Fireball (30 page)

‘Just one big chain gang.'

We looked at each other. That was when he decided to drop me off. At least, that was when he took his foot off the gas. The speedometer crept down past one-forty, one-thirty, then one-twenty. It was like being on a roller coaster that's finally coming to a stop. Partly you're relieved, but partly you just wish the operator would crank it up and let you go around again.

49

Julian wasn't there the night it got a bit weird. He was at a tennis tournament in the Okanagan. It was just the three of us. We stole two bottles of red wine from Chris's mom and walked around the Cove, getting wasted. For some reason we ended up at the dirt bike track in the woods near Myrtle Park, the same park where Pat Shaw kicked my ass on Halloween. We usually avoided the track because of what happened. You know – with the paper bag killer and shit. Karen hadn't heard about him, so we told her.

‘He hid out here and killed little girls.'

‘He raped them and then he killed them.'

‘With this paper bag on his head.'

‘Shut up, you guys.' Karen giggled and took a swill of wine. ‘That's total crap.'

‘No,' Chris said. ‘We got warned about him in school and everything.'

‘He dragged them down here. Right here. This is where it happened.'

It was dark as a cave in those woods. Karen and Chris were just shadows hovering on either side of me. We heard all sorts of strange noises, noises that might have been anything.

Karen asked, ‘What happened to him?'

‘They never caught him.'

‘Are you kidding me?'

‘No.'

‘You mean he could still be around?'

‘Sure. He probably is.'

Obviously, we were trying to scare her. And we did. I know because she started giggling hysterically, in that way of hers. For about thirty seconds she couldn't even talk.

‘Let's get out of here,' she finally managed to say. ‘I hate this place.'

‘Relax.' Chris took the wine from her. ‘He's not around. He wouldn't do shit if he was. I'd kill him, first.' He started pacing. He hated the paper bag killer almost as much as he hated turtlenecks. ‘He's a piece of shit. And the cops are pieces of shit for letting him get away. They'd rather hassle us than stop a pervert like that from killing little girls.'

He thrust the wine into my hand and turned to face the forest.

‘Come out and fight me you paper bag piece of shit!'

Then he started storming around, breaking branches and kicking treetrunks. He did stuff like that occasionally, as a way of blowing off steam. It wasn't like he wanted to hurt the forest in any way. He just had a lot of anger – especially towards the paper bag killer.

‘Chris – it's okay.'

That was Karen. I saw their two shadows merge in the dark and knew she was holding him. She whispered something I couldn't hear. It was like listening to a trainer talk down a horse that's gone berserk. Eventually she managed to pacify him.

Then she said, ‘Let's go drink at my house.'

That was where it started to get all weird.

‘Your turn. Time to give me a kiss.'

I froze. Karen was on her hands and knees, crawling towards me. Her face was flushed and sweaty, like a rain-drenched rose. It had started as a joke, but not quite a joke. It was more of a dare. She'd dared us to play spin the bottle – just me and Chris and her.

Now this was happening.

‘Don't you want to?' she said, acting all coy.

‘Go on Razor, kiss her.'

‘Yeah, kiss me.'

I felt Chris's hands on my shoulders, urging me forward. First it had been him and her, and then the bottle had pointed to me. We'd locked ourselves in Karen's basement. It was super dark and quiet down there. Totally intimate. We hadn't even put any music on.

‘You have to kiss me.'

‘Those are the rules.'

Her face was only inches from mine. I saw all the little details that you can't normally see. I saw the pores in her skin and the fur on her upper lip and the mascara flecks around her eyelashes. I saw all that and fell towards it, touching my mouth to hers. It wasn't much of a kiss. The first one was short and quick – like kissing your grandma, or your aunt.

‘He's so cute,' she said, and stroked my cheek. ‘Like a little boy.'

‘How was that, Razor?'

I was still a bit dazed. ‘Nice. I liked it.'

‘Good – that means you're not queer.'

We all laughed. The wine came around and I poured some down my throat. It was a cheap red that stained our teeth, making us look like rabid vampires. While I drank, Chris spun the empty bottle again. It went around and around and bumped up against Karen's knee. He kissed her and after that I kissed her again. Our second kiss lasted longer and I felt the tip of her tongue touch my lips. It was pretty crazy, actually. She went back and forth between us, the kisses getting longer and longer. We forgot about spinning the bottle. We forgot about everything except the next drink and the next kiss. It was her lips that did it. Karen's lips were magic lips. They could do anything and say anything.

They said: ‘Now you guys kiss. I want to see you kiss.'

Chris and I looked at each other. We were too drunk to be nervous, or scared.

‘Come on. If you kiss we can do some other stuff.'

‘What stuff?'

‘Stuff. You'll see.'

You couldn't say no to her lips. They knew we wanted to try it. We were sitting right next to each other. I kind of turned to face him, and Chris leaned in. It wasn't a short kiss and it wasn't a long kiss. It just felt very natural – like kissing your reflection in the mirror. Afterwards, we sat and stared at each other for about a minute. It was as if we were talking without moving our mouths or making any sound at all. We were talking with our minds.

My mind asked,
Is this cool?

And his mind answered,
Yeah. It's cool.

What happens next?

I don't know.

Karen did. ‘Come on,' she said, shoving the bottle at me. ‘Just a few more rounds before the other stuff.'

I took one more sip. That fatal sip.

‘What's wrong, Razor?'

‘I don't feel so good.'

‘Seriously?'

‘Yeah. But don't worry – I'm not gonna puke or anything.'

The problem with red wine is that it doesn't just get me drunk. It also makes me incredibly sleepy. So I lay back to rest for a second. They kept playing, but the sounds they made drifted further and further away. At one point I think somebody started stroking my head, and I remember Karen saying, ‘Aw, little Razor's going to sleep through the best part.'

And I did. I passed right out, like a complete gearbox. Later, when I woke up and realised what I'd missed, I wanted to cut off my own balls. No joke. I wanted to castrate myself and become a monk for the rest of my life. A neutered monk. Eventually, though, I sort of came to terms with it. I mean, I don't know if I could have handled that kind of thing, anyways. But at least I kissed her. And him. That's got to count for something.

50

‘What are you going to do, man?'

‘We'll see.'

Julian played tennis at the North Shore Winter Club. He took lessons from a pro. The pro taught him how to look good as he grunted and sweated and smashed little yellow balls. It was the one sport Jules was super good at. Every Saturday he went down to the club and spent the whole afternoon working on his strokes. That was where Chris finally caught up with him. Jules had been avoiding him ever since the toga party, but we both knew he'd never skip his tennis lesson. I went along, mostly because I thought I might be able to keep Chris from killing him.

‘You spot him?'

‘No. Not yet.'

There are dozens of courts down there. Some are on the roof, in the sun, and others are indoors, where it's air conditioned. That day, every single court was full. It was like entering the mannequin training ground. The place was swarming with them. All the guys had the standard muscles and fake tans, and all the girls wore white skirts that matched their designer headbands and bleached blonde hair. They raced around the courts in singles or pairs, hitting the ball with the same perfect strokes. Jules had finally found his route in. He'd been eating his protein powder and going to the gym and taking his tanning pills. He'd even managed to lose his virginity. Pretty soon he'd be a full-fledged mannequin.

If he survived that long.

‘Maybe he's not here,' I suggested.

‘He's here all right.'

He wasn't on the outdoor courts, so Chris tried inside. We circled the perimeter, slouching along in our jams and sandals like a couple of bums hunting for loose change. Tennis balls flew past on all sides, popping off the clay floors and cement walls. There were no windows. The only light came from rows of those fluorescent tubes – the kind that turn everything sort of sick and pallid.

‘There he is. Over there.'

Jules was playing in the far corner, swatting serves at his pro. Chris didn't waste any time. He walked straight onto the court and called him out.

‘So I hear you fucked that little whore.'

Jules laughed, pretending he hadn't heard. ‘What are you doing here, Chris?'

‘Karen. The slut. You fucked her. She told me.'

Jules opened his mouth, shut it, and opened it again. He looked like a fish trying to breathe out of water. Then the pro came hustling up. He was the head mannequin: slick and tanned and chiselled. He was what all the other guys wanted to be some day.

‘Is everything okay, Julian?'

‘Shut up,' Chris said. ‘He just fucked a whore and I want to hear him say it.'

The pro said, ‘Whoah – I don't think that language is necessary.'

‘She's not a whore!' Jules said. ‘Don't call her that!'

‘She's a fucking whore and so are you!'

It went back and forth like that. People started to notice. They drifted over from the other courts, lured by the commotion. A semicircle formed around us. The fluorescent lights stripped away skin tones and sucked the colours out of clothing, so that everybody looked drained and lifeless and even more artificial than usual.

‘Shut up, Chris! Just shut up!'

‘She's a slut, a whore, a skank, a bitch!'

Nobody stepped in. Just like on that day at the beach, all the mannequins had short-circuited. Instead of stopping it they stood there waiting for the bloodshed to erupt. I wasn't much better. I kept saying really feeble things like, ‘Come on, guys,' and, ‘You don't have to do this.' I actually broke down a bit and started sobbing, probably the only time I've ever cried in front of that many girls. Nobody paid me any attention – for obvious reasons.

‘Did you eat her out?' Chris said. ‘I bet you did – you shitty man-whore!'

‘Fuck you, Chris,' Jules screamed, raising his racquet, ‘I love her!'

Then he smashed it on Chris's head.

Let's face it. We weren't exactly the three musketeers. We were more like the two musketeers with a spare musketeer who had a car and wanted to play frisbee. All the same, I was pretty shocked when Jules did that. I'd never seen anything like it. In movies, when people get things broken on their heads – chairs, pool cues, bats, whatever – it always looks and sounds totally fake, like it wouldn't hurt at all. This was ten times crazier. The top of the racquet splintered into a dozen pieces, making a brutal crunching sound. All the mannequins gasped. Chris stag­gered back, bent at the waist and clutching his skull. Even Jules was a little stunned. Instead of following up the attack he stood there with this queasy expression on his face, cradling what remained of his racquet. It didn't even look like a racquet any more. With all the strings and splintered fragments jutting out, it looked more like some kind of broken musical instrument. A harp, maybe. Little cupid holding his broken harp.

‘Get out of here, Jules,' I told him. ‘Get going, man.'

To his credit, Julian didn't listen to me. Maybe he realised it was going to happen sooner or later, whatever he did. Or maybe he actually believed he had a chance against Chris. Either way, he didn't run – not even when Chris straightened up, and raised his fists. Blood had soaked through his hair. A single drop trickled down his cheek, like a red tear. Jules let go of his racquet, preparing himself.

He did a little better than Bates, I guess.

Karen called Chris up that night. She called him over and over and over, but he only answered the first time.

‘Chris, I'm sorry,' she sobbed. ‘I'm so sorry.'

‘Don't ever call me again, you whore.'

51

‘How deep do you think it is?'