Fade to Blue Read online

  “It is always smelling like the ass,” Karl-Heinz said, wrinkling his nose as sweaty Connors and sweaty Jeds zoomed by, passing, dribbling, yelling “Here, here, here. Dude, HERE!” A year ago, Karl-Heinz transferred from a school in Ohio. His real name is Marty. The first day, he pretended to speak almost no English. Teachers immediately forgave grammar mistakes, didn’t demand homework, and took his complete lack of interest to be a sign of cross-cultural incomprehension. Even Coach Dhushbak leaves him alone.

  “Um, you could try holding your breath?” I suggested.

  “Ya, ya,” he said.

  I unwrapped a Nut-Buddy Mallo-Cake as my sister and Lake came through the doors at the other end of the gym. They picked their own empty row, just like us, but were somehow able to project a face-saving intent. Sophie slipped off her leather jacket, revealing a cutoff band shirt that said Doktah Jack and the Kevorkians. Pretty much every guy in the gym stared. Even Karl-Heinz eyed her clinically.

  “Is hard to belief you are twins, ya?”

  At this point he was unable to completely turn off the accent. His parents had already taken him to three doctors, who all prescribed Ritalin. He was gobbling about six hundred milligrams a day.

  “Seriously, with the twins thing?” I said. “Oh, man, that’s some hilarious material.”

  He shrugged. On the wall above him was a poster with an enormously fat kid surrounded by laughing jocks. Underneath it said The Four Major Food Groups: Fries, Fries, Shakes, and Fries.

  “What do you think of the girl she’s with?” I asked.

  “I belief that chick is in a wheelchair, ya?”

  “Yes,” I said. “She is.”

  Bryce Ballar ran by with two bottles of talcum, tossing it in the air. “It’s snowing!” he laughed. Karl-Heinz swore in German. Powder speckled my issue of The Adventures of Destruktor-Bot and Manny Solo, Boy Mentor, reducing it from mint-minus to very good/very good-plus. Would Destruktor-Bot have accepted the insult so easily? Ah, no. While Destruktor-Bot wanted nothing more than to shed a real human tear, a lot of the time he just sort of redlined and smashed shit up. I definitely wanted to redline and smash shit up, too. I was, however, unequipped with a massive titanium fist.

  “O.S.?” Karl-Heinz said, pointing across the gym.

  “Yeah?”

  “Your sister, she is waving to you.”

  “She is?”

  “Go and say the hello, the how are you. Talk like a man to your new girlfriend.”

  “Hoo, boy,” I said, mentally willing my breath to smell better.

  “Hey, O.S.” Lake said. On her lap was a book, Venkman’s Astoundingly Unusual Words and How to Use Them, Vol. II. I tried to think of something to say about it and failed. Her hair was blond and messy. She wore a rumpled shirt and jeans. There was a tiny, lovable gap between her front teeth. Her eyes were speckled green. And they were waiting for me to say something.

  I came up with Hi!

  Coach Dhushbak blew his whistle three times. “Get over here, Blue!”

  Sophie trudged onto the court. She refused to wear the Upheare Toros purple shirt and shorts. Coach Dhushbak gave her a speech heavy on the word mandatory.

  “Don’t you just love gym?” Lake asked.

  “Watching Sophie play volleyball in fishnets and combat boots? It almost makes it worth it.”

  Lake laughed. It was little and sparkly, the kind of laugh you’d make up just about any dumb joke to hear again. I couldn’t think of a single dumb joke. Not even a knock-knock. My knees started to sweat. I looked at her arms, the little blond hairs that rose softly from them, and had to force myself to look away. After her accident, people kept saying, “What a shame, she had so much going for her.” What they really meant was: That could (and probably should) have happened to someone a whole lot less popular.

  “We’re not the only ones who think so,” Lake said, pointing.

  On the other side of the court, Jed and Connor and Liam and Ralph were standing in a group, trying to decide if Sophie was scary hot. Or just scary. Did they believe the Rumor? Was Test Tube true?

  “Bet you ten dollars she gets another detention,” Lake said as Coach Dhushbak handed the slip over. While on his tiptoes. One time, Bryce Ballar goes, Um, excuse me, Coach, but are there some X’s and O’s you need to diagram down Gothika’s shirt? Everyone laughed. Bryce Ballar got detention for a month.

  The Rumor began right after Dad left. No one remembers who started it. That’s the thing about a rumor, you can let it go like a bird, and instead of looking at your hands, people watch it fly away. Sophie heard it but didn’t laugh. She traded the soccer shorts for a tube of Midnight Noir lipstick instead.

  Sophie folded the detention slip into an origami swan, dropped it on the floor, and sat back down. “Dhushbak is a renob,” she said, pulling out her pad.

  Lake looked renob up in Venkman, but there was nothing between renaissance and renal calculi.

  “Is that rooted in the Latin?”

  Sophie didn’t answer, pretending not to stare at Aaron Agar.

  “Stop staring at Aaron Agar,” Lake said.

  Sophie drew a skeleton wheeling Lake into the pool.

  “So stare already,” Lake said. “But at least go ask him for his phone number.”

  Sophie drew Lake floating. Crocodiles with gaping jaws and hypodermic teeth closed in.

  “Fine,” Lake said. “But if you wait, some low-cut Kirsty is going to snap him up.”

  The Rumor was that Dad did something. To Sophie. Bringing home equipment from the lab. Bringing home test tubes. Being a pervert. Sophie having to go to the hospital. Dad having to leave town after the police found out. Once Sophie went Midnight Noir, though, it pretty much went underground. Ripped black tights mean maybe that crazy chick has an Anarchy tattoo and a blog about bomb schematics. Big black boots mean maybe Gothika’s got a list of who she’s going to shoot first. And then second. And then third.

  The volleyball game got louder. Jeds jumped, Connors fell. Sophie stopped drawing. She was writing on her yellow pad, but now it was just lines of numbers, 00010101001010101010101 010000001.

  “What’s that supposed to be?” Lake asked.

  “I dunno. It’s sort of like counting sheep.”

  “It’s binary code,” I said.

  “Bi what?”

  “It’s a computer language. Like, how computers talk to each other?”

  “What are you counting sheep for?” Lake asked.

  “I dreamed I was run over by an ice-cream truck last night,” Sophie said.

  “That’s messed up,” Lake said.

  “Yeah,” Sophie said, pulling up her shirt. There were big purple bruises in vertical lines across her ribs. “Especially since, in the dream, the truck hit me right here.”

  Jed and Connor and Liam and Ralph stared. Dieter, Samuel, Constantine, Prajit, and Wally stared. Karl-Heinz stared. Sophie pulled her shirt back down and scratched her elbow so hard it bled. Red drops plopped onto the floor in threes.

  “Maybe you were lying on a book?” I guessed.

  “Yeah, maybe,” Sophie said. “But then what’s that?”

  Through the dirty window on the other side of the gym, I could just make out a mean-looking truck, jacked up, with tinted windows, idling in the parking lot. It could have sold Popsicles. It also could have been delivering spinach to the cafeteria or barrels of pomade to Coach Dhushbak. Lake wheeled over to get a better look. The truck backfired, interrupting Aaron Agar’s serve. The ball banged off the net, coming to rest near Sophie’s boot. He waited for her to grab the ball and toss it back. She didn’t. No one said a word. Not Dieter, Samuel, Constantine, Prajit, or Wally. Not Jed or Mike or Connor or Bradley or Ralph. Eventually, Kirsty Swann went back to the office to ask Coach Dhushbak for a new ball. When I looked up again, the truck was gone.

  “Do not pass go,” Lake said. “Do not pass Goth. Chapter One: How to Make Friends and Influence Classmates.”

  Sophie made a face and palmed the
volleyball. Aaron Agar held out his hand. Instead of throwing it to him, she launched it at the basket at the other end of the court. It flew over everyone’s head in a crazy arc, spinning backward, hanging in the air. It was like a diorama of the three wise men, all of us staring at the little felt North Star. The ball swished through the hoop. Snap. The whole gym started yelling, going crazy. Coach Dhushbak burst out of his office, blowing his whistle. What? What? WHAT?

  Sophie sat down and drew Dracula sipping a martini, three onions, an extra olive, and, at the end of the toothpick, a little bloody heart.

  CHAPTER SIX

  KENNY FADE

  TRUCK WITH TINTED WINDOWS TO WHICH NO KIDS WOULD EVER COME RUNNING, NO JANGLING QUARTERS OR APRONED HOUSEWIVES OR STICKY LITTLE FUDGESICLE HANDS

  The next morning, there was a space for Kenny’s Jeep in the student lot, right up front. No one ever said anything, but it was known to be his, always empty so he didn’t have to walk an extra twenty feet to the door. Dayna met Kenny at his locker, her timing uncanny. She grabbed his butt and planted one on him.

  “What’s up, player?” Zac asked, leaning against Kenny’s locker, which had been pried open. All his junk was tossed around. Fade Rules was now spray-painted across the front.

  “Listen, guys,” Kenny said, closing the door. “I need to tell you something.”

  “You’re pregnant,” Freckle said, playing with the drawstring of his hoodie.

  “You’re queer,” Zac said, his blond hair shellacked straight out. He had on a designer shirt with the collar up, and expensive yellow goggles perched on his forehead.

  “No, seriously. Something happened in the shower room last night.”

  “Did I guess it?” Zac said, holding his arms up like he’d won the lottery.

  Kenny sighed. “Great. Thanks for listening.”

  The bell rang. Miss Last looked Kenny up and down while he found his seat, and then began explaining conjunctive verbs.

  “Ahem… Mr. Fade? Could you come to the board and diagram this sentence for us?”

  Kenny shuffled to the front and didn’t even look at the sentence, writing words randomly, adding unnecessary letters, tossing in punctuation. Miss Last took the chalk, her hand lingering on his.

  “Thank you, Mr. Fade, that is completely correct.”

  “No, it’s not,” Kenny said. “It’s wrong.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Fade,” Dayna repeated from her desk, in a deeper, sexier voice. “That is totally, completely, deeply correct.”

  Everyone laughed. Kenny sat back down and wrote Dayna a note. I need to talk to you. It’s serious. Something happened last night. Dayna took the note, wrote something, and handed it back. I love you, too. Kenny turned it over and scribbled furiously. Did you read what I wrote? I think something’s really wrong. Dayna handed it back. There were no words at all this time, just a lipstick imprint and a smiley face. Kenny crumpled the note and threw it on the floor. Finally, the bell rang. Miss Last gave Kenny a wink as he merged into the flow of hallway traffic, a full head and shoulders above a stream of heads and shoulders. He took a left by The Nurse’s office, nearly walking into a knot of boys who’d formed a circle around a fat kid with a shaved head. One of the boys knocked the kid’s books to the floor.

  Kenny pushed his way into the center of the circle. “Leave him alone.”

  Bryce Ballar wheeled, fists up. He wore a thick layer of fat like a winter coat, wide and solid underneath. Kenny was sure Bryce was going to kick his ass, but when Bryce saw who it was, he tried out a smile, teeth craggy with chocolate.

  “Hey, K-dog.”

  “Hi,” Kenny said.

  Bryce signaled his underlings, who let the bald kid go. “Nice game on Friday,” he said, melting back into the crowd.

  * * *

  Kenny’s shiny red Jeep cornered hard out of the parking lot, the engine growling like a Rottweiler dying to be let off its leash. Dayna leaned forward in the passenger seat, applying a coat of orange gloss to her already orange lips. Sheriff Goethe drove by and gave a friendly honk. Cars of teenagers sped past in all directions, giddy about leaving school, blaring music, everyone flashing lights or yelling KENNY! out the window.

  “Stop scratching,” Dayna said. Kenny stared at his bloody fingernails. His elbow was red and raw. Dayna opened the glove compartment, shuffling through papers and gum wrappers and change.

  “What’re you looking for?”

  She shrugged and went back to her lips.

  “So have you heard any gossip or whatever about a lab?” he asked. “Like someplace in town, maybe?”

  Dayna winked at him. “There something you need to get tested for?”

  “Yeah, right,” Kenny said, flushing. “No, it’s just, some of the guys have been talking about this place. It’s supposed to be… cool.”

  Dayna frowned, finishing her Sour White and tossing the can over her shoulder. The wind whipped it away, bouncing in the rearview until a truck creamed it flat. Dayna undid her belt and stood between the roll bars as another car pulled alongside. It was Bryce Ballar’s convertible, fishtailing in gravel, half on the shoulder. Kenny honked, signaling for Ballar to fall back. They raced in tandem, blocking both lanes.

  “Move over!” Kenny yelled.

  “Whoo!” Bryce Ballar yelled.

  The two cars roared down a straightaway and over a hill. On the horizon, an ice-cream truck sped toward them. Its rusty grill was mean-looking and low to the ground. The windows were tinted and a bullhorn mounted to the roof blared chanting music. The truck accelerated on the next straightaway, straddling the yellow line. Kenny slammed on the brakes, swerved, just missing Ballar’s rear quarter-panel. The ice-cream truck backfired, a long strip of flame shooting from its tailpipe, and shot past, racing away.

  “God, did you see that?” Kenny asked. “It was like it was trying to…”

  “Bryce is crazy.” Dayna laughed, sitting back down and patting her hair. “Don’t you think?”

  “Totally insane,” Kenny said, edging back into traffic.

  “Don’t worry, it’s not like I think he’s cute.”

  “I wasn’t worried.”

  Dayna took Kenny’s hand and stuck his entire index finger in her mouth. He flicked the turn signal. “I think we should go down by the docks and ask around. Maybe check out this lab.”

  “Let’s just go to your house,” Dayna whispered huskily, digging her Popsicle-red nails into his thigh. “And check out your room instead.”

  The front door was open. Kenny’s mother, Rose, sat on a white leather couch that angled away from an enormous stone fireplace. She was knitting a white sweater. Or maybe it was a white vest, since there were no arms.

  “Rock and roll!” she said, getting up and giving Kenny a hug. “The football hero!”

  “Basketball,” Kenny said.

  Rose put out a plate of cookies. She was tall and blond and severe, her skin as pulled and tucked as the tight white dress that hugged her waist. She had a way of smiling that was hungry and bored at the same time. Zac and Freckle thought she was hot.

  Dayna air-kissed Rose. The dog, a little shaggy mutt, came over and licked Kenny’s hand. The mutt didn’t have a name. When they’d gotten it, Rose insisted on calling her Dog. She was like, “Well, it’s a dog, right?”

  Dog wagged her tail, which had a red ribbon tied to the end. There was a little black circle on her tummy that Kenny traced with his finger.

  “Want a smoke?” Rose asked, lighting one for herself.

  “No, thanks.”

  Rose pulled a cooler from behind the sofa. “How about a brewski?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “It’s midseason,” Kenny said. “I’m in training.”

  “Oh, right,” Rose said. “Commitment. Teamwork. Keep it up.”

  Dayna accepted a beer and took a big swig. The television in the background flickered, some hospital show where all the doctors were ridiculously handsome, ethical, and really, really wanted t
o help lower-income patients get better.

  “So,” Rose said, winking at Kenny. “What are you guys up to tonight?”

  “Nothing,” Kenny said.

  Dayna smiled coyly, squeezing Kenny’s arm.

  Rose laughed. “Hey, say no more. I guess I’ll get out of your way.”

  “You’re leaving?” Kenny asked.

  “Sure, why not? I need something from the hardware store.”

  “The hardware store’s closed.”

  “I need something from the yarn store,” Rose said. A button popped off her blouse and rolled under the couch. Dog got up and sniffed it.

  “There is no yarn store,” Kenny told her.

  “Then I’ll walk over to the clinic,” Rose said, patting her flat stomach. “Your mother needs the exercise.”

  “Ha!” Dayna laughed, giving Rose a high five before the door closed behind her. Dog turned three times in front of the fireplace and lay down. Dayna got on her knees in front of Kenny and slowly unlaced and removed his Dikes. She peered in each, as if looking for a treasure, and then put them carefully beside the door. Then she went to the multi-multi-buttoned stereo and chose some uncomplicated jazz. She took Kenny by the hand and started kissing his wrist, slowly working her way up until their mouths locked. Kenny took off his shirt, stomach corded into an anticipatory knot. Dayna took her shirt off as well, showing the handiwork of a benevolent god. Kenny knew if Freckle or Zac could see him now, they’d be punching each other on the arm and talking about how insanely stacked she was, how he was the luckiest guy in the world. He didn’t feel lucky. He felt like he was drowning, and began to imagine himself picking up her clothes from the pile on the floor. And putting them on. Sliding into the dress and rolling up the pantyhose. Maybe even putting on some of her lipstick.

  What the hell?

  Kenny shoved Dayna off the couch and ran down the hallway, locking himself in the bathroom. He turned the faucet all the way up, refusing to answer Dayna’s knocking. She called and pleaded. She banged and kicked. She begged him to open up, but he wouldn’t answer, and she finally went home.

  CHAPTER SEVEN