Lex Thomas - Quaranteen

“Hey, what do you call it when two Loners stand together?” David looked up at the guy.

“I call it my future wife and… some loser.” More laughs. The comedian mouthed the words I love you to Lucy, and he got a cheap laugh out of the crowd.

“I’m just joking, David. No hard feelings, right? I’m glad you’re here. I got a stain on my boxer shorts. Got a second?” The crowd laughed hard at that one. David pushed out a strained smile. Lucy’s hand was shaking on his arm. David looked over to see that her face was red from trying to hold in her giggling. She couldn’t stop.

“Oh, come on,” Lucy said, tugging him away from the comedian. “It was a joke. You can’t take a joke?”

“Hey, if it’s funny, I’m the first one to laugh.”

“Ooh, I think he touched a nerve.”

“Pssh, are you kidding me? I love thinking about all the mornings I spent trying to scrub blood off of some kid I hate’s sleeve with a toothbrush.”

Lucy looked unsure as to how to respond. David meant it to be sarcastic, but it came out angry.

“That’s just not what I am anymore,” David said.

“David, do you ever relax?”

“What do you mean?”

“You never take a break. You’ve already done more for all of us than anyone could have expected you to. Take the night off, for crying out loud. Let Ritchie do the worrying, because he already is anyway.”

Lucy motioned behind David, and he turned to see Ritchie less than ten feet away. He was shadowing them, and he knew he was busted. Ritchie strode up to them.

“So… hey, what are you guys up to?” Lucy arched her eyebrow at Ritchie.

“You know what? Never mind. Pretend I’m not here,” Ritchie said, backing away.

When Ritchie was finally gone, Lucy squeezed David’s hand.

“So, do we have a deal or what?”

“A deal?”

“Are you going to just enjoy yourself tonight? The world’s not going to end if you have a little fun.” David took in the auditorium. He didn’t see one person who was having a bad time. If kids could mingle across gang lines here, why didn’t they all the time? He wondered if the school could ever be like this every day.

“All right,” he said. He turned to her. “Deal.” Lucy jumped and clapped her hands. She pulled him over to a concession stand that served juice. To compensate for their smaller claims on the quad, Varsity had started selling what was once reserved only for their own drop parties: their homemade apple juice hooch.

“Two cups, please.”

Lucy slid two tickets across the table, and the Geek at the stand served up two tin cans full.

Lucy raised her can up to David’s.

“To a great night,” she said.

“You drink?” David said.

“Not really, but if I’m asking you to cut loose, well, I guess I can’t be a hypocrite.”

David liked that. He raised his tin can.

“To a great night,” he said, and they each took a swig. It burned going down.

“WHOOF!” Lucy yelped. She had to cover her mouth to force herself to swallow. She fluttered her fingers and did a little dance to help it go down. She finally managed and crumbled

into David. “What is in that stuff?”

“Good old-fashioned moonshine, mixed with apple juice.”

“Moonshine? Is Huckleberry Finn in Varsity?” David laughed.

“Yeah, moonshine. Anthony Smith used to bring it on the bus to celebrate after we won away games. It’s just sugar and yeast, and you distill it, I think. If Varsity can do it, it must be easy.”

“You mean, it’s sugar, yeast, and fire. I can’t feel my throat.”

“Me neither. That means it’s working,” David said, and took another swig.

The juice made him buoyant. Anxiety slipped away. David reached out to take Lucy’s arm, but somehow they ended up hugging. She felt so good in his arms. He didn’t want to let go.

The night became a dazzling blur. The colors, the sparklers, the flames. David held close to Lucy. Her laugh was fast and childlike. She had one pointy tooth that only showed when she smiled all the way. Her fingers would graze the inside of his wrist. They shared more juice. Wandering performers interacted with the crowd in spontaneous dramatic scenes.

At a game booth run by art Geeks, kids could pay one ticket to take whacks at papier-mache sculptures of soldiers in haz-mat suits. David demolished one as Lucy cheered. They stumbled from spontaneous sing-alongs to dance perfor-mances to poetry slams. One Geek took his clothes off and streaked through the auditorium. The music thumped.

The houselights flashed, signaling everyone to their seats.

David and Lucy were ushered to the best seats in the place, a gift from Zachary. As they settled in and the lights went down, Lucy slid her fingers between his. The curtain parted, and the stage lit up. Zachary took the stage to begin the school’s most popular ongoing play, Sunday Morning.

David was surprised to discover that Zachary was a fine actor. His grandiose personal flourishes didn’t exist onstage.

He was completely in character. He was Paul, a normal kid from the suburbs, on a lazy Sunday morning. Paul went to the grocery store; he read a book; he walked his dog. David understood why McKinley students never tired of dipping into Paul’s world. It was a world with no threats, no danger, nothing but real-world leisure and everyday chores, the things that they ached to be bored by again.

He let himself be carried away by the delicate world onstage.

Paul was David. David was Paul. And nothing mattered anymore. He wasn’t in McKinley. He was in Paul’s living room, then in Paul’s backyard, under the open sky.

“Lucy,” David whispered.

“Yes, David,” Lucy said, her head on his shoulder.

“Is there anything between you and Will?” Her head lifted up.

“I… Will is just a friend,” she said.

While David could still feel the breeze of Paul’s world on his face, he leaned over and gave Lucy a soft, slow kiss.

Will wanted to vomit. He watched David kiss Lucy. His lips against her lips. His tongue digging into her mouth. Her hand was on her chest, covering the necklace Will gave her. He hated the look on Lucy’s face; she was in heaven.

Her eyes were closed, and she coiled her arms around David’s body. David held her face in his hands.

“Hey, man,” someone rapped their knuckles on the back of his head. Will spun around. It was Ritchie. He looked at Will, totally astonished. “What the hell are you doing, Will?” he said, then lowered his voice to a fierce whisper. “You’re supposed to be on guard duty.”

Will didn’t have an answer. He looked down where David and Lucy were seated. Lucy was resting her head on David’s shoulder.

Will found it hard to breathe. The auditorium was immense, but it felt like it was pressing down on him. He broke away from Ritchie and pushed past a Geek guard. Will bolted out a fire door into the raked hall that ran the length of the auditorium.

The guard took off after him and shouted to a cluster of costumed drama Geeks at the end of the hall to stop him. Before they could react, Will blasted through them like bowling pins.

He ran past dressing rooms, catching a fleeting glimpse of a make-out session in one, a pile of ragged costumes in another, and in the third, he saw a momentary reflection of himself in a full-length mirror, the biggest mirror he’d ever seen intact.

It would have been worth a fortune in the market.

Will careened into art studios. A shirtless guy poured black paint over his face, then rubbed his head against a bedsheet that was stretched across the wall. Will slipped on some paint and slammed his body against the sharp corner of a metal table, cutting open his lower back. He shouted in pain and kept running. He blazed past wire sculptures, reconstituted furniture, graffitied canvases, and finally a series of charcoal drawings. They were head and shoulders portraits of the old faculty members, but in all of the drawings, they were vomiting blood.