Charles Bock - Beautiful Children

But today it had been different, Kenny had shown his drawings, and the comic book guy had liked them. But then Newell's mom had forced him to leave before the good stuff happened. Newell always got shafted. If he wanted a measly twenty bucks Newell had to listen to his dad's boring stories; he had to be back home by ten o'clock on what was supposed to be the funnest night of the week, only even when Newell stayed out way past his curfew, the night wasn't so great. Gambling didn't turn out to be such a big deal, and he ended up chased out of the casino, and the vampire guy had tricked him on that bet, and those homeless pieces of shit had stolen his phone. Newell couldn't even grab candy from a 7-Eleven without having a midget threaten him. Every shell Newell insisted the marble was under was empty, every turn he made led to a dead end. Time after time Newell was let down, deceived, corrected, Newell was swindled, scolded, taken for a ride. All the times Newell's mom had bugged and warned Newell, all the times she had worried that something was wrong with Kenny, and it turns out she was right, Newell was wrong. Wrong for all the times he had defended his friend. Wrong for getting touched in a bad place. Wrong for how the touch made him feel.

Throughout the FBImobile the rattle and grind of the working engine was the only audible sound. The car stopped at a red light.

6.6

Then an ocean. Cascading breaks. Froth lapping at her arms and legs. Half-submerged, the girl with the shaved head floated, supported by tides, rocking in their swell and ebb, the waves caressing and enveloping: purple the color of blood before it hit the atmosphere, crimson the color of blood in broad daylight. The lull in her ears was calming, and now was joined: by an amplifier fizzing in the not too distance, the incremental sounds of a guitar being tuned. Then the indistinct noise of multiple conversations, a small crowd buzzing from somewhere beyond the girl's reach. Now there were more voices, closer to her, over her, someone expressing joy that the opening acts must have run late. She heard heavy clomping sounds and when the girl opened her eyes, she saw lumpish forms jumping out of the ice cream truck, bodies abandoning the vehicle before it had lurched and stopped. For a few bizarre seconds the girl did not understand how a truck could be in the middle of the ocean. She could not determine whether her eyes were playing tricks on her, if her senses were off track, or what. She started to rise and even this was curious because she definitely was in the breadth of something warm, the hold of something strong, which suggested a body of water — only this thing wasn't wet, but solid, pulling on her arm, though gently. The girl recognized the voice.

“Let them go,” Ponyboy said.

She gave herself to his arms and he brought her toward his musky chest and his hand was alive on her knee once more. The girl opened her mouth and pressed it to his, and each following sensation was a miracle and a revelation, the prayer and its answer. They slipped down onto the floor and the rush made her head spin, and when the girl closed her eyes the ocean returned and spun around inside her eyelids, and when she opened her eyes, the waves receded and the world returned, but spinning at an even faster pace. Shag follicles and the crumbs of all kinds of snack foods dug into her back and the girl was aware of the scratching sensations, but felt removed from their irritation. She was lucid enough, barely, to know she was drifting between hallucinations and lucidity, but not together to the extent where she could differentiate between what was real and what was imagined. The associative leaps blurred: the girl was on the cordless with Francesca, complaining that her mom could not seem to grasp the concept that a dress wasn't old, it was vintage; she felt her skirt bunching up, warm air around her hips. There was an instant when a hand came to rest on the outer lining of her panties and there was the eternal second when the girl decided to let it linger on the elastic band.

Drool had accumulated in the corner of her mouth but she was too disassociated from her body to do anything about it. She was barely able to raise her head from the carpet. The absence of all other sound in the truck sounded very much like joy and she marshaled all of her strength to experience the sensation of that hand and she was eight years old and had straight golden tresses down to the middle of her back and was dressed up like a cheerleader for Halloween. The boats were lined up and sitting quietly in the boat basin and the girl smelled the muskiness and salt in the air and the ocean washed up onto the shore and her mom told her not to think of dinner as leftovers but as vintage casserole. The girl turned the stereo up and juggled the cordless and said, I'm such a martyr I should get my palms pierced.

Was she swapping spit with Ponyboy or was she flashing back to kissing Ponyboy, or was the whole night a hallucination? How long had passed between that moment and this one, between that first hallucinated kiss and the hallucination of her confusion?

The back of his hand traced lightly over her mons.

This, her last sensation.

6.7

“How do I get back to your house again?”

Newell stiffened in response to the question; he remained covered in shadows, kept looking out the window.

Kenny's hand left the steering wheel; he wearily rubbed his eyes. “I can take Maryland Parkway, right? That'll cross with Sahara.”

Newell snorted, as if he could not believe what he'd heard. For the first time in a while, he turned and fixed a hard look at Kenny. “This is bullshit.”

“We've had enough fun tonight, don't you think?”

“Yeah. You had fun.”

“I'm trying to talk to you here.”

Newell answered over Kenny, drowning his words: “Yeah, you try all your fag bullshit on me. You get all oh, you do something cuz you just feel like doing it .” The boy's voice turned mocking now, vicious: “That don't mean you know how it's gonna come out—”

“Great. Have another tantrum, Newell. Make sure everyone's kissing your selfish little ass.”

“BULLSHIT—”

“Really cool there, dude .”

Newell's eyes bulged, hatred consuming his ability to think, his ability to speak, his stare burning. “Fuck you, Kenny,” he said.

“Yeah, fuck you, too.”

“I know you want to. We both know you want to.”

Kenny pushed against the steering wheel, releasing and opening his hands. “I was trying to talk to you. Can't you hold on with your little spoiled routine just for five seconds?” Kenny's voice wavered, but he controlled it, and released each word with an icy calmness. “Be a fucking human being for five seconds, okay?” His hands closed around the wheel once more. He took three hard breaths now, leaving his chest hollow. “I said I was sorry, Newell. I am sorry. I didn't mean… I didn't mean to—”

“So it's my fault !”

Kenny bit his lip. “It was just a couple of seconds. I couldn't…” His next words, help and myself, twisted, fading before they could form. There was silence, the low constant rattle of the FBImobile, the darkness shifting to cover Kenny, Newell, the seats they sat on, the trash around them. The sound of a gunned engine rose from the opposite side of the street, where a tricked-out flatbed was waiting for the light to change.

As if released from a straitjacket, Newell suddenly jerked back against the bucket seat. He moved the canister to his side and crossed his arms. He looked past Kenny now, into the intersection, and Kenny did the same, the pair of them staring anywhere but at each other, the light remaining red.

“The longest light ever,” Kenny said.