Is Cody gonna spend his big fat paycheck on weed? That’s what Tyler thinks, ’cause he said, “You’re just gonna go down to the levee and get wasted, little dude. Get caught with a dirty pee test by your PO ’cause you always get caught at everything.”
No! Cody is not going to blow his money on weed! ’Cause he’s not a selfish douchebag asshole who only thinks about himself anymore.
He thinks about his mother. How her birthday’s coming up. He thinks about what he did for her birthday last year.
Busted. Vandalism. Went apeshit in the middle of the night at Santa Cruz High. Expelled for life.
He looks down at his kicks. No wind in his sleeves now. That one night earned him six months in Hotel California, which is what the guys call juvie up there on Graham Hill Road.
But this birthday? He’s a new Cody, a mature Cody who thinks about what mothers like for their special day.
Chocolate. Not from the drugstore but the expensive kind from Marini’s on the Boardwalk. A big red box with a red bow.
No, a glittery gold bow!
One thing, though. His mom’s got this problem. When he goes up to her place and hands her the box, she’s gonna get all mental about her weight and lift her shirt and pinch about ten inches of blubber around her belly and he’ll have to look at how the flesh is white with a little pink, like a bloated earthworm.
So he’ll say, Oh, Ma. You’re fine the way you are. Eat a chocolate.
And she’ll eat half the box in like ten seconds and say, The only thing I ever got from my mother were these fatty-fat genes.
Shit!
A Nissan Versa with a mattress tied to the top whizzes by too close and forces Cody to jump back on the curb.
Anal Versa Asshole!
He hikes up his pants under the costume. Clothes always slip over Cody’s skinny hips. Burns calories just standing still. At least he didn’t get the family pork genes.
And the family bad-luck genes are gonna stop with him too. He’s got X-factors going for him. Like the Cody smile, which females of all ages go crazy for because his teeth are straight and white, not like Tyler whose teeth are ugly black Jujubes from all the meth.
A minivan honks and he sees like a hundred kids cheering him, their faces pressed against the window. Bet most of them have shithead stepfathers too.
Do it, Cody. Brighten their day.
Triple-pumping motion with the arrow-shaped sign and fancies it up with high karate kicks.
“Anal Excursion!” Cody yells.
“Anal Prowler!”
A mom-type lady in a silver Camry flips her signal and turns into the Liberty Taxes parking lot.
Fist pump! Success! A customer. His first!
He pretends to fish and hook the Camry. Reel it in.
Driver laughs. With him, not at him like Tyler does.
He leaps in the air, a cheerleader split with bent legs. Drops the sign and flips into a wobbly, rubber-legged handstand just for her.
Liberty crown hits the pavement. Green gown hikes up to show size-ten sneakers, one of them untied, laces dangling. And flashing something — his good luck charm, insurance — tucked into the waistband of Cody’s jeans.
A few minutes after Cody starts his gig at Liberty Taxes, another seventeen-year-old arrives for his shift, right up the street at Ferrell’s Donuts.
Milo, small-boned and on the shorter side for a high school junior, exits the front passenger door of his mother’s silver Camry. Runs his fingers through the lock of hair that flops over his forehead, popular-boy-band style. Milo is not especially popular nor in a band, but he does have great affection for music, mostly classical.
He studies the Camry and, hit by inspiration, flips on his video phone.
Slow zoom, tight close-up of subject in driver’s seat. Uber-cinematic. But not too artsy. Milo abhors anything too artsy. Hates it even more than he hates being derivative.
Is he being insensitive for casting his mother’s face in what’s shaping up to be a genre-breaking art-house horror film? If Mom could get inside his head right now — and sometimes Milo thinks that she can actually do that, a two-member support team ever since Dad died — Milo and Mom, Mom and Milo — her feelings would be uber-hurt.
So yes, he is definitely being an insensitive person.
Milo presses the delete button.
He hears the hum of the driver’s window rolling down.
Mom and Milo are eyeball to eyeball now. “My workingman,” she says, then orders: “Head bump!”
He leans in even closer. Their foreheads gently connect. Her face, full-screen, huge. Like this dream he had — keeps having, the same dream ever since Dad died — where their foreheads, Mom’s and Milo’s, have magnets in them and no matter where he goes, their faces lock, her north to his south, blocking his view of everything but her.
Milo moves back a few steps to the curb. Mom pulls out into traffic, heading off to get her taxes done.
Behind him, a voice-over fading in, meow-y and sexy.
No, the opposite of that.
His coworker Melissa. Black polyester pants, white shirt tucked in, donut-shaped name tag, a dot of red jelly on her upper lip. He remembers her from back in Bayview Elementary, a tiny, quiet girl who he imagined having a river of deep thought running through her.
“Jesus, Mylar, you gonna stand out here all day?” Melissa says. “I wanna clock my ass out of here.”
The camera in his head clicks on.
He follows, recording her walk in those unattractive pants.
The buzzer sounds as the Ferrell’s door opens.
Quick montage. The glistening sludge of the classic glazed, the perfect doughy circles with their centers missing.
“Symbols,” Milo says under his breath. “The emptiness of human existence that hungers for connection.”
Fade out.
Reel ’em in, boy! Show ’em how it’s done!
Two more customers. Then Mr. Liberty, the man himself, pats Cody on the back, tells him, “Great job; break time, buddy.”
Cody feels so proud and so full his heart wants to burst out and leave a valentine-shaped hole smack in the middle of the Statue of Liberty.
The next twenty minutes are all his. A Man with a Plan. Dash over to Ferrell’s and see if that girl Melissa from last night’s party works there like she said. If Melissa’s there, whip out the charm. Flash his smile. Turn down the free maple bar she promised him. Pay for it himself ’cause he’s a workingman now. Wink as he drops a gigunda tip into the jar.
The buzzer sounds as Cody enters the shop. Smell the sweet grease.
Nope, no Melissa. Figures. Fuck Melissa. Whatevs.
Hey, check out the geeky nerd behind the register, bent over a book. Kid doesn’t look up. What? Is he deaf?
Hold on. Cody knows this kid. Same grade at SC High. Before the apeshit incident.
Hold on again. Time warp. Fourth grade. Bayview. Yeah, he sat in back of this dude all year. Damn, he’s still got the same LEGO hair like back in the day. What’s with that? Man up, get a buzz or something.
Miss Merlotti’s class.
What’s his name? Silo? J-Lo?
Milo. Yeah, that’s it.
He’s in Drama Club, something faggy like that. Only don’t use faggy, Cody. Not cool. Not mature. Not worthy of the New You. Live and let live.
But there’s something else about this Milo.
Tap tap, Cody’s heel of his hand against his forehead.
Oh yeah. Kid’s got a dead dad. Cancer or something mega-fuckin’ depressing. ’Bout a year ago. Weird how much you know about someone’s shit you don’t even talk to. Bad news gets in the air like a fart.
Dead dad. That’s gotta suck.