Twisted (2 page)

On the public-humiliation scale, being picked up in Dad’s car was better than being picked up in Mom’s. Yes, it had a couple rust spots and 162,000 miles on it, but at least it was a Benz. Mom drove an ancient Suburban, beige, dented from encounters with mailboxes and trees. If I had my own car back, that would’ve been the best.

When I came out the front door, he pointed to the trunk, gaping open.

I stripped off my sweatshirt, boots, and wet socks, and dumped them in the cardboard box stuck in a nest of investment brochures and bungee cords. I left my jeans on. Even Dad knew it would not be cool to strip down to my boxers in front of the school.

“Hurry up,” he called.

I sat on the beach towel laid on the backseat. Wouldn’t want to mess up the leather.

His cell phone rang. His lip curled slightly when he saw the number on the screen. He answered the phone. “What is it now?”

Meet my father: Corporate Tool. He’d always been a hardass, but since his latest promotiwon, he’d dialed it up.

“That’s not my problem,” he told the phone. “It’s yours. Solve it.”

Mom stared at him from the passenger seat, then sighed deeply. It was Friday afternoon, which meant they had just come from their therapy session. They were recovering the joy in their relationship.

“Hi, Mom,” I said.

She looked back and gave me a little wave. Her smile was fake, like a piece of paper with a smile drawn on it had been glued to her face.

As I buckled my seat belt, Dad ended his call and started the engine. “I still don’t know why you insist on picking him up every day,” he told Mom. “It wouldn’t kill him to ride his bike.”

Mom’s smile fell off. She blinked hard and studied the dust on the dashboard.

Meet my mother: pet photographer, cake baker, nice lady who smells faintly of gin.

Dad put the car in reverse and glanced at me in the mirror.

“We have an office barbecue tonight,” he said. “I suppose it’s too late for you to get a haircut before then.”

I shook my bangs in front of my eyes. “I don’t want to go.”

“I expect you and your sister to be ready by seven o’clock.”

“I have plans,” I said, which was not exactly true, but sounded good.

“Change them.” Dad looked beyond me. “Dammit.”

We were blocked in by the cars lined up to be washed. Dad shifted back into park and turned off the engine. “Don’t want to waste gas,” he muttered. His phone rang again. He answered it without a word, listened for a moment, then launched into a rant about federal regulations and interoffice memos.

Mom rolled down her window and waved at one of the tennis players soaping up a Volvo. She waved at Bethany Milbury.
The
Bethany Milbury. Bethany waved back.

I thought the tar fumes had made me delusional. She’d been in my homeroom since seventh grade. She’d had the starring role in most of my fantasies since then, too.

But this was real.

Bethany Milbury, Holy Goddess of Hotness, floated…towards…our car. She put her clean hands with their perfect fingernails on my mother’s door and leaned forward, straining the top of her bikini to the max.

“Hey, Tyler,” Bethany said to me.

I had this weird rushing noise in my ears. My jeans tightened near the zipper.

“Ha,” I said. “Heya-ha.”

Idiot. Moron. Cretin. Fool.

Mom said something about the party. Bethany looked surprised for a second, but then Mom mentioned pasta salad and I stopped listening because a drop of water slipped from Bethany’s collarbone to her cleavage. I leaned forward for a better view of the water crawling, millimeter by millimeter, down the golden, soft canyon of her...

“Ow!”

Both Mom and Bethany stopped talking to stare at me.

“Did you hit your head, Tyler?” Mom asked.

“Are you okay?” Bethany asked.

“Ha,” I said.

As we pulled out of the parking lot, I pressed my face against the back window to watch her walk away. Bethany was the Alpha Female of George Washington High—the most beautiful, the most popular, the queen bee. She was also the daughter of my dad’s boss, and the sister of the guy who had been making my life hell for years.

And me? I was a zit on the butt of the student body. I had a screwed-up past and no visible future. My chances of hooking up with anything female, much less Bethany, were small.

But anything was possible on the last Friday of summer vacation.

The Milburys lived in the Hampton Club and Estates, ten blocks and fifty million miles away from our house. It was close enough to walk to, and far enough that we should have chartered a jet. My parents were struggling wannabes of the upper middle class. The Milburys were the people they wanted to be.

“I can’t believe you’re making us do this,” Hannah bitched as we pulled out of our driveway at precisely seven
P.M.
” Why can’t we stay home?”

Mom balanced a two-gallon plastic bowl of pasta salad in her lap. “Don’t whine.”

“I’m not whining.”

Dad slowed down to go around a pothole. “You’re whining about not whining.”

“How can you say that?” Hannah asked.

“In English,” Dad said, “so you should be able to understand it.”

“Enough,” Mom said. “We’re going to a party. Can’t we have some fun?”

Dad cleared his throat. “This is not’a party,’” he corrected. “It’s a business function. We’re going to put in a family appearance, I need ten minutes of face time with Brice, and then we can leave. I expect everyone to be on their best behavior.”

His eyes found mine in the rearview mirror. “Including you.”

Dad liked to pretend I was a dangerous criminal because of the Foul Deed. But it was just a stupid prank. I mean, all pranks are stupid, but that’s kind of the point, isn’t it?

The last time anybody had noticed me (in a good way) was in third grade when I won the home-run contest during Field Day. After that, my reputation struck out every time. I was the shortest guy in middle school and too chicken to hit back. I had “victim” tattooed on my forehead.

It got a little better in high school. I became invisible, your average piece of drywall who spent too much time playing computer games. Girls would look straight at me and never see the writhing masculine beast hidden inside my hundred thirty-five pounds of veal-white man-flesh. So at the end of my junior year, I decided to do something bold. A prank that would turn me into a legend.

At three o’clock in the morning on Monday, May first, I used five cans of spray paint to decorate George Washington High with words that proclaimed the superiority of the junior class and a couple crude remarks about the manhood of Principal Hughes.

I misspelled “phenomenal” and “testicle.” I also forgot one of the cans, the red one. And I was so flustered, trying to finish before the sun came up, that I didn’t notice my wallet was missing until the police arrived on our front porch.

“Best behavior,” Dad repeated. “Be an asset, not a liability.”

Hannah made a face at the back of his pointy head.

I stared at him in the mirror until he looked away.

The Milburys’ house was what you’d expect: monstrously big and slightly tacky.

“It’s gorgeous!” Mom said. “So tasteful. What a beautiful fountain.”

Dad muttered something under his breath. He wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand.

Wisps of barbecue smoke and jazz drifted from the backyard. We came to a screeching halt as we rounded the corner of the house.

“Whoa,” Hannah said.

Yeah.

A massive swimming pool, complete with hot tub and waterfall, took up a third of the yard and was ringed with a broad patio and burning tiki torches. A jazz quartet was playing at the far end, close to the bar. Right in front of us were two tented pavilions, one for food and one filled with tables and chairs. A pig was roasting on a giant spit, and a cook was slapping down hamburgers on a grill. Waiters buzzed around with trays of snack food, glasses of wine, and imported beer in dark bottles. The golf course (a Hampton Estates perk) stretched out beyond the rose garden.

The place was packed: people standing, sitting, eating, drinking, dancing, flirting, frowning, laughing, practicing pretend golf swings, and watching each other. It was mostly adults, but the hot tub was filled with half of the lacrosse team, and a couple other kids from school were scattered around the patio. The rich kids, the really rich kids. You know what they look like.

Mom yanked Dad out of view. “How could you do this to me?” she hissed. “This isn’t ‘casual’ and it is absolutely not potluck.”

Dad frowned. “The memo said casual. Casual means potluck. Everybody knows that.”

“Memo?” Mom’s voice went up. “What memo? You said Brice invited you personally.”

“Be quiet,” Dad said. “Here comes Doreen.”

Mom handed the pasta salad to Hannah, who turned and handed it to me.

“Get rid of it,” Mom whispered.

I bent down and stuck the bowl behind a bush. When I stood up, Bethany and her mom were talking to my parents. Bethany was wearing a long Hawaiian-skirt thing tied around her hips and a see-through lace shirt over her bikini top. The peanut butter–colored cat she was carrying obstructed my view. Mrs. Milbury was an older and thinner version of her daughter, with a tan that made her skin look like a tired leather sofa, and very large, very white teeth.

Mrs. Milbury gave me the once-over. “My goodness, Tyler,” she said. “You used to be four-foot-nothing and skinny as a beanpole. You certainly have grown up.”

“He’s six-three and one ninety-five,” Mom said. “Growing taller every day, like a cornstalk!”

Hannah snorted.

“Ah,” I said, cringing. “Ha.”

Dad tapped his foot and waited a suave two seconds before he blurted out, “So, where’s Brice?”

Brice Milbury, CEO of Milbury Brothers Trust (“Trust Milbury Trust!”), was the tall man with the perfect tan and fat gold watch motioning to Mrs. Milbury from the farside of the pool. Three shorter guys were grouped behind him, all wearing lime-green golf shirts with the company logo. As we walked up, his son Chip did, too. Chip Milbury: Bethany’s evil twin brother, four-year lacrosse starter, fairly good offensive linebacker, and all-American jerk who majored in beating the crap out of me in middle school.

We did more of the fake-polite handshaking thing. Mr. Milbury held on to Dad’s hand an extra moment. “Surprised to see you here, Bill,” he said. “Didn’t know your department was coming.”

The short dweeb guys looked at each other. I knew in the pit of my stomach that Dad had screwed up. You didn’t crash parties in Hampton Estates, even if you were the new Vice President of Oversight and Compliance. Not cool.

Dad gripped his boss’s hand harder. “You know me, Brice, always looking out for the company’s best interests.”

(Yeah, he said that.)

“So, Nerd Boy.” Chip punched me in the shoulder. Hard. “They let you work out in prison?”

“Tyler didn’t go to prison—” Mom shut her mouth when Dad shook his head once.

Mr. Milbury looked me over. “You playing football, Tyler?”

“No, sir,” I said. “I’ve just been working.”

“Part of his parole,” Chip said.

“My job,” I said slowly. “I work at Pirelli’s Landscaping.”

Mr. Milbury squeezed my bicep. “Maybe you should do some manual labor, Chip. This guy’s made of steel.”

Chip stood up straight, trying to make himself as tall as me. “How much can you press?”

“I have no idea.”
Two fifty-pound sacks of mulch in each hand, douche bag.

“You two boys should work out together,” Mr. Milbury said. “Looks like you’d be a good match.”

“We’re not matched,” Chip said.

The band broke into “La Macarena.” A few women jumped out of their seats, formed a line at the edge of the pool, and flailed their arms around. Mom and Mrs. Milbury both wiggled their hips. Hannah slunk off towards the food tent. Bethany managed to look incredibly bored and incredibly hot at the same time.

“You could bring Tyler to the gym,” Mr. Milbury suggested to Dad. “I’ll meet you there with Chip. We’re always looking for someone to push him to the next level.”

Chip blinked fast and pretended to watch the pig turning on the spit.

“That would be great,” Dad said. “I’ll tell Linda. Now, if I could just borrow you for a few minutes, Brice. The situation in Omaha is uglier than I thought. The new regulations…”

One of the dweebs whispered something into Mr. Milbury’s ear. Dad snapped his mouth shut and tried not to frown.

“This isn’t the place for business. You can call Stuart here on Monday,” Mr. Milbury said. “We’ll set up a meeting.” He turned away from my father and patted my shoulder. “I don’t know, Chipper. I think Tyler might be out of your league.”

“Let’s find out.” Chip sat down at a small table and placed his elbow square in the middle, palm open. “What do you say, Tyler? Think you can take me?”

“Knock it off, Chip,” Bethany said.

“Chicken?” Chip asked.

“Great idea,” Mr. Milbury said. “I’ll bet you a round of golf, Bill. Your boy against mine. What do you say? You golf, don’t you?”

“Braaaaawck,”
Chip clucked softly.

“I love golf,” Dad lied. “Go ahead, Tyler.”

“All right.” I sat down across from Chip and planted my right elbow next to his.

A crowd quickly gathered around our table. He wiggled his fingers, then grabbed my hand. I let him squeeze without fighting back. The left corner of his mouth twisted up in a half-grin.

There were no calluses on his palms.

“This won’t take long,” Chip told his buddies.

“On my count,” Mr. Milbury said. “Start on ‘three.’”

Chip opened his hand and regripped. This time I squeezed before he did. He blinked.

“One,” Mr. Milbury said. The band played “La Macarena” faster.

“Two.

“Th–”

Chip didn’t wait for his father to finish the word. I didn’t think he would. I was ready. When he pushed, my forearm hardened into a steel girder planted in cement. Chip frowned when my arm didn’t budge. He took a deep breath and tried to curl his hand over mine. I drove it back and tested the strength of his arm. He had nothing on me.

The lacrosse guys yelled at Chip to put me away. Chip glanced up at his father.

I kept staring straight at him.

Our arms were shaking, making the table wobble on the uneven slate. Chip was breathing harder. I could smell the pizza he ate, the beer he drank, and the Tic Tacs he used to cover them up.

Mr. Milbury stepped closer to the table. “Looks like we have ourselves a draw, folks!”

“No, we don’t,” Chip said.

My father moved behind his boss, pretending he wanted a better angle to watch.

“Want to quit?” I asked.

“Shut up,” Chip said.

The song ended.

“Do it, Tyler!” Bethany said.

Boiling blood filled my arm, white-hot with strength.

“Do it!”

Staring dead into Chip’s eyes, I powered his arm backwards one inch. Another inch. I could see how this was going to end. I would take him down smoothly, pushing his hand to the tabletop and forcing him out of his seat so his shoulder wouldn’t be ripped from the socket.

And then I made the mistake of looking at Dad.

He shook his head, just a little bit, from side to side.

I closed my eyes and let my enemy win.