I felt bad as soon as I’ve said it. Not as bad as Wheelchair, though. His bottom lip trembled and he glared at me like he wanted to kill me. Then he started to cry. Right away, I knew I’d committed a major sin. I’d made a kid in a wheelchair cry. KC stared at Wheelchair, dead serious. When we rode away, he said: “What the fuck did you have to go and say a thing like that for?”
“You were the one who said his boomerang was stupid,” I said.
“Sometimes you’re a real prick, Garrett. You know that?” said KC.
In my defence, Wheelchair isn’t the easiest cripple to get along with. My kid brother Monkey, who writes compositions about what a swell guy Jesus is, went up to Wheelchair once and tried to make friends with him. Wheelchair was real grateful, so grateful he tried to pull Monkey’s pants down. That’s the trouble with the less fortunate. One minute you’re trying to do them a good turn. The next minute they’re pulling your pants down.
When we turned up at Maya’s house, she was with her cousin Mirabeth. Name like that, I thought Mirabeth would be terrifyingly ugly. Mister, she was not. She was the same age as her cousin. Long dark curly hair and no tits, also like her cousin. A pretty face, though. I really liked her. Right away, I wanted to impress her so I pretended to fall off my bike. Mirabeth laughed a lot, so did Maya. I felt I was off to a great start.
Maya’s mom and dad were out at the store with her kid sister, so we all went inside to listen to music. Except Maya didn’t have any music, all she had was her mom’s fuckin’ Neil Diamond CDs. Me and KC were supposed to listen to this shit and act like we enjoyed it, just for the privilege of sitting in the same room as two girls. Except I didn’t pretend, I said right away that in my opinion, Neil Diamond didn’t deserve to live.
Mirabeth and Maya went off to fetch us some cokes from the kitchen. Then Maya came back to say that in their opinion, I was very immature and didn’t deserve to be in their grown-up company.
“What?” I said to Maya. “You’re kicking me out?”
Maya nodded. Mirabeth passed me my coke and shrugged, like it wasn’t up to her.
“Seriously? You are seriously asking me to leave? What about Kevin?”
“Kevin stays,” said Maya.
“What about my coke?” I said.
Maya told me to drink it outside. I waited for Kevin to take my side and say that no buddy of his took orders from a flat-chested moron but he just sat there same as fucking usual, sipping his coke like enamel wouldn’t melt in his mouth.
I told Maya I admired Neil Diamond really, really admired his wig and the way he pretended he had a deep voice. But it was too late. The bitch said no, I was leaving anyway. She kept saying I was immature. I got my revenge by farting real loud outside the window.
By the time I’d finished my coke it was getting dark. I was sulking on the porch when Johnny Seven rode by on his bike. He saw me and right away slammed on his brakes eek-eek-eeeek.
“Hey,” he said.
“How’s it goin’?” I said. Feeling awkward because I hardly knew anything about the kid, apart from the fact that he was a little insane.
“What did you say to Shelton, man?”
“You mean Wheelchair.”
“No. I fucking don’t. I mean Shelton.”
“Shelton Wheelchair. What about him?”
“What did you do?” said Johnny. “I just seen the kid, he was almost hysterical.”
I told him everything about the conversation. Johnny leaned over and spit on Maya’s drive. “He’s a kid, Newton. One of our own. We’ve got to look after our own.”
“Yeah. But he’s crazy. He scares me.”
“He’s scared too, man,” said Johnny patiently. “Shelton can’t tell dreams from reality.”
“How the fuck would you know?”
“Because I talked to him.”
I doubted this. Far as I knew, Shelton’s only topic of conversation was boomerangs. Johnny gave me a stick of gum. “Thing is, I don’t want kids ripping on other kids. I don’t like it.”
“You don’t like it? What the fuck’s it got to do with you?”
“Just go easy on him,” said Johnny. “I’m asking you as a favour.”
“Hey, you’re not the boss of the neighborhood. You only just moved in. You don’t ask me a fucking thing.”
Johnny just looked at me, like he thought I was better than this. I kept looking at him like I fucking wasn’t. After ages had passed and we’d both turned into old men with grey beards and crap in our pants he said: “Listen, my dad’s out looking for me. If he comes by, you guys haven’t seen me? Okay?”
“Okay,” I said.
“I appreciate it,” said Johnny. Then he did a wheelie for about half a fucking mile.
A minute later, Maya threw Kevin out. They were getting a divorce. She’d asked him to kiss her, so he did. Then she accused him of kissing her with his eyes open and asked him to leave.
“Oh, that is fucked up,” I said. “How was you supposed to find her mouth if you didn’t have your eyes open?”
“Exactly,” said Kevin. “Exactly.”
“I mean a guy wants to know what he’s kissing, doesn’t he?”
We were standing in the road, debating about why girls are so full of shit. Then we heard a voice shouting: “Johnny? Johnny!”
I remembered what the new kid had said about his dad looking for him and told Kevin. We figured the guy calling out was Johnny’s old man. He sure as fuck didn’t sound friendly. I was still pissed at Johnny for lecturing me about Wheelchair so I yelled: “Fuck you, dad!”
I nearly cried with laughing at how Johnny’s dad would think it was Johnny who said it. Johnny’s dad made this big roaring sound like an animal in pain. Then KC joined in. “Dad, fuck off! You big ugly cunt!”
Now we were both creased up, cackling so hard we were nearly in tears. Then the guy started running and we could see right away that he was fast and didn’t move like no daddy we’d ever met. We got scared and pedalled off. The wind was in our faces and we thought we were safe when we heard this big bastard’s feet pounding the road behind us. Man, that spurred us on. Our hearts and legs didn’t stop racing until we reached my house. When we looked behind us and saw he wasn’t there we started laughing again, this time with sweet relief.
“Fuck you, dad,” I said.
KC howled and so did I. Then I had an idea. “Let’s go over to his house, maybe we’ll see what happens when Johnny’s old man catches up with him.”
So what we did was climb the railway bridge and walk down the tracks in the moonlight. We were still pissing ourselves. KC or me only had to say “Fuck you, dad” and we’d crack up. Then we had to stop, bending over and holding our ribs, laughing ‘til we cried. Finally we were looking down at Johnny Seven’s house. It was as shittily painted at the back as it was at the front. We sat on the verge under the railroad track, staring straight across into the bedroom windows. All the lights in the house were shining.
Out of nowhere, I got this scared feeling. Coming here was beginning to seem like a mistake. “What if his dad looks out and sees us?”
“So what?” said KC. “This isn’t his property. Right now we’re sitting on railroad property.”
To lighten the mood, I said “fuck you, dad” again but the joke had worn kinda thin. I told KC that maybe we should go, but he said we should linger for a few more minutes; see if anything “transpired”. KC had a bit of weed and he knew how to make roll-ups, so we inhaled real fucking deep to give ourselves breathing problems in later life. I hoped it’d give me a real buzz for once but it didn’t so I had to fake it. “Man,” I said, pretending to lose my balance. “I am so high you wouldn’t believe it.”
“Damn right I wouldn’t,” said KC.
We were on the point of leaving when we saw Johnny Seven walk into one of the bedrooms. Johnny was yelling his head off at someone out of sight. Then a big guy in a vest walked over to Johnny and hit him in the face. Wham!