ET walks by the usual stoner haunts first, the broken tables in the lunch area that are dragged way out to a cluster of trees. This is where skate boarders, druggie girls and hippies all share a little corner of the universe. He sees one small shape in a hoodie there smoking. A frail looking asian girl carving her name into the tabletop. Sensing him there she says, “what the fuck are you looking at poser?” He keeps walking as it starts to rain. He checks the abandoned pool room thats been half empty for years. No thunder of skateboard wheels just drips from the roof echoing in the empty room. He looks in on the old art room / woodshop that has been closed since they cut the budget. Now a pile of extra furniture and tables. Where couples go to have sex or the occasional drug deal. Just a tripped out place full of 1960s posters and band instruments that disappear one by one till all thats left has been smashed to firewood.
Seeing his nemesis, skin crawlingly disgusting and self righteous Ms Draughn. Not quite a butch lesbian despite the mustache and hairy legs. More like a fashion victim who still thinks caked blue eye shadow in a distinctive drag queen type cake gives a hip mid 1960’s mod house wife pastiche, she dressed in mumus with animal print and female business suit disco glamor that looked like a hippie on acid designing coloring book is attractive. She creeps him out, like she is licking her lips and thinking about pulling him into a closet to take his manhood. Her disposition is always the obsessive disciplinarian, to the point any time he sees her he tries to not make eye contact and be invisible to avoid a lecture in detention. They call her the “skunk ape” and “queen obesity.”
He dodges her line of sight and sneaks into the back of the science class, where old Mr Herbert is taking a nap while showing 1970s nature videos on wildlife. ET makes it to his seat just in time for the bell to ring. His tagger buddies Enrique and Max fill him in on latest drama, who is crossing them out. What new drugs are on the scene and the fact there is a new chick into heavy metal but is stuck up. ET thinks he saw her at the tables.
Mr Herbert gets a phone call and holds them back from recess for a moment of silence. A local girl Suzette and her family were killed in a head on collision. Asking for them all to make memorial cards by Monday, he says the winners will get a special gift from the principal. They all plan some crazy graffiti card, but to be honest ET doesn't remember Suzette or have any idea why he should draw any thing for some BS pencil or calculator or any other stuff the principal gives away like educational comic books or 1980s free posters for B movies no one remembers. The three make a plan to head out to the tables to see if the new girl has any cigarettes or wants to buy some herb.
Trying to be cool they sit the next table in front of her and ignore her. They saw she is doing something to the table but when she sees them looking she hisses and covers it with her hand. They do notice she has some kind of crazy Japanese t-shirt. It looks punk rock, but has some screaming faces blurred by tv static. ET busts out his black book full of his graffiti. Feeling watched he turns around and sees her standing over his shoulder. She says, “whats that say?” He tells her he tags Zygote but she can call him ET.
She looks at it through dark sun glasses and replies. “I think i crossed you out at the river, that shits weak.” She walks away while Enrique and Max try to break the ice with a joke that falls flat as she has turned and put headphones in. Looking at the table behind, she has carved in DIE-EYE just like down at the river. ET is used to feeling deflated. He thinks about how hot she was and her cool t-shirt. Hopefully he can make a better impression. This town is lame and some new blood means new music and magazines to check out.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
After school the three of them decide to check out the walls at Hobo Beach. He has been hyping up the production he painted but when he gets down there he can see it was dissed. A big squiggly line goes through the piece and “Decibels Invading Earth” Crew scrawled in a style he never saw before, kind of angular and vicious. DIE CREW sounds cool to him. He thinks of some new meanings like “Destructive Imbecile Exiled Creatures” or “Demonic Instigators Everywhere Crushing”. They cant let the diss stand so they make a plan to come back with some buckets of house paint and just splash out the diss and make it illegible.
Before that they talk about getting some beer and going out to the kick it spot out on the northern bay. Its big rock formation that looks like a skull. Kids long before them in the mid 80s dubbed “South of Heaven.” Named for the skull album cover of the Slayer album. Its a big open cave with a couple ledges and rope ladders. Pretty much every kid in the city considered it their clubhouse. Its on a causeway that floods with high tide so any bad weather and you are going to be spending the night, and thats ok with firewood and a rope ladder but otherwise you are going to be getting slammed into the walls by 10 foot waves with rusty nails, broken boards, crushed shopping cars and old stolen bikes poking holes in you.
The walk to South of Heaven is through the wetland that makes the eye in Fish-head bay on the maps. Old dead trees and fishing huts falling into the water make it pretty desolate. Carrying beer across the causeway to the rock formation is rough, its easy to smash bottles and break bones in the wind and rain which never lets up in South East Alaska. Coming to rocks they don’t see any fires inside.
Some times older and tougher Natives come out here and if they don’t rob you they might just spend the night punking you. Inside the big cave two big eye holes make the skull face. Inside is covered in decades of graffiti since this was part of an abandoned government radar installation, removed sometime in the 1950’s. Years of paint are surrounding a central image from slayer album covers like Reign in Blood and Hell Awaits. Satanic images of goats, demons, vampires and evil proceedings.
They smoke weed with their beer, drink Crazy Horse Malt liquor in 40 oz bottles, play the radio on a little silver boombox. Playing Radio stations from Vancouver and as far as Seattle. Any thing works Hip Hop, Modern Rock, Alternative, Punk, Oldies, Psychedelic. When the weed and beer run out they huff paint and talk about moving to California. Places like SF and LA have legendary graffiti scenes. They hear about places like Venice Beach, Santa Cruz, Portland, San Diego, Tijuana. They imagine buying a car and just going. Maybe learning to film music videos or getting into porn. Sounds like a dream when your head is flying on inhalants, beer and smoke.
ET wakes up alone. His friends abandoned him. He sees the wind and rain picking up but he never memorized the tides. they look pretty hairy but he cant tell if they are building or getting low. Either way he sets out in the blackness. Relying on moonlight to not slip and die. By the time he is back to shore his heart drops as he sees his fathers Police Bronco waiting for him. He feels kind of happy someone would have noticed if he drowned but he also doesn't want to deal with one of his dad’s bad moods.
Getting in the truck his dad says, “i should kick your ass but I’m too tired. I don’t ask much of you. No drugs or alcohol, not to hanging out in dangerous places where 13 kids have drowned since the last time we boarded it up. Is that too much to ask?” ET stays quiet. He doesn't want to breathe beer in his cop father’s cruiser so he just sulks. His dad says, “You missed dinner, you want the usual?” He nods and sits silent while his dad orders burgers at a drive through.