Adam Levin - Hot Pink

“And you’re so creative.”

“Creative? This kid’s a friggin genius! You know I told Lee Anders about some of the stuff you’re learning in those math classes and he didn’t believe me? Flat out called me a liar. Said it was bad luck to lie about your own son. Then again, his son’s off taking it where the sun don’t—”

“Easy, Carlo.”

“What? Why does he gotta — Cliff, why do you gotta cry every time someone has something nice to say about you at the dinner table?”

The best thing about huffing was how much you could do. Since it only got you high a couple minutes at a time, the worst that could happen if you did too much — except for death — was you’d get freaked out for a couple of minutes, which wasn’t long at all, and so unless your last huff made you have a bad time, you always tried to out-huff that huff this huff. At least that’s how I huffed. Franco, too. But I always huffed more than him. Master Glow, Dusted That, Shine Cannon, Ronson — the brand didn’t matter. My lungs were deeper cause I wasn’t a smoker, plus I wasn’t afraid. I’d freaked out a few times, and I’m not saying I liked it, but it wasn’t boring either. I never regretted it. Once I thought I was a light getting dimmer in a window. Another time I thought I’d looked up too hard and my eyes were stuck staring inside of my skull. The day after we ripped off all that grilled cheese from Theo’s and my dad suspected me of being a fag, which was the fifty-fourth day in a row I hung out with Franco, I was sure Gino Kim was using ESP against me, like to make me remember things we’d done that I’d forgotten. I remembered this one time we bought a bag of tarragon, thinking it was weed — real drugs were impossible to get at our school — and we smoked it in a pipe Gino made by rolling tin foil. The smoke hurt our throats but tasted kind of good. I thought it did, at least. Gino didn’t like it. But he liked to eat fish patty sandwiches from McDonald’s, so his taste in food smells wasn’t reliable — I remembered that too. And I remembered this other time we threw rocks at the slide of a jungle gym for hours. I can’t even explain why that was fun, but it was.

I opened my eyes, which I’d forgot were closed, and remembered I’d told Gino I’d pay him back for all the grilled cheese. Thirteen-fifty. And plus the two cookies. Fifteen dollars. But how would I get it? I didn’t know how I’d get it. My summertime allowance was ten bucks a week, and I’d given five to Franco for Dirt Gun XL, which is what we were huffing, there on the garage couch in front of the TV. It’s the same thing as Dirt Gun, but the trigger you pull to make the nozzle blast the drugs out is black instead of purple, and the can’s twice as big — that’s why it’s so expensive. Franco said “Wah” and rolled it slow across the couch to me. His TV’s antenna was missing an ear and the only channel he was able to raise that morning was playing Three Stooges , but he hated Moe’s voice — he said it made him feel accused — so he’d turned off the volume, and that was fine with me cause the noises the Stooges make give me a headache, but sitting there looking at them tweak each other’s noses and make pained faces while I came down from Dirt Gun wasn’t any good, so I took a giant huff, not big enough to cause another ESP freakout, but big enough to make me forget about the first one.

Right in that gap between huffing and feeling it, this knocking started up on the door of the garage — not the one made for cars that faces the alley but the one that you enter from Franco’s backyard — and Franco III started barking her face off. Once the Dirt Gun came on, though, the wahs were so loud that everything else sounded far away and swirly.

An unhappy-looking fat guy in a suit came in, and the sleaze from the alley from the day before followed him. They stood behind the TV, facing the couch, and the fat guy’s mouth was this straight black line, and the sleaze shook his head and said things to Franco. It might as well have been static, though, whatever he was saying. I could tell it wasn’t good just by looking at his face, but didn’t know what it was cause the wahs drowned the words out. Plus the sleaze’s hair, I’d noticed, was the shiniest thing. It was so clean and shiny that the lamplight behind him made his head look on fire. I wanted Franco to see, so I lifted my arm to point the head out, but my arm was dense and heavy, which slowed me down, and before I could even get my index finger straightened, Franco’d jumped to his feet.

The whole couch jerked.

The fat guy’s mouth showed small wet teeth and the sleaze pushed at air like “Hold up, take it easy, just please quiet down.”

Franco told him, “What!” It was louder than the wahs — the wahs were wearing off fast — and it sounded like his voice cracked when he said it again. “What!” he said. “What!” Then he flicked his lit cigarette, which grazed the sleaze’s face. Orange ashes blew around and the sleaze cupped his ear. “Franco!” the sleaze said. “Come on now! Come on!”

Now the fat guy pushed air. “Calm down,” he told Franco. “Just sit back down now.”

“What!” Franco said.

I’d missed something important. Something big was happening and I didn’t know what. I thought I should have known what.

I felt a little sick, then remembered to breathe.

Franco III kept barking her face off.

Then Franco stepped forward and kicked the TV off the crate that it sat on, right at the sleaze, who it caught on the waist. The sleaze shouted “Fuck!” or made the noise fuh! and bent forward hard and the TV screen shattered all over the floor.

Franco jumped the crate, tackling the sleaze. The fat guy grabbed Franco’s shoulders and pulled. Franco bucked, sent him back into the wall, smacked the sleaze, and kept saying “What!” I was on my feet. I didn’t know what I should do. The fat guy caught his balance and dove at Franco. I saw a holstered gun when his jacket flapped up, and I was running out the door, into the yard, like a gifted-track fatso pussy, but I wasn’t. I wasn’t a pussy. I was doing what I had to.

When she saw me, Franco III went crazy, but I stood just outside the range of her chain and I stared into her eyes — they were all pink with blood and dripping with water — and I pointed my finger and yelled at her, “Easy!” and yelled it again, and guess what happened. The chain sloped behind her and she looked at the ground. She sat on the grass.

I freed her from the fence as fast as I could, and we entered the garage. Cords were straining under Franco’s neck skin. His face was this greasy tomato of pain. He knelt one knee on the chest of the sleaze and his other leg was straightened at a nasty-looking angle while the fat guy, behind him, was twisting the chickenwing he had Franco’s arm in and saying stuff to him too soft to make out.

I didn’t register the fat guy’s voice’s softness until I’d already said “Nasal spray,” though.

Franco III had some distance to cover — most of a garage — and she barked the whole way. The fat guy heard her coming and released the chickenwing. He pivoted quick and, right as the dog hurtled over the crate, he raised both his fists and shouted, “Down!” She hit the ground squealing, already bent to turn, and she re-jumped the crate and pushed her head between my shins with so much force I nearly lost my footing. “Scout,” I said, and she laid down flat.

Franco was sitting on top of the sleaze. His face was in his hands. His shoulders were jumping.

The fat guy said to me, “Jesus H. Christ, kid.” The walkie-talkie-thing on his belt made that crackle like they do in the movies, and a voice said some numbers.

Then I did run away like a gifted-track pussy. Tried to, at least.