“Let’s have lunch with RHAPAW,” he answered.
RHAPAW was a fifteen-year-old Buick that had been driven with impunity by all three of Ben’s older siblings and was, by the time it reached Ben, composed primarily out of duct tape and spackle. Her full name was Rode Hard And Put Away Wet, but we called her RHAPAW for short. RHAPAW ran not on gasoline, but on the inexhaustible fuel of human hope. You would sit on the blisteringly hot vinyl seat and hope she would start, and then Ben would turn the key and the engine would turn over a couple times, like a fish on land making its last, meager, dying flops. And then you would hope harder, and the engine would turn over a couple more times. You hoped some more, and it would finally catch.
Ben started RHAPAW and turned the AC on high. Three of the four windows didn’t even open, but the air conditioner worked magnificently, though for the first few minutes it was just hot air blasting out of the vents and mixing with the hot stale air in the car. I reclined the passenger seat all the way back, so that I was almost lying down, and I told him everything: Margo at my window, the Wal-Mart, the revenge, the SunTrust Building, entering the wrong house, SeaWorld, the I-will-miss-hanging-out-with-you.
He didn’t interrupt me once—Ben was a good friend in the not-interrupting way—but when I finished, he immediately asked me the most pressing question in his mind.
“Wait, so about Jase Worthington, how small are we talking?”
“Shrinkage may have played a role, since he was under significant anxiety, but have you ever seen a pencil?” I asked him, and Ben nodded. “Well, have you ever seen a pencil eraser?” He nodded again. “Well, have you ever seen the little shavings of rubber left on the paper after you erase something?” More nodding. “I’d say three shavings long and one shaving wide,” I said. Ben had taken a lot of crap from guys like Jason Worthington and Chuck Parson, so I figured he was entitled to enjoy it a little. But he didn’t even laugh. He was just shaking his head slowly, awestruck.
“God, she is such a badass.”
“I know.”
“She’s the kind of person who either dies tragically at twenty-seven, like Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, or else grows up to win, like, the first-ever Nobel Prize for Awesome.”
“Yeah,” I said. I rarely tired of talking about Margo Roth Spiegelman, but I was rarely this tired. I leaned back against the cracked vinyl headrest and fell immediately asleep. When I woke up, a Wendy’s hamburger was sitting in my lap with a note. Had to go to class, bro. See you after band.
Later, after my last class, I translated Ovid while sitting up against the cinder-block wall outside the band room, trying to ignore the groaning cacophony coming from inside. I always hung around school for the extra hour during band practice, because to leave before Ben and Radar meant enduring the unbearable humiliation of being the lone senior on the bus.
After they got out, Ben dropped Radar off at his house right by the Jefferson Park “village center,” near where Lacey lived. Then he took me home. I noticed Margo’s car was not parked in her driveway, either. So she hadn’t skipped school to sleep. She’d skipped school for another adventure—a me-less adventure. She’d probably spent her day spreading hair-removal cream on the pillows of other enemies or something. I felt a little left out as I walked into the house, but of course she knew I would never have joined her anyway—I cared too much about a day of school. And who even knew if it would be just a day for Margo. Maybe she was off on another three-day jaunt to Mississippi, or temporarily joining the circus. But it wasn’t either of those, of course. It was something I couldn’t imagine, that I would never imagine, because I couldn’t be Margo.
I wondered what stories she would come home with this time. And I wondered if she would tell them to me, sitting across from me at lunch. Maybe, I thought, this is what she meant by I will miss hanging out with you. She knew she was heading somewhere for another of her brief respites from Orlando’s paperness. But when she came back, who knew? She couldn’t spend the last weeks of school with the friends she’d always had, so maybe she would spend them with me after all.
She didn’t have to be gone long for the rumors to start. Ben called me that night after dinner. “I hear she’s not answering her phone. Someone on Facebook said she’d told them she might move into a secret storage room in Tomorrowland at Disney.”
“That’s idiotic,” I said.
“I know. I mean, Tomorrowland is by far the crappiest of the Lands. Someone else said she met a guy online.”
“Ridiculous,” I said.
“Okay, fine, but what?”
“She’s somewhere by herself having the kind of fun we can only imagine,” I said.
Ben giggled. “Are you saying that she’s playing with herself?”
I groaned. “Come on, Ben. I mean she’s just doing Margo stuff. Making stories. Rocking worlds.”
That night, I lay on my side, staring out the window into the invisible world outside. I kept trying to fall asleep, but then my eyes would dart open, just to check. I couldn’t help but hope that Margo Roth Spiegelman would return to my window and drag my tired ass through one more night I’d never forget.
11.
Margo left often enough that there weren’t any Find Margo rallies at school or anything, but we all felt her absence. High school is neither a democracy nor a dictatorship—nor, contrary to popular belief, an anarchic state. High school is a divine-right monarchy. And when the queen goes on vacation, things change. Specifically, they get worse. It was during Margo’s trip to Mississippi sophomore year, for example, that Becca had unleashed the Bloody Ben story to the world. And this was no different. The little girl with her finger in the dam had run off. Flooding was inevitable.
That morning, I was on time for once and got a ride with Ben. We found everyone unusually quiet outside the band room. “Dude,” our friend Frank said with great seriousness.
“What?”
“Chuck Parson, Taddy Mac, and Clint Bauer took Clint’s Tahoe and ran over twelve bikes belonging to freshmen and sophomores.”
“That sucks,” I said, shaking my head.
Our friend Ashley added, “Also, yesterday somebody posted our phone numbers in the boys’ bathroom with—well, with dirty stuff.”
I shook my head again, and then joined the silence. We couldn’t turn them in; we’d tried that plenty in middle school, and it inevitably resulted in more punishment. Usually, we’d just have to wait until someone like Margo reminded everyone what immature jackasses they all were.
But Margo had given me a way of starting a counteroffensive. And I was just about to say something when, in my peripheral vision, I saw a large individual running toward us at a full sprint. He wore a black ski mask and carried a large, complex green water cannon. As he ran past he tagged me on the shoulder and I lost my footing, landing against the cracked concrete on my left side. As he reached the door, he turned back and shouted toward me, “You screw with us and you’re gonna get smackdown.” The voice was not familiar to me.
Ben and another of our friends picked me up. My shoulder hurt, but I didn’t want to rub it. “You okay?” asked Radar.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” I rubbed the shoulder now.
Radar shook his head. “Someone needs to tell him that while it is possible to get smacked down, and it is also possible to get a smackdown, it is not possible to get ‘smackdown.’” I laughed. Someone nodded toward the parking lot, and I looked up to see two little freshmen guys walking toward us, their T-shirts hanging wet and limp from their narrow frames.
“It was pee!” one of them shouted at us. The other one didn’t say anything; he just held his hands far away from his T-shirt, which only sort of worked. I could see rivulets of liquid snaking from his sleeve down his arm.
“Was it animal pee or human pee?” someone asked.
“How would I know! What, am I an expert in the study of pee?”
I walked over to the kid. I put my hand on the top of his head, the only place that seemed totally dry. “We’ll fix this,” I said. The second bell rang, and Radar and I raced to calc. As I slid into my desk I dinged my arm, and the pain radiated into my shoulder. Radar tapped his notebook, where he’d circled a note: Shoulder okay?
I wrote on the corner of my notebook: Compared to those freshmen, I spent the morning in a field of rainbows frolicking with puppies.
Radar laughed enough for Mr. Jiminez to shoot him a look. I wrote, I have a plan, but we have to figure out who it was.
Radar wrote back, Jasper Hanson, and circled it several times. That was a surprise.
How do you know?
Radar wrote, You didn’t notice? Dumbass was wearing his own football jersey.
Jasper Hanson was a junior. I’d always thought him harmless, and actually sort of nice—in that bumbling, dude-how’s-it-going kind of way. Not the kind of guy you’d expect to see shooting geysers of pee at freshmen. Honestly, in the governmental bureaucracy of Winter Park High School, Jasper Hanson was like Deputy Assistant Undersecretary of Athletics and Malfeasance. When a guy like that gets promoted to Executive Vice President of Urine Gunning, immediate action must be taken.
So when I got home that afternoon, I created an email account and wrote my old friend Jason Worthington.
From:
[email protected]
To:
[email protected]
Subject: You, Me, Becca Arrington’s House, Your Penis, Etc.
Dear Mr. Worthington,
1. $200 in cash should be provided to each of the 12 people whose bikes your colleagues destroyed via Chevy Tahoe. This shouldn’t be a problem, given your magnificent wealth.
2. This graffiti situation in the boys’ bathroom has to stop.
3. Water guns? With pee? Really? Grow up.
4. You should treat your fellow students with respect, particularly those less socially fortunate than you.
5. You should probably instruct members of your clan to behave in similarly considerate ways.
I realize that it will be very difficult to accomplish some of these tasks. But then again, it will also be very difficult not to share the attached photograph with the world.
Yours truly,
Your Friendly Neighborhood Nemesis
The reply came twelve minutes later.
Look, Quentin, and yeah, I know it’s you. You know it wasn’t me who squirt-peed those freshmen. I’m sorry, but it’s not like I control the actions of other people.
My answer:
Mr. Worthington,
I understand that you do not control Chuck and Jasper.
But you see, I am in a similar situation. I do not control the little devil sitting on my left shoulder. The devil is saying, “PRINT THE PICTURE PRINT THE PICTURE TAPE IT UP ALL OVER SCHOOL DO IT DO IT DO IT.” And then on my right shoulder, there is a little tiny white angel. And the angel is saying, “Man, I sure as shit hope all those freshmen get their money bright and early on Monday morning.”
So do I, little angel. So do I.
Best wishes,
Your Friendly Neighborhood Nemesis
He did not reply, and he didn’t need to. Everything had been said.
Ben came over after dinner and we played Resurrection, pausing every half hour or so to call Radar, who was on a date with Angela. We left him eleven messages, each more annoying and salacious than the last. It was after nine o’clock when the doorbell rang. “Quentin!” my mom shouted. Ben and I figured it was Radar, so we paused the game and walked out into the living room. Chuck Parson and Jason Worthington were standing in my doorway. I walked over to them, and Jason said, “Hey, Quentin,” and I nodded my head. Jason glanced over at Chuck, who looked at me and mumbled, “Sorry, Quentin.”
“For what?” I asked.
“For telling Jasper to piss-gun those freshmen,” he mumbled. He paused, and then said, “And the bikes.”
Ben opened his arms, as if to hug. “C’mere, bro,” he said.
“What?”
“C’mere,” he said again. Chuck stepped forward. “Closer,” Ben said. Chuck was standing fully in the entryway now, maybe a foot from Ben. Out of nowhere, Ben slammed a punch into Chuck’s gut. Chuck barely flinched, but he immediately reared back to clobber Ben. Jase grabbed his arm, though. “Chill, bro,” Jase said. “It’s not like it hurt.” Jase reached out his hand, to shake. “I like your guts, bro,” he said. “I mean, you’re an asshole. But still.” I shook his hand.
They left then, getting into Jase’s Lexus and backing down the driveway. As soon as I closed the front door, Ben let out a mighty groan. “Ahhhhhhhggg. Oh, sweet Lord Jesus, my hand.” He attempted to make a fist and winced. “I think Chuck Parson had a textbook strapped to his stomach.”
“Those are called abs,” I told him.
“Oh, yeah. I’ve heard of those.” I clapped him on the back and we headed back to the bedroom to play Resurrection. We’d just unpaused it when Ben said, “By the way, did you notice that Jase says ‘bro’? I’ve totally brought bro back. Just with the sheer force of my own awesomeness.”
“Yeah, you’re spending Friday night gaming and nursing the hand you broke while trying to sucker punch somebody. No wonder Jase Worthington has chosen to hitch his star to your wagon.”
“At least I’m good at Resurrection,” he said, whereupon he shot me in the back even though we were playing in team mode.
We played for a while longer, until Ben just curled onto the floor, holding the controller up to his chest, and went to sleep. I was tired, too—it had been a long day. I figured Margo would be back by Monday anyway, but even so, I felt a little pride at having been the person who stemmed the tide of lame.
12.
Every morning, I now looked up through my bedroom window to check whether there was any sign of life in Margo’s room. She always kept her rattan shades closed, but since she’d left, her mom or somebody had pulled them up, so I could see a little snippet of blue wall and white ceiling. On that Saturday morning, with her only forty-eight hours gone, I figured she wouldn’t be home yet, but even so, I felt a flicker of disappointment when I saw the shade still pulled up.