Charles Bock - Beautiful Children

There was beer, a watery brand of dog piss that had been obtained through whatever machinations teens go through to get alcohol. There was a dime bag of really weak hash that had somehow gotten the nickname Tijuana Worm. Zydeco music played on a scratchy LP, though nobody was paying it attention, for they were too busy talking, of course, a bunch of teenagers slinging shit, would-be immortals in conversations that were destined to be carved on the sides of mountains. Voices still in the process of maturation cracked and reverberated off the metal hull, merging together; sentences overlapping, their echoes becoming jumbled, mixing in with the fiddles and banjos, this complicated, irrepressible tune.

The girl was in the far back, sitting on some sort of off-roading tire. Jagged treads were digging into the back of her thighs and she was squirming in place, trying to look like she was not squirming, pretending she did not care about getting her skirt dirty. A black plastic trash bag had been duct-taped where the rear window should have been, and shards of light were filtering in through the holes in the bag, creating columns of illumination, which fell upon her like water from a shower nozzle, this almost angelic effect.

This place sucks, she said. I can't stand it here.

She yapped intently, obliviously, as if she were the first person to come up with her idea, as if the notion of flight— I can't wait till I'm old enough to blow this hole —were not part of being young, as if the idea of running away were not part of the romance of youth, as natural as imagining your own funeral, telling yourself, When I'm gone, won't they be sorry.

Specifically, she was bitching about her home, the eggshell-and-puke piece of cardboard her mom kept her trapped in. Most definitely not her home, according to the girl with the shaved head. Vegas was not the girl's home. Vegas was a black hole. A total fucking conspiracy. The girl had done her research on this matter, and this research had fed her outrage, led to more researching, more uncovered transgressions, every one of which she'd dutifully transcribed into her diary, looping four-page sentences done with black marker: how each resort put the front entrance on one side of the ground floor, the hotel elevators on another, the restaurants on the third, and the shops on the fourth, so every time Mr. and Mrs. Tourist Suck wanted to do anything, they had to walk across the casino floor. How oxygen got pumped into the casino so gamblers wouldn't get tired. How there weren't clocks, so you didn't know how long you'd been playing, and didn't care if it was day or night. How poker chips replaced money so that after a while you wouldn't see the monetary value of what you were doing, but maybe got bored with playing only the red chips and wanted to play some blues, which were worth like twice as much. How waitresses gave out free alcohol-soaked drinks so the gambler would make good and sober decisions with all those chips that were not quite being seen as money. How oxygen, liquid, night, day, animal, vegetables, minerals, every and any single aspect of the casino resort environment, how all of them were skewed to keep a person on the floor of the gambling house— all so you could win money from the casino.

It galled her, the way her mother always harshed her flow, tried to get her to calm down. Sitting at the kitchen table, waving some sort of health food cracker at the girl. Saying, “Oh, sweetie. SWEETIE.”

Sure her mom was a single parent, working full-time and trying to raise a kid and adjust to a new city and build a new life, doing the best she could with an English degree in a cheap frame and a shitload of debt on her mind. The girl's mother was prone to crying jags and panic attacks, and whenever the girl got rolling about everything that was wrong with their new home, her mom would cut her off, shouting back: “ What do you want me to do? It's a miracle if we get an alimony payment. I moved here for a teaching job and the school district goes into a hiring freeze. The temp service hasn't called since the last time that spreadsheet program crashed. These are the facts, sweetie. So tell me what to do here. At least gaming school guarantees a dealing job when I graduate. It gives us a way to pay the bills. NO, THEY DO NOT STORE NUCLEAR WASTE ON THE STEPS OF CITY HALL. AND NO, I DON’T CARE WHAT YOU READ. THEY DO NOT STILL TEST HYDROGEN BOMBS RIGHT OUTSIDE CITY LIMITS. Oh, sweetie. SWEETIE. Please. Baby. You are asking the right questions. There's nothing wrong with the way you feel — I feel it, too. It's part of being alive. There's not any grand conspiracy. I mean, yes, but… Oh, baby.”

The conspiracy of human frailty, was the phrase her mother used. And this usually seemed to have an effect on the girl. Like some magic elixir had been released, the tension would break, the two would embrace, the girl letting her mom cradle the sides of her skull, kiss the crag near the top of the back, letting her mother plant another one on her forehead, the girl finally breaking the embrace and holding her mom's hand for a count or so and then getting back to doing the dishes, or taking out the trash, the girl doing her chores and quietly telling herself things would be okay, trying to convince herself. Seriously. Just like she tried when they'd packed up the U-Haul, driven their crap in from Long Beach. Like she tried when her father called and explained that he was going to get married again, but of course he still cared about Mom. When he said that just because his schedule did not let him come down and visit, it didn't mean he didn't love her. Like with each guy her mother dated for longer than a week. Every bleeping time: the inevitable arrived and the girl dutifully stopped working on her latest poem or rant, she put out her cigarette (Death Cloves®, the profits of which went to a foundation dedicated to the abolition of smoking), made sure the ashes were hidden in the window frame, and lit up one of those incense candles endorsed by Amnesty International. She promised whoever was on the phone she'd call right back, muted the idiot box, put the stereo on auto select, saved and closed whatever file was open, undid her door chain, and let the poor schmuck enter. And never ever did she roll her eyes when he took a seat on the corner of her bed: Um, hey, hey there. You know, your mom's a little concerned about your eating habits.

But hanging out in the ice cream truck, see, that didn't take no effort.

Shadows subdivided the van's dented interior. Skunkweed and nicotine melded with the lingering scents of perspiration, urine, and leftover and rancid hamburger meat. From outside, the school bell blared for, like, the ninetieth time. What a school bell was blaring every half hour for on a summer night, who the fuck could say. Whatever. No point cursing it anymore.

“Doctors are fucked,” the girl said. “Medical science is a plot.”

Her words were directed next to her, to some kid whose name she may or may not have known, this lanky mawkish boy wearing an improbable stretch cap of bright green wool. Frail bone structure. Spectacles. A dramatic Roman nose. She wasn't sure, but it might have been the same face as this kid from her advanced-placement English class, this kid who never spoke and carried the same coverless, water-warped paperback wherever he went.

“Telling the truth would cost them customers and that would cost them money.” The girl took a long swig of beer. She was pretty baked, her thoughts vomiting forth, shooting straight from her brain into her mouth.

“Forget their quackery. That shit about a lack of calcium and protein and essential daily vitamins preventing menstrual flow. I missed my last four periods because adolescent witches miss their periods. I'm thin because adolescent witches are thin.