14
DERIK
AFTER MY TRIP to the loony bin, I end up going in to school late, muttering something to the school secretary about having car trouble. It's not like it matters anyway. I mean, it's senior year. My grades suck. And I'm not going to college. People know this about me, my parents included, which is why every day after school I find myself elbow deep in tuna freakin' salad.
Today when I get to the diner, my mom's waiting tables. It was her idea that I go full time here on the weekends and come in every day after school. I've been doing food prep up the ass-- that and working behind the grill, learning how to do the books, and how to run the place. She and my dad want me to take over the family business one day. This grease bucket is three generations old, and they'd sooner be found guilty of tax fraud than shame the family and let this place go.
Lucky me.
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I think my parents are actually happy about the suckage of my grades, that I have no prospects unless I find myself some sugar mama to take me away from all this burger grease. I'm their meal ticket, so to speak. It was either me or my brother, Paul, to keep this place going. But he's already three years through dental school. The guy's gonna be a freakin' dentist--like it wasn't enough that he's first generation college--so it doesn't take a rocket scientist to guess who the suckah is in this whole messed-up scenario.
"After the tuna," my dad hollers, "I'll show you how to make them blueberry scones." He's got this huge-ass grin on his face which only makes me feel worse. I know the old man's proud of this place, of the idea that one of his sons will be around to keep it going.
"I got a date tonight," I tell him, trying to get the image of that psycho security guy out of my head--of that stupid finger-drill joke of his. "I gotta leave early." It's not entirely a lie. I do have plans. I'm going to the gym and, let's face it, there's bound to be a decent helping of datable girls there.
"Who's the girl?"
"You don't know her," I say, sticking a glove-covered finger into the tuna for a taste. Way too much mayo--this crap is heinous. I add in a few squirts of horseradish mustard--my parents' secret ingredient--to see if that does the trick. But it only makes it worse.
"Everything okay?" my dad asks, noticing how I look like I'm gonna heave.
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"Just freakin' dandy," I tell him.
"Why don't you go along. I'll finish up here."
"You sure?"
My dad nods, taking a good look at the tuna--a soupy white mess that reminds me of bird crap. He dips his finger in to take a taste. "Like shit," he says.
"Yeah," I laugh, passing him the jar of mustard.
He lets out a growl, mutters something in Canuck-- something about me, brains, and a baby pea--and then shakes his head since this means he has to whip up a brand-new batch.
"Sorry, Dad."
He gives me a pat on the back and moves over to his special drawer that's reserved for old diner relics. He pulls out the sacred spatula--the one passed down by his grandfather, and then by his father; the same one he's gonna give to me on graduation day.
Joy-
"You'll get it right one of these days," he tells me, turning the spatula over and over in his hand. The stainless steel shines. My dad knows every nick on the thing-- from the time it got stuck in a pop-up toaster (who's talking brains the size of a pea?), to the time my granddad bent the handle while using it to fix the overhead fan.
"It was hard for me in the beginning, too," my dad continues. "I screwed everything up. I'm not just talking tuna, either: menus, bills, grease fires, food prep. Wait'll I teach you how to make corton; you'll be beggin' me to go
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back to tuna then." (Note: corton = ugly pig-fat spread.)
"I don't know," I say. "Maybe this isn't for me."
"Nonsense," he says, forcing the spatula into my hand. I can see the glint in his eye--like he just rubbed off a hundred-dollar scratch ticket. "Looks good on you," he says.
"I don't know," I repeat.
" I know," he says. "Just give it time. You'll settle in to it. We all do."
"Thanks, Dad," I say, handing him back the spatula. Part of me wants to do this ... for him, anyway. The guy's so goddamned proud.
"Hey, have fun tonight," he says with a wink. "Who is it, the redhead?"
"Which redhead?" I smile.
"That's my boy," he says. "Have fun while you can, because before you know it, it's all over." He motions to my mom.
"What?" she squawks, catching his drift--the woman's a mind reader.
Dad comes from behind the grill to grope her butt and nuzzle her neck. "Still feisty after all these years, aren't you, Barbie?"
My mom lets out a giggle and smacks his butt.
My mom's real name isn't Barbara--it's Janet--but my dad likes to call her Barbie because she used to look just like the doll. Everybody says so. To me, they just look like parents, my dad a much older version of me--dark
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hair, blue eyes, buff body (for a forty-something-year-old, that is). They've been sweethearts ever since high school, but their families knew each other even way before that. I've seen the pictures--the two of them at prom, graduation, holiday parties at my grandparents' houses--big-ass grins across their faces like they shared some wicked secret.
Instead of watching them fool around behind the counter--a regular occurrence despite the customers--I pull off my apron and head for the door, knowing that in their own way, they have made a good life together. And they expect no less from me. They expect me to graduate high school and accept my post behind the grill with the sacred spatula in hand. They want me to marry the girl next door. She'll wait tables like my mom. Together we'll pop out a few kids. They'll grow up. One will suck at school like me. And then the cycle will repeat itself.
But it's not going to happen. It can't. I can't let it. Which is why I took a trip to that mental hospital this morning. When I saw the headlines that it was going to be torn down, I thought it was the perfect idea--to make my movie, capture a bit of history, and win my ticket out of the burger business once and for all.
I've decided to enter a contest I saw recently on RTV, the Reality TV network. They're offering a summer internship to a soon-to-be high school grad interested in pursuing a career in the TV biz. The idea of it--of me --as one of them TV producer guys, driving around in my brand-new tricked-out Porsche, coming up with all these
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cool ideas for reality TV shows, with girls galore hangin' all over me--is too good to ignore.
If the summer gig goes well, who knows what can happen? Maybe they'll hire me full time. Maybe my parents will stop comparing me to my walks-on-water brother, Paul.
All I need to do to win myself the gig is get my hands on a video camera, find myself a full cast of characters, and get our asses in there for one night--and without security guards to screw it all up.
And I have less than one week to do it.
Easy, right?
Not easy. Probably not even possible. A long shot, to say the least. But as corny as it sounds, I believe there's a reason I saw that contest ad. There's a reason that girl brought me up there this summer--in the daylight, when I could really see everything, when I could see things through her eyes. And there's a reason I saw the headline that the place was going to be torn down for condos and apartments.
So I have to give it a try--at least so I can just say I tried something. Or else I'll be smellin' like tuna fish for the rest of my natural life.
20
MIMI
I HATE ART CLASS. But when I got shut out of music this term--because all of those classes are reserved for people who actually have musical talent--my adviser insisted that art is the elective someone like me should take.
Someone like me who likes to wear black clothes. And black boots. And dye my hair to match. Because I wear dark makeup. And carry around a camo duffel bag for my books. And have a faux diamond stud pierced through my lower lip.
> It obviously must mean that I enjoy stuff like art. Yeah.
So while Ms. Pimbull, my art teacher--more commonly known as "the pit bull"--sits at the back of the room working on her grad-school stuff (an installation of watercolor hell: eleven paintings filled with nothing more than pastel dots and lines), we're all free to draw whatever we want.
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I'm sketching a chicken head. It's got a hand gripped around its throat in a choke hold. It's not that I love or hate chickens. It's not that I'm some fanatical vegan trying to make a statement for PETA. And no, I'm not sketching out what happened during one of my moonlit rituals--as some of the administration imagine about me. (No joke. I once got called down to the principal's office, accused of vandalizing Winter Island beach with stuff like sacrificial dead fish and a giant pentagram made out of driftwood.) I'm just trying to piss people off--to feed what they already think they know about me.
When none of them have even stopped to really find
out.
Derik LaPlaya LaPointe moves from his table across the room and plops down on the stool beside mine. "Hey there, Miss Sweet," he says. But he isn't talking to me. He's talking to the girl sitting across from me at my table. Nicole glances up at him but then resumes sketching a portrait of her boyfriend. She's got his junior year picture propped up in front of her for inspiration.
"Hey," she mutters, less than enthusiastic to talk to his sad self. She resumes her sketch.
"Is that Sean you're drawing?" he asks.
Nicole nods, all but ignoring him.
"How are you guys doing?"
"Great," she says, perking up slightly. She actually looks at him for two full seconds.
"I missed you at Maria's party last Thursday night," he
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says. "It was awesome. I guess her mom kicked out that boozer-ass of a boyfriend she had and then took off for some weeklong retreat thing. The place was packed. How come you didn't go?"
"I had to study."
"Come on, a brainiac like you? Haven't you heard, the weekend starts at three on Thursdays?"
"Which is why you're flunking out of school," I say, cutting in.
"Are you talking to me, Halloween?" Derik asks. "If the point-zero-seven GPA fits."
"For your information, I have a better plan than school."
"Male prostitution?"
Derik turns his back to me and continues to badger Nicole. "I'm doing this film project," he explains. "I thought that maybe you and Sean might like to give me a hand."
"Why?" she asks.
"Why am I making a movie?"
"No, why would we want to help you?"
Derik's mouth falls open but nothing comes out. "What's with you?" he says after a few moments.
Nicole shrugs, but she doesn't answer.
"It's for this reality TV contest," he continues, not giving up.
The idea of it--of Derik LaPointe making anything other than a play for some girl surprises me. I take a
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second glance at him, noticing how jacked the boy is these days. He's got on this incredibly tight long-sleeved T-shirt that shows off the bulges in his chest and arms.
"I don't think so," Nicole says, grabbing a strand of her frizzy hair. She brings it up to cover her mouth.
"I haven't even told you all the details yet," Derik continues. "I'm filming it at the Danvers crazy hospital."
"On the hill?"
He nods.
"Then definitely count me out." She adds a twinkle to Sean's eye with a yellow pastel, only it makes him look jaundiced.
"Come on, it'll be fun. Maybe you can get Kelly to come."
"Kelly's not even talking to you. And she's barely talking to me."
"They won't let you up there to make a film," I say, butting in again. I grab a red pencil from the center of the table and use it to draw droplets of blood spurting out from the chicken's neck. "They don't even let people tour the place anymore."
"Are you still talking, Halloween?"
"You're such a jerk," Nicole says to him. She gets up and moves to another table.
Meanwhile, I turn completely toward Derik, watching as he lets out a sigh and runs his hand through his gelled-up brown hair. "She's right, you know," I say, before he can get up. "You are a jerk ... and an idiot, too. Because
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everybody knows it's impossible to break into that place at night."
"I have my ways."
"Oh, yeah? So you know about all the added security at night? That after five they shut the grounds down completely? No last-minute peeks. No final good-byes. They even lock all the gates."
Detach readjusts himself on the stool, as though finally ready to listen.
"I hear there's been something like thirty arrests there in the last month alone," I say, resuming my drawing, shading in the black fingernails of the hand throttled around my chicken's neck. "Everybody wants one last look before the place gets torn down."
"How do you know all this?"
"Let's just say I have my ways, too. I also know how to get past all those security guards."
"Yeah," he says, looking me over. "I guess that kind of thing is right up your twisted alley."
"Fine, forget it," I say, pretending his lameness bothers me. "If you're going to be an ass, I won't help you."
Sheer cave-age. The guy is absolute putty in my palm. "Okay, sorry," he says, utterly predictable. "Forget I said that."
I shrug and turn toward him again. "I could tell you, too, you know ... how to get in, I mean. But first you have to tell me about your film."
"Why?"
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"Because you won't get into the place unless you do. You know my father is on the zoning board, don't you?"
Derik crinkles his brow, not grasping that last part about my dad. And why should he? It's not like the zoning board committee has anything to do with the security business at the asylum. Still, Derik doesn't argue, instead climbs farther into the web I've spun.
But it's not like everything I'm saying is a lie. It's true about the arrests for break-ins--but the number is more like ten or twelve for the month, rather than thirty. My father, who is on the zoning board, told me he heard they've been beefing up security at the place--but I have no idea if that means they shut it down at five on the money.
Regardless, Derik fills me in--tells me all about his idea for a film and how he wants to enter it into some contest.
"I still need to get a cast together," he continues. "I want to use people who are different--people who'll spark lots of drama."
"Look no further," I say, completely piqued by the idea.
"Seriously?"
"Why not?"
Derik's pale blue eyes grow wide. He looks around the room to see if anyone's listening, and then lowers his voice. "Are you free Friday night?"
"Sure," I say, matching his tone. I add a little shadow under the bulging eye of my chicken head. "Is that when you plan to film it?"
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He nods. "So what's your real name, Halloween?"
"Mimi." I sigh, annoyed that he doesn't know it-- since we've gone to school together for four years now-- but unsurprised nonetheless.
"What kind of name is that?"
"It's short for Miriam."
He nods as if it finally clicks. "So you can seriously get us in?"
"Sure thing," I say, since I do know how to get in. Thanks to online maps and chat sites devoted to asylum spelunking and urban exploration, I know exactly where to park, what time to go, how to dress, and what to bring. I must have planned out the trip at least a hundred times inside my head. I've just never had the nerve to go through with it.
That haunted asylum is the one place I've purposely avoided--the same one I need to see once and for all.
27
DERIK
AFTER GETTING THAT first bite, all I can think about for the rest of the school day is who else I can get to be in my film. During math, I come up with a list of potentia
l candidates, trying to pick people from different cliques, imagining a Real World kind of thing--the pretty girl, the angry-on-'roids guy, the religious freak, the tree-hugging naturalist chick.... But nobody else is biting--seriously, I think I've been rejected by at least two-thirds of the senior class.
I know I could make this a whole lot easier. I could totally ask my buddies to come along with me--any one of them would join me in a heartbeat. But I also know that none of them would take my project--or me--seriously. They wouldn't follow my direction. And they'd sure as hell be shit-faced before we even got inside.
I need people who are gonna help me win.
So, after an entire afternoon and evening spent trying
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to master my dad's mystery meat loaf recipe without any luck--the guy actually uses pickles, eggs, and ketchup-- I head over to my uncle's place. Because I'm not giving up.
My Uncle Peter's a rebel, so I kind of look up to him. He's my father's brother, and he basically said "screw you" to working in the greasy-fry business, and now he teaches video production at Lynn Tech and works as a wedding videographer on the side. Once when I was in middle school, he complimented me on my cinematic eye, said I did a good job taping my cousin's Communion.
"Come on in," he says, opening the door wide. "You smell like your dad's meat loaf."
"Thanks, scumbag."
"Don't mention it, buttwad."
Me and my uncle have a pretty cool relationship.
He plops down on the sofa and cracks open a beer, clicking the mute button on the ten o'clock news, wanting instead to hear all about the details of my film. And so I tell him--about the contest, about how the thought of working at the restaurant until I retire or win the lottery feels more like a prison sentence than a way of life, and how I have less than two weeks to pull this thing together.