“Not nearly as gross as watching you chew it.”
I spat out several double bubbles but never made it close to the coveted quadruple.
At seven, the line began to move, and we made our way to our seats. “Do you mind if we sit on the aisle?” I requested. “I like to have an exit route.”
“In case of a zombie attack, I’m assuming.” I nodded. Once we were in our seats, Leo asked, “Do you want any snacks?”
“Dots, if they have them,” I said, and fished a few dollars out of my pocket.
“That’s okay.” He wouldn’t take the money. “You can pay for coffee later.” Leo stood up and rubbed past my knees on his way out of the row. Standing next to him outside in line did nothing for me, but that small act of connecting with my knees made my stomach tingle.
I texted Becca while Leo was away.
About to see Bruce! I’ll tell him u say hi
As the lights dimmed for the start of the movie, Leo returned and slid past me once again. I tried to ignore my libido’s feelings to retain the reverence of the Evil Dead films. Leo handed me the box of Dots, while he munched from a tub of popcorn. I attempted to remove the clear wrap from around the yellow box in a movie-appropriate manner, but it took me forever to find a weak spot to open the plastic. By the time I was in full crinkle, characters were talking and some people in front of me turned around to glare. I popped a Dot in my mouth and sneered back.
“Ew.” I spit the Dot into my hand.
“What’s wrong?” Leo leaned over and whispered into my ear. He smelled all buttery.
“I ate a green one,” I whispered back. The warmth of his cheek near my mouth begged for a kiss, but I restrained myself.
“Here.” He handed me a napkin from under his tub, and I rubbed the sticky mess from my hand into it.
Each time I pulled a new Dot out of the box, I held it up to the screen in hopes of discovering its color in the darkness, lest it be green again.
“Do you want some popcorn?” Leo whispered midway through the film.
“No thank you. Want a Dot?”
“Are there only green ones left?”
“Yep,” I told him, and he kissed me one, two, three times on the mouth. I wished there weren’t so many people around us.
We watched the rest of the movie as members of an audience, reacting together with laughter and disgust at the appropriate intervals. When the film ended, Bruce Campbell, the lead actor in the Evil Dead trilogy, as well as a cult god, walked out on the stage. He looked paunchier and older than in the films, but still had that great movie star butt chin I admired on him. The audience took several minutes to calm down from our enthusiastic standing ovation, and when we did Leo immediately took my hand in his.
I never was much for holding hands. Most people were so clammy, or our fingers fit together wrong. There was nothing worse than intertwined fingers as a gesture of romance only to realize that the boy’s hands were stumpy and there was barely enough room to lace our fingers together. Leo didn’t weave our fingers, but held my hand on his lap with a grip that tightened every time he laughed at something brilliant Bruce said. Leo’s hand was much larger than mine, with prominent veins. At times, no matter how funny or engaging Bruce was, I was distracted by the force with which Leo would jerk my hand with a laugh. Not a bad distraction, but I wanted to focus on Bruce, maybe learn something for my own movies.
I fished my hand away from Leo’s and pretended to dig something out of my back pocket. He didn’t seem to notice. I spent the rest of the show wondering why Leo didn’t try to hold my hand again.
Bruce was selling and signing copies of his books, posters, shirts, and any other weird artifact people brought to him. When it was time for me and Leo to greet him, I told Bruce, “You are a legend.”
He thanked me and offered to sign an Army of Darkness poster I brought along. “Gimme some sugar, Baby,” he wrote, a classic line. One of my favorites. I asked Leo to take a picture of me and Bruce with my phone, and he did. Then the next person in line, a rather large woman with a Bubba Ho-Tep t-shirt on, asked us, “Do you want a picture with both of you?”
“Sure,” Leo answered before I could decide for myself. When the moment was over, Leo and I reviewed the picture. We stood on either side of Bruce, smiling like dorks, while Bruce produced bunny ears behind our heads. Classic.
If it were possible for me to feel jubilant, that’s how I felt as Leo and I walked back to my car. For two seconds I forgot about my dad and Becca and just reveled in the primo evening.
Leo was bubbly, too, and quoted moments from Bruce’s Q&A verbatim. “Remember when…?” “And then he said…” It was funny how cute and sweet such a big, supposedly scary guy could look. I started the car, and the clock read 10:45. “What time do you have to be home?” I asked.
“One,” he answered.
“Midnight for me. But you can have my glass slipper.” He smiled, illuminated by the parking lot lights. “What do you want to do?” I asked. I knew the question was too open, too obvious. At that time of night, we could go back to someone’s house and worry about waiting parents, go to Denny’s for coffee, which I had previously offered to cover, or find somewhere to park the car.
“How about the Halloween store?” Leo suggested. I hadn’t thought of that.
“Is there one up yet?” The phenomenon of pop-up Halloween stores was always exciting and depressing at the same time. Anything huge and Halloweeny meant awesomeness in my book, but they were always thrown into some giant, dead store space that would become empty again once the holiday ended. Or at least until the pop-up Christmas store took its place.
“Sure,” I agreed. “Where is it?”
“Where the Borders used to be,” he directed.
I drove to the strip mall parking lot and parked in the vast emptiness. We unclicked our seat belts and walked up to the blackened windows. Leo cupped his hands around his eyes and peered in. “I guess we’re a little late,” Leo noticed as we surveyed the dark store.
“They stay open later when Halloween gets closer,” I mentioned.
“Next time,” he suggested.
I mulled over the idea of a next time as we returned to the car. “So,” I asked as Leo hopped in and shut the door. “What now?” I started the car and turned on WVVX, a local station that turned from Spanish to metal at 8:00 p.m.
As I attempted to tug on my seat belt, Leo slid toward me and ran his hand up my arm. At that moment, the streetlight above the car flickered off. “I planned that,” he said. He leaned over and kissed me, his position awkward and sideways, the steering wheel preventing us from getting comfortably close. I gently pushed his chest away from me and crawled my way over the armrest and into the backseat. Leo followed, less gracefully, and stumbled until we were next to each other.
Our hands were everywhere. He pulled my shirt over my head, and I did the same to his. Or was it the other way around? He leaned back onto the leather bench seat, and I rested on top of him. Without taking my bra off, Leo slid his hand inside it and drove me to an embarrassing squeak.
“What was that?” He laughed quietly, as if talking loudly would alert someone outside to our presence.
I bit his lip slightly harder than playfully, which he took to mean I wanted more. I did.
Somehow my hand found its way down to the buttons of Leo’s jeans, and I undid them one by one before fitting my hand inside and feeling him against me. He responded with a moan, and dug around until my jeans were unbuttoned, too. We slithered out of our pants and rubbed our barely dressed bodies together, kissing, grinding, gripping. He hooked his finger onto the top of my undies and started to pull them off.
“Wait,” I breathed. “We’re not going to have sex,” I told him.
“Why is it you keep saying that?” He didn’t sound annoyed, just curious.
“I’ve said it twice.” His finger remained on my undies, which were now halfway down one side of my leg.
“Does that mean third time’s
a charm?” He smiled. I smacked his freckled shoulder and shifted onto my knees to pull on my undies. “Wait,” he stopped me. “We don’t have to have sex. I don’t have a condom anyway. Unless you do.”
“Even if I did, I said no.” My undies were back in place, and I was sitting up. Leo pushed himself up next to me and began kissing my ear.
“Can I still take your panties off if I promise we won’t have sex tonight?”
His hands didn’t give me time to answer, and he felt so good I wouldn’t have said no anyway. After my undies were somewhere on the floor of the car, Leo took my hips and turned me so I was reclining on the seat. He slithered down to where my underwear used to be and placed his hands on either thigh, separating them. I grabbed onto his hair, not hard enough to pull him away from what he was doing but enough to steady myself. Even lying down, I felt like I could fall at any moment. He was masterful at what he did, and I squirmed in painful ecstasy. My head started going to that place where I wondered how he got so skilled, but I willed myself to drown in the moment. I gasped and palmed the car seat, reaching for anything I could before I completely succumbed. When it was over, I released my grip and my hands cramped. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t think. That must be what heaven is like.
I heard Leo groping around for his clothes, and I opened my eyes. He had a, well, me-eating grin on his face, and I was embarrassed to look at him after how I completely let go. When we were both dressed, I noticed the clock. “Shit. I have to get home,” I said. We climbed into the front seat, a Megadeth song playing as I drove Leo back to his house. When we got there, Leo unclicked his seat belt. I thought he’d slide over for a good-night kiss, but he just said, “I had a good night.”
“Me, too,” I answered, rushing home in my head so my mom wasn’t worried. I never wanted to call her when I was late, in case she was asleep and my call woke her up. Better to be late without her knowing if at all possible.
There was a pause, both of us wondering what to do. Leo’s mom helped us out, calling from the front door. “Leo? Is that you?”
“And that’s why we didn’t go back to my house,” Leo said. “See you Monday.” He got out, and I drove away without looking back.
When I got home, Mom was asleep in her room, and the house was quiet.
I went to my room and dug out my jeans pockets and threw keys, cash, and phone on my desk. There was a text I must have missed during the movie. Or something else. It was from Becca.
I’m dying, was all it said.
CHAPTER
17
I CHECKED THE TIME Becca’s message was sent: 9:14. It was currently 12:17. If I texted her back, would I awaken her from a pain-free slumber? What if she were back in the hospital? I had to try.
Are U OK? Are U dead?
After I sent the text, I turned on my computer and logged onto Skype. Chances were slim that Aunt Judy was still up and waiting for a midnight chat unless she had some seedy secret life I didn’t know about. Maybe I would like her better if that were true. Like a Mullets Anonymous group or something.
Hello? Come in, Becca. Do you read me, Becca? I typed.
Nothing from either phone or computer.
To calm my nerves I played a video of Troll I downloaded last week. It was such a crappy movie, but the guy who played Atreyu from The NeverEnding Story was in it. And a weird plant lady.
I wished I could talk to Becca about what happened with Leo. It was exactly the kind of story my sex-obsessed bestie would have been dying to hear every drippy detail of. But instead she was just dying. For a second, I almost felt angry at her, which made me feel like the biggest dick in the world. How could I possibly be mad at my best friend when she was sick—possibly dying—with cancer just because I couldn’t talk to her about Leo Dietz going down on me? Shame on me for even allowing a guy down there when Becca was so sick. Is that how she felt when she was doing I don’t even want to think about it with Davis? Was this payback in the most disgusting form possible? I wanted to ask God, to talk to him one-on-one, but I couldn’t decide if I even believed in him at the moment. Plus, kind of a weird topic. Death and sickness and sex and so much guilt—where did God fit into that?
As my internal moral battle raged, my Skype rang. It was not Aunt Judy and her mullet club but Becca. I scrambled to my desk chair and answered. The view of Becca was a close-up of her bald head resting on a stack of pillows in her bed. She looked tired and pasty. Her lips were dry and cracked. I wanted to pass her some lip balm through the computer, or a glass of water, or something to help. Once again, I could do nothing.
“Hey, Cueball,” I joked. She laughed dryly but didn’t say more. “How are you feeling?” I asked, wanting to know but not sure if she wanted to talk about it or pretend things were normal. I felt that way a lot about my dad.
“Like a bag of ass,” she croaked.
“Whose ass? Because if it’s mine, then you must be feeling pretty good.” I was trying too hard.
“Can’t laugh. Hurts.” She held up a bandaged and bruised hand to her throat. “Tell me something good.”
“Well, Leo went down on me in the backseat of my dad’s car. And I met Bruce Campbell.” Becca coughed, and I couldn’t tell if it was because of what I told her or because she had to cough. The coughing continued. “Do you need me to get help?” I asked the screen. She shook her head no. A woman I didn’t recognize appeared, her wide behind blocking the camera. When she was gone, Becca held a cup of water with two hands.
“Who was that?” I asked.
“Night nurse. Helen.”
“Was she in the room when I just told you about the car scenario?” Becca nodded. “Is she still in the room?” Becca nodded again.
“But do go on,” she eked out. I curled my lip in disgust, but Becca said, “It makes me happy to hear about it.”
“I hope Helen isn’t a prude,” I told her, and launched into the story of the night.
When I finished, Becca told me, “Helen just crossed herself.” I laughed. “I better go to sleep.” And just like that she closed her eyes. I thought she might already be out.
“Are you really dying, Becca?” I asked.
She opened one eye. “The doctors say probably not, but it sure fucking feels like it.” She closed her eyes again.
“Good night,” I whispered at the computer. No answer. Becca was already asleep.
CHAPTER
18
I SLEPT IN on Saturday, spending most of the day in my room in case Becca called. I watched all three Basket Case movies, plus The Toxic Avenger and A Nightmare on Elm Street 2. While Nightmare wasn’t as cheesy, weird, or gross as the other films, I always loved the premise of someone attacking you in your dreams. Plus, I heard Robert Englund, the guy who played Freddy, wore actual blades on his fingers and could cut an apple if he wanted.
The only Skype call I received was from Aunt Judy, who I ignored and didn’t care about the consequences. I messaged a little back and forth with Damien and Brandon, and they invited me to a show that night, but I declined. I didn’t want to have to talk about Becca or Leo or myself. There was no point in leaving the house.
Instead, my mom, brothers, and I shared a pizza and watched Poltergeist on TV. For a horror movie, it’s surprisingly scary. Maybe I watched too many and was desensitized, but it seemed to me most horror movies were funny and gory but not necessarily scary. But Poltergeist … the clown doll? I had second thoughts about leaving my Chuckie doll out after that. CJ hid behind the couch whimpering most of the movie.
I texted Becca at bedtime with a quick note.
Still Ok?
Ten minutes later she wrote back.
Can’t stop barfing.
And that was it.
Sunday I worked all day, which meant hungover college students and tons of business. There was some game on TV in a corner of the restaurant, but we in the kitchen didn’t give a shit and drowned out the jocular din with a musical din of our own. I anticipated the possibility o
f Leo coming in for a sub, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. If he did, would we have to talk? Make out in the disgusting bathroom? I grooved on the rhythmic construction of the subs, and I didn’t want that to be interrupted. When it turned out I wasn’t interrupted all day by a visit from Leo, I was a tad disappointed. I wish I could make up my mind.
Before I left work, I texted Becca.
Do u want me to bring u a sub?
It was a long shot, with her puking issue. I was afraid she might say yes, which made me feel horrid. But I was scared to see her in person, not just in the grainy, poorly lit world of my computer screen. She texted back.
Too pukey. Too medicated. Thanx.
I kicked myself for my fear. How scary it must have been for Becca. I’m glad she didn’t know what I was thinking. I had to hold it together for her, do whatever I could. I pulled out the Fuck-It List from my pocket. It was always there, transferred each time I changed my jeans. Nothing on the list caught my eye. It was either sex or food, and I wasn’t in the mood for either. The guilt piled on me even more. I couldn’t even do a simple task like number 2: Stick my tongue to a frozen pole, or one like number 18: Have sex with a football stud, and dump him the next day. “Jesus, Becca,” I said to the list. “Just fucking get better, so you can do this ridiculous shit yourself.” Then I berated myself again for my selfishness. The cycle was endless.
That night I did my homework in bed as Troll 2 played in the background. Nothing like the original, it was so bad there was even a documentary made about how bad the sequel was.
My Skype rang: Becca in bed. I wondered if she had moved at all since the last time we spoke.
She greeted me with “Where’s my sub?”
“I thought you didn’t want it,” I said, defensive.
“I’m kidding. Why are you so wound up?” Becca sounded better than the last time we talked. “I think I’m going to try and come to school tomorrow,” she informed me.