Ryan Thomas: The Summer I Died

His mother burst through the front door like one of those snakes popping out of a novelty can, all arms flailing and hair licking about like it was made of flames, screaming incoherently and running so fast she nearly tripped. She grabbed up her little boy and rushed him away to the end of the earth-which would be Jersey. Two weeks later, she came back and got a divorce, and Tooth got his nickname because ever since then he had to wear a bridge.

And what I never understood after that was why Tooth asked to live with his father. My guess is, his father being a drunk and all, Tooth could pretty much do whatever he wanted.

Anyway, things became sort of like an after school special. You had your usual child welfare services, and AA meetings, and Tooth’s parents trying to get back together and not succeeding, and you can figure the rest out.

Going to my house was just simpler than dealing with his dad, who was always trying to get us to go to church when he was drunk, even if it was three in the morning on a Wednesday. The man obviously regretted his decision to leave the ministry and take the blue-collar route, as if in the end he’d let God down. Maybe that accounted for a lot, maybe it didn’t.

I told Tooth to park his beat up Camaro in the driveway. My parents were gone for the weekend to Providence, visiting my grandmother who’d been complaining of back pains. She was always scared she had the latest disease she saw on CNN, even if it was only in pumpkins or something.

Unfortunately, them being out of town didn’t mean I had run of the house. Jamie was there too, and since I’d been away at college all semester, she saw fit to assume the role of homeowner. In the few days I’d been home already, she said that things had changed since I’d been away and since I didn’t know how they were doing things now, I could just leave if I preferred. The only thing that had changed as far as I saw was that she’d moved into my old room and torn down my limited edition Daredevil and Gambit posters. While part of me debated shaving her hair off while she slept for ruining perfectly good collectables, the rational side of me decided it wasn’t worth the fight, I’d be gone in another two months when the fall semester started.

When we came in, she was sitting on the living room couch with a bag of rice cakes, watching some stupid chick flick with sappy music and some guy talking about feelings. I wasted no time picking up the remote and changing the channel.

“Put it back, asshole,” she said.

“Why don’t you go up to my room and watch TV? You know this is the only one I can watch now. Tooth and I are gonna watch a movie.”

“Well, in case you didn’t notice, Geekmaster, I was in the middle of one.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen it. The girl gets the guy, and somebody dies, then somebody gets married, and everybody cries and shares their feelings. It’s wonderful. Now move.”

“Wow, you’ve watched a movie that had actual adult themes and not grown men in tights rubbing their codpieces together. ‘Oh, Boy Wonder, is that your gun or are you happy to see me?’”

“Robin doesn’t carry a gun, Einstein.”

“Who the fuck is Robin?”

Tooth, who was amusing himself with our sibling rivalry, went and plopped on the couch next to her. He put his arm around her and stared at her chest. “Hey, Jamie,” he said, “ain’t seen you in a few months. You’re developing nicely.”

She hit his hand away and stood up. “Fuck off, Mervyn. Touch me again and I’ll knock out the rest of your teeth.”

Mervyn. That was Tooth’s real name, and also the reason he preferred to be called Tooth. He said “Mervyn” sounded too much like a verb. Jamie stormed out of the room and stomped up the stairs muttering, “Stupid geeks,” under her breath.

“Nice move, Tooth.”

“I figured that’d work. But I wasn’t lying either. Your sis is looking fine.”

Truth was my sister was very attractive, and it was starting to make me nervous. She had her driver’s permit now, and I couldn’t help feeling, well, almost paternal. When she took the car out to the movies the day after I got home, it was like some giant spider had dropped down from nowhere and spun me up in a web of concern. I wanted to fight it, because I couldn’t stand my sister most of the time, but I also couldn’t shake the feeling. I didn’t need to dissect it; it came from knowing what a teenage boy thinks about-Fucking. One day you’re walking down the school corridor thinking about the new Gen 13/X-Force crossover, the next you look up and see Lucy Graves’ tits. And from that moment on, everything you see, whether it’s a chalk eraser or a folding chair, it all looks like Lucy. And you want to fuck it.

I hated to admit it, but I cared about Jamie, and I didn’t want someone like Tooth-who was pretty much representative of the entire male population of our small town-getting close to her. She was all fire and spunk now, but I remember what I was like as a teenager, thinking I knew everything and nobody could teach me shit I didn’t already know. Then I got to college and, well, you grow up real quick in college, learn what it means to be alone and irresponsible. You see things you only dream about-orgies, drugs, social upheaval, rape. It makes you think. It makes you realize how dumb you were in high school, and how unaware today’s high schoolers are. Yeah, Jamie was all fired up, but only because she hadn’t seen the downpour of the real world.

“Man, I’m hungry again.” Tooth looked at me with that look that said if I didn’t do his bidding he was going to keep bugging me till I did. I hated that look. “That dude at the packy got me all worked up. Feel like I could eat the world. You got any Doritos or anything?”

I went into the kitchen and found some chips and dip and we munched for a while.

The movie we watched that night was The Thing , John Carpenter’s classic horror film about a mutating alien that attacks an Arctic research station. With the exception of Big Trouble In Little China , I consider it the last good film Kurt Russell ever made. The original version, The Thing From Another World , directed by Christian Nyby and starring James Arness as the alien, still holds up by many standards, but does not compare to Carpenter’s generous use of effects-but I’m kind of a movie elitist so take that as you will. We’d both seen it a bunch of times, but it was still as good as the first time.

Tooth asked me the same question he always asked, at the part when one of the research team is sitting in the snow looking nice and normal, with the exception of having an alien arm, and is clearly not human. Circled around him, his friends struggle with whether or not he’s still their friend. “Would you kill me if it was me and you weren’t sure?”

“Yup.”

“Good thing, because you’d be the first one I capture. Make you toss salad in an alien prison.”

We laughed.

Jamie came down once to get something out of the refrigerator and looked at us as if she were trying to shoot liquid shit from her eyes onto our heads. She was dressed in boxer shorts and a wife-beater. Tooth must have popped a rod as she passed by because he shifted around and covered his groin with his shirt like he was embarrassed. It kind of made me uncomfortable, him looking at my sister that way. I couldn’t fault him for being human, I just hoped it wouldn’t come to something unpleasant.

When the movie ended, it was nearly midnight. Tooth got up and said, “I gotta piss. Why don’t you order some pizza or something?” And drifted into the small bathroom that ran off the kitchen. He’d finished all his liquor and let out a grunt as he released the floodgates. He pissed so long I expected to be swimming in it soon.