Andrew Smith - Grasshopper Jungle

Events that night were going to set in motion a disaster that would probably wipe out human life on the planet. That night, I was going to say something to Shann I had never said to anyone. I was going to do something I’d never done, and see things I could not understand and never believed existed.

This is history, and it is also the truth.

I sat in the front seat.

Robby refused to chauffeur us around like he was some kind of limo driver, he said, so either Shann or I always had to sit up front with him. This rule increased the degree of difficulty in actually fulfilling my fantasy regarding Shann Collins and Robby’s backseat.

But now, Robby was gone.

“What are you doing?” Shann said as I shimmied my way between the front seats, over the center console where there was still an assortment of cassette tapes that had belonged to Robby’s dad.

I thought what I was doing was obvious enough, so I said, “I’m looking for my death-ray gun.”

“Well, if your ray gun doesn’t look like a pair of Robby’s underwear or socks, it isn’t back here.”

Robby needed to stop accumulating so much laundry this way, but it did keep the floor of his room tidy.

My foot got stuck between the passenger seat and console. My shoe came off. I left it there.

“I’m coming back there with you till Robby comes out.”

“Robby came out in the seventh grade,” Shann said.

A lot of things happened in seventh grade.

“There.” I said, “I’ve never been back here alone with you, Shann. It’s rather sexy.”

I thought using the word rather would make me seem mature and like I was not from Ealing.

“I’ve never heard you say anything like that before, Austin,” she said.

“Rather?”

“No. Sexy ,” Shann explained. And she was right about that. I never had spoken about sex with Shann. I was too afraid to.

“Well, it is sexy,” I said. I kicked off my other shoe and scooted myself against her.

I put my arms around Shann. I leaned into her and brought my feet up onto the bench seat. I put my lips on her neck and licked her. She gasped.

“Shann, I want to tell you that I’m in love with you. I love you, Shann.”

I had never said that before, either.

“Oh, Austin. I love you.”

It was the first time Shann said it, too.

Then the dome light in the Explorer blinked on. Robby opened the driver’s door.

“You are not having sex in my car—on top of my clothes!” Robby said.

I don’t remember exactly how it happened, but the basketball shorts I’d been wearing that day were halfway down to my knees.

“Um. No. Robby. No.”

Shann coughed nervously and straightened up, while I pulled my shorts back over my hips.

“One of you,” Robby said sternly, “up front now. Let’s go get our shit.”

I squeezed my way back into the front seat.

Robby gave me an intense, scolding stare.

He shook his head and laughed at me. Robby wasn’t angry. Robby was as shocked as I was. He and I both knew what probably would have happened if he had waited about one more minute before coming back to the car.

I extracted my shoe from the center console. Somehow my socks had come off, too. I tried to find them. Clothing has a way of abandoning ship sometimes.

Then Robby dropped a pack of cigarettes in my lap and pushed in the dashboard lighter.

He started the car.

“Light one for me, Porcupine,” he said.

ROBBY COULD HAVE BEEN A PREACHER

WE CASED THEEaling Mall.

We sat across the street at Stan’s Pizza , where we ate and watched through the window.

Stan’s closed at midnight. Stan was visibly angry that we came in and ordered. There was nobody in the place, and Stan wanted to go home.

I ordered a large Stan-preme in an attempt to cheer Stan up.

“We’ll have a large Stanpreme , please. For here,” I said.

In the same way that Johnny McKeon was proud for coming up with the names Tipsy Cricket Liquors and From Attic to Seller Consignment Store entirely on his own, and just as Dr. Grady McKeon was considered a genius for inventing the brand Pulse-O-Matic ®, Stan must have been very pleased with himself for creating the concept of the Stanpreme.

People from Ealing were very creative.

We didn’t know for certain that Stan’s real name was Stan. We never asked him.

Stan was Mexican, so probably not.

We sat, ate, and watched.

Stan watched us.

Everything was dark at the Ealing Mall across the street, except the sign over the Ealing Coin Wash Launderette. The launderette never closed. There was no need to. Between the hours of 2:00 and 6:00 a.m., it was more of a public bathroom, a hash den, or a place to have sex than a launderette, though.

Thinking about having sex on the floor of the Ealing Coin Wash Launderette suddenly made me horny.

Nobody was out there.

This was Ealing at nighttime.

Nobody ever had any reason to be out, unless they were standing on the curb watching their house burn down.

I wondered if Ollie Jungfrau had gone home. Ollie worked at Johnny McKeon’s liquor store. Tipsy Cricket closed at midnight, too, but it was already completely dark by the time Stan scooted the tin pizza disk containing his eponymous creation down on our table by the window.

That was the first time in history anyone from Ealing, Iowa, used the word eponymous. You could get beaten up in Ealing for using words like that.

Just like Robby and I got beaten up for sitting there smoking cigarettes and being queers. But I don’t know if I’m really queer. Just some people think so.

We ate.

Robby asked Stan for three ice waters, please.

Stan was not a happy man.

We couldn’t finish the Stanpreme. It was too big. Stan brought us a box for the three slices we had left on his tin disk.

“Do you think we should make a plan or something?” I asked.

Robby said, “This is Ealing. There’s some kind of prohibition against making plans.”

If we didn’t hate being Lutherans so much, Robby could easily have been a preacher.

NEVER NAME A PIZZA JOINT STAN’S

ROBBY PARKED THEExplorer at the end of Grasshopper Jungle.

He positioned the vehicle facing Kimber Drive, so we could make a quick getaway if we had to.

Like real dynamos.

The pretense of doing something daring and wrong made the rescue of our shoes and skateboards a more thrilling mission to us. Nobody, ultimately, would give a shit about two teenage boys who’d been embarrassed and beaten up by some assholes from Hoover, who climbed up on an insignificant strip mall to get their shoes back.

Shann waited in the backseat.

When we were about ten feet from the car, Robby got an idea.

“Wait,” he said. “We should leave our shoes in the Explorer.”

It made sense, like most of the shit Robby told me. Once we got up on the roof, it would be easier if we didn’t have to carry so much stuff back down. We could wear our roof shoes to make our descent.

It was really good that Grant Wallace and those dipshits didn’t throw our pants up there, too, I thought.

We went back to the car.

Shann was already asleep on top of Robby’s underwear and shit.

We took off our shoes and left them on the front seat.

Robby grabbed his pack of cigarettes and a book of matches and said, “Now we can do this.”

A narrow steel ladder hung about six feet down from the roof ’s edge. It was impossible to reach the bottom of it, so Robby and I rolled the heavy green dumpster across the alley and lined it up below the ladder.