand.'

‘You're lucky you didn't end up in the hospital along with her!'

This time, the laughter sounded forced. The audience, at least, could tell we didn't like him joking about it. The less they laughed, though, the more he tried. He just wouldn't quit. It was only a matter of time before he stuck his foot in his big, fat, mouth.

‘Are you saying you had to resuscitate her?'

‘Chris did, yeah.'

‘You gave her mouth-to-mouth? Honestly?'

I looked at Chris. His face was blank and his eyes were half-closed, like the lids had grown heavy. That happened, sometimes – when he was on the verge of losing it.

‘That's right,' he said.

‘Oh, boy. You're a better man than I am. That must have been crazy!'

A few diehards in the audience chuckled and coughed. Chris didn't say anything.

‘Sooooo,' Crazy Dan said, totally oblivious, ‘have you seen her since?'

We looked at each other. I asked, ‘Seen who since?'

‘Mrs Reever.'

I don't know who'd forgotten to tell him. It was a pretty big mistake to make.

‘She died in the hospital,' Jules muttered.

When he said that, the whole place went totally silent – like a movie theatre just before the curtains open. Anybody else would have known to let it go. Not Crazy Dan. It was as if he didn't even have a brain beneath that helmet. He was just an oversized doll in a white jumpsuit, a doll programmemed to make lame jokes and laugh at itself.

‘Hey,' he called, as if he was talking to somebody backstage. ‘We got the wrong heroes out here. You didn't tell me she died!'

Nobody laughed, except him. I remember thinking how badly I wanted to smash that stupid smile off his face. I wanted to smash it with a fist or a foot or a chair or anything. Even as I thought that, from the corner of my eye I saw Chris push himself out of his seat. He was wearing his jeans – the pair that he'd slashed up for Halloween. His eyes were half-closed, almost sleepy. I remember thinking:
If this happens, it's going to be the craziest thing ever
…

Afterwards, tons and tons of people crowded onto the stage. First came these security guards – two huge guys with shaved heads and matching bomber jackets. They sort of stormed around the set, looking tough, but neither of them really knew what was happening or what they were supposed to do. Crazy Dan's assistant rushed out after them. She had a first aid kit and made a big fuss over his bloody nose – stuffing cotton up his nostril and patting down his face with a towel wipe. At the same time, about eight hundred audience members stood up and gathered at the front, ridiculously excited. There were a bunch of reporters, too. They'd been sent to do another article on us. You know – a follow-up article about how great it was that Crazy Dan had put us on his stupid show.

Like always, most of what they wrote was total crap.

Chris didn't punch him, for one thing. That's what they wrote, but it was a lie. He slapped him, two or three times, across the face. That's different from punching him. Plus, they didn't hear what he said. I heard. I was right there so I know exactly what he said.

He said, ‘Hey – shut the fuck up, okay?'

And that was all. He said it after he slapped him, or maybe just before. I can't really remember. But he definitely didn't say anything else. He just walked off stage. I did, too. I mean, I didn't want to hang around with Crazy Dan and all those treats. So I went to find Chris. Not Julian. He stayed out there and tried to smooth things over for us.

‘Don't mind him,' he said. ‘He's always been volatile.'

That was the first time I heard that word – the word everybody started using. It sounded pretty bizarre, coming from Jules like that. I don't know if he was defending Chris, or blaming him, or what. I just know that he spent about half an hour trying to convince Crazy Dan to keep going with the interview. It didn't work, though. Crazy Dan was finished with us. They couldn't air the show, and Chris almost got charged with assault. That's what the cops said, at least. They phoned up his mom and laid it all out. Actually, they phoned our house, too. Not that I cared. My dad told me those network execs would rather swallow their own vomit than take a couple of kids to court. I mean, that kind of thing isn't exactly great publicity. This way, they came across as the good guys. That's how the papers wrote it up, anyways. Crazy Dan was this super tolerant guy who'd let us off the hook. Nobody mentioned all the stupid jokes he'd been making about Mrs Reever. They didn't mention what happened backstage, either – in the darkness that smelled like dirt and piss. That's where I found Chris, standing with that pot-bellied guy who chewed bubblegum.

‘That was radical, man,' the guy said. ‘Totally radical.'

He clapped Chris on the back, like they'd known each other for years. Then a frizzy-haired lady walked over, and a little runt with wire-rimmed glasses. They came out of nowhere – all these people who worked the lights and operated the cameras and assembled the backdrop and mopped the stage and flushed the toilet when Crazy Dan took a dump. There were dozens of them, and they all said the same thing.

‘You don't know how long we've been waiting for somebody to do that.'

To those people, we really were heroes.

30

‘It's how you cash out that matters. More than anything.'

The smoke was everywhere, like a thick fog rolling in off the ocean. We'd locked ourselves in Karen's basement suite. That's where we smoked up at her house. Her parents hardly ever came down there, so we pretty much had free reign. I don't know how she explained the smell. Maybe she covered it up with that perfume of hers. Or maybe her parents refused to believe that their little princess liked getting high. It's hard to say. But basically, we were blazing in her basement when Chris started getting super philosophical.