Chapter 19 (very brief preview)

Chapter 19

“You know how to hotwire a car now?”

“Christ Will, haven’t you ever watched a movie or read a book before?” London says as she rips wires down from under the steering wheel.

“How on earth could that question have anything to do with being a seventeen year old girl and knowing how to hotwire a car?”

“I’d say in at least forty percent of books, or TV shows, or movies I have seen, someone knows how to hotwire a car, usually at a pretty damn important part of the story too. If they didn’t, the movie would probably stop there and would basically suck. I firmly believe,” bantering like possessed politician, “that everyone knows at least one person in their lifetime that knows how to hotwire a car. It’s an evolutionary necessity. When I was about ten or so I felt a responsibility to learn how to do it, for the sake of humanity.”

“For the sake of humanity? Who are you?”

“I am London McGuire, sent here to make sure your life doesn’t suck.”

When she says that, I think about how in some odd way she is right. Not specifically about people being able to hotwire cars, but more of how there are people that want to hotwire cars and those who rely on someone else to learn to do it for their own gain. There are people that want to save the day, and those who have days that need to be saved. I think about what person I am. I obviously don’t know how to hotwire a car, but more importantly never had the urge to learn. Maybe its because I don’t have a creatively mischievous bone in my body, but I think it’s more because I want to be saved. It’s weird because there isn’t anything particularly wrong with my life. I don’t have any real problems or have felt real pain.

London certainly seems to be the type to do the saving, and she has felt real pain, and has had real problems. I don’t know if there is a correlation between people and the types of which they are, but London and I, are certainly different types. London wants to do the saving not just because it’s the type of person she is. There is always a reason for why people are the way they are. London is a girl that can’t stand not having control of a situation, of what she can and can’t save. It’s not releasing the gratification of the people she could save, but it’s the nightmare she carries of that one person she couldn’t.

I’m realizing that I want to get hurt. I want to have problems or have things to worry about. There are things that happened early on in my life that could be considered problems but nothing that I can really connect to pain. It was at an age where a problem was my red Huffy getting stolen. Or when the concept of an “accident” was understood as pissing myself and couldn’t, in any way, be tied to what a car crash was. At an age where a mother couldn’t be known cognitively, when all you can concentrate on is crying so you could breath for the first time. A mother couldn’t be tied to death at a time where you just found out there is something called life. What I am getting at is, none of those things really impose directly to how I feel about my life now. I was naïve for the first ten years of my life, and numb for the next six. I remember the first sixteen years but I almost feel like I haven’t actually lived them. I realize that in this seventeenth, London is saving me from that numbness. Since I have met her I have experienced everything in extreme forms, ranging from excitement to anxiety, happiness to frustration, lust to feeling alive. London didn’t learn how to hotwire cars to make sure hers, or mine, or anyone’s life didn’t suck. She did it so life didn’t suck. With every moment with her, I feel like she is saving me from all the numbness that is I, and that I was the one enabling it.

With all the feelings I have never felt before, and now have, I know for an almost certainty, that I will soon feel a feeling that I haven’t felt much of in my life. London will soon make me feel pain.

“Yee haw!” London screams in a country accent as the engine ignites.

“Can we go take a shower now?”

“Yes Clyde, we can now wash our bodies of this mud,” she declares with enthusiastic accent, “but never of our sin!”

Yes, we are in a barn.

Why is there a limo in a barn?

There isn’t.

We are in a rusted green pick-up truck from the fifties with a truck bed made entirely of wood.

Yes, it is what we are going to prom in.

Yes, it is one of the most awesomely hideous ways you can attend to prom.

Limos are too cliché and restraining to the socially conformed.

Yes, those were London’s words not mine.

As soon as I open the barn door I see a man I’m not exactly looking forward to meeting. Do you remember that dashing tractor of a woman that goes by the name of Gilly? Well meet her male counterpart. I could describe what he looks like, but I can’t take my mind away from the shit I have in my pants. Lets just say he is not a small man, nor a pretty man, nor a man that is pretty happy to see a stranger in his barn, and another in his truck ready to drive away. I can’t move or say anything, as we stand no more than six feet away from each other. Fewer feet than he is tall and as many as he is wide. He just stands and stares at me--I stand and stare at him--both with exceptionally different demeanors. He is exceptionally pissed off. I am an exceptional asshole.

“Nice overalls!” London yells out fearlessly, followed by a reckless laugh. Not as much reckless by the sound of it, but more reckless towards the security of my life. The man seems to take offense to the comment and takes an angry step towards me.

“You don’t understand. She’s wearing overalls to prom. She likes your overalls!” I shout in desperation. London beeps the horn and draws the man’s attention away from mauling me for a quick second. The man’s vulnerability makes him look like the last pig, and instead of diving for his legs; I kick him in the penis. I feel the ground shake as he drops to the earth. Without having a second to comprehend what I just accomplished as a man, good or bad, London honks again and I sprint into the passenger seat of the truck. London slams the peddle to the bottom part of the floor and the trucks screams backwards, crashing through the backend of the barn, sending fragments of wood over the windshield. Were spinning now, but by the look of her, she seems to have control somehow. We whip into a beeline straight for the dirt road and take off. I can now safely cross grand theft auto off the list of reasons why my life doesn’t suck.

So, London and I returned back to pigs at Eden and loaded them into the back of the truck. We decided to take separate cars so I can go and shower and pick out a nice shirt and tie, accompanied by a dashing pair of cargo shorts of course. London took the stolen truck and the pigs to undisclosed location.

London took off before I had a chance to ask where we should meet up again or what to do after I get out of the shower. I am now driving down the same dirt road we were just on when I stole my very first tuck. My very first truck. Funny how the nostalgia is already getting to me. Along the road is surrounded by wide-open field whose horizon lines stretch to the edges of the planet, or if were talking technically here, to the point where the curvature of the earth is no longer apparent to my line of site.

Whichever person you are, the poet, or the nerd, all you need to know is that the sun is now below the horizon and most everybody is likely to be eating some over priced, under proportioned meal, at some restaurant in the city. I on the other hand, haven’t taken a shower yet. I nearly can’t get over myself as I think about how much I am the man right now, until I see something in the distance that looks to be a stolen truck and a cop car on the side of the road. As I approach, I confirm the assessment that this truck, is indeed the stolen one, and that London is the girl standing by the cop car. I slow down as I pass by seeing London spray painting a huge number four on the side of the unaccompanied cop car. She notices me driving by and waves and smiles wildly like one of those moms at sporting events trying to get the attention of their child. I shake my head and drive pass. I guess that’s the fourth pig.

I shower in record timing and wrap one towel around my waste and use another to dry my hair. I walk into my room and drop the towel around my waist blindly as I continue to dry my hair.

“Wasn’t expecting to see that so soon.” London says from my bed scaring the shit out of me. I pick up the towel instantly and cover myself.

“What the hell!” I shout in complete embarrassment. I never thought the word embarrassment would be so literal. They should change the word to

em-bare-ass-ment

London acts like seeing my penis is no big deal but thinks my reaction is the funniest thing she has ever seen.

“Stop laughing.” I say bashful.

“Alright, alright. Hurry up and get change so we can get down to business.”

“Where did you bring the pigs?”

“To the school.”

“At the school, in the school? Where?”

“Somewhere safe. Me and the janitor are tight.”

“Tight?”

“Yeah, you know the younger janitor? I think he graduated like four years ago—kind of hot?”

I start to get immediately jealous, “You mean the loser one who never went to college and is a janitor?”

“Yeah him.”

“How do you know him?”

“Well I just met him last week at school. He’s really cool.” She says apparently oblivious to my jealousy.

“I thought you said you two were tight?”

“Yeah it has been a pretty eventful week for him and I?”

“Apparently it has been. Especially, since you felt more comfortable to tell him about the prank instead of me, "I say frustrated as I throw my cargo shorts on like a brat, "What made you think he would be cool with it anyway? That could have ruined everything if he wasn’t, am I right?”

“I gave him a hand job.”

I don’t even know how to react as she says it. Today has been too good of a day to be pissed. I don’t feel like being pissed but what the hell? I can’t exactly stand for this. Right?

“I’m joking? Jesus. I gave him eighty bucks. See Will, you travel a maze from start to finish despite knowing that it is twice as easy to go end to beginning. Don’t you think I would have figured that step out first before going through all the trouble of setting this up? I talked to him first to make sure he would follow through. Once he did, I started to figure everything else out. Eighty dollars, even in this economy, especially in this economy rather, will get you a long ways. The funny thing is dude, you are still completely clueless of what is going down tonight, something I didn’t realize how awesome that fact is, until now. “

“London,” I say hopelessly patient, “what is going down tonight?”

“Will,” she says magically, “the best night of your life.”

The night seems to swallow the easy acoustics of what would seem to be a Wednesday night if it were that, but our minds evaporate any existing reluctance that should be our instinct, but rather a Friday night, our becoming’s take over of what our lives not sucking replaces; resulting in the latter high road. We drive on a one-way route to our school. We take the low road, not to get to the end faster but to get there more efficiently. We visit the world’s largest ball of rubber bands to live the way we could instead of the way we should. This is the place we understand is the most risky but the most necessary.

Prom.

A prank.

A legend.

A nerd.

Becoming just that.

Yes a nerd.

What it takes to become cool is the realizing that you were the nerd all along.

The night air through our window, in-between our lack of conversation, lies as nothing more than the anticipation of what we are going to do. I would like to say I am nervous because I may lose my virginity tonight, or I might lose my freedoms as a person while I’m in jail, or that I’m on a one way course to the super bowl of all things adolescent that is prom, but I think it’s more because I am wearing shorts and tux at the same time.

I look to our driver, the same driver whom is my girlfriend.

The same driver that is wearing overalls.

The same driver who is beyond broken and more figured out than anyone I know.

The same person that is making me feel amazing right now.

The same person that is making me feel amazing because she just made me take some weird pill.

I have taken pills all my life that made me feel nothing; and that was the point.

First pill I have taken, a few molecules off from being speed, which has actually made me, feel something. Anything.

Ecstasy.

We pull up to the same parking lot that is the ground zero of the most infamous happening that has happened, to basically most of our lives at a collective standpoint, as I realize that nobody has seen a figment. Of. Shit. Yet. No pun intended.

London, and kind of I, know what is going to happen tonight. Yeah there is a possibility that a twenty-five-year-old janitor may know as well, but that is neither here nor there. That is it. nobody else. We park.

“William Evans.”

“Yes.”

“Are you ready for your instructions?”

“Yes.” Finally.

“First you must meet Ricky.”

“Ricky?”

“The janitor you hate.”

“Oh,” I pause, “And?”

“Take this saran wrap,” She pulls it out and instructs in front of my face, “this mineral ice,"

“Yeah. And?” I say impatiently.

“And Ricky will tell you the rest.”

Chapter 18 (Draft)

Chapter 18

I don’t know why I haven’t mentioned this before but I’ve always had this recurring-daydream-type-thing that is different every time but always ends the same. I could be swimming in jellyfish infested waters, or climbing a mountain fighting off flaming monkeys, or even Indiana jones style running from a massive rolling boulder jumping through flames and snakes. Either way, by the time I reach that deserted island, or that summit in the clouds, or that temple of wherever the hell I’m trying to get to, I always find a dictionary.

Yep, a dictionary.

It always feels like I knew all along in these daydreams that this six pound hardcover book, made up of nothing more than plain text, definitions, solutions to arguments, and better grades, is the most end all important thing to my existence. I always reach this book gasping for air and the hopes to find an answer to some unknown implore, inside every member of the human race, open it to find nothing but blank page after blank page. Stubborn, I refuse to think I went through all of this for absolutely nothing, I check every single page. I get to the very last page to find one word, as if it is the only definition we as people need to know.

“Love: By luck; not design.”

So by the time I get back into town and drag the pigs through the woods and reach Eden, the sun seems to be getting pretty low in the sky. Of course I am the only guy on the planet that doesn’t know what time it is because I refuse to own a watch or cell phone. Either way, it seems to be getting pretty late, which isn’t all that great of a herald on prom night. I see a note nailed to the small dead tree. I rip it from the nail and it reads:

Project Will Getting Laid (Phase 2)

1. Although I am very proud of all you have done to make it this far, there is plenty of work to do. Every step from now on is far more crucial and must be executed to the utmost precision. It’s a matter of life and death. Well more a matter of life being awesome or sucking badly for a while. Which is really, the only situation, we as people, should always hope to be in, right? For the first step, however, requires just getting the pigs into this cage you see to the right of you.

2. Spra

Oh well this is just awesome. Did she forget the rest or something? What the hell London? This girl is unbelievable. I turn back towards the wagon of pigs to complete the one and only step I am assigned and begin to contemplate what I should do next, although I am seriously considering just going home for the night. As soon I think about actually doing that, a feeling of leftoutedness comes over me. I know that isn’t a word, but bare with me, its that overwhelming feeling that I would be missing out on an amazing night and I feel jealous of everyone else that would be having it.

As I get the first pig into the cage I hear a splashing behind me and turn to envision a mad women, soaked in her underwear, charging out of the water with a vigor to take my head off. Before I can react she jumps at me and latches on to me with her arms around my neck and her strong legs around my waste, taking both of us to the ground rolling over about three times until we stop, and I see this girl on top of me with dripping dark hair and mud along her forearms. Smiling.

All can do is smile back and say, “Thank god its you.”

I don’t think I say it because I’m glad I’m not Eden’s next victim in the serial murder saga, but because I am strictly so glad to see her. As the beads of water drip in illumined patterns from her face to mine, breathing heavy, she laughs, “You made it.”

“Oh shit!” London snaps as we see the pigs running wild as one barrels into the river. We both spring up and jolt towards the river, slam into each other simultaneously, and spill into the water. I stay under water for a while spinning upside down not knowing which way gravity is pulling my brain. By the time I gather myself and break the surface of the water I see London dragging the pig out of the water by its hind leg whipping it screeching into the cage. I stumble out of the water trying to run before I find my footing and scrape my knee. We spend the next three to five minutes chasing these unholy creatures back and forth in small circles. Our bodies awkwardly hunched, ankles meandering, our laughter synonymous to each other as we lung desperately to snatch up the hell-broken animals.

The last pig.

It stares at us with the fervor of a menacing beast that has been in this very situation a thousand times over.

Determined.

Determined to not get caught this time.

London and I are hunched in some sort of primordial athletic stance as if we have done this a thousand years ago and our next thousand years depends on it. We don’t look at each other. We don’t say anything. Eyes on the pig.

In the midst of our momentous stare down, the pig makes his move as he jukes to the left of London just out of her diving grasp. In a heap of debonair reflex, I leap, in perfect form right over London’s back. Right as I hit the ground my arms extend just far enough to clip its hind leg, sending it into a tumbling wallop. London recovers at whirlwind speed to capitalize on the pig’s rare state of vulnerability. She clasps both of its back legs together with one friggen hand and drags it on its back towards the cage. The pig seems to smile the entire way, like we were playing tag with the damned thing. She gets it into the cage and drops to the ground, sitting with her legs flat to the grass and her back to the cage, exhaling relief.

I walk over to her and as I sit next to her, “Now you know how my day has gone so far.” She doesn’t laugh. Or really show any kind of reaction. I don’t mind because I can already tell she is elsewhere. Still catching her breath, her head is against the cage, tilted upward, staring at the sky, “My mom is dead, Will.”

“What?” I say it like didn’t hear her clearly even though I did.

“She died three years ago. I went to prom at my old school and was miserable the whole time because that is something she should have been there for. She was a photographer and would have loved taking pictures and doing that whole thing. That’s why I didn’t want to do a normal prom again this year. I’m sorry for robbing you of that. I just couldn’t”

I have no idea why she decided to tell me this at this moment, nor did it matter. She was telling me now, and I am looking at her, not seeing the crazy girl who makes me do crazy things, or the con artist, or the thief, or even my dream girl. She had always seemed like a figment or an intangible entity that I couldn’t keep up with. No--she wasn’t my dream girl anymore--she wasn’t an entity. She was a girl. For the first time London McGuire became a person. To me. The same way Scarlet became a person when I told her I was leaving her. A good feeling comes over me as I think about how London trusts me with this. She doesn’t seem to be a person who trusts people with this kind of stuff. I feel bad that I feel good because its horrible that she lost her mother. But I feel great because I realize that I am not just a fling to her, I am not just a crush. I am not some figment of a subliminal list of guys she has dated. I am important to her. I am a person, to her. I feel great because I haven’t felt this way about anything since I was nine, and this time, London wasn’t peddling away.

“Thank you.” She says.

“For what?”

“Not saying anything.”

“Sorry, I just didn’t know—“

“No, I am serious thank you. I’m not the type of girl that wants to be comforted or said any corny things to like, I’m sorry, or it will be okay, or any of that shit. I am glad you just listened to what I had to say and that was it.”

“Yeah, but I still should have said something.”

“Trust me. You said plenty.”

London lifts up her arm and looks at her elbow. “That’s going to look good in my prom dress.” She has a big scrape on her elbow. Even her wounds look pretty.

“Hey we match kind of,” I say showing her the scrape on my knee. “Except my pants will be covering it.”

“Nope you are wearing shorts.” She says with haste.

“What?”

“Just what I said. You’re wearing shorts to prom.” She says confidently trying to hide her smile.

“No I am not wearing shorts.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not actually wearing a dress. I’m wearing overalls.”

I don’t even feel like asking her motive for this, “I’m pretty sure they won’t let us just stroll in there like looking like the Beverly Hillbillies.”

“Not true, the dress code states that men have to wear a collared shirt with a tie and coat, and the girl dress codes all have to do promiscuity. Nothing that says I can’t wear anything like overalls. I dare them to tell me I can’t wear overalls.”

I’m already excited about the idea of this. I am actually excited to stick out for once. I think mostly because its something London and I will be doing together and everyone will see that. They may laugh, but in some weird way, I know they’ll be envious.

I don’t want her to know that I am excited so I change the subject, “So she was a photographer huh?”

“Yeah the camera I always have was hers. I refuse to get those new digital ones. There’s something much more artistic about film and the process of it. No chance to cheat the integrity of the picture by doing all that editing rubbish. Goes to show that most people choose to remember things better than they actually were. Who wants to remember a moment differently than how it was? If you alter your remembrance to shape the integrity of your past, you ultimately ruin the integrity of your character. Something I simply refuse to do. Film,” she pauses, “film is the only way to do it.” We sit there in silence for minutes. “That’s how I got my name, you know?”

“What? From film?”

“No. My mom and dad were a pretty typical couple. You know, met freshman year in college, broke up and got back together three or four times throughout college, by the time they graduate they were a pretty serious relationship. But like life usually does, it got in the way. My mom got offered a fairly major job as a fulltime photographer in London. A true dream job ya know? Only thing was my dad got offered job in the city and wasn’t about to follow my mother there. That summer they decided they would take a summer long road trip together and see the country and be in that crazy kind of love, until they had to go separate ways. Next thing they know it was the beginning of August and my mother was three weeks pregnant and they were more in love than they ever imagined they would become. So they named me London. She told me that I was her London. Going to London just represented an amazing, beautiful dream opportunity. But that had nothing to do with the city or the job. It had everything to do with her being a twenty-four year old dreamer who instinctually needed to put all that young invincible passion into something. I ended being that something. I became what would have been her London. She told me I was her “Lucky twist” of fate that everyone gets in each lifetime.

“How—“

“Cancer.”

I don’t say anything. We sit there still not saying much nor worrying about time or anything at all. We seem to know by now that we have this night by the pubes. Well she definitely does more so, but I am way more confident now than I was twenty minutes ago. I still have no clue what’s going to take place tonight, but I don’t care. I know tonight is going to happen. So I don’t care. We’re kind of just sitting here muddy and bloody with London’s leg in between mine checking out our battle wounds. The pigs are starting to get impatient and making all kinds of noises. London looks back at them and snares, “Fucking swine flu.”

As soon as she says that we both look at each other and pause. Our emotions break out of our faces and we begin to laugh uproariously. We both laugh not because it was witty or clever or anything, it was just one of those things that is funny for no reason at all. Those are the funniest things. Here we are rolling around like little mud children. Our guts clenching the air out of our lungs, laughing so hard but quietly for lack of oxygen. After our initially gut bursting reaction, air collects back into our lungs, and our laugh starts to get much louder. Now, the sound of our laughter makes us laugh even more. I can’t even hear London laughing anymore; I just know we can’t stop. I look over to her laughing--and she looks at me laughing--and we look each other in the eyes. With no time between the laughing and the latter, London starts crying. Not crying from laughing so hard, but real, sad, deep soul crying. I don’t do anything. I just look at her, finally understanding what a broken person she really is.

Again, I don’t say anything. I just let her cry her eyes out. I hold her hand and just listen to her. Letting all of her emotions say what they have to say. I can tell she hasn’t cried in years. I look around this place that I have been to a million times over and it looks the same as it always has, but know that it isn’t the same. Nothing is.

As London’s crying calms she starts to sit up. She looks at me as she still continues to whimper. She gives me that look somebody gives you when they realize that you have never seen them cry before. Except, I can’t help to feel like she has never cried in front of anyone before. At least, anyone like me, basically anyone that wasn’t her dad. I don’t really know what do in this situation because before London I never let myself be in a situation like this. I have been with Rose but she’s six. Out of instinct and definitely not design, I take London’s arm and kiss the wound on her wrist. I know this seems super corny but it isn’t. London smiles, and sniffs, brushes the strands of hair from her face. She snaps out of this state of vulnerability and walks toward her car. She comes out with the can of spray paint and struts back towards me steadfast.

“Pink?” She says with a menacing smile.

I don’t even bother explaining. I shrug, “Yeah.” I rub my chest once again feeling the welt from getting hit by the Olympian spray paint can thrower.

She shakes her head and smiles as she marches by me and opens the cage. She takes one of the pigs out of the cage and shakes the can intensely determined. She sprays a giant number one on its side and put it back in the cage. In giant glorious pink spray paint, she paints the numbers, one, two, three, and five on the pigs.

I don’t ask.

“So it’s getting pretty late,” I say, “Should we go and shower or something?”

London throws on a pair of shorts and as she buttons up her white shirt, “No. We have to do something else first.”

“Sounds good to me,” I say with enthusiasm clapping my hands together, “What’s next?”

London looks at me, and with that ever-wretched nonchalance she says, “We have to go steal our limo.”

Love: for the naïve, not the sane.

Prologue

Prologue

It didn’t take me a long time to figure it out. People pretend. We are all pretenders. I don’t mean that in a matter-of-factly way, or how kids pretend to be super heroes. I don’t even mean it in a Holden Caulfield “bunch of phonies” way. I just think we are essentially just a bunch of blind animals, made up of particles created out of complete chance, venturing around in this awkward thing called being alive. We don’t have any idea what anything is. Faces pass, one after the other, people overrating their own yesterdays, which reflects an imitated tomorrow as the perhaps of one day. We masquerade concepts, and theories, and morals, and communities, and societies, and put on a complete act as if this is what we are here for. Like there is a reason.

We make things up.

We pretend.

I guess we do it to not feel so darned shitty all the time. Or a more likely a reason is to feel smarter, and more significant in the scheme of things and the way they ultimately lie, no pun intended, that everything is everything and nothing at the same time, somehow. It’s not meant to be understood. So we shouldn’t pretend to. We know nothing—and that’s the way it should be.

I learned this at a very young age. Even more vividly than the sounds I hear around me now, I can still hear the lopsided tire on my red-orange huffy squeaking in rhythm against the newly paved street. Then following shortly, a small female voice and six very insignificant words that I will always remember, which probably pertains to me more than I would like to admit, “Take off the training wheels pussy.” she says, tread with spite and callous on her tone.

Scarlet Valens. The ten-year-old vixen-child that lived down the street. The tiny girl with scrapes on her knees and dirt in her fingernails. Known as the outcast kid with no parents whom already smoked cigarettes. My very first friend.

I didn’t have training wheels by the way.

Training wheels were for seven-year-olds.

I was nine for Christ sakes.

Going on ten.

My tire was messed up and my bike just sucked.

That’s why she was always so far ahead of me.

Yeah.

“My bike just sucks.” I yelled back hopelessly defenseless.

“Come on.” She responded, hardly sympathetic, “We’re almost there.”

Although I was trying desperately to catch up with her, like always, I really didn’t want to go where we were going. She told me she found a dead body and she wanted to show me. I was a pretty anxious kid, so you can imagine that I wasn’t very fond of this idea. I always just kept to myself but she made me be her friend and do stuff with her anyway. I hated that I liked that about her.

We cut through the Bolsters yard and took a trail into the woods. Scarlet whipped her bike sideways into a skidding halt in the middle of the trail. She looked really cool doing it. I looked like an idiot flipping over my bike onto my shoulder trying to emulate her. It was okay though because she was already galloping into the heavier woods before she had a chance to see me.

“I don’t think we should do this,” I said catching my breath and up to her, “We should tell somebody first.”

“Are you fucking crazy dude? The person that finds the body is always the one that gets blamed for the murder.”

“Really?” I say concerned.

“Duh.”

“How do you know that?”

“Law and Order.” She says in an “obviously” way.

“How do you know he was murdered?”

“She, and I think the bullet hole in her neck would be a hint.”

I swallow, “So what are we going to do?”

“I don’t know. Just check it out I guess.”

“Well what about after? We have to tell somebody after right?”

“No. Somebody will find it eventually and then they can deal with it.”

The farther we head into the woods the louder the sound of a waterfall gets. We got to the top of a hill, which then sloped down steeply to the bank of a river.

“There it is!” Scarlet rang out excitedly pointing ahead along the side of the river.

Disappointed that it wasn’t a waterfall and terrified to see the dead body I stood silent with my hands in my pockets. Scarlet ran ahead leaving a thick trail of mischief and excitement behind her almost apparent. Of course, I followed, apprehensively.

“I don’t see it.” I said confused.

Scarlet lifted branches from a bush off of a dead fox, “There it is. Cool huh?”

“I thought you said--”

“I wonder what happened to her.” She said ignoring me, surveying the dead animal. She continued to investigate and act like the fox was a dead woman for a good five to ten minutes. I just let her do her thing as I sat frustrated on large rock on the edge of the river. I was also secretly very relieved, but frustrated nonetheless.

“Enough!” I finally shouted.

“Isn’t this awesome!” She expressed excitedly, ignoring me even more aggressively.

“That isn’t a dead women! It’s a dead fox.” Scarlet stopped and looked at me blankly, like I was ruining her birthday or something. “Why did you take me out here? Do you like scaring me?” Still saying nothing she lit a cigarette and took a puff holding in the smoke as she looked back at me. “I’m leaving.” I said sharply.

“Yeah right, you won’t leave.” She said, exhaling the words into cigarette smoke against my face.

“Yes I will. I am. I was supposed to be home an hour ago already.”

“I know you, you don’t remember how to get back.” She said coyly.

I didn’t say anything. She smiled like the devil and then said, “Well if this isn’t a dead woman then what am I?”

Scarlet flicked her barely smoked cigarette into a spiraling bravura of sparks and smoke as she fell to her back simultaneously. She then lay there with her eyes closed and mouth open as if she was dead.

“Come on Scarlet, I have to go home.” She said nothing. “I know you aren’t dead, get up.” Still nothing. I have always been a stubborn person. I refused to tend to her antics and decided to sit there until she gave up. Of course she never did. In fact, she laid there, in character, for so long that she fell asleep. That was one thing I found really interesting about her. She always looked a lot happier when she was asleep. Like she was somewhere else. She took naps a lot. I think most of my memories of her are of her asleep. I remember specifically on that day, at that moment, I fell in love with her. Her heroin hair and the curly split-ends that fell like smoke rings down her back. I loved her switchblade eyes as she spoke with hangnails between her teeth, which left scars on her words, and pain in her voice. I loved mostly, how it was always just me and her, if that makes sense. She only wanted to hang out with me, and I didn't want to see anyone else. I was crazy about her and she was crazy about everything. We were both alone in this world. Alone together.

A horrible feeling came over me at that moment because I realized I really felt something for her and wanted to embrace it from then on. I wanted to stop pretending that it wasn't a big deal seeing her and being with her. I wanted to do things and go a lot of new places with her. I wanted to make her my girlfriend. It hurt so profoundly, right then and there, sitting on a rock, knowing that I couldn't.

I walked up to her and whispered with somberness in her ear, “Scarlet wake up, you don’t have to pretend anymore.”

She squirms into a different position and whispered back with her eyes still closed, “I can’t. Then no one would know who we are.” I think she just said that because she was half asleep and wasn’t making sense.

I picked her up in my arms and began to walk her out of the woods. I really did know how to get back but really didn’t want to leave. I wanted to stay there with her. Either way, before I could even walk four steps she jumped out of my arms. She never liked people helping her or doing things for her. Refused to take anything from anybody. Unless it was cigarettes from her “bitch” foster mother.

She walked back toward the dead fox and picked up the cigarette from the ground, re-lit it, and stared at the fox. She stood there, arms folded, her pale legs shot straight downward from her white dress and her converse sneakers snug together square to her body. I walked up next to her. We stood there for minutes. Just staring.

“What do you think happened to him?” I asked.

“Well it’s definitely a girl fox.”

“How can you tell?”

“And her parents probably left her,” I looked over to her and knew what she meant. She flicks the ash from the tip of her cigarette, “Probably couldn’t survive being alone.”

"How do you get cigarettes so often?" She always had cigarettes and I never asked her how till then. I like how she never asked me to smoke with her for some reason.

"My foster Mom, parent or whatever, is a chain smoker and has cartons of them all the time."

"And you take them?"

"Who cares," She said as she pressed the tip of her cigarette twisting it into the dirt, "She's a bitch."

“Scarlet,” she finally looked away from the fox and at me, “Why did you say it was a dead body?”

“Forget it.”

“No. Tell me.” I said sternly. After a moment of her not answering I grabbed her arm, “Tell--” She rips her arm away from me.

“I was just pretending alright!”

We're all pretenders.

“Don’t you wish something like that would happen? Just something,” her sentence stifled by the cracking sadness in her throat. She paused as tears welled in her eyes, “just anything to happen.” She stared into my eyes waiting to see what they would say. I stood there baffled and taken aback by her burst of unprecedented emotion. Obviously, she didn’t see what she wanted to see because with one sniffle and wipe of her eyes she was back to her tough callous self and walked away. I don’t know what came over me but I ran after her, turned her around, and kissed her. It was one of those really quick tight-lipped kisses that nine-year-olds do. That was my last memory of doing anything with balls to this day. I think I just wanted to be that “something to happen,” for her. I still taste the smoke on her lips.

I don’t really remember what happened immediately after that. I don’t even remember the bike ride home. The last thing I remember from that day was when we got to the outside of my house. We were on our bikes facing each other. Our front wheels touching seemed really intimate at the time. Scarlet was smiling shyly. I don’t know if I had ever seen that vulnerability in her before. She looked really pretty when she tried to hide her smile.

"Will," I looked at her as she timidly stared downward, "do you like me?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean do you like me? Not like you like your bike or like how I like cigarettes, or how our pretend parents say they like us, like really like me?"

"Yeah, I like you a lot. I think I like, love you kind of." I say with a giggle.

She smiled, still looking downward, "I think you're really cute, and not like any of the other kids, or anyone at all around here.

She never says cute or anything like that.

“I think you are too.” I was nine. I didn’t know what to say to girls. Not that I do now.

“Seriously though Will, I think you are the only good thing I have. And you are the only one who gets me.”

“Sometimes I feel like I don’t get you at all.”

She starts laughing. “Yeah, but still. Sometimes I don't even feel like I exist. I feel like I am only part of someone else's dream or something. Like I am dead to everyone," She looked into my eyes fervidly, "Except when I am with you.”

The next few minutes there was just a lot of smirk silence and positive awkwardness venting between us.

“We should get married.” She said breaking the air.

“Okay.”

This time she fully smiled, “Do you want to go to the movies tomorrow?”

As soon as she asked, that horrid feeling returned and ached deep into my stomach. I can still feel the aching now. I kept forgetting that I wasn’t going to be around anymore. I had been shutting it out of my mind completely those last few weeks to the point where I literally forgot.

She noticed that my mood complete shifted, “What’s the matter? We don’t have to go to the movies if you don’t want.”

“I want to go to the movies with you but I can’t.”

“Why not?” She said tough.

Barely getting the words out of my mouth, “I’m moving tomorrow. I was adopted.”

I can’t describe the sadness that washed over her face when I said that. Her eyes tear up but they didn't cry.

“But I thought we were going to get married?”

“I thought we were just pretending?”

Those were our last words to each other. Just two kind of questions, with definitively no answers. For either of us.

Her face changed and that blank look returned. She turned around and peddled away. I never saw her again. There I was, standing there heartbroken, watching her pedal away, and realizing that I am leaving her here alone. I kept thinking about the dead fox lying in the middle of nowhere completely alone. I hated that I was nine and couldn’t make decisions for myself. I hated that I was taking the only person she had away from her. I still can’t get the memory of her peddling away out of my head. I don’t even remember going inside after that. In a way its like I am still there in my mind, sitting on my sucky bike, watching her peddle away from me. Forever. Forever hoping something, anything, will happen.

We are all pretenders.