“So we got”—I’m nonchalant, but it takes some doing—“arrested?”
“We have to go,” Bear insists.
“Yeah.” Aaron faces me. “Listen, man, I know it bugs you that you can’t remember anything about yourself before the accident. Let me fill in some of the details. Our boy Chase isn’t the kind of kid to get bent out of shape about a bunch of idiots overreacting to a few firecrackers. We did what we did, and we got in trouble for it. End of story.”
“End of story,” I echo. I’m speaking carefully, almost as if I’m trying it on for size. “I mean, nobody got hurt, so what’s the big deal?”
Bear snickers. “Yeah, right. Nobody.”
“The problem with Hiawassee,” Aaron goes on, “is that everybody’s jealous of us. I don’t blame them. We do what we want, and nobody messes with us. Even the adults are jealous, because when they were kids, they were probably losers too. So when Fitzwallace or some judge gets a chance to slap us down, they go hard, since it’s the only revenge they’re ever going to get. You can’t take it personally.”
I nod in agreement. “It’s kind of not fair.”
Bear grins. “Sometimes I cry myself to sleep at night just thinking of the injustice of it all.”
I laugh. Aaron and Bear wouldn’t cry if you jammed flaming bamboo under their fingernails. They’re the toughest guys in the world.
“Thanks for being straight with me,” I tell them—and mean it. “My own mother kept me in the dark about this. I don’t know what she’s thinking—maybe that if I can’t remember it, it never happened.”
Aaron shrugs. “It’s a mom thing. They’re all the same. If it’s fun, it must be bad.”
“My dad warned me about that,” I admit. “He said I shouldn’t let her coddle me.”
“Your dad is the man!” Bear exclaims. “He was part of the best football team ever to come out of this place. Next to ours, I mean. When you come back, we’re going to wreck!”
That pulls me up short. Bear knows as well as anybody that I’m out for the season. It makes me wonder: Should I be? Dad doesn’t think so. It’s Mom the coddler who took Dr. Cooperman’s word for it.
How much should I put my trust in her? She’s the one who tried to hide a pretty major part of my past from me. If it wasn’t for Aaron and Bear, I might never have figured it out.
Who knows what else she’s holding back?
When Mom gets home from work that day, I’m there at the front door to throw it in her face. “Where do you get off?”
She looks totally bewildered. I forge on. “You were so devastated when I got amnesia—but not too devastated to pass up a little editing job on my life!”
“Editing job?”
“Don’t you think I have the right to know that Aaron, Bear, and I were arrested and sentenced to community service?”
She doesn’t answer right away. She sets down her bag, shrugs out of her jacket, walks to the living room, and collapses wearily into a chair. At last, she says, “You’ve just been through an awful ordeal. How can it help your recovery if I tell you a lot of things that are just going to upset you?”
“Things?” I echo. “You mean there are more? How many other nice little stories have you been keeping away from me?”
She seems genuinely sad. “I’ll love you and support you through the end of the world—you know that. I’ve always seen the good in you, Chase, and I believe that’s the person you really are, deep down. But you’ve had your moments.”
I have a sickening vision of faces turning away from me, of kids shrinking back at my approach, fear in their body language. I think of that crazy girl who was angry enough to dump a tub of frozen yogurt over my head. What if she wasn’t crazy at all? What if I deserved it?
Then I think back to the conversation with Aaron and Bear. There are two sides to every story, and Mom is taking the opposite one. But that shouldn’t surprise me—her kid got in trouble. Major trouble, if the community service is any indication.
“Okay, it wasn’t a very nice thing to do,” I admit. “But I don’t understand why the school had to make such a big deal out of it.”
She stares at me. “How can you of all people say that after everything that’s happened?”
“Maybe because I don’t remember everything that’s happened!” I shoot back. “They were firecrackers, not grenades! It was a prank!”
My mother’s expression becomes hard. “Never mind the poor musician you practically put into cardiac arrest. The problem was the auditorium of people that thought they were under attack. It was pure luck that nobody got injured in the panic. I’m sure that’s what Dr. Fitzwallace was thinking when he decided to bring in the police.”
I hear Mom tell the story and feel ashamed. But if you go by Aaron and Bear, it was a nothing gag that the school blew out of proportion because they were out to get us. Who’s telling the truth? Is Mom making it sound worse to scare me straight, because—as Dad says—she’s coddling me?
When I got amnesia, I lost thirteen years of myself. I have to replace those memories using what I can pick up from other people. But everyone has a slightly different version of me—Mom, Dad, my friends, the kids at school, even frozen yogurt girl. For all I know, the lunch ladies know me better than anyone else.
Who should I believe?
“A prophet is not without honor, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house”—that’s a quote from the Bible, King James Version.
It turns out this applies to YouTubers as well. Here I am, ready to shoot the greatest video in the history of humanity, and I can’t get anybody to help me.
“Come on, you guys,” I plead with my fellow vidiots—members of Hiawassee Middle School’s video club. “You can’t all have dentist appointments. It’s against the laws of probability!”
“All right, you got me,” admits Hugo Verberg, raising his hands in surrender. “I don’t have a dentist appointment. The reason I won’t help you is because you’re completely out of your mind!”
“What do you care?” I shoot back. “That’s my problem, not yours. I’m not asking you to do the hard part. I just need someone to be my wingman. Shoshanna—you’ll help me, right?”
“Not in a million years,” is her reply. “You’re going to get yourself in trouble.”
“I’ll put your name on YouTube as a coproducer,” I wheedle.
“Oh, good,” she drawls. “It’ll help the cops spell my name right when we get arrested. I’m out, Brendan, and you’d be out too, if you had any sense.”
So it’s no. No from Hugo, no from Shoshanna, no from Barton, no from the whole video club. Mauricia even suggests that I should see a mental health professional.
I slump against my locker, watching them walk away, deserting me. Where’s the loyalty? Where’s the club spirit? Where’s the fire of creativity? The betrayal stings, but mostly, I hate to miss out on this idea. It could be the next thing that goes viral. But it can’t go viral if it never gets made.
I look around the crowded hall—kids loading up backpacks for dismissal. Do I know anybody? Actually, I know just about everybody, but none of them will meet my eyes. I’m not the most popular guy at school. I’m not sure why. I’m on the honor roll, president of the video club, champion of the Academic Decathlon two years running. Come to think of it, those are probably some of the reasons why kids aren’t lining up to ask what I’m doing after school today. Nobody even acknowledges my existence.
Then, out of the passing parade, someone notices me hunkered down beside my locker. Oh, man, it’s Chase! That’s all I need to put the finishing touch on this perfect afternoon. Bad enough I can’t shoot my video. I don’t need to hang by the waistband of my underwear off a peg in the girls’ changing room.
He pauses, frowning at me, as if trying to come up with where he remembers me from. It must be weird to walk around your own school knowing nobody when you should know everybody. A familiar face—even mine—must really stand out.
> “The cafeteria,” I supply. “We almost had lunch together. I’m Brendan.”
His face relaxes into a sheepish smile of recognition. His arm sling is gone, and even his cuts and scrapes are fading. “Chase,” he introduces himself.
I have to laugh. “Everybody knows you.” How can I forget the face that starred in so many of my nightmares? With Joel Weber gone, I might be next on the list of preferred targets. I should have told him my name was Harold. Too late now.
On the other hand, the word is Chase is off the football team, thanks to his head injury. And he certainly seems different than he was last year. Maybe that’s because once you’ve cut a guy’s chicken for him, he can never really be that scary again.
So I try the impossible. “Hey, Chase, are you busy this afternoon?”
He shrugs. “What have you got in mind?”
I push my luck. “I’m shooting this video to put up on YouTube, but I need a wingman. Can you help me out?”
Part of me is screaming, Abort! Abort! It’s one thing to coexist in a world with people like Chase Ambrose. It’s quite another to recruit the guy for something nobody else will touch.
He never actually says yes. He just goes with me. I explain on the way. And when I tell him how the video is going to go, he doesn’t even tell me I’m nuts. He just laughs and asks me if I’m kidding.
“Just because something is funny doesn’t mean you treat it like a joke,” I assure him. “Comedy is serious business. If people are going to laugh at this, it’ll be because we worked hard at it and got it right.”
He actually seems to think that over. “Yeah, I can see that. But I’m not the one who’s going in, right? My doctor would freak out—not to mention my mom.”
Wow, Chase Ambrose has a mom! I always thought the popular people floated down to earth in a column of pure light from the Great Space Ark.
“It’s all me,” I promise. “You just have to work camera two.”
We stop by my place to pick up the tricycle. Chase even takes it for a test drive on the street, practically cackling with mirth. I laugh too, because he looks pretty funny. He’s a tall guy, so as he pedals, his knees rise up around his ears.
My mother comes out to investigate the ruckus. When she sees who I’m with, she’s practically ready to dial 911. I can’t really blame her. When the Chases of the world hang out with me, it usually means I’m about to be dangled by my feet out a high, high window.
“It’s fine, Mom,” I soothe her. “Chase is helping me on a video project.”
“Good to meet you,” Chase introduces himself politely.
She’s tight-lipped. “Oh, we’ve met.”
I get Chase out of there before Mom says something I’ll regret. We head downtown, taking turns alternately riding, pulling, and carrying the trike. Our destination: The Shiny Bumper car wash on Bell Street.
I hand him the school flip-cam and he goes off to distract the attendants. Chase is even better for this than one of the vidiots, because he’s kind of a celebrity around town—not just a star athlete, but the son of the last star athlete. Plus, everybody’s heard about his accident over the summer, so all the attention is on him. That leaves me free to sneak around the back and put on the headband with the other camera mounted on it—a waterproof GoPro I brought from home.
Sneaking ahead of the next car, I place the tricycle on the conveyor, bracing my wheels against the tire block that moves vehicles through the washing tunnel. Then I sit down on the trike, reach up to the camera, and hit record. My heart is pounding, and I’m tense with anticipation.
This is it. The moment of truth.
The conveyor pushes me and the first blast of water hits. It’s all I can do to keep from screaming. It’s ice-cold. Considering the research and planning I did to get ready for this stunt, it never occurred to me that they’d use cold water in a car wash. I take hot showers—why wouldn’t cars?
The frigid blast has my heart beating so fast it’s practically popping out the top of my head. I try to tell myself to get used to it, but it’s not possible. I’m hyperventilating to the point where I can’t get any air in. Just when I’m about to pass out and topple off the trike, the water stops. Gasping for breath, I glance over to the observation area. Sure enough, there’s Chase, filming. I experience a surge of relief. The only thing worse than going through this would be going through this for nothing.
My reprieve is short-lived. The soap is next, pelting down on me like wet snow. They only know two temperatures in here—cold and colder. Two gigantic spinning brushes come at me on robotic arms. I’m vaguely aware that my glasses are gone. That’s not important, though. I reach up and confirm that the GoPro is still strapped to my head. Out of the corner of my eye—which stings now, from the suds—I see that Chase is still following along. He’s hysterical with laughter, but the camera’s steady in his hands, and that’s the main thing.
The rinse cycle is next—more hyperventilating—followed by a blast of wind that threatens to hurl me off the tricycle. Actually, it’s great. It’s the dryer, and it’s hot. Even better, it means I’m coming to the end. There should be light at the end of the tunnel, but I can’t make out much. I lost my glasses when the brushes did their thing.
When the door lifts, I pedal out of there, nearly running over Chase. He never stops filming, not even when the manager turns off the machinery and comes to chew us out.
“Very stupid, Ambrose!” he yells. “Is this your idea of a joke? You could have gotten him killed, you know. This isn’t the first time you’ve put people in danger in this town. I’m surprised you didn’t have a few cherry bombs left over. I’m calling the cops.”
“It isn’t Chase’s fault,” I manage to croak. “It’s mine.” I have very little strength left, but I have to speak up. “The whole thing was my idea. It’s my video project. I talked Chase into helping me.”
“Brendan?” The manager squints at me. I guess I’m not that easy to recognize, soaking wet and half dead, and my skin all slimy—I think I got a wax treatment in there somewhere. “Is that you? Why would you do such a crazy thing?”
“I’m the president of the video club at Hiawassee Middle,” I supply. Adults always cut you more slack if they think something is a project for school.
It does the trick—especially when I promise to put an ad for The Shiny Bumper on the club’s yearbook page. Sure, I get yelled at, but at least no one is talking about calling the cops anymore. The manager even sends one of his employees into the mechanism to rescue my glasses, which are undamaged except for a small crack in the right lens.
We head back to my place. I’m riding the trike, mostly because I’m too weak to stand. Chase carries the precious cargo—the two cameras with the footage on them.
“Sorry, Chase,” I mumble, contrite. “I didn’t mean to get you in trouble.”
He cocks an eyebrow. “Looks more like you got me out of trouble.”
“All I did was tell the truth. The whole thing was my idea.”
“That guy was ready to have me arrested,” he insists.
“Well,” I tell him, “that’s mostly because of your reputation—” Oops. “That is, your old reputation—you know, for stuff you probably don’t even remember doing.” In my depleted state, I’m not thinking straight. I’m digging my grave with my mouth.
He shakes his head. “My reputation wasn’t what made the difference. That was all yours. You must be somebody pretty special around here to get that kind of reaction from a guy who runs a car wash.”
I’m blown away. My record as a nerd and goody-two-shoes never seemed like much to me before. For sure, it didn’t compare to Chase’s—athlete, bad boy, big man on campus. But it was my reputation, not his, that got us out of a jam back there.
At my house, we manage to sneak upstairs without Mom getting a look at her baby boy in such a state of disrepair. I’d never be able to convince her that Chase didn’t do it to me—a bully-palooza where I was half drowned in the river and had my
glasses smashed by a ball-peen hammer.
I can barely bring myself to take the time to change out of my wet clothes. That’s how anxious I am to see the footage we shot. I keep expecting Chase to lose interest and take off, but he hangs around, and it starts to sink in that he’s just as into it as I am.
We watch the video from the GoPro first. It’s pretty insane—a blizzard of flying foam and torrents of water, and a lot of whimpering I wasn’t aware of at the time. I might have been trying to yell for help, but I couldn’t form actual words. I was also thrashing around more than I remember. It’s a miracle I stayed on the trike. The best part is when the brushes come. It’s as if I’m being attacked by two whirling monsters from Where the Wild Things Are.
Next we play Chase’s footage from the viewing area next to the washing tunnel. There I am, clinging to the tricycle like it’s the only thing keeping me from floating away into outer space. When the freezing-cold water hits, my entire body writhes, belly dancer style, only at triple speed. And when the powerful dryer’s on, you can actually see my skin pushed up against the bone structure of my skull. It’s pure gold, and I have to say that a lot of the credit for that goes to Chase. He’s got a real knack for camera work.
We laugh until we’re falling over each other. It’s definitely more fun to watch it than it was to go through it in real life. I show Chase how to piece the video together on the computer, intercutting footage from both cameras for maximum effect. For example, when you see the GoPro image flying all over the place, and then jump to me, jerking and flailing, struggling to keep my perch on the trike, it’s even more hilarious because it explains why the picture inside the car wash is so wild and chaotic. Chase catches on quickly, and adds some good suggestions of his own, like a split screen of both cameras when the spin brushes come in.
At last, we set the whole thing to music—“Ride of the Valkyries”—and upload the clip to YouTube. We give it a title—How to Clean Your Tricycle, Brendan Espinoza and Chase Ambrose, coproducers. I kid you not, he actually thanks me when I include him in the credits.