Slot Machine (26 page)

I went to the window and watched my classmates board the silly yellow bus. Destination Sister School. I sighed, take-me-with-you style. One of those mugs was going to be dancing with
my
girl. Whoever she was.

Metzger came up and leaned on the sill right up against me, also looking out the window.

Maybe he wanted to be friends.

I took the opportunity to try and smooth things over with him.

“This bites, doesn’t it? Detention. When we could be heading off right now to meet all those girls and partying all night.”

Do people say that? I can’t stand words like party as a verb, but I figured the Metzgers of the world did, and if I was going to get along...

“Suck my ass, fat boy.”

Apparently not.

“You talking to me?” I said. It was either me or Ferlinghetti, right, so he wasn’t
necessarily
referring to—

“How the hell’d ya fit yourself into those queer brown jeans that are ten sizes too small? Jam yourself in with a broom handle?”

I told myself he was just making small talk. That Metzger didn’t have any friends, so the art of conversation was still a little new to him. I, Elvin Bishop, would remove the thorn from his paw.

“No, I skipped lunch actually, and jogged some too.” I smiled. There were about ten guys left to get on the bus, and I told
them
too, in my head, “I skipped lunch. I sweated. I did that, you didn’t. I should be the one—”

“I’m gonna kick your fat ass,” he said.

Well I tried. You saw. I tried, didn’t I?

“Mr. Ferlinghetti,” I said. He looked up from his book. He wasn’t happy about it. “This guy says he’s going to beat me up. Right here.”

“You load,” Metzger hissed. “You fink. You chicken-shit wimpy sonofa—”

He was right, of course. I had to recover. Just because Frankie wasn’t here didn’t mean I had to revert to my Mr. Nobody mode. He was putting a lot of work into me, and I could at least show some style. It was safe enough to do anyhow. Controlled, officially supervised circumstances.

“And if he doesn’t shut his mouth,” I barked, “I’m gonna shove my fat fist right in there.” Not exactly how I wanted it to come out, but close enough.

Ferlinghetti looked sleepy, but he had things tightly under control. He looked back down at his book. “Can’t do that,” he said firmly. Good, good. Just what I was counting on.

I smiled at Metzger. Made him crazy.

“Take it outside,” Ferlinghetti said.

There was a loud gulping sound that came out of one of us and filled the room.

Now here’s a move I was sure Metzger had never seen before. My knees buckled, I bent at the waist, and with both hands...

I grabbed my flaming rump.

Remember what Frankie said about my affliction? About what stress does to compound it? Remember his poor grandmother eating standing over the sink?

“What in the hell is your problem?” Metzger asked, taking a few steps back.

“None of your business,” I growled. Then I pointed at the door with my thumb. “Let’s go outside.”

“Am I supposed to bend way down there to beat your ass?” he asked as he followed me down the stairs. Like he was all put out by the situation.

“’Cause I’ll do it. Long’s I get to kick your ass somehow.”

Every time he mentioned doing stuff to my ass, I winced, and walked a little more sideways.

Finally, as the last party guy climbed on the bus, Metzger and I stood squared off in the school lot. I couldn’t believe that Ferlinghetti wasn’t even curious enough to come to the window like most teachers would. He even counted on the honor system for Metzger and me to drag ourselves back to incarceration after we were done with each other’s asses.

Cripes, the honor system. If I had half a chance, I’d scratch and bite my way out of this, and at the end of it all, I’d be expected to return honorably to detention?

The bus started up. Metzger started punching air for practice. The dope.

The honor system.

The driver was taking an awfully long time to close that door.

“Come on, Elvin,” a call rang out. It was Mikie.

Now there was an idea. How torn should I be over this? How compelled to return to detention? How committed to battling my nemesis with dignity?

How much did I want to meet our sisters?

Metzger bent over to touch his toes. If he was going to make it a game of I-can-do-this, I didn’t stand a chance, since I stopped being able to touch my toes at about the age when I stopped wanting to put them in my mouth.

I looked up at the detention window. Ferlinghetti was still tromping across Russia in winter.

“Come on, come on”—this was Frankie. “You gonna waste a killer outfit like that on Ferlinghetti?”

I was weakening.

He started chanting. That is so unfair, the chanting part.

“Sis-ters, sis-ters, sis-ters...”

Then, of course, all the bus windows opened at me and everyone in the freshman class—ninety-five percent of whom wouldn’t know me if they found me inside their lockers—started egging me on. Like I
had
to go to this thing. Like it would just be no fun without me.

It’s the chanting thing, you know. Guys will chant anything, as long as somebody starts the ball rolling. And once chanted, a thing is important and vital and so true you wind up with tears in your eyes you want it so bad. We men are slaves to the chant.

“Sis-ters, sis-ters, sis-ters
...”

I did have this new running skill I’d developed. Shame to waste it...

It was so obvious that I was going to cave in to this that the bus driver didn’t bother putting it into gear. He’d hauled the door shut with that big robotic arm lever, and now he was going to all the effort of shoving it open again to wait on me.

It was obvious to everyone, that is, except Metzger, who was advancing in a crouched stance, with wide demonic eyes, and the spread-finger lunge of a madman from, like, the silent movies of a thousand years ago.

I was disgusted. “You’ve never beat up anybody in your life, have you?”

That put him back on his heels. He stopped momentarily, then remembered what he was there to do.

He lurched.

He took a swing.

I took the low road.

“Go, Elvin!” There were chants and hollers from every seat on that yellow bus. The driver started rolling slowly while I motored mightily.

As I stood on the bottom step of the bus, looking back to blow kisses to Metzger, Ferlinghetti appeared in the window, pointing down at me silently with a mile-long finger.

It is a very good thing that clothes actually do make the man. Because if who we were really depended on what we did, I would have just nullified myself. I’d done the most stouthearted and ballsy thing I’d ever done, running away from detention in full view of the entire screaming freshman class. And simultaneously, I’d done the most snivelly and chickenshit thing I’d ever done, running away from Metzger in full view of the entire screaming freshman class.

And happily, both situations would wait all weekend for resolution on Monday.

So who was I? What was I?

I had great clothes.

“This had better be worth the trouble I’m going to get into, you guys,” I said as I sat next to Frank, in front of Mike. The rest of the bus had forgotten who I was already, and moved on to “A Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall.” “I better be king of the prom here.”

Frank squinched up his whole face. “Not smelling like that, you won’t be. Whatju do, Elvin, take a bath in ammonia?”

“It’s a little sweat, do you mind?”

Mikie put a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry about him. You’re doing fine. That took a lot of guts, blowing off detention. Bring that kind of confidence into the dance with you and you can’t miss.”

Guts? Confidence? I wasn’t aware of having those things before. But now that Mikie mentioned it...

Frank would have no part of it. I was like an art project of his, and somebody had spray-painted over his good work. “And your little problem is back, isn’t it?” he demanded, taking
my
very personal problem very personally.

“It shows?”

“No, you could have a squirrel down your pants making you walk that way.”

“Hey,” Mikie snapped. “He’s been under a lot of stress. ...”

Frank put a finger to his lips to shut us up. Then, very quietly, he laid it out for me. “Nobody cares about your stress, so if you want to score, we can’t talk about your stress. Got it?”

I got it. I nodded. He really did want something good to happen to me at the end of this, so if I had to take some knocks along the way, well, Frankie was good for me. I was not a baby anymore. I wasn’t.

Besides, if I needed to be babied, Mikie would do it.

“He might be right,” Mikie said.

Uh-oh.

“So while we’re at it, don’t talk about your mother. And don’t walk sideways. Don’t
dance
sideways, for sure. And if anyone does notice your, y’know, difficulty, don’t tell them about that, no matter what you do. Instead... you hurt yourself lifting weights.”

I was trying to be cool. But really now...

“With my butt? I was doing butt curls?”

“Lat pull downs,” Frank said. “Nobody’s going to know the difference... unless you keep talking like a jerk.”

“So I should stop that then.”

“Ya,” Mikie said. “I’d say so.”

Gotcha.

“I don’t see how you can miss, Studley.” Franko laughed.

The laugh, obviously, was the troubling part.

Chris Lynch (b. 1962) was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the fifth of seven children. His father, Edward J. Lynch, was a Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority bus and trolley driver, and his mother, Dorothy, was a stay-at-home mom. Lynch’s father passed away in 1967, when Lynch was just five years old. Along with her children, Dorothy was left with an old, black Rambler American car and no driver’s license. She eventually got her license, and raised her children as a single mother.

Lynch grew up in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood, and recalls his childhood ambitions to become a hockey player (magically, without learning to ice skate properly), president of the United States, and/or a “rock and roll god.” He attended Catholic Memorial School in West Roxbury, before heading off to Boston University, neglecting to first earn his high school diploma. He later transferred to Suffolk University, where he majored in journalism, and eventually received an MA from the writing program at Emerson College. Before becoming a writer, Lynch worked as a furniture mover, truck driver, house painter, and proofreader. He began writing fiction around 1989, and his first book,
Shadow Boxer
, was published in 1993. “I could not have a more perfect job for me than writer,” he says. “Other than not managing to voluntarily read a work of fiction until I was at university, this gig and I were made for each other. One might say I was a reluctant reader, which surely informs my work still.”

In 1989, Lynch married, and later had two children, Sophia and Walker. The family moved to Roslindale, Massachusetts, where they lived for seven years. In 1996, Lynch moved his family to Ireland, his father’s birthplace, where Lynch has dual citizenship. After a few years in Ireland, he separated from his wife and met his current partner, Jules. In 1998, Jules and her son, Dylan, joined in the adventure when Lynch, Sophia, and Walker sailed to southwest Scotland, which remains the family’s base to this day. In 2010, Sophia had a son, Jackson, Lynch’s first grandchild.

When his children were very young, Lynch would work at home, catching odd bits of available time to write. Now that his children are grown, he leaves the house to work, often writing in local libraries and “acting more like I have a regular nine-to-five(ish) job.”

Lynch has written more than twenty-five books for young readers, including
Inexcusable
(2005), a National Book Award finalist;
Freewill
(2001), which won a Michael L. Printz Honor; and several novels cited as ALA Best Books for Young Adults, including
Gold Dust
(2000) and
Slot Machine
(1995).

Lynch’s books are known for capturing the reality of teen life and experiences, and often center on adolescent male protagonists. “In voice and outlook,” Lynch says, “Elvin Bishop [in the novels
Slot Machine
;
Extreme Elvin
; and
Me, Dead Dad, and Alcatraz
] is the closest I have come to representing myself in a character.” Many of Lynch’s stories deal with intense, coming-of-age subject matters. The Blue-Eyed Son trilogy was particularly hard for him to write, because it explores an urban world riddled with race, fear, hate, violence, and small-mindedness. He describes the series as “critical of humanity in a lot of ways that I’m still not terribly comfortable thinking about. But that’s what novelists are supposed to do: get uncomfortable and still be able to find hope. I think the books do that. I hope they do.”

Lynch’s He-Man Women Haters Club series takes a more lighthearted tone. These books were inspired by the club of the same name in the
Little Rascals
film and TV show. Just as in the Little Rascals’ club, says Lynch, “membership is really about classic male lunkheadedness, inadequacy in dealing with girls, and with many subjects almost always hiding behind the more macho word
hate
when we cannot admit that it’s
fear.
”

Today, Lynch splits his time between Scotland and the US, where he teaches in the MFA creative writing program at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His life motto continues to be “shut up and write.”