Dear Life, You Suck (12 page)

“Ladies and ladies, Aaron is correctamoondo. Apollo Zipper did not drown on that fateful day. His ship sank, but he did not drown.”

The room fills with hushed
oooooohhhh
s.

The door swings open and Mother Mary Makemyday enters. You woulda thought she was wielding a .44 Magnum the way the Little Dudes jump into a single-file line.

I cross my arms over my chest and rumple an intimidating stare. “Excuse me, Mother Superior, but I’m not done with my story.” I’m thinking Mother
Posterior
but don’t say it.

“You’re done for tonight, Cricket.”

She snaps her fingers and the room empties.

“I was just getting warmed up.”

“Cricket, you were born warmed up.”

I grab my knapsack and head for the door.

“Cricket.”

I stop.

“Tomorrow morning. My office. Ten A.M. We need to talk.”

“There’s nothing to talk about.”

“I believe there is.”

“Same old story, same old song and dance.”

“You can reserve the ambiguous song references for the musically oblivious, Cricket. I was rocking out to Aerosmith before you were born.”

Mother Mary Metallica rocking out. A creepy consideration. Her shoes are big and square like Frankenstein’s. Tough to dance in.

“You’ve been suspended from school again. This time for a week.”

“Right is right.”

“I assume you’re speaking to the suspension.”

“No.”

“Fighting isn’t the answer, Crick.”

“Maybe not in your world.”

“We live in the same world.”

I turn and glare at Mother Mary to see if she’s gonna keep a straight face after that lie. Her face is granite. “We ain’t even in neighboring galaxies.” I turn to leave.

“Oh, and by the way . . .”

I stop.

“Storytime for the big kids is now twice a week.”

I spin around. “Are you shittin’ me?”

She jabs a finger at me. “Twice a week. No exceptions.”

“What?! I couldn’t rattle tales to these midget twits twice a week if I wanted to.”

“I don’t care if you want to or don’t want to. Storytime is twice a week from now on, so you’ll just have to do whatever
the hell
it is you do in that Tasmanian devil mind of yours to come up with more stories. Discussion closed.”

“Request to reopen.”

“Request denied.”

“What the hell?”

Mother Mary pinches the bridge of her nose and sucks in a few deep breaths. “I was listening at the door, Cricket. The good Lord has blessed you with an imaginative mind and an energetic spirit. It’s high time you put them to better use.”

“This is bull . . .”

“Pardon? Something to add?”

“Bull . . . oney.”

“Look at it this way, Crick. You have a whole week off from school to get a head start on lots of interesting adventures. You can work on them in between the mountain of extra chores I’ll be assigning you tomorrow.”

I glare at Mother Mary knowing it’s a wasted glare. She knows me too well. I turn.

“Good night, Cricket. Sleep well.”

“Yeah, right.”

On the way to my room, I peer into the chapel to see if any of the nuns are begging God’s forgiveness for pushing us meek little orphans around. You know, on account of us inheriting the earth and all that. I’ve been waiting on my deed for seventeen years, but nothing yet.

The chapel’s empty. They musta all got their pardons already. I tiptoe inside. There’s a candle burning on the altar. A hundred years ago, this was the men’s shower room. Caretaker told me. That’s probably why the air feels so thick and steamy. He says converting a prison bathhouse into a Christian chapel is one of God’s all-time best practical jokes. I’m not sure what he means, but I’m guessing it has something to do with bathing and baptism or the dirty getting clean, or something like that. Whatever it is, I know Caretaker doesn’t mean any disrespect because he believes in God and loves Him a wicked lot and would never do anything to offend Him on purpose. Unlike me.

I slide into the back pew. I don’t like being too close to God’s workbench on account of a stray thorn might catch me in the eye. I always feel shifty and slippery in here, like some dirty old man trying to sneak a peek at a little girl taking a tinkle.

Like I said before, I don’t believe in God. Well, I don’t believe in God the way the nuns and priests want me to. I don’t believe some white-haired old dude is sitting in a Barcalounger on a cloud, doling out good and bad and happy and sad with an almighty Xbox controller. That’s just stupid.

I’ve read most of the Bible. Talk about nutseefuckingkookoo. God punishing people for being good. God loving some people more than others. God asking fathers to kill their kids as proof of their faith. God giving kings special powers so they can slaughter entire nations. God not jumping in when His own kid gets murdered. That’s some crazy shit. If that’s the God they want me to believe in, no thank you. Ship me off to Hell right now so I can toss back a cold one with the zillion other people God never tortured with His infinite kindness. If you ask me, the existence of the Bible is the strongest argument against the existence of God.

I believe in something. I’m just not sure what. I think the way life started, that Big Bang thing, is a clue. Like maybe God’s the explosion, and we’re the particles, and the purpose of it all is to get back together. Hey, I know I ain’t no Plato or anything, but it makes more sense than believing some old fart is standing beside a pearly gate in a velvet bathrobe with a Naughty and Nice clipboard like Santa Claus.

I hear a sniffle up near the altar, so I stand to see who it is. If I’m wrong and God’s been eavesdropping, I could be in deep shit. I peek over the back of the second pew and see a curly brown mop nestled in two tiny hands. It’s Charlie Brittlebones.

I slide into the pew next to him and kneel. The kneeler creaks, and Charlie jumps. His eyes are red, and his cheeks are wet.

“Sorry, Charlie. Didn’t mean to disturb you. Just wanted to send up a few prayers before bedtime.”

Charlie cracks a smile under the tears. “Yeah, sure. I ain’t never seen you pray, Cricket. Even when the nuns are watching.”

I was eight the last time I prayed. It was in my mom’s bathroom. I begged God to bring my baby brother, Eli, back to life. God ignored me and I never prayed again.

“Yeah, I ain’t big on prayer, Charlie.”

“How come? Don’t you believe in God?”

I look at Charlie’s big brown eyes bulging out of his pale, skinny face. “I don’t know, Charlie. God kinda confuses me.”

He wipes his face with his sleeve. “Me, too.”

“What are you praying for?”

“Lots of stuff.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t wanna say. You’ll goof on me.”

“No, I won’t. I promise.”

Charlie glances at the crucifix behind the altar, then at the floor. “It’s stupid.”

“Tell me.”

He speaks without looking up. “I pray that some long-lost relative, like an aunt from Australia or something, will find out about my parents dying and take me to live with her in her ten-bedroom mansion.”

My head gets hot and fuzzy.

“Stupid, huh?” Charlie mumbles.

“No. That’s a good prayer.”

“It’s stupid ’cause it’ll never happen.”

“You never know. Stranger stuff has happened.”

Charlie rubs his eyes. “You can say that again.”

I get off my knees and sit in the pew. I pat Charlie on the back.

His lips tighten, and he grips the seatback like he’s gonna rip it out of the floor. “You know what else I pray for?”

“What?”

He faces me. “To be like you. To not be scared of bullies.”

I think about the snake party in my gut this afternoon right before the Pitbull fight. “I’ll let you in on a secret if you promise not to tell anyone.”

He nods. “I promise.”

“I get plenty scared before fights.”

“Yeah, right.”

“I ain’t lying. My gut knots up, and my arms and legs go all wobbly and numb.”

Charlie pushes himself off the kneeler and climbs onto the bench. “The same thing happens to me when I get shoved around.”

I scan his spindly neck, scrawny arms, and cardboard chest. “You want me to teach you how to fight, Charlie?”

He looks away. “Nah. I don’t want to be a fighter. I just wanna stop being scared.”

“I don’t see how you can be one without the other.”

“Huh?”

“Not being scared and not being a fighter. Fear and fighting are intertwined. If you don’t know how to fight, you’ll be afraid to fight. If you’re afraid to fight, you’ll get pushed around all the time. If you get pushed around all the time, you’ll always be afraid.”

Charlie slumps his shoulders. “Guess I’ll always be afraid.”

“Unless you learn how to fight.”

Charlie extends his arms toward me. “Look at me. Penelope Lintmeyer can whup me.”

I smile and extend my arms toward Charlie. “Look at
me
. You ever figure these string bean arms could pummel Pitbull Pitswaller?”

Charlie picks up a Bible off the seat and smoothes the cover like he’s dusting it. “I just figure there’s gotta be another way.”

“Another way what?”

“Another way to be brave without fighting.”

“Well, let me know when you find it.”

Charlie opens the Bible and rubs a random page with his fingertips. “Jesus got picked on all the time, and he never fought. And he wasn’t a coward.”

“Yeah, but Jesus . . .” I run out of words. I don’t have an answer for that one.

Charlie closes the Bible and slides it into the rack on the seatback. “Maybe I’m asking for too much, and that’s why God doesn’t give me nothing.”

“I don’t know, Charlie. I ain’t never been able to figure out how He decides who gets what.”

“Me neither. Sister Elizabeth says we’re supposed to be grateful for what we got ’cause plenty of kids around the world got it a lot worse.”

I look at the giant wooden Jesus on the cross. The red velvet curtain hanging behind his crucified carcass looks like some religious fanatic doused it with a hundred gallons of holy blood. The carving on the bony savior is intricate. You can see every rib, muscle, vein, and strain in the poor dude’s bashed body. Talk about having it a lot worse.

That’s the thing that’s always crimped my cojones about his limp-wristed turn-the-other-cheek philosophy. What omnipotent moron would let a herd of hornswoggled hypocrites whip the holy ghost out of him when he could walk on water and then abracadabra that salty sea into a nice glass of Cabernet? Why’d this all-powerful dude let those evil bastards kick his peace-lovin’ ass up and down the dusty Jerusalem donkey trails?

And what about his pops? I mean, this dude was the
son
of God, which means he had a
dad
. Now, I can see a human dad standing on the sidelines while his kid sizzles in the hot sun, ’cause I know how evil human dads can be. But a God dad doing that? A God dad chil- laxing on a poofy cloud with a bowl of popcorn and a brewsky, watching
Desperate Prophets of Jerusalem County
while His kid gets tortured to death—when He could save him with a wink? He flooded the friggin’ earth on account of a bunch of coattail relatives being dickheads, but He ain’t willing to sneeze up a simple Dead Sea tsunami for His own son? At least give His kid the thumbs-up to fight back. That’s some backward-ass shit.

That’s where my faith gets completely dingleberried. Jesus’ dad is way too human to be the real enchilada. Makes an orphan wanna stay an orphan. Who the fuck would want a dad like that?

Charlie scooches past me. “I gotta go. They’re gonna do lights out soon, and I don’t wanna spend another weekend scrubbing toilets.”

“Okay, see ya. Let me know if you change your mind.”

“About what?”

“About me teaching you how to fight. After a few weeks in the gym, you’ll be able to whup Penelope Lintmeyer’s scrawny ass.”

He grins and scurries out the side door.

I lie on the bench and stare at the ceiling. The glow from the candle dances on the knotty pine. I pull my letter from my pocket. The bloodstains are smeared. Like the words have been bleeding.

What in particular sucks? Why do you want out?

I read the questions over and over. I don’t know what it is about Moxie’s comments that freak me out so much. Is she serious? Does she really expect me to answer her questions?

Excellent start but needs more detail
.

Excellent start? My letter was supposed to be
The End
.

Why do you want out?

I sit up and take another gander at the shadowy Jesus. His chiseled face looks peaceful. Happy, almost. Imagine that. Being all calm and content while assholes are nailing you to a tree. Must be on account of he understood. Understood the
why
.

It suddenly dawns on me why Moxie’s comments are shriveling my nutsack. It’s not that she’s asking the questions. It’s that I can’t answer them. I don’t understand the
why
. My
why
. Not with any
specificity
. I didn’t compose my Dear Life letter. I puked it. Truth is, I haven’t given my
why
much thought.
Why do I want out?

I look up at Jesus’ pained, peaceful face. He’s at peace because he understood his
why
.

I look down at my letter. I suddenly know what I need to do. What I need to accomplish.

Back in my room, I grab a pen and notebook, climb onto the fire escape, and recline in my lawn chair.

Dear Life, You Suck
Reason Number One
By Cricket Cherpin

A
DULTS SUCK AND I DON’T WANT TO BE ONE
.

My parents are adults. Where the fuck are they? Splitsville, North Crackalina, that’s where. They know they have a kid. I ain’t no Homeland Security secret. What the fuck? How can you make a kid and then punt him over the backyard fence and be like, I’m bored, game over, let’s go grab a beer. It doesn’t make sense.

Not that I’d want those deadbeat crackheads for parents anyway. I read my file. My biological whore was worse than my foster floozy. All she ever did was drugs, crime, and time. Went to prison twice. Probably isn’t even out. Huh, wouldn’t that be a stitch in the ass seam? We both end up in the same crimeatorium. The file didn’t say nothing about her tricking, but I wouldn’t be surprised. She had a serious love affair with Captain Crack and Major Meth and had to support those bloodsuckers somehow.