Chapter Ten

-- July 4th, 1999

Styx – “Fooling Yourself (The Angry Young Man)”

It was the weekend of the Fourth of July wiener roast and the groundskeepers had been setting up barbeque pits all morning long. Unfortunately, I was on the schedule to work. I watched from the canteen as the one percent shoved hot dogs down their throats. “Look at these rich assholes,” I said.

The Mexicans laughed. They had only just started talking to me after several weeks of silence. “You act like you aren’t one of them.” Hair gel Gomez said as his buddies snickered amongst themselves.

“I’m not - I’m fucking poor!”

By now the Mexicans couldn’t stop laughing. “Don’t your family go here or something?”

“Yeah, but I--”

They cut me off. “You’re white and you wear polos – it’s the same thing.”

Before I could argue, Aurelio joined the pile on. “Why do you want to be a filmmaker, anyway? No one cares what you have to say!”

“You don’t know! I could be the future of Hollywood!”

“You’re not the future of Hollywood.”

“Oh, yeah? Then who is?”

“Latinos! We’re takin’ over!”

I tried to get a word in edgewise but they wouldn’t listen to reason. I returned to making as many “toast points” as I could. Why they were called toast points I had no idea. To me they looked like toast cut diagonally -- but hey, what did I know?

I looked up at the canteen window just in time to see Lauren arrive. Even after the Layla “hugging” incident, she continued to be nice to me. My sister remembers Lauren as “that girl who called our house all the time.” And it was true, we had been seeing a lot of each other the past couple weeks.

There was a Thai restaurant Dean and his friends used to eat at called “Waterlilies,” where they had a massive fish tank. Lauren and I liked to re-enact the scene from Baz Luhrmann’s “Romeo and Juliet” where they discover each other at a party through said tank. It was hilarious to reach longingly for the other person through the glass.

Lauren had been a constant presence at the canteen, always chatting me up while I was working. “When do you get off?” she asked.

“Never. Slavery is forever.”

“You’re off now.” Silverio said. I looked up at the clock and damn it if he wasn’t right. As I untied my apron, Silverio added, “Now you can spend the afternoon with your girlfriend!”

I turned a million shades of red as they heckled me in Spanish. “She’s not my girlfriend!” I mumble-hissed.

They took turns looking Lauren over in her jean shorts and baggy t-shirt, her hair up in a messy bun. “Then can I date her, goddamn...”

I was genuinely confused. “You’re talking about Lauren?”

“If that’s Lauren then yeah, fool!” They started catcalling and whistling, which Lauren really seemed to appreciate.

“Her?!” I asked Silverio once more. But he was too busy trying to get Lauren’s phone number. I shook my head and headed out to the patio to join her. The guys didn’t stop making kissing noises until we were out of sight.

“Just ignore them,” she said. “Ten years from now they’re still gonna be working here and you’ll be off in Hollywood, being a big deal. Come to think of it, I should probably get your autograph now...” She said it like she was joking, but I could tell she wasn’t. I found myself blushing. At a loss for words, I took a long sip off the soda I had taken from the canteen.

“Is that another Diet Coke?!” Lauren said, laughing.

I looked at her, quizzically. “Yeah... why?”

“How many have you had today?”

“I don’t know... thirteen?”

“Thirteen!”

“What? Too much?”

Lauren shook her head, smiling. She liked it when I was dry.

Across the pool, my eyes found Layla, tanning. The sunburn she had when we first met had turned to a golden brown. Even after the embarrassment of the hugging incident, I still wanted to give her a tongue bath.

When I turned back to Lauren, she was frowning. “She’s not that pretty, you know...”

“Huh?” I decided to pretend I hadn’t been caught staring.

I watched as Lauren considered giving me a hard time, but in the end, thought better of it. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go swimming.”

We went off to change into our bathing suits, Lauren came back in a psychedelic two-piece that hugged her apple bottom. We spent the next hour or two swimming in the pool, shooting baskets on the low net. Or rather, I spent the time shooting baskets. Lauren spent the duration trying to pants me, ducking under the water to see what she could see. After a while, I loosened my bathing suit string and let her have at it because I had half an erection and was feeling confident. She stayed underwater for a long time, finally surfacing as if nothing had happened.

“Taylor?” a voice said behind me. I turned to see my boss, Mr. Mayer, beckoning me over from the side of the pool. “A word please?” I yanked up my bathing suit and took my time swimming over so that the aforementioned half-erection would be gone by the time I got out of the pool. When I was convinced I was safe, I climbed out and made my way to him. “You are aware that staff cannot fraternize with club members?” he said.

He coughed before fraternize and I had no idea whether he’d seen Lauren pants me. “But she’s my friend...”

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Mr. Mayer shrugged. “I’m sorry, but I don’t make the rules.” He was about to set off when he remembered something. “Oh, here’s your paycheck.” He slid a white envelope out from under the clasp on his clipboard and handed it to me, not knowing the gravity of his words. This was my very first paycheck. As he hurried away, I opened it greedily. A check for $204.37 stared back at me. For two weeks work...

What. The. Fuck.

I read it over and over again, but the words stayed the same. Eventually, Dean passed with all his belongings and tried to read over my shoulder. “What’s that?” he asked.

“My paycheck.”

“Good, we’ll need it. We’re going to Rich’s house.”

“Who’s Rich?”

“From my school...”

“How would I know that?”

“Just come on.” He started to drag me towards the exits, just as Lauren swam over.

“Where are you guys going?”

“To do drugs.”

“Can I come?” she asked, already climbing out of the pool.

Dean barked “no girls allowed!” in her face, surprisingly loud, which made Hudson and Avi laugh. I apologized profusely but followed them out.

**

Twenty minutes later, Hudson’s father dropped us off at Rich’s house. It was a beige, non-descript kind of place, something a suburban bomb-maker might live in. Inside, it was dark and there was a thin layer of cat dander over everything. Rich had four cats and it smelled like it. Mercifully, he led us out to the screened in patio.

I quickly learned that Rich was a wild card. He had beady, bloodshot eyes and was always laughing at someone, never with. His mother had died when he was very young and now he lived alone with his father. Rich was the only weed dealer at Dean’s school. He was constantly high on his own supply and making up slang that he somehow expected you to know. He would lambast you if you couldn’t figure it out. He said words like “quap” which I found out months later meant quarter pound. In the meantime, all you could do was smile and nod.

As we found seats on the wicker deck chairs, Rich pulled out a three-and-a-half foot bong. Dean and I had only recently dipped our toes into “the drug world,” smoking a homemade, tin-foil bowl in his basement while his parents were asleep.

But this... this seemed a little advanced.

We watched as Rich took the first hit. I had never seen so much smoke in all my life. He passed the bong over to Hudson, who somehow had a lower voice all of a sudden. “Wish I could man, but I’m on the swim team and we get tested for drugs.”

Rich nodded. No one really questioned that it was summer vacation. Hudson handed the bong to Dean, who looked like he wanted to be as clever as Hudson but just didn’t have it in him. Dean struggled to light the bowl, so Rich lit it for him. I watched as Dean took the tinsiest of hits and passed it along to me, coughing.

“Yeah, it’s better if you cough.” Rich said, cackling.

In my recent attempts at fitting in, I had begun taking things to the extreme. So, when my turn came, I was not about to take a preschool-sized hit. When I hit, I hit big.

But it just kept coming...

“You gotta clear it,” Rich kept saying.

“I know how to do it,” I maintained, but still didn’t cap it, letting valuable smoke escape. “No, you’re wasting it, man!” He grabbed the bong from me and cleared it himself. “Fuckin’ first time, huh?” Hudson and Dean laughed. I would have stuck up for myself, but I was starting to feel weird. The picture window frames of Rich’s patio started to run on a loop like a roll of film...

This was not fun. I was pretty sure I was hallucinating.

“So, it’s $25 for a gram, $50 for an eighth.” Rich started to explain. I guess I missed some of the conversation because suddenly all eyes were on me.

“I, uh... actually don’t have any cash.” I managed to mumble.

“But you have your paycheck.” Dean pointed out.

Rich nodded. “Oh, that’s easy, just sign it over to me.”

Even Hudson was getting in on it. “Yeah, just sign it over to him!” Apparently, money meant so little to the wealthy that they could spend yours without even realizing it.

I hissed at Dean, “maybe I don’t want $200 worth of weed!”

Dean lowered his voice. “Please don’t embarrass me.”

I was covered in that good old flop sweat and was getting tired of everyone looking at me. “Fine, you can owe me.” I said and handed over my newly-earned paycheck.

I would never see that money again.

But that was farthest from my mind. By now, the fear was upon me. It was a horrible, stomach-drop feeling, the closest I’ve come to realizing true terror. It felt as if everyone around me was about to attack. Like a voice was telling me to run. Muscles shook independently of me asking them to and my eyes darted looking for the multiple exits.

I needed to be alone. I needed to lay down, but suddenly everyone was talking about “going out into nature,” which meant walking to the park. This was as ill-informed as Janet’s friends going to the carnival, but I couldn’t find the words to object.

As Hudson, Dean, and Rich walked in a group, I tried to keep up. But just staying balanced was a chore. I had never been so tired in all my life. My body was literally shutting down, so much so that I was falling asleep while walking. Hudson and Rich kept looking back at me and laughing. Dean just looked like he wanted to kill me. He told me to “fuckin’ get it together!” so I slapped my face a few times, which just seemed to unnerve everybody.

As the municipal building came into view, they gave me a wide berth. The town’s Board of Education had a small playground where the special ed kids would play. I followed Dean and his friends over to it. They grabbed seats in a gazebo where Rich began to roll a blunt. I couldn’t even fathom smoking any more, let alone being around people that were.

As Rich licked it closed, he asked Hudson and Dean what they were up to tonight. To me it seemed like that old cliché of the drug dealer who doesn’t know when to go home, but I was alone on that front. I listened as Dean said that he’d probably just be “chilling at home tonight.”

Words stopped meaning anything. I said to Dean, “I thought we were sleeping over at my house tonight.”

“No... I said we’d talk about it.”

“You never want to sleep at my house. What, is there something wrong with it?!”

Hudson and Rich had turned their complete attention onto the two of us. Feeling the glare of the spotlight, Dean finally blurted out: “I don’t feel safe there, okay?! Let’s just stay at my house!”

“What, you think my place is shitty? That I live in a bad neighborhood--”

“--Fine, I do, okay?! Just drop it!”

Dean stormed off with Hudson and Rich. I watched as they started a fun game of swinging as hard as they could on the swing-set and then launching themselves at the last possible moment to see how far they could go.

I joined them just as Dean’s turn was up. He pumped his legs to get momentum going. As he did, I thought about how shitty the day had turned out. Right when Dean was about to launch himself, I pushed the swing next to him into his path.

My intent was just to get him tangled up. But the seats were made of hard plastic and the seat caught him hard on his forehead.

All I saw was blood. Lots of it...

Realizing that Dean’s house was only two blocks away, I ran like my life depended on it. I ran faster than my feet could carry me, so fast that I was barely touching asphalt. I made it in roughly ninety seconds.

Aunt Lynn was out by her car. I ran up to her and told her that Dean had cracked his head open. Before she jumped to life, before she raced to the driver seat, she stared at me with the strangest look...

A sickening, detestable look, like I was a feral creature meant to be held at bay. I could almost read her thoughts: “Oh my god, you hurt my son again.”

She yelled for me to get in the car and I did. We raced back to the park and nearly crashed into a car going the other way. It slowed to a crawl as the driver flagged us down. Some mother at the park had put Dean in her car and drove him down the hill towards his parent’s house. When Lynn saw the blood all over his face, she stifled a scream.

She hustled him into her car and together we drove to Overlook hospital. It was the first time I had been there since I’d been born. During the drive, she tried to get the story from either one of us as to how this happened. All I could say was, “we were just swinging.”

At the hospital, Dean was seen right away. Lynn had to hang back in the waiting room to fill out some paperwork. She gave him a kiss on the top of his head as a nurse led him back into the emergency room. I saw Lynn’s face as she smelled his skunk weed hair. I watched the wheels of recognition click. But she didn’t say anything. Which I found fascinating...

I just kept apologizing, saying it was an accident over and over again. But part of me thought that I had done it intentionally, to make him feel some kind of pain. When Dean finally got his stitches though, he forgave me. But Lynn never seemed to...

A poor person had hurt her son. And from that day on she kept me at a distance.