Nothing Bad Is Going to Happen (2 page)

My name is Kippy
Bushman, and I'm a crippled interloper, a girl detective in retirement, but also—

“What's that?” Sarah McKetta asks, nodding at the letter in my hands.

We're in the wheelchair van on the way to school, and per usual she is all up in my business.

“A letter from my grandfather,” I lie, stuffing it back into my coat pocket.

“Yeah, right,” she says. The van's radio is blasting Christmas carols, and between the icy wind whipping through the windows and our driver Mildred's penchant for loud music, I'm starting to freak out. Some days at school the chorus of pencils scratching paper will shrink into silence and beneath the nothingness I'll hear Ralph's
heavy footsteps on unseen stairs, with the scrape and thump of a machete dragging behind him. Often I can't tell if the lightning outside is real or remembered.

Dr. Ferguson gives me stacks of books and case reports, all of which prove that people with PTSD can improve, which is good, because personally, I've got a lot of “improving” to do.

“How's it going, ladies?” Mildred shouts, glancing at us in the rearview mirror.

“Pretty bumpy, actually, you incompetent dickhead,” McKetta yells back. “Just because I can't feel my fucking legs doesn't mean you have to hit every pothole.”

Another dip in the road jostles my bad leg and I shudder, secretly hoping that we get a speeding ticket so that Mildred is forced to slow down. Ever since he took full credit for capturing Ralph, Sheriff Staake has been too busy throwing parades for himself to monitor the local speed limits. Friendship used to be a safe and boring place. But now that the cops are so caught up in their potlucks and their cakewalks—taking advantage of Friendship's goodwill to raise all sorts of money for God knows what—the roads simply aren't safe anymore and petty crime is on the rise.

I do a double take, thinking that I see my former Cloudy Meadows roommate, Albus, on the sidewalk. But
it's just a mailbox. My brain knows that Albus is still in the psych ward, but no matter how many times I remind myself of the facts, my mind rebels. I've been “seeing” her a lot lately: riding her bike around town, or in the crowd during a school assembly. It always turns out to be someone else: a little girl with short hair that looks like it's been chopped with kitchen scissors. Some shadow out of the corner of my eye, or in the reflection of a mirror. There'll be a flash of Albus coming around the corner that turns out to be a boy in hunting gear. Once it was a golden retriever. It's normal to get hung up on the people we miss.

Still, you'd think if I were going to be haunted, the ghosts would be of my former best friend, Ruth, (murdered by Ralph), or Mom (murdered by cancer)—someone actually gone, in other words, not some living girl who once helped me escape from a sanatorium. It almost seems like an insult to Ruth and Mom, since I only knew Albus for less than a week. But she's like a song stuck in my head.

Anyway, things didn't exactly turn out so great with my last few friends: Ruth's dead and her photo, now faded by the sun, has been stuck with wires into the shoulder of the highway next to the crop where she was killed; Ralph's awaiting trial in Green Bay for murdering her; and crazy Albus is 100 percent crackers and bananas. So I sort of feel
like maybe no friends from now on. It's for other people's own good because maybe I'm bad luck—although actually that's a complete lie, now that I think about it. It's all for me, this
reticence
(SAT vocab word) because I just can't stand to lose anybody anymore. There's nothing left inside me to carve out.

I cringe again. My leg.

McKetta laughs. “How're those bones, cripple?”

“I get my cast off tonight,” I mutter. McKetta's been paralyzed from the waist down since trying to fly when she was four, so you'd think she'd be more empathetic about my temporary disability.

She sneers. “Well, it's good to see you dressed up for the occasion.”

“These are my most festive pants!” I pull out a stack of laminated flash cards, determined to ignore her. Surely no one will remember I wore these Christmas-tree-print pajama pants yesterday.

“I bet you're studying for some test, aren't you,” McKetta says, “like a big old dork banana.”

“Dork banana?”

“Yeah, you cunt, a dork banana. Your new name is Cripple the Dork Banana. Fuck you.”

“Your hostile words hurt my feelings.” Dr. Ferguson is trying to get me to be more confrontational when people
say things that I don't like. (“If you can address it in the moment, you'll be less likely to repeat the conversation in your head later.”)

I pore over the flash card in my hand, trying to focus. I'm testing myself on sex moves for later. I'll finally be free of my cast after school, so Davey and I decided that tonight's the night. (For sex.)

The front of this card says
DONUT THINGAMAJIG
.

“How come you study so much anyway?” McKetta asks. “If I had a boyfriend as sexy as yours I'd never waste a single fucking second—”

“Stop.” Donut Thingamajig = Eat a donut off your male partner's penis, or “dick,” as some people like to call it. I read about this move in
Cosmopolitan
magazine and I was like “Whaaaa . . . ?”
Cosmo
doesn't say exactly what type of donut to use but I think it should be the kind with a hole in the middle. That way, the donut hole mimics the vagina, or “cunt,” as McKetta would say. I've also decided I'm going to get two donuts in case one doesn't fit correctly. The bad thing is that I make a lot of crumbs, even when I eat off regular plates, so I will probably make a big mess. Plain donuts will be the easiest to clean up, but they are also, objectively speaking, the worst type of donut.

Also what if I miss the donut and bite Davey by accident? Most plain donuts are flesh colored (well, if you're
white like Davey they are—God, I'm being so race normative). The perfect donut for this would be fluorescent orange like those reflective vests that hunters wear so they don't get shot. That way I could protect Davey, because I would know where the donut stops and Davey begins.

One last problem is I don't love donuts. Like, at all. In terms of snacks I would definitely prefer M&M'S, but rules are rules, and M&M'S are probably hard to balance on penises.

“What are you muttering about?” McKetta asks.

I don't know where she gets her confidence from, but I wish I could borrow some. I'm actually pretty body conscious lately, mostly because of the cast, and I'm nervous about achieving my desired sexiness factor tonight because Dr. Clegg said my healed leg is going to look skinny and shriveled, and also kind of grayish, like a corpse leg. (He actually said “Corpse leg.” I was like, “Pardon, what did you just say?” And he was like, “Corpse leg.”)

“Look at you,” she continues, shaking her head. “I mean, no offense but how in the world did you get such a hot boyfriend?” People say this crap all the time to me. All the time.

Also it's crazy how people think they can say “no offense” and magically temper whatever inherently offensive thing they've just said. I glance back at the donut flash
card one more time, biting my lip. I still don't totally understand how it will work, but I'm sure that part of it will be instinctive—like, the animal inside of me will rear up and in this gruff voice yell out, “DONUT.”

“Davey Fried is a dangerous, erotic man,” she continues, ignoring me, her eyes all faraway, “so troubled and dark . . . like a beautiful villain prince.” She makes a noise somewhere between a grunt and a sigh. “I bet when he's naked you can see every muscle.”

I wrinkle my nose and keep flipping through my flash cards. The next one is superweird and maybe even physically impossible. I remind myself that
Cosmo
is a reputable publication and would never be allowed to publish anything that was made up or unhelpful, so this particular piece of advice must be based on biological facts that a virgin like me simply wouldn't understand.

“I wanna kiss him so bad,” McKetta says.

Like everyone, including me, McKetta has a crush on Davey that borders on maniacal. I just wish she wouldn't talk about it to my face. Mildred's the same way. I once caught her crouched outside of the Frieds' house with binoculars.

The truth is, I'm not sure how Davey likes me, either. But the fact is, he does. So I figure it's kind of a waste of time to go around all insecure, asking the universe,
“Why? Why me?” I'd rather ogle my boyfriend's body, sit on his lap, ease my tongue into his mouth until erstwhile dormant parts of my body fill with magma. (
Erstwhile
is one of my SAT vocab words.)

“You little snotbags mocking my driving?” Mildred hollers.

She's paranoid.

“Yeah, we're back here gossiping about you, per usual,” McKetta shouts, rolling her eyes. “Your paranoia is completely real, Mildred.”

I slap my forehead. It's just like McKetta to provoke her. Last week, McKetta pissed off Mildred so bad that she careened onto the sidewalk. While the van's radio played joyous Christmas songs, Mildred screamed like a banshee for almost an entire carol and a vein popped in her eyeball.

“What'll you do when you don't have any lesser-abled types to drive around?” McKetta adds loudly. “Kill yourself?”

Mildred regards McKetta in the rearview mirror. I notice that one of her eyes is still bloodshot.

“Watch the road,” I whisper, more in prayer than conversation. “Please watch the road.” A car swerves around us and I brace myself, anticipating a collision. Finally, after all these near misses: death. But after a few achingly
long seconds, Mildred lets out a forced, honking laugh, yanking the wheel just in time to avoid the passing car's rear bumper.

“I'll cut off some legs and create more customers,” she says gleefully, slapping on her blinker. I close my eyes, unable to watch any longer. This is the last time I'll have to ride in Mildred's van, and we can't get to school fast enough.

“Hey, Kippy,” Colt shouts from across the crowded hall, watching as I struggle to get through the bathroom doorway on my crutches. “You need help?”

I shake my head, propping the door open with my elbow and trying to inch through before it closes on me again. After a few failed attempts, Colt jogs over, seemingly oblivious to the way his friends are staring. Everyone in town has been weird around me since Sheriff Staake lied to the press and said that he was responsible for finding “that galdanged murdering psychopath.” Of course, he didn't just stop there, he completed the betrayal by telling reporters, “The Bushman girl was just a nutcase who nearly threw me off course, no offense. I'm the hero here. I'm the guy.” So now, instead of being “girl detective” or whatever I used to aspire to, I'm that kid who almost got murdered after escaping a psych ward.

“Here we go,” Colt says, holding the door. “Come on, Ms. NASCAR.” It's the last day of school before winter break, so like most people, he's in a pretty good mood—though the truth is that since “the incident,” as Dom calls it, Colt is always pretty cheery around me. In general, people fall into two camps where I'm concerned: 1.) “Kippy is crazy—did you hear that she escaped from a mental ward the night she got all hurt? We better talk a lot about how insane she is, because then it's like she brought it on herself and we can distract ourselves from the randomness of violence and bad things will never happen to us!” or 2.) “Gosh I used to be sort of mean or dismissive to Kippy, and gee she almost died and I'm vaguely Christian, so I better make up for it now by being a total sycophant.” Colt falls into the latter group.

“Thank you,” I tell him, glancing at the football players who are still watching us with bemused looks on their faces. Granted, Colt genuinely owes me big time; my investigative prowess (or at the very least, my tendency for nosiness/being in the wrong place at the wrong time) basically freed him from jail. We've come a long way since the days when he thought it was funny to call me a prude in the hallway and put deer urine in my car's exhaust system. He and Libby are even covering for me tonight when I go to Davey's. Dom thinks I'm sleeping at Libby's place,
and if he calls to talk to her parents, Colt is going to get on the phone and pretend to be her dad. Then they'll call me and I'll call Dom on my cell from Davey's, pretending to be annoyed that he doesn't trust me. It's pretty much foolproof.

“Where are you going, anyway?” Colt asks as the lunch bell rings. “I'll walk with you.”

“Mr. Zarwell's to get my anatomy test.”

“Colt!” somebody screams, and there's Libby sprinting toward us. I used to have a lot of feelings about how she was so mean to me after Ruth died. But it turns out it's pretty easy to go from enemies to friends. After Libby sent me that weird, passive-aggressive card saying she was dropping all her charges against me, she just started showing up in my hospital room, and sitting there, and talking to me while I drifted in and out of consciousness.

The thing is: a lot of people came to see me, at first—even Diane Sawyer's offices called. But then, all of a sudden, it was just me and Dom and Rosa, and sometimes Libby, and having her around made me feel a lot less claustrophobic. Mostly because Dom only ever wanted to talk about how sorry he was for sending me to Cloudy Meadows, and those conversations always devolved into him yelling about good intentions.

“Oh my Gah,” Libby says now, breathless, tugging on
Colt's sweatshirt. They've been hooking up for a month, but they're not “official”—a fact Colt brings up whenever he doesn't want to see her. “Hey, Kippy.” She winks at me. “Long time no see.” She's alluding to the fact that she drove me to the post office during our morning free period, as soon as Mildred dropped off McKetta and me at the handicapped door, so that I could post my hate mail. Libby's been surprisingly supportive about the fact that I'm trying to channel my anger toward Ralph into something. She's got rage issues, too, she says, so she relates. Mostly she's been in a good mood ever since she mailed off her application to UW–Madison. Her mom and dad and both of her older siblings went there, so she's pretty positive she'll get in—though as far as I know she's gotten straight Cs throughout high school.