I recognized him then. Randy Meade, the guy Charlie called Meat. The taller shadow behind him, Gray St. John. Charlie’s friends. Guess I dozed off again, staring at them. Meat banged the window. “Charlie’s waiting.”
“For what?”
Meat blew an exasperated puff of air. He looked to his friend.
“Raise a little hell.” St. John laughed.
The laugh did it. It finally registered. This was real. This was happening. Still blinking in the dim light, I cranked open the window, Dad’s nightmare face fading to memory. The air was hot. “I need to get dressed,” I managed. In the dark, I found shorts, a T-shirt, and pulled my mystified head and trembling arms through. The whole time, I was thinking, What do they mean? Why me? But refusing Charlie was never an option. I shoved my feet into my still-tied Top-Siders, stole across the living room, and out the door. I didn’t speak until we reached the parking lot.
“Where is he?” Still looking for a trick. The high safety lights turned shadows into monsters. I searched for Charlie’s white Mercedes.
Meat raised a ham-size hand toward a black Bronco, idling with lights off. I followed, tripping across parking turds, barely getting my legs in before the car sprang to life, flinging me back into the hard leather seat. My skin, bones, organs screamed, I’m here! I’m here! My mouth was silent, though. And my brain, still back in bed where I thought I belonged.
We squealed out, lights still off. The driver—it was St. John—turned to Charlie, riding shotgun. “Where to?”
“Head east. And turn on the lights.” Charlie handed me a bottle of something. “Welcome to the Mailbox Club, Paul.”
I took a sip, a swig. The liquid burned like acid. I didn’t spit it out. “What’s the Mailbox Club?” When my mouth recovered.
Charlie gestured to Meat, who said, “Secret society. Started at one of the public schools, but we picked up on it.”
“We perfected it,” St. John corrected.
“To be a member,” Meat said, “you’ve got to take out mailboxes.”
“Take them out?” I tried another, smaller mouthful from Charlie’s bottle.
“Trash ’em, knock ’em down. It’s fun.” Meat reached for the bottle. The lights of Kendall Drive whizzed overhead, making their faces white and black in alternating madness. I looked at Meat, then at Charlie. He met my eyes and grinned. I recognized it as a challenge.
“How many mailboxes?” I asked.
“We’ll let you know when you fill the requirement,” Charlie said.
I took the bottle from Meat, had another swig. Used to it, I recognized the flavor. Licorice. “What is this?” Squinting at the label in the alternating light.
“Ouzo,” Charlie said. “Greek. Big Chuck and Mary took a Mediterranean cruise. I have Russian vodka and tequila from Mexico.” He pronounced it Me-hi-coh.
“Your parents don’t mind?”
“Think they know? They buy this stuff to show they’re sophisticated world travelers—shots around the world sort of thing. But at home, Big Chuck sucks down Jack Daniel’s, and Mary gets sloshed on daiquiris at the club.” He shrugged. “They wouldn’t care, though.”
I nodded. The ouzo—whatever it was—had taken effect, and the light made mutilated patterns on hands, arms, legs. The heat inside and outside my body was exciting. Shapes whizzed by, outlining Charlie’s face. I noticed Charlie didn’t drink. That was the last thing I noticed before the night became a blur of speed, road, and ouzo.
And mailboxes. We chose a house. The mailboxes were by the curb in that neighborhood, big houses with huge yards so no one could hear what we were doing. Our intended victim, a pink dollhouse shape. Meat shoved something at me. “Come on.”
I stared at the object in my hands. A baseball bat.
“Go for it,” Meat said. In front, the others watched me.
“What do I do?” I looked at Charlie.
“Smash it,” St. John said.
“Smash it,” Meat echoed.
I still looked at Charlie, waiting. He said nothing. I thought of someone, a kid maybe, or an old person, choosing that corny mailbox, painting their number, 6870, on the side.
“Look,” Charlie said. “It’s no big deal. I mean, if you can’t handle it…”
But my fingers grasped the door handle. My feet hit ground, the bat sliding out beside me. Dad had never gotten me my own bat, never took me to Little League, said I was too clumsy. I made up for it now, gripping it with both hands, using it as a battering ram against the mailbox’s wooden door. Pain shot through my arms. The door barely budged. I tried again, harder. It splintered. I backed up and put the bat through the back of the box. Collapsing the sides with a half dozen swift strokes, climbing onto the truck for a better angle. I thought of Mom pulling her hair, the jocks mooning, Binky sneering, Mary weeping for the sins of mankind, Old Carlos picking up Trouble with a dustpan. I thought of Dad. All the world’s power was in my bat. And in my suddenly sharp mind. The wild fire-heat around me. Streetlights danced against splintered pink wood. And I danced with them. I danced with them.
From the darkness, a voice.
“Good job. You annihilated it.” It was Charlie.
I looked down at my hands, the bat. The mailbox. Charlie was right. I’d annihilated it. Only pink wooden shards hung from the stick set in the ground. I felt a twinge of something. Not guilt. Why guilt? It was a mailbox, for God’s sake, only a mailbox. Easily replaced by rich people—rich bastards—who lived around here. Still, I stared at the stumpy stick. Everything had changed. Meat and St. John emerged from the truck, laughing, slapping me on the back, and whatever I’d felt disappeared. For the first time since coming to Miami—the first time ever, maybe—I belonged. Everything had changed.
“Way cool!” Meat was laughing, wasted. “Can you just picture their faces when they see it tomorrow?”
“Yeah. That’ll show them.” St. John crunched my shoulder, suddenly my friend too. He looked at Charlie.
I looked too. Charlie hadn’t participated in the smashing, except by approving. But he’d picked me up, hadn’t he? He’d picked me. Now, he sat, quiet, looking in my direction, but not at me. I tried to catch his eye. I couldn’t. Finally, I said, “Right. We’ll show them all.”
I think Charlie nodded then. Hard to be sure. Meat shoved me toward the truck. I was still laughing when St. John floored the gas. Then, we were careening down Old Cutler, through sharp turns, gnarled ficus trees, past reflector lights and wooden crosses, makeshift monuments to drivers who’d bought it in knots of chrome and metal. I stared at Charlie. He didn’t seem frightened by our speed, so neither was I. We were all little Charlies that night, all stoic, strong, sober despite the mercuric mouthfuls we’d swallowed, all calm and ever wise.
And there were more mailboxes to smash. Black mailboxes, white mailboxes, mailboxes with mosaic tile fronts. Or shaped like fish. Or manatees. Mailboxes that gave way to a smack of the bat and others that needed extra pressure from St. John’s bumper. Even one mailbox, shaped like a plane flying on top of the world, that had to be dismantled by hand. And, through it all, Charlie watched us, faithful disciples doing his bidding. And when he said, “Enough!” I felt sad. I didn’t want it to end.
“Lots of people around here have stopped buying nice mailboxes because of us,” St. John said when we got into the truck that last time.
“Really?” Beside me, Meat leaned his chin on his big paw. “That’s sad.”
“Sad?” St. John turned to gaze at his friend. “What’s sad about it?”
Meat looked from Charlie to St. John. Finally, he laughed. “Don’t you know when I’m messing with you?”
St. John stopped short at an amber light, sending me into the seat back. He turned to me and said, “Meat, here, is our resident conscience. He’s had a better upbringing than the rest of us losers.”
“Shut up, Gray,” Meat said.
“I’m just screwing with you,” St. John said.
“Right,” Meat said. “What
’s going on with Amanda? Heard she dumped your ass.”
Even in the dark, I saw Meat had hit a nerve. But St. John said, “I cut her loose.”
“Yeah? Saw her with Tyler the other day.”
“So?”
“Had her tongue so far down his throat, I thought they’d call fire rescue.”
St. John released the wheel, turned to Meat. The car swerved. For some reason, probably ouzo-related, the whole thing struck me as hysterical. I started laughing. Once started, I couldn’t stop.
“Quit it.” Charlie took control. I quit laughing. It wasn’t hard. Suddenly, nothing was funny. “Turn the car around, St. John. This is boring.”
“Right. Let’s bail.” St. John gained control of the car and hung a U-ey. We drove back in silence, across the highway with its neon lights, tall buildings. I was dropped off first, but in my mind, I was still with them. I don’t even remember the parking lot or the stairs. I fell into bed, barely believing the night had happened.
CHAPTER TEN
Charlie didn’t talk to me at school. I saw him, though, in hallways, where he met my wave with barely a lip twitch. He was usually alone. I was with Binky the next time I saw him, walking between classes, glad for once to be tall, able to see everything in the suffocating breezeway. I tried to catch Charlie’s eye. He walked on.
Binky noticed, though. She looked first at me, then Charlie. That day, she wore a plastic hair clip that made her look like a Pomeranian. She raised an eyebrow. “What do you, have a crush on him?”
My head snapped back toward her. “What a stupid thing to say.”
“You do.” She laughed, backing away. “God, you’re blushing.”
I turned with a squeak of my rubber heel. I had to get away from her.
She followed me. “I was kidding, stupid. Kidding.” She grabbed my arm, acting as much like a girl as possible. “I know you were spacing out.” She glanced at Charlie, who’d stopped to talk to Principal Meeks. “You’re not that shallow. And it’s not like Charlie Perfect would notice our crowd anyway.”
“Since when are you and I a crowd?” I pulled away from her. Then, at her face, I stopped. “Look, I didn’t mean—”
“Forget it.” She practically jogged away. I glanced again at Charlie. He smirked past Meeks’s shoulder. He was only smiling at the principal. I walked alone to class.
By Wednesday, I realized Binky was right. Charlie Good wasn’t my friend, not publicly at least. I wasn’t any closer to the mob of friends I’d wanted. But something weird happened those days. Everyone left me alone. No locker pranks, no accidents. Nothing.
I asked Binky about it. She shrugged. “Be happy.”
I tried to be. And I waited.
Without me to torment, everyone concentrated on David Blanco again. I couldn’t say why I watched it. But I did. The way you look at the corpse at a funeral—as much as you try not to.
It was hard not to look at David. Since Trouble’s death, he’d dyed his hair acid green and kept wearing jewelry in his piercings—violating the dress code. No one said anything, even the same teachers who got off on burning people for minor infractions like forgetting socks or wearing non-logo polo shirts. The administration probably found it easier to ignore David. I wished I could.
I noticed he carried all his books with him in a backpack, like he didn’t trust them to a locker—I understood that—and one day I found him in the boy’s room after lunch. He was cursing pretty loud, and I figured he didn’t see me. Someone had trashed the backpack. Whatever they’d put in was on everything, grayish, gloppy, and funny-smelling, dripping off books and crusting on the corners.
David stood by the sink. He took out each book, squeegeed off the gunk with his hands, rinsed the cover, and tried to dry it. Some papers, the really bad ones, he just stared at, cursing, then threw away. He didn’t acknowledge me. I chose a urinal and did what I’d come for.
He was still there when I finished. The bell rang, ending lunch. David pulled the rest of the books and shit from his backpack, muttered something about it not mattering anyway, and started for the garbage pail.
“You can’t do that,” I said.
He turned, like he’d just noticed he wasn’t alone. “What?”
“You can’t just throw those away.”
“Why not?”
“Because you need them. And they cost a fortune. My mom paid, like, three hundred dollars for my books.”
“Watch me.” He shoved the books into the trash, through the used paper towels and down. He shoved the backpack in too. He picked up the few books he’d managed to clean and headed for the door.
“Wait,” I said. And for some reason, maybe gratitude that I wasn’t the one with the backpack full of crud, maybe guilt over the gratitude, I blocked his way, then fished into the trash for the gray, gloppy books. I threw them onto the counter and started squeegeeing and washing them myself.
David didn’t leave. He didn’t help, either. He watched me. The late bell rang, and still, I stood there, squeegeeing and washing, and getting smelly gray gunk on my shirt. I noticed it had green flecks in it too. What was this crap? Why was I doing this? Not to be friends with David Blanco. I didn’t need anything to make me weirder than I already was, especially when I was almost Charlie’s friend. The bell finished ringing. David stood beside me.
“Why are you doing this?” He echoed my thoughts.
I handed him a few books. “Because I’m not an asshole.”
He pulled out towels and dried them. Then he took some other books and started washing and squeegeeing with me. Finally, he said, “No, I guess you’re not.”
He guessed. My shirt reeked of the crap. But I let it go. I handed him another stack of clean books. “What is this shit anyway?”
“Potatoes,” he said. “This shit is potatoes.”
Then I could smell it. “But where would they get potatoes?”
“Not real potatoes. Powdered potatoes, the kind they use in the cafeteria. Three or four boxes, I’d guess. Just poured them in, then filled my bag with water.”
“How do you know?”
“I had a friend once who talked about a prank like this. There are chives, too—the green stuff.”
I smelled it now. Gross. I wanted to get out of there, away from the stink of potatoes and chives and bathroom. But mostly, away from David, away from what I’d almost become. I wasn’t that far gone. I told myself it wasn’t like what he’d said about the Germans. Because David didn’t want to be my friend either. I handed him the washed-off backpack, and he put his books in.
I was fifteen minutes late to class.
I opened the door. Mom stood, holding a piece of paper. “We need to talk.”
Conversation had been slow around there. Afternoons I spent holed up in my room, only coming out for dinner, which I made in the slow cooker, starting at six in the morning. It had been almost two weeks since Charlie had initiated me into the Mailbox Club. He still ignored me at school. I’d gone back to calling Dad, not every night, but weird times, when I figured he wouldn’t expect it. I still hated Gate, hated living with Mom.
Now, Mom held out the paper. I saw it was a telephone bill. I looked away.
“You’ve been calling your father,” she said evenly.
I didn’t answer.
She tried again. “Twenty-two calls, Paul. Twenty-two one-minute calls to his answering machine. And he hasn’t called back.”
“How do you know he hasn’t?”
“I know, sweetheart.”
I didn’t need her sympathy, didn’t want it. Something inside made me yell, “You don’t know anything. He’s called a bunch of times, but late at night. We talk all the time.”
“Paul…”
“Just because you couldn’t hold on to him doesn’t mean he left me. It doesn’t mean…”
I saw her restrain herself from reaching for me. “It shouldn’t mean that, honey. But it does. It isn’t your fault.”
“Of course it’s not. It’s
your fault. Your fault. You drove him away. He couldn’t stand it anymore. He couldn’t stand you anymore. And you fucked me up so bad he couldn’t stand me either.”
“Don’t use such language.”
But the word felt good, liberating. So, I repeated it. “Fuck.” Then, again. And again. Because it made me someone else, someone normal and happy, someone who used words like that, like St. John. I repeated it, over and over until she walked away, wounded. Then, I was glad. And still, I kept repeating it, because that word was the only thing that kept me from crying.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The knock didn’t startle me this time.
“Give me a second,” I told Meat. I put on jeans, a T-shirt. I’d laid them aside, just in case.
The ride was as wild as the first time, and I was as drunk—this time on something called Piesporter that Charlie’s parents had brought from Germany. I think it was wine. I climbed into St. John’s backseat after our tenth mailbox, feeling the alcohol seep through my system. Charlie said, “I’m hungry, St. John.”
St. John put down his window and spat into the cooling night. “Everything’s closed, Charlie. It’s four A.M.”
“I know that,” Charlie said. He hadn’t been drinking, so he sounded reasonable.
“So what—?”
“Turn here.” Charlie pointed to a street we’d nearly passed. St. John veered left with a string of obscenities. A few blocks later, Charlie instructed another turn, then another into a strip-mall parking lot.
It was deserted. Abandoned cars loomed like crouching criminals. St. John glanced at Charlie but said nothing. He passed a consignment store window filled with battered strollers, a Chinese restaurant. We reached the 7-Eleven.
“See? Closed.”
“Move along.” Charlie flicked his hand as if brushing a speck of dust. St. John rolled forward. At the end of the line, there was a bagel place, its pink neon sign announcing B GELS. Charlie held up a hand. “Here.”
“But it’s—”
“I know it’s closed.” Charlie’s voice was patience personified. “That doesn’t mean we can’t eat here.” He gestured toward the pink-lit doorway. “See?”