Charles Bock - Beautiful Children

As urban legends went, it wasn't particularly illuminating, out of the ordinary, harrowing, or even gory. When you got down to it, the story wasn't even about running away. But it cast a different pallor on traits that any parent recognized as defining the teen years — self-absorption, feelings of being unjustly persecuted when you did not get what you wanted, the twisted logic, the self-serving conclusions, the love of melodrama. Lorraine saw these traits in other stories, too, echoing and reappearing often enough to vaguely affect what sense she had of not only her child's mind-set, but also the mind-set of the reality in which he had placed himself.

And nobody could even say how many kids were out there.

So how were they going to find Newell?

3.10

Propped up against the base of the casino wall like an abandoned doll, the body was bulky in places, but still frail enough to look as if it might be carried along by a good wind. Electricity glossed over its mess of hair — kinked and matted strands of indistinct, artificial colors, clumped in all directions. Legs and shredded leggings were extended outward on a crushed cardboard box, perhaps a series of them.

Through the spaces between the people ahead of him, Kenny could see that it was hugely pregnant, stretching out and sticking out of the bottom of her tank top, her belly this mass of flesh, rubbery in appearance, the color of uncooked bird. Approaching now, maneuvering through the pedestrians, heading toward her side of the sidewalk, Kenny could see where the left side of her neck was coated with some kind of greenish slime.

Her arms reached and extended upward. Fingers danced, squalid with steel skulls and python rings. “Spare some change for some ketamine,” she said. “Won't you help for some low-grade horse tranquilizer?”

And there was another ragged body. On the other side of her, he realized now. Folded up as if it were inside a small box, head in its hands, knees reaching toward its chest, heavy black clothing dripping from its spindly limbs, he — this one seemed to be a he — could have been an extra from some postapocalyptic movie, one of the decomposing undead types that come on camera to show how bad things are after the bomb. Resting against his shins was a piece of torn cardboard, its face scribbled with black marker:

I am a good person in a bad situation

Trying 2 get home 2 mom

Please help me

$30 4 a room 2nite

Now the corpse became animated, coming alive in the manner of a haunted house mechanism that pops up as children approach. A high-pitched and scornful voice screamed: “Please, won't you help the children?”

The pregnant girl looked at him, shook her head.

“Why you always gotta be like that, Lestat?”

Kenny could not take his eyes off them, slowing and stopping, watching the undead skeleton cackle at the pregnant girl and bare what looked to be fangs; the pregnant girl responding as if she had seen this show countless times, scratching at her distended belly. He, Kenny, was used to seeing people sleeping on park benches, homeless panhandlers, and the like. You hardly went a day in this town without seeing somebody by a freeway on-ramp, holding up a sign asking for a ride somewhere. But these two looked to be in his age range, and this was shocking, even as it sucked Kenny in further. For he saw that they were not alone.

A few yards beyond the skeleton, a large delinquent was occupying himself with a book of matches, lighting and flicking one after another at pedestrians, who were going out of their way to give him a wide berth. In fact, punkers were strewn all over the sidewalk, six, eight — Kenny tried to take in the sight of all of them without looking like he was looking at them. Their presence had him alert, defensive, but more than this, too. He began searching around in his pocket, his finger poking cleanly through a hole in the soft white lining.

“Need something there, slick?” she asked.

“Oh.” Kenny started feeling around in his other pocket. “I just had it.”

Preggers did not acknowledge the comment, but looked beyond him, out and down the length of the Strip. Her left hand stayed on the length of a mess of brown and gray and black fur that was curled into her side; Kenny hadn't noticed it before. This mangy, wolfish thing. Its head was nuzzled into the girl's exposed hipbone, at rest where the waist of her beaten shorts had been rolled up to form a makeshift belt. The girl stroked down the length of its back. Kenny checked his back pocket.

“DUDE.”

The familiar voice, the scuffling of a compact and quickly approaching weight. “What the fuck's wrong with—”

A lack of breath ended Newell's sentence. Cradling the fun cup as if he were holding a baby to his chest, he sucked in a gust of wind, and spat onto the sidewalk. He bent over, the top of his head a bright red crayon that had been used to the point of dullness. A line of spittle hung from his hidden face, and he pulled at the end of his shorts, then reached to his stomach. When he came upright, his face was red and shimmering, and watching his struggle, Kenny immediately felt horrible about losing his temper, about having made his friend play catch-up. He had an impulse to wrap the boy in his arms.

“Dude, what are you doing? You ditching me or what?”

“I didn't— I wasn't…I told you to stop it.”

“That's a funny way of not ditching someone.”

“I got mad, Newell. When someone says — I mean — Why can't you just stop ?”

“OKAY, Dad. Can I have my allowance now?”

Kenny didn't understand the last part, but figured it was some sort of slam or joke. He didn't have a response, and anyway, Newell was in the process of turning away from him, realizing they were not alone. “Whoa,” the boy said, and went quiet, inspecting the scene. “Total anarchy, man.” He took a step toward the filthy pair on the cardboard and removed a coin from his fun cup. “Want a nickel?” he asked, tossing the coin straight in the air. As it came down, his fist flashed, grabbing.

“Newell.”

“Just joking.” He released the nickel down into a small plastic cup, at rest on the edge of the pregnant woman's raft. “Geez.”

“He didn't mean anything,” Kenny told them.

“Like you know what I mean.” As if mocking Kenny, Newell followed up with more dropped nickels.

“I hate taking baths, too,” he volunteered. “Baths suck.”

Preggers remained nonplussed, and retrieved a plastic bottle from the opened maw of her backpack. The skeleton raised his head, ignoring Newell as well, instead watching his companion unscrew the cap. Lestat's eyes narrowed at the sight of Preggers swigging, the green liquid sloshing inside transparent plastic.

“Once I didn't bathe for like a week,” Newell said. “I got sent home from school. It was pretty sweet.”

The skeleton's eyes shifted toward Newell. Tired, deeply set inside carved sockets, they were lined with red, but still lively. Calculating. As if sizing up what was in front of him, he said, “What's your name, li'l man?”

“Newell.”

An oblique cough. A lick of chapped, blackened lips. “How do ya like that? Newell, is it?”

“That's my name, don't wear it out.”

“Maybe we should—” Kenny said.

“Well, Newell, would you believe I got your name branded right here on my body.”

“No way. ”

“I swear.”

“Nuh-uh.”

A sickly smile, dead and yellowing teeth. “Bet on it?”

It was a dare as much as a proposition, with its own logic, some sort of hidden answer, Kenny could see that much. Exactly the kind of thing that made him nervous. He called out his friend's name. Newell stayed in place.