Hilary turned and stomped for the door. Her girls followed. As soon as she was out the door, she sped up. She walked faster than all her girls, so that none of them could see her crying.
26
GATES LAY FACEDOWN ON A WHITE SAND beach. The hot grains of sand pressed into his eyes, his lips, his nose. He rolled onto his back. There were two oiled-up girls in bikinis and linen beach shirts with him, one lying on either side. He didn’t know who they were and he didn’t care.
The beach was long and crescent-shaped and empty. He and his female companions were the only ones around. The ocean had no waves, no movement, its surface was still, like a lake. He stared up and watched thousands of white dots appear across the deep blue sky, and then slowly grow larger. As they grew, he could see them better. Volleyballs. Volleyballs were raining from the sky. The first of them struck the soft sand and bounced back up high, like the sand was hard as asphalt. More balls hit the beach and bounced high, spraying sand in the air as they launched back up. White balls battered the beach all around where Gates lay, with his arms still behind his head, and his ankles crossed. None of them struck him or his two lady companions. Other things rained down. A falling cloud of shuttlecocks and Latin-to-English dictionaries pummeled the ground behind his head. Red neckties with little skulls on them came fluttering down. Hundreds of purple Super Balls struck the beach along with boxes of Boston baked beans that rattled when they landed.
The oily girls began to caress his shirtless body. One kissed circles on the skin of his neck, while the other whispered filthy promises in his ear. More objects rained down and struck the beach, kicking up more sand. The sand spray kicked up into the air, but it didn’t fall back down, it hung in the air all around him. He reached out above his head, and swept his hand through the suspended sand, feeling it fall away at his touch.
“Where were you right then?” one of the girls said.
Gates turned to her. They weren’t on the beach anymore, and they weren’t lying down.
“What?” Gates said.
It was no longer daytime; it was night, the sky was black, and he was in Pruitt’s backyard, where tangled Christmas lights had been draped all through the branches of a barren winter tree in the center of the yard. The girls from the beach stared at him, annoyed, and fully dressed, and holding plastic champagne flutes.
“Where were you right then?” one of them said again.
“On a beach,” Gates said.
“Why are you acting so weird?”
When he looked back at them, their heads looked like fleshy marshmallows with black dots for eyes and no noses or mouths.
“Damn, girls. What happened to your faces?” he said.
“You like it?” one of them said. The area near her mouth seemed to pulse as she spoke, but he heard her quite clearly.
He wasn’t sure if he liked it. Their heads were structureless blobs, but on the other hand, their skin was beautiful. It was luscious and healthy. He could see the hint of bluish veins under the veil of their delicate skin, and it made him want to touch their soft, puffy heads.
“What do you kiss with?” he said.
“We don’t kiss. Straight to business,” the other one said.
He nodded. “You girls are cool.”
“Gates! You hear about the new hat?” Fowler said.
Fowler was walking across the yard toward him, holding a plain cardboard box in his hands.
“What new hat?” Gates said. The blobby-headed girls were gone, but he’d already forgotten them.
“A French fashion designer came up with the perfect hat,” Fowler said.
“What do you mean perfect?”
“The design of it is so perfect that it makes anyone who wears it look the best they could possibly ever look. It doesn’t even matter what other clothes you’re wearing, you put it on and poof, immediately you’re better-looking than you’ve ever been.”
“It’s a magic hat?”
“No bro, it’s scientific,” Fowler said. “Just looking at the hat releases all this stuff in your brain.”
“But how?”
“There’s PDFs on their website; you can read all the research.”
“That rules so hard,” Gates said. “How much is the hat?”
“Free.”
“You have it in the box?” Gates said, pointing to the box in Fowler’s hand.
Fowler grinned. “You’re never going to be the same, bro.”
He pulled the top off the box, and inside was a green felt hat, with a pinched ridge running down the top, a baseball cap bill in the back, and three drops of white paint spilled on its front.
“Are you sure that’s perfect?” Gates said.
“Just put it on, dude.”
Gates took it out of the box and pulled it onto his head.
Instantly, he jolted with pleasure. It felt like his whole body was a tongue, the world was made of ice cream. He began to grow taller than everyone else. Girls came running out of the bushes, tearing their shirts off at the sight of him.
“Oh my God, Gates. There’s no one better,” he heard Lark say.
People were literally breaking out in tears when they saw how good he looked. He said his own name, “Gates.” The crowd of girls encircling him simultaneously achieved orgasm. He said it again. “Gates.” They fell to their knees, bodies quivering.
His fists grew to the size of boulders. He raised them up into the air and the girls all ran back to the bushes. He smashed his hulking fists into the ground, and made hot-tub-sized dents in the earth.
“Gates!” he screamed, and he launched into the air. Gates soared over all of Denton, spinning and twirling his way between buildings and over the trees, trying to swat all the birds out of the sky. He willed himself to go up, and he soared higher and higher, until the air got cold and thin. It pressed on his chest. He felt one with the wind, in complete control, but as soon as he thought that, he began to drift down toward the ground.
He tried to will himself higher again, but his powers of flight had abandoned him. He looked down at Denton, and saw that his slow descent was lowering him down to Capitol Boulevard, where most of the car dealerships were. His feet touched the ground in a cracked and overgrown parking lot, behind the local mini golf course. There were no cars, but five townie kids stood smoking weed by the light post. Their clothes were dirty, and two of them were shivering. They listened to a baseball game on a portable radio.
The weed smelled good. He wanted some.
“Hey, can I get a puff of that?” Gates asked.
One of the kids, who had droopy eyes and a dusting of facial hair over his plump face, passed the roach to Gates. He took a long drag, and it tasted like an orange Creamsicle.
“Where’d you get that hat?” one of the shivering kids asked him.
They were all eyeing it. The vibe had changed in an instant. He knew with absolute certainty that these townies all wanted his hat.
“You can’t have it!” Gates yelled.
“Get that hat!” the droopy-eyed one yelled.
Gates ran. He tried to fly but he couldn’t. He sprinted across the cracked asphalt, and over the tufts of grass and weeds that sprouted out from the cracks.
He looked back and saw that all the townies had vanished and only one person pursued him—his little brother Colton, with a bullet hole through his forehead.