M. T. Anderson (15 page)

One Saturday, a few days after we saw the riot from the news in our dreams, there was this promotion, where if you talked about the great taste of Coca-Cola to your friends like a thousand times, you got a free six-pack of it, so we decided to take them for some meg ride by all getting together and being like,
Coke, Coke, Coke, Coke
for about three hours so we’d get a year’s supply. It was a chance to rip off the corporations, which we all thought was a funny idea.

I picked up Violet at her house and we drove to Marty’s, where everyone was meeting.

When we got there, Calista and Loga were getting out of Calista’s car, and it was like,
Whoa,
because they were wearing all torn-up clothes. They were walking normal, but they looked like they’d been burned up and hit with stuff.

I ran over to them. I was going, “Holy shit! Are you okay? What happened?” and Violet, too, she was going, “Hey — are you okay?”

They stood there and looked at us, then looked at each other like,
Omigod! Someone is poopiehead!

“Yuh,” said Loga. “It’s Riot Gear. It’s retro. It’s beat up to look like one of the big twentieth-century riots. It’s been big since earlier this week.”

I was like, “Oh.”

Violet was like, “Sorry.”

“No wrong,” said Calista, flipping her hair.

When we went inside, Marty and Quendy were also wearing Riot Gear. Everyone was going,
Hi! Hey! Hey! Hi! Unit! What’s doing?

“Hey!” said Loga to Quendy, pointing. “Kent State collection, right? Great skirt!”

Quendy bowed her legs out. “It’s not a skirt — it’s culottes!”

“Ohhh, cute!”

Calista said, “That looks great on you!”

Quendy didn’t say anything to Calista, because Calista had just put her arm around Link and they were smelling each other’s faces, and Quendy was jealous.

“Units!” said Marty. “Into the — in here — fuck yeah, man — into the living room. Kay kay kay kay. Right in here.”

We grabbed some seats.

“Okay,” said Marty. “O-fuckin’-kay!” He nodded. “Coca-Cola!”

We waited to start.

We were like waiting.

We all sat there for a minute, looking like we were smiling, but in reality, not. Each of us looked at everyone else’s face. Violet chatted me,
This is like when I was twelve, and we had this slumber party and agreed to show each other our boobs. I think we finally just gave up and watched
America’s Unlikeliest Allergy Attacks.

“So . . . ,” said Marty, kind of sneaky. “Anyone up for the great taste of . . . Coke?”

Loga said, “I like its refreshing flavor.”

“It’s really good on a really hot day,” said Link. “There’s nothing like an ice-cold Coke.”

“I like regular Coke,” said Quendy, “but also the fantastic taste of Diet Coke.”

Link pinched Calista. She kind of sighed, “Me, too.”

Marty said, “Coke, its great taste, it’s so good that I would beat up a guy if he had one and I really wanted it.”

“Anyone?” said Link. “You and Coke?”

Loga said, “Coke, it’s really good, almost as good as Pepsi.”

“Unette!” said Marty. “‘Almost’? You just lost us one! The fuckin’ count just went down.”

I said quickly, “I like Coke because of the energy.”

Link pinched Calista. She kind of sighed, “Me, too.”

Violet said, “I love the great feeling of Coke’s carbonation going down my throat, all the pain, like . . .” She waved her hands in the air and looked at the ceiling, trying to think of something. She said, “It’s like sweet gravel. It’s like a bunch of itsy-bitsy commuters running for a shuttle in my windpipe.” Everyone was looking at her. I could feel them chatting each other, saying that was stupid. I sat nearer to her. I put my hand on her back.

She was saying, “Sometimes I try to think back to the first time I ever had Coke. Because it must have hurt, but I can’t remember. How could we ever have started to enjoy it? If something’s an acquired taste, like, how do you start to acquire it? For that matter, who gave me Coke the first time? My father? I don’t think so. Who would hand a kid a Coke and think, ‘Her first one. I’m so proud.’ How do we even start?”

There was a long, silent part.

Then Marty said, “Yeah. That may have cost us a few. Hey, how about the great foaming capabilities of Coke?”

And then we were onto this whole thing, about Coke fights, and Coke floats, and Coke promotions, and we went on and on and on, but Violet didn’t say anything else, just sat there silently. The guys kept going. I was laughing extra loud at everything, because I didn’t want people to notice that Violet was all clammy. So I was yelling all these carbonation things and trying to bring her back in, and the other guys were going spastic and throwing pillows at each other. We were like rum and Coke, stadium Coke, flat Coke, bottled Coke, Coke and nachos, Coke and hot dogs, hot Coke, Cherry Coke, Coke on tap, comparative suckiness of, until finally there was another quiet part, and Link said, “Hey, Marty-unit, do you actually have any Coke?”

Marty was like, “No. But, fuck, aren’t you getting like meg thirsty? With all of this talking about the great taste of Coke?”

We looked at our feet for a minute. I moved my butt around on the, it’s called an ottoman.

“Let’s go out and get some,” said Link.

“Yeah. Let’s go to the store.”

“Which store?”

“There’s a Halt ’n’ Buy up on like, near the Sports Giant.”

We were all standing up. Marty was like announcing, “Okay, we’ll go out and get some of the great beverage of Coke, with its refreshing flavor,” but no one was really rattling that way now.

Loga and Calista were whispering to each other, with Violet walking behind them. They saw she was near them, and they changed the subject.

“Oh, and omigod!” said Calista. “Are those the Stonewall Clogs? They’re so brag.”

“Yeah,” said Loga.

“Omigod. They look wholly comfy. Are they comfy?”

“They’re pretty comfy.” Loga picked up her foot and played with her flowery clog, and she was like, “I got a size seven, but it feels more like a man’s size seven.”

“This top is the Watts Riot top.”

Violet said, “I can never keep any of the riots straight. Which one was the Watts riot?”

Calista and Loga stopped and looked at her. I could feel them flashing chat.

“Like, a riot,” said Calista. “I don’t know, Violet. Like, when people start breaking windows and beating each other up, and they have to call in the cops. A riot. You know. Riot?”

“Oh, I just thought you might . . . know. . . . Maybe . . . I wondered what incited it.” Violet was playing quickly with her own hands.

“Yeah,” said Calista.

“I was just asking,” said Violet.

“Okay.”

“I was just . . .”

“Yeah. ‘Incited.’”

“What? It’s not like I was saying something mean or stupid.”

“No. Okay. Loga, are we going?”

They kept on walking.

Loga said, “Put
that
in your metizabism.”

Calista said, “What’s a metizabism?”

“Oh, sorry. I thought it was good to use stupid, long words that no one can understand.”

Calista laughed and looked backward, going, “Shhh. She’ll hear you and have an alpoduffin . . . fleatcher.”

In my head, I was like,
Oh shit.

Violet was chatting me.
Did you hear that? I can’t stand this anymore.

I was like,
What do you mean?

They were just these meg bitches. Will you take me home?

I was like,
Just let it blow. Let it blow. No wrong.

They hate me.

No one hates you.

Your friends hate me. They think I’m stupid.

No one — fuck! — no one thinks you’re stupid.

Yeah, I don’t mean dumb stupid.

We can’t leave them now. It would be like a total rash on their ass if we went.

They just insulted me.

Unit, they didn’t.

They thought what I said during the game was stupid. They think everything I say is weird and stupid. What is your problem? Take me home.

Link was like, “You coming with?”

Violet was like,
Take me home.

Fuck! Why? Fuck.

I want to leave.

“No,” I said to Link. “Violet, uh, she has to go home.”

“Unit,” said Link. “The party’s just begun. We haven’t even filled the bathtub with anything from the kitchen yet.”

“I’ve really got to go,” said Violet, smiling like she was shaking hands with the members of the frickin’ PTA.

Everyone was going out to get in their upcars and go get some stuff at the store. Calista was showing off her WTO riot Windbreaker. Violet and me said good-bye. We got in my upcar. We took off.

Then we started to fight.

I flew down the main tube in Marty’s community. It was a gated community, and I waited to get out through the neighborhood’s security sphincter. It pulled open, and I flew out into the droptube, going like a million miles an hour so that Violet would jerk back in her seat. Then when I was going up, I had this idea that instead of like throwing her around by going too fast, I would be like quiet angry like my father got, and I’d just do everything
exactly right,
everything up to the centigram.

So I flew really good when I got up above the surface, going over the shantytowns that had been built up around the cooling steeples. I flew perfect. I could see the others come out of the droptube behind me, and they were heading off to the strip.