Kicking and Screaming[]
I felt so angry that breathing fire seemed totally plausible for my enraged mind. Pacing around Blue Balls, fists clenched so tight my nails dug into the palm of my hand.
How dare Pete say such a thing.
He was jealous.
Doing it out of spite.
Just trying to hurt me.
These were the reasons swimming around my mind, but none of them were true. Finally, I let the anger go. Leaning against the bar, letting my back slide down the surface until I was sat on the floor. Banged the back of my head against it, to give me a reason to cry.
Kyla was using me, and I was too stupid to see it.
Johnny sat down beside me, holding a bottle of beer in one hand, and the opener in the other. He hadn’t opened it yet. “What’s bugging you, kid?”
“I found out my girl is using me to make someone else jealous.”
“Who?”
“Damon West.”
“Ah.”
“How do you deal with it, Johnny?”
“Make sure he knows what he is messin’ with. So he won’t be going near her again—that don’t work for everyone.” Johnny handed me the beer, and popped the cap off with the bottle opener. “That helps.”
I lifted the bottle to my lips, and took a sip—and that is the last I remember. The rest of it was a blur of drinking bottle after bottle. A hazy amber mist consuming the whole world, with the odd moment bursting through and fading away.
I found myself outside the girl’s dorm in the pouring rain. Raging angry. Soaked through. The rain had gotten under my jacket, where I hadn’t zipped it up all the way. My hand full of pebbles.
“KYLA!” I shouted up at the only window with the light on. “GET OUT HERE!”
The door opened, but it wasn’t her. “Josh?” All I could see under the umbrella was purple hair, and a skinny perky body clothed in a mix of goth and greaser. Becky. “What are you doing?” The hurried down the stairs, moving the umbrella to shield both our heads from the downpour. “Josh… are you drunk?”
I stepped back out into the rain, and whipped the pebbles up at the window. “COMING TO TELL THAT BITCH I AIN’T HER PUPPET!”
Bam.
Next thing I know, I’m in the school building.
Broad daylight.
Wearing exactly what I had on possibly the night before.
Getting slapped around the face by an infuriated Kyla.
She started shouting at me in another language—Spanish I think. Her nostrils were flared. Eyes fixed in full on glare mode. Amongst her ranting she called me “pendejo” and ended with “Considerate pateado.” Needless to say, Johnny’s advice didn’t pan out so well.
Well, her intentions were clear. I was single again. Lost in a haze of my own intoxication.
Then this happened;
I found myself in Mr. Galloway’s classroom, desperately trying to break the desk draw open. Drinking never appealed to me before, but it helped. Helped me forget. The pain in my heart.
Listening to Johnny in the first place. What did he know? His life was a mess.
Letting Kyla use me like that.
Turning on Pete.
Getting all heartbroken over a girl I didn’t even like.
The pain in my head.
Hating myself for all of it.
“LB?” broke through my trance. I felt a hand on my shoulder.
“Milo,” I said out loud.
I let go of the crowbar, that just happened to be stashed under the desk. Slumped down on the ground, and let myself cry. Milo sat beside me, pulled a cloth from his pocket and handed it to me. He left me to cry it out.
“I don’t know why it hurts…” I muttered between sobs. “My head…”
“You’re hung over,” said Milo, bluntly. “Done crying?”
“Yeah.” I offered him the cloth back, but he waved his hand to imply I should keep it.
Milo stood, and without warning, pulled me up onto my feet, draped my arm across his shoulders, grabbed hold of my belt, and lead me out the classroom. I looked at his face. Must have been the drunken stupor, but there was something familiar about his features… his eyes. Hazel. The same hue as my own.
“Did you always have a soul patch?” I babbled.
“Keep it together, LB, we got to get you past prefects yet.”
Milo steered me out the classroom, towards the foyer—there he stopped. Turned to look at the cafeteria.
“Slight detour.”
With that, he pulled me down to the cafeteria. He propped me up against the wall near the tray dispenser. There she was; the bitch. Kyla chatting away, waving pompoms, being the center of attention for her dominantly male gang of friends.
Milo walked over to her, calm and collected. “Oi, Kyla.”
“Ay/Por dios, que esta haciendo este idiota?” she muttered. Kyla turned on her heels, and looked at him as if he were dog shit on her shoe. “Turn around, and walk away. I’m taken, and I don’t date Townie trash. Vete, hombrecito estupido.”
“Oh yeah, I know what you date.” Even though I couldn’t see from where I was stood, I felt sure he smiled at her. “Tell you what, Kyla, you use Josh, or kick off your personal brand of bitch on him again; you know that hot pink convertible that your daddy is getting you for your sixteenth—or should I say; soon to be burned out wreck, they will be scraping up off the parking lot? I’ll make it go boom, baby. Do I make myself clear?”
Kyla took a step back. She was scared. Kyla Vazquez actually had fear in her eyes.
Milo wasn’t done. He turned to Damon. “Oh, by the way Damon, Kyla has made out with at least three of your friends. I’ll leave that to you to knock out—I mean figure out—who. And you know that rumor a while back, about your…” Milo wiggled his pinky finger. “Kyla started it, because and I quote, “None of those bitches would dare touch him, if they think he is packing a one inch punch.” Amazing girlfriend you got there.”
Milo turned and returned to me, smiling proudly.
Kyla was left smiling awkwardly, while her trophy boyfriend gave her a stare that implied their relationship won’t be lasting long.
I remember opening my mouth to say something to Milo, as he lead me out the cafeteria, but what happened next was a blank.
My head felt like my brain had grown twice its size, or maybe my skull had shrunk. I felt too shitty to decide which. Groggily, I raised my head from my pillow. I had my clothes on from whenever it was Milo found me in the school building. Only thing missing was my gloves, jacket and boots.
Slowly I sat up, trying in vain to remember what actually happened since I left Blue Balls. It was all a complete blank. Pete was asleep in his bed, a worried frown creasing his brow. I found Milo sleeping on top of my old brown sleeping bag. He had spread it out on the floor. Muttering, “Antonia, no… get off!” he tossed and turned, as if trying to fight someone off. Milo was fully clothed, missing only his boots. A little bit of a five o’clock shadow along his jaw, around his soul patch.
I climbed out of bed, placing my hand on his shoulder, and gave him a bit of a nudge to wake him up.
Milo looked up at me dazed, sleepily muttered, “Morning, LB.”
“Morning,” I replied.
He sat up, stretched. “Got a razor?”
“No. Not really. I don’t need one.”
“Oh, yeah. Don’t worry about it. I can borrow one off a pal who lives in these dorms.”
I grabbed a few things—mostly the red shirt I wore on my first day, that I was once so proud of, a pair of jeans, underwear, socks and my sneakers. My school uniform was a mess. At some point between the cafeteria and here, I must have thrown up. I chose not to ask Milo about it.
On my way upstairs to the bathroom, I wondered how I had let this happen. All of it. The total destruction of my life. Not that anyone really cared. I had a total breakdown, and the only kid who seemed to care was Milo, who found me at my lowest moment.
No one was in the bathroom, not that I expected there to be. Out the window showed a pre-dawn landscape of the girl’s dorm across the campus grounds. I stripped off and got in the shower. The warm water lasted about a minute, not that it even mattered. I sat on the floor, hugging my legs, staring at a patch of tiles on the wall. They were white. The only white tiles in the whole cubicle. The rest were a really light shade of green. Probably mold.
My skin had lost most of the feeling in it, when I got out. Dawn had come and gone when I left the shower, dried myself off, and got dressed. From my small locker along the far wall, I fetched my toothbrush and some toothpaste. Installing these lockers were probably one of the school’s best ideas. Made it difficult for other kids to tamper with the toothbrush of someone they hated. I brushed my teeth, staring at my own hazel eyes in the mirror.
Being a greaser. The life just fit, at first. But it all went downhill. Rapidly. From the moment Johnny taught me how to ride a bike, that was it. My fate set to become just like him. Get angrier. Possessive. Living for heart break. One day, be the new Greaser King, with my clique on the verge of breaking apart. Heck, I even dated a girl who used me. All I needed was an earring, and a smoking habit.
I headed back to my room, and found the makings of party. Pete, Milo, Becky, Beatrice, Johnny, Hal, and to my surprise Gary. All of them had gathered in my room, facing brimming with concern. Except Gary, who honestly looked like he hadn't slept in days.
Becky was the first to step forward and speak. “Josh, this is an intervention.”
“Question,” I said, sitting on the desk chair Becky gestured for me to sit on. “If this an intervention; what is Gary doing here?”
Gary shot me a glare. “I’m going first.”
Becky nodded.
With that, Gary pulled a slip of paper out of his pocked. Unfolded it. I got the suspicion he had memorized it, because his eyes didn’t even look at the paper. “You want to mess up your life, go for it. Makes it harder to mess with you, if your life is already a train wreck.” He walked out the door, flipping me off, adding, “Get over yourself, moron.”
“Well then,” I said, after a few moments. “Intervention.”
Beatrice went first. She read me a poem—for that, I was glad Gary left. He would have mocked her in some way, to undermine her confidence.
Josh, I care deeply for your heart of gold,
From the first moment in Worn In, the attraction took hold.
You put out the fire of my self-hate,
With the Halloween first date.
A tantrum thrown in haste,
Lead a relationship to wither and waste.
Please put your path of self destruction to an end,
Can we start again, as a friend?
Hal handed me a brown paper bag, sporting the Burger logo. “You know I ain’t good with words. Here, this says it all.”
I opened the bag, one cheese burger; inferior bun with burnt seeds, questionable meat patty, and a slice of cheese pretty close to the sell-by date. Burger’s finest, beaten only by Burger Shot’s Bleeder Burger. “Oh, Hal…” I muttered, touched. “Your first cheese burger of the day.”
“All for you, J-Dog.” He had never called me ‘J-Dog’ before, ever.
I offered him a one armed bro hug.
“Kid, I did a lot o’ thinking,” Johnny begun—but he was interrupted by Becky fake coughing, loudly. “Alright, Becky came and got all on my case. Sayin’ I ain’t the best role model for you. Seeing how you been the last day, I got to agree. I said back in November, you made in the shade. You are.”
“You’re kicking me out?” I said, stunned.
“No! No, kid—Josh, I’m not kickin’ you out. I’m just saying, this life we got, we didn’t choose it. It chose us. We’ve lived this life so long, we don’t know how to not live it. I pulled you into it. Make you think my crazy life is what you need. You shouldn’t listen to me kid. What do I know? I love a girl who don’t love me back. I beat up kids she cheats with, and blame myself ‘cause she gets off on it. This is all I got left. You got friends who come together to make you see how good you got it. I ain’t got many of them left.”
I resisted the temptation to let my jaw drop open. That was possibly the most words Johnny has ever said in one go, followed by the most insightful.
“Thanks, Johnny. For everything you did. Having my back in Glass Jaw. All the other stuff.”
“Eh, forget about it. Friends help each other.”
Becky rested her hand on my shoulder. “And Milo and I are here for you. Whatever you need. Right, Milo?”
“Totally, LB. Whatever. Even if all you need is for me to drag your drunken ass back here after a relapse.”
“I’m never drinking booze ever again,” I decided. “Just, don’t ever tell me what I did in the last—I’m guessing more than twenty four hours.”
“Thirty six. Or there abouts,” Johnny provided. “About that… the keg that got delivered…”
“There was a keg?” I said, none the wiser.
“Yeah. You were already out o’ it. The preps ordered it, spiked it, had it delivered. Hoped if we got out of control enough, the heat would get on our case. Crabblesnitch would crack down on us.”
Milo scoffed. “Please. He’d chuck you all in Happy Volts. Crabblesnitch would rather sweep a problem under the carpet than deal with it.”
“I’m guessing I had plenty of the spiked keg,” I assumed.
“Oh, yeah,” said Hal. “You did.”
Everything was starting to get completely emotional. I headed out my dorm to the common room. Pete was at the vending machine getting a soda—I hadn’t even noticed he had left. He moved a side, to let me get a drink of my own.
“Pete, about the other day…” I began.
Pete smiled, and held out his unopened can.
I understood.
We exchanged drinks, drank, and our friendship was restored. Just like that.