Thalo Blue (24 page)

Fish had begun some rabble-rousing that was actually uncommon for him. He had found a towel and decided to line up his classmates and see who could withstand the most towel burns. It was no coincidence that the girls’ class was doing stretches on their half of the gym floor. They faced the unit of boys while Standish’s counterpart, Mrs. Elgin, oblivious with her back to the unsupervised male half, instructed them on proper stretching technique.

As usual—though this contest seemed far beyond even Fish’s normal regime—everyone complied as he lined them up. Nervous or not, they all complied because the individual who decided this game was for fools or crowd-pleasers was labeled just that: an individual. And he would be singled out and sized up for future torment. Rudy Dunlop and Simon Caulder, as always, were in on the fun. They were Fish’s best friends and ever-present for his exploits.

In Zeb’s mind, the whole episode was nothing more than a cavalcade, a farce, a circus-show in the middle ring of a bigtop. His distaste for these kinds of things ran deep, even though his actual aversion to Fish did not. He suspected it was that way with everyone there. No one hated Fish. They probably felt the allure of his personality and his magic, just as the girls always had. But they also saw the pointlessness in this stuff—or at least sensed there was something wrong in winding up a towel and snapping it against bare skin to establish a twisted hierarchy of superiority. They all just felt so powerless to deter it. Or maybe they thought the effort wasn’t worth it. Would anyone back up the classmate who stood his ground? Or would turning on that infamous individual become today’s new game? Did any of them realize that, standing around waiting for Mr. Standish that morning, was a group of young men who would graduate in two and a half years? They were supposedly joining the real world then—
in just two and a half years
. And here they were, playing follow-the-leader, snapping each other with towels so the girls in Mrs. Elgin’s class could see. The oddest part, the least logical aspect—which Zeb would discover in just a few years—was that this kind of thing wasn’t so far off in that real world. Only, out there it would be done with dollars and cents, fast and faster cars, and insider knowledge about spouses and dirty secrets.

When Fish, Rudy and Simon came down the line to him, after most of the other kids had red arms, Zeb was still sitting at the bench looking vacantly at the opposite side of the gym where Mrs. Elgin was now dividing up her girls into teams for
their
period of baseball. In truth he was actually staring at Vivian Leland and, just moments before, thought he had been caught by one of her friends.

Out zipped the towel in a snap.

And even faster, out zipped Zeb’s hand. It seemed to catch the towel in slow motion and then, in a continued movement, the fabric coiled around Zeb’s wrist and arm, pulling Fish nearly all the way down to where he was sitting. Fish came off his balance in that quick second and teetered forward, but Zeb put his hand on Fish’s shoulder, steadying him before he could fall. They paused for a moment, eye to eye, only a little ways apart. And they just stared. Fish was clearly taken aback and Zeb was too, though he looked flawless and sober, fully empowered.

“
Look at this one. Redfield thinks he’s the towel snap champ
,” Fish said, finally, with some spring in his words, but still nose to nose with one of his ‘subordinates’. He smiled, silkily, and so did Zeb, whose eyes were as clear and as blue as a chilled winter morning. The rest of the boys let out fake
oohs
and laughter, but were interrupted by Mr. Standish’s arrival, painfully late. He appeared at the office doorway and clapped his hands twice, loudly. “C’mon guys,” he yelled at the group, “let’s get this show on the road.
Line up.
”

Zeb remembered, for a long time after, that he hadn’t said a word to Fish. Just stared him down until Fischer used a snatch of his award-winning comedy to step out of the confrontation. But Zeb had just stared. There was ego in that. And also fear.

<> <> <>

The second moment they had shared was at Vivian Leland’s sweet sixteen. In the living room of the Leland lakefront estate, among crowded pines and a few red oaks, which all pressed in like looming figures of darkness, the party was already rip-roaring. While some sat outside around a fire pit, yellow and crisp, shooting orange stars upwards and threatening to turn low branches into torches, Zeb remained inside as long as he could stand it, away from that comforting air, the groping couples in darkened coves of foliage, and the odd partier pissing into the lake from the boat dock.

He was on a sofa-couch in front of a large plate window which framed a deck, then a murky courtyard, then a sloping patch of dimly lit flowers and a pristine, yet damp, stretch of olive turf. Then there were the englulfed logs and the sillohouette figures, phantoms hulking around the blazing pit and tipping bottles at their lips. Beyond them, the moon hung with little to say for the moment. Its rippling reflection struggled to remain whole atop the surface of the water. It was cut like sets of streaking batwings were crossing between it and the reality of the Leland estate. Jackson was customarily missing in action. Likely, thought Sebastion, his closest friend, one of the few people he could
stand
, was busy with one of the girls in a shared “Understanding Visual Art” class, teaching her how to improve her brush strokes.

Hardcore rap was hammering through the house, chatter was prevalent—though it couldn’t be understood beside the music—and in Zeb’s head there were a dozen conflicting sensations. The room of crowded guys and girls blotted out, becoming a blurry white cloud burst at every bass thud. And a tiny procession of ants tickled up and down his back whenever someone’s shorts brushed his knee or a bare arm. Under his hair, the flesh on top of his head itched and burned like it was being cooked to blackened ash. He looked down at the red-pink flesh of his inner arm where, a million years before, the lip of a boiling pot of water had marked him forever. He expected to see the long and familiar splotch blaring like the brake lights of a car in traffic. An old Beemer maybe.

But the scar kept quiet.

Small favours
, he thought, then closed his eyes. He tried to think of something,
anything
, other than the fire in his hair. He just wished that some monumental event would ocurr, maybe that Vivian would saunter into the room and sit down with him. The night would be redeemed if that happened...It would be completely and graciously saved.

Among his myriad of talents, Zeb discovered that he had a unique capacity to easily skip from social circle to social circle, an undertaking that would be difficult for most; pigeon-holes occur so quickly in a set of more than three people. Every school seems to have its core groups—plus or minus a few smaller, fringe cliques—and during the previous year, almost out of a need to remain predominantly anonymous, he had secured a connection to each of the circles at his school: the athletes, the alternatives, the artsies, the club geeks, and those that didn’t gravitate toward anything worthy of a title card. So on this night, as usual and accorded by his ‘acquaintance to many, friend to few’ approach, there were a lot of hellos and pleasantries. People came and sat with him, or stood nearby to talk for a bit. Then, after some chit-chat, they would generally mull back towards the kitchen where there were drinks and food, and a few souls closer to the core of their own crowd. People came and went. Not as often as he hoped, but truthfully, more often than he could deal with.

Line up
, he thought then.
Time to get this show on the road.
The optimistic little voice, the one that had praised a higher power for small favours, now sounded bitter, underwhelmed and callous. But it was true.
All bets are off, welcome to the machine
, he wanted to say.
We’re in it, under it, and there’s nothing else for us. Might as well line up, step in, pull up some imported Italian leather sofa, and get comfortable.

He already regretted coming all the way out here for this stupid party. His head was a crashing sea of turbulent waves and the sensations he experienced in crowds of people generally meant that he could hardly concentrate on conversation, much less speak effectively above the roar of Shane Jose’s porno-lyric house music. So he sat alone, fuming a little, and simply tried to get through the night.

As Zeb bounced from group to group over the year and a half since that gym class when he had been informally crowned as Towel Snap Champ, he had managed to avoid more words than were absolutely necessary with Riley Fischer and his band of merry men. There was a respect developed between him and Fish. Passing in a hallway, there would only be eye contact and an exchanged ‘hey’ but nothing further. The School of Fish, as Zeb referred to them, was one clique he had managed to stay away from. Sheer circumstance.

But on this night, circumstances shifted,
the line-up shifted
, and the new tilt to the situation felt like an unexpected slap on Zeb’s cheek. As if the sea of bodies—all dancing and standing and goofing around—simply parted for him, Riley Fischer was there. And he made his way to where Zeb sat on the otherwise empty couch.

Zeb had enjoyed where their relationship had gone since the towel snap—there
wasn’t
a relationship. He reveled in the fact that he was respected from afar and revered in silence by the one guy who could make or break you. It was avoidance, plain and simple. And having never really spoken to Fish meant he didn’t need to impress or cower for him. He was just coasting neatly left of center, out of range but always with a little assurance that
hey Red
meant he was okay.

But here was an assault on the old, cloaked ways. Here was Fish and his School, plunking down on the couch to either side of him. Already on his way to one mother of a hangover the next morning, a smoky-eyed Fish said, “Hey Red. How’s it hangin’?”

“Long and stiff,” Zeb said back, as another burst of white flared in his eyes. He squinted for a second, thinking how stupid that had sounded but he
had
been trying to come up with something cool and distasteful. Success, he supposed. He hated when anyone called him Red. Most did not, but it didn’t matter to Fish, did it? And, at this moment in time, with the white bomb-beats in his eyes and the fire stroking his head like it was, he was willing to let it go.

Simon and Rudy laughed at his long and stiff comment. Both of them had been taking a few drinks as well. They must have been—their gestures and speech were drawn out and carefully considered. Fish sounded that way too. “Speaking of ‘long’, he said, “
and ‘stiff’ too, I guess
”—he laughed at his own gag—“Red, you want one of my special Three-Mile Long Islands?”
Three-Mile Long Islands
came out of his mouth sounding more like
Free My Long Eye-lens
.

Zeb told him no, and Fish, oblivious, started unscrewing the cap on a bottle of Triple Sec. He had probably stolen the Triple Sec from the Leland liquor cabinet; someone had broken the lock on it earlier in the night and the house had erupted in whoops and cheers. He drained more than half of a non-brand name pop can into a potted fern then poured the Triple Sec into it. It was red, the tin can, with shiny white letters on it, proclaiming simply,
Cola
, and Fish managed to spill a good portion of the Triple Sec down the side. As he bent to lick his fingers and the face of the can, Zeb was struck by an odd thought: that the Lelands, so concerned about appearances, would buy a no-name flat of pop for their kid’s sixteenth party.
Two-color, professionally printed flyers, but make sure you get the cheaper brand of pop, honey
. He stifled a little laugh.

Zeb always found things like that funny. And, on top of that, he wanted to know why Fish was worrying about hiding the Triple Sec in the cola can.
Just chug it, Fish, jeez
, he wanted to say to Riley.
Go ahead, tip the damn thing back if you want to be the lush
. But Fish wouldn’t do that—he was drunk, true, but he wasn’t yet
that
drunk. If someone called the Dorset police to settle down the noise, or if Viv’s parents came home to find a roomful of kids with stolen mickeys in their hands, Fish could look as innocent as a school marm if he stood artlessly still as everyone else scattered and tried to discard the evidence they were holding. When things suddenly went to hell and everyone got picked up for underage drinking then waited in agony for their parents to arrive at the sherrif’s office, Riley Fischer could tell his parents that
he
didn’t have a drop, that
he
only sipped on pop and snacked on chips. And there would be some kind of value in that. “We couldn’t find any gin or rum,
or bitters
, so this’ll have to do,” Fish said and took a drink. “Mm. ‘
S good
. You really sure you don’t want a swig?”
Shard Own One Ass Wig?

Zeb told him he was quite sure he would be okay without. The bass was still exploding mercilessly across his vision and the last thing he needed was another sensation on top of it. He ran his fingers through his hair, front to back, as though it might reduce the burn and sting of his skin up there. This was the exact spot he didn’t want to be in. His mild aloofness over the last year or so had provided a simple, yet effective, mysterious ‘coolness’. Coolness from the simple fact that the coolest of them all held him in reserve. Fish just didn’t know anything about Zeb.
Hell, he called him
Red
, for chrissakes
, so how could he know that Zeb was so far removed from his league?

The four of them did the small-talk routine, mostly about Fish’s new car, while Fish worked at his make-shift Three Mile Long Island. “Well, I don’t know about you guys,” Fish interjected to his School, “but I gotta piss like a race horse.” He threw his head back, drained the pop can, belched, said something about how nice Vivian’s tits were, and then got up from the couch. He sloppily set the empty cola can down on an end table and walked off with Rudy and Simon. Next to the can, there were fern leaves spilling out of their pot in long thin, vibrating strands of iridescent green. Zeb looked at the cola can, and the words seemed to bleed outwards in a wash of exploding white—with each pound of the music. He got up too, and went outside to listen to the moon.