Tales of Misery and Imagination Part 2

"Yet I fear that many of them might turn to the oldest profession if the kootch show were shut down," Tapeworm said, crossing his slender legs and rocking thoughtfully.

"I just don't get it," Comet said, working hard to hold back the tears. "How can these people rob us of our livelihood? And they say they're doing it for our own good? Why don't they just mind their own business? I don't make anybody watch me do my act and I don't wanna be countin' food stamps in the grocery line!" Losing the battle, she sniffled as the first tears spilled over her plump cheeks. "I'm proud that I can pay my own way."

Hesitantly, the Geek shuffled over to the fat lady and put an arm around her.

"I stink some, I'm sorry," he said.

Unconcerned by the funky odor, Comet enfolded the Geek in her plentiful flesh and buried her face in his chest, weeping softly.

Masoncup felt sick. These people never hurt anyone well, Screw Boy was a pain in the a.s.s, but a relatively harmless one and it griped his liver to think that some bunch of self-righteous Defenders of the Downtrodden had seen The Elephant Man a few too many times and felt it was up to them to take the performers away from the cruelty forced upon them by the sideshow life. With the exception of Colonel Tapeworm (who'd been in broadcasting), these folks had worked carnivals their whole lives; they didn't know any other way. It was far more cruel to take them out of their little corner of show business and thrust them into the real world, where they'd only be fat, short, skinny, pathetic.

"We live decent enough," Comet sniffed, as if reading Masoncup's mind. She released her hold on the Geek, who wobbled unsteadily as he was exposed to the air once again. "And there's the travel I never would've seen anyplace but my momma's living room if it weren't for the carnival."

"We ain't exactly seein' the world," Screw Boy spoke into what remained of his gla.s.s of whiskey.

"But we're seein' our part of it," Comet argued. "New Orleans, Memphis h.e.l.l, we even got to meet William Shatner that time in Lexington during the Kentucky Derby, remember?"

MacCorkindale smiled at the memory. "Even as a boy in-a Napoli, I was-a the fan of Captain Kirk and-a hees friend Spock. What a pleasure to shake-a hees hand."

"You big nerd," Screw Boy said.

MacCorkindale's fist waved in the air again. "This ees-a your nerd," he snarled.

"Maestro's threatenin' me, Lester."

"Jesus Christ," Masoncup said, annoyed. "Am I gonna have to separate you two?"

Standing, Masoncup smoothed his electric-blue acetate suit. "It ain't like you've gotta pack your things tonight." The alcohol had cut a numb furrow through his brain and he teetered for a moment before finding his whiskey legs. "Uncle Fatty hasn't made a decision yet one way or the other. Let's just... go on about our lives for the time bein'."

"Easy position to take," Screw Boy said, getting to his feet, "When your job ain't on the line."

Masoncup licked his lips, frowning at the unpleasant taste.

Waddling over to the double-doors, Maestro MacCorkindale swung them wide. The carnival was silent at this hour; the only sound that of the cars speeding past on the highway nearby.

MacCorkindale bowed as the Geek and Colonel Tapeworm left the trailer, saying their good-nights to Comet. The midget knew better than to take his eyes off of Screw Boy, lest he receive a thumping on the noggin; the two merely glared sullenly at one another as Screw Boy made his exit.

MacCorkindale turned, offering a bow to Comet. "Good night-a, most delicious woman," he said, then toddled off down the steps, his head disappearing before he reached the ground. A musical burst of flatulence Speak Softly Love faded into the night as the midget strolled away.

Masoncup rubbed his neck, sighing. Comet was staring at him, her eyes moist and red; unable to meet the stare, his gaze flicked from the floor to her face and back again several times.

"I'm sorry about all this," he finally said, starting for the door.

"I just hope if Uncle Fatty lets us go, he'll at least have the courtesy to do it face-to-face," the fat woman said.

Masoncup paused in the doorway. He stuck his head outside, looking for the others. They had disappeared amongst the tents and other trailers.

He considered the words carefully before speaking. "Uncle Fatty doesn't exist. I mean, he does, but he doesn't. He's a tax dodge." Masoncup watched the swarms of gnats swirling around the exposed light bulbs strung through the carnival grounds, then turned to face Comet. "I'm Uncle Fatty. I own the show."

Comet's expression didn't change, but he could see the hurt in her eyes.

"I guess you're faced with the prospect of some sleepless nights, then," she said.

After a long moment, Masoncup gave her a slight nod. Then he stepped out, shut the double-doors behind him and walked into the Tennessee summer night.

Honestly, I don't know where the h.e.l.l The Apartment of the Last Neanderthal came from, except that I've always been incredibly nervous and uncomfortable around pretty much everyone, which will probably be obvious after you've finished reading the stories in this collection.

I also really love Cheap Trick.

THE APARTMENT OF THE.

LAST NEANDERTHAL.

It was Rosa little Rosa, five years old who said it this time. She's the daughter of the couple that own D'Agostino's, the mom-and-pop grocery store I like. It's the only one left around here. I figure it doesn't have much longer before it's either swallowed up or just plain run out of business by the big chains.

Anyway, Rosa. She can't even p.r.o.nounce the word right, so it came out "Nandythoo" or some G.o.dd.a.m.n thing. She doesn't even know what it means. At first I figured she was aping the other kids, but it was just her by herself in the frozen aisle, so now I'm starting to think she heard it from her parents. Figures. That D'Agostino, he always looks at me funny. Now I don't know how much I like their store.

This name-calling is nothing new I've been hearing it all my life. It's not like I'm the Elephant Man or something, constantly being hounded and tormented, but I hear a lot of it, mostly from kids. Adults just say it with a look either curious, which I don't mind so much, or disgusted, like the sight of me wrecked their appet.i.te. There's also that Is-he-in-a-freak-show glance-and-look-away thing, which is what I mostly get.

I don't look so terrible, really. My face is kind of bony, and I'm short (only about 5-foot-4). It's the brow that gets the most attention, I think, and the way my mouth, my chin, recedes a little. I don't think I look so bad, but I can also see why people say what they say. This Neanderthal business is a recent development, though.

I've been called caveman and Bigfoot and plenty of other names, but a few months back, some kid out of the freaking blue points me out to his buddies as I'm walking back from the Dairy Queen and yells "Neanderthal Man!" He even said it the new way, the way I'd never heard until the last couple years "Neander-tall." He must've seen some show on the Discovery Channel is all I can figure. But it sticks with me the way the other names don't not because it stings any worse, but because it became Number One With A Bullet on the name-calling Top Ten.

Pretty soon, all the kids in the neighborhood were calling me Neanderthal Man or Neanderthal Jim, if they knew my name, and it was really eating me up. I don't want to give the wrong impression, like I'm Mr. Social Interaction or something. I tend to stick to myself. I don't much leave my apartment other than to go to work and the grocery store. I like to rent movies now and then, so I do that, but I go when the video store isn't too busy. It's the looks I get, you know? The looks from adults are a h.e.l.l of a lot worse than the names kids call me. I mean, they're just being kids.

But the way this Neanderthal thing stuck, what with all the kids picking it up (and I live near a d.a.m.n elementary school, so there's a plentiful supply of children) had me balled-up something fierce. There were times whole days, even when I couldn't get it off my mind no matter how hard I tried. So when Rosa chirped it at me at D'Agostino's, I was already about two-thirds of the way around the bend. Why the h.e.l.l was it the name that stuck when the others all faded like forgotten TV shows?

I'm online, and I usually just visit chat rooms and read about upcoming movies, but I decided it was time to put the Internet to some real use. I went to Yahoo! and typed in "Neanderthal." I spent hours researching the subject. What I found out is that the first kid that one outside the Dairy Queen almost nailed it. It's subtle, I think, not like I'm a full-on throwback, but as I poked around more, I started to think maybe it's not so impossible. My parents don't show any signs of it (my dad looks like a G.o.dd.a.m.n movie star, for Christ's sake, and I still kind of hate him in a way), but what if it was some genetic thing, a race-memory or something?

See, what a lot of people don't know, what those kids yelling it at me from the schoolyard and laughing like monkeys in the trees don't know, is that some scientists now think that Neanderthal Man was one smart cookie. That they were actually smarter than the Cro-Magnons who either f.u.c.ked or slaughtered them out of existence as they swept across Europe. So I started thinking: what if these technology-thieving Cro-Magnon sonsab.i.t.c.hes banged my great-great-great-great-great-great-etc.-etc. grandmother way the h.e.l.l back, and for some reason this Neanderthal gene just sat around in my family's bloodline while they got closer and closer to producing my James Dean-looking dad, who then pops a throwback load into my mom's womb, creating what for him must be the ultimate disappointment? I realize how this sounds, but the more I thought about it, the more it gave me something to, I don't know, almost feel good about.

As I did more research, I became more convinced that there was something to this theory. I mean, what do I know, right? but it seemed feasible. Stranger things, as they say. It was reaching the point where I couldn't sleep nights, the stuff that was going on in my head. Finally, I called the anthropology department at the University. The first guy I talked to scientist-type just laughed like I was some frat boy making a prank call, but the second fellow, Westin, his name was, agreed to meet with me.

I don't have to tell you I was more than a little nervous about going to the campus. The place is crawling with beautiful girls and those good-looking college-boy types, and I didn't know if I had it in me. I felt sick to my stomach, but I made myself go. Problem is, it's really hard to find your way around that place, so I got lost. The looks I was getting were killing me, and the girls were so pretty. I was afraid to ask for directions and at one point I almost ran, just to get the h.e.l.l out of there and not be looked at like that anymore. Eventually, I stumbled across the right building, but I was late when I made it to Professor Westin's office and he was real bent about it.

"I do have work, you realize," Westin sniffed. He sounded just like a professor, too. Intellectual. And he had these crazy-intelligent eyes, like he was so smart it had knocked something off-kilter in his brain. I felt bad for being late, but once Westin got a load of my appearance, I could see that he was interested enough. He fell into the "curious" category, but in a real weird way, like a scientist in some old monster movie when the hero brings him a giant ant leg or something. I apologized to him, explaining how hard it was for a guy to find his d.a.m.n way around that campus. "Nyess, I suppose so," he muttered. Nyess, just like that.

He suggested that we get down to business, so I laid my whole theory out for him, glossing over certain parts (you don't want to tell a guy you've just met about how you get teased all the time; it makes you sound weak). He seemed impressed by the research I'd done, especially that I knew some of the most recent information.

"Well," he sighed, "you understand it's very unlikely." I swear, the old guy was totally saying one thing and doing another, because you know what Westin did next? Pulled a set of calipers from a cabinet and went to work measuring my skull, hmming and tsking the whole time. It made me feel a way I never had before, a little like a circus freak, yeah, but more like a find.

Westin poked and prodded and hmmed some more. I got the feeling that he was trying to hide something, like he was working real hard to contain his excitement. I knew I was on the right track when, after he finished going over my skull, he stood back and stared at me like I was something good to eat. "I suppose I could take a blood sample," he said after gawking for a good long time.

I put the kibosh on that. I could see Westin was upset he tried to hide it, but he went on about DNA and proving the link and a bunch of other mumbo-jumbo but as he yammered on and on, his voice just became a drone. I faded into my own thoughts, and I realized that maybe I didn't want to know for sure. Like, this way there was some question, and as long as that was the case... well, I wasn't just an ugly, unfortunate b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

The way Westin followed me out of his office and watched me walk down the hall further convinced me I was onto something, and that I had made the right decision by refusing the blood test. I could always do it later, anyway. Once I left his building, I took off across campus, but d.a.m.ned if I didn't get lost again. It took me almost a half-hour to find my car, which made me late for work.

I'd never been late before in the four years that I'd had the job, so my boss was cool about it. I work as a cook at Pizza Hut, and it's a pretty decent job, if you want to know. I like that I provide something for people by feeding them dinner, and most of the time the delivery guys share their tips with me, so I bring home good money. The best part is, even though we're supposed to report the tips, I just lie and make up a number, like if I make twenty bucks in tips, I report maybe nine dollars. I learned this from Pete, one of the drivers. I actually applied to be a driver, but the manager convinced me to be a cook instead. I know it was because of my appearance he was afraid I'd put people off their pizza but at least he was nice about it, and I honestly think I'm happier as a cook. I can't imagine having to face all those different people out on deliveries. The drivers kid me sometimes, good-naturedly calling me Kong and stuff like that, but they're all pretty friendly guys.

A couple weeks earlier I used some of my tip money, which I normally save, to buy a ticket to see Cheap Trick. They were playing at a huge country-western bar here in town. I never saw them in their heyday, but I love their music and jumped at the chance when I heard about the show. I had it's called buyer's remorse, I think, real bad after I bought the ticket, though. I mean, what with the way I don't like to go out much, and here I'd bought this ticket for what would no doubt be a big show, with a huge crowd. In fact, I had just about made up my mind to skip the concert and was feeling pretty depressed about it, but after that whole deal with Professor Westin, I started thinking it might not be such a bad idea. I owed myself something special, maybe.

The night of the show, a wave of nausea rolled over me as I was getting ready and I almost chickened out. It took a lot, but I fought the queasiness down and forced myself to get in the car. I had swapped s.h.i.+fts with another one of the cooks so I could go, and I was d.a.m.ned if I was gonna wind up sitting at home.

The parking lot at Reggie's Midnight Round-Up looked like something from a Burt Reynolds movie crammed from one end to the other with seventies Firebirds and Trans Ams. I found a s.p.a.ce and pulled in, then after giving myself a little pep talk, I went inside.

Holy s.h.i.+t, that's all I can say. I mean, where do you go to buy Lynyrd Skynyrd t-s.h.i.+rts nowadays? The entire bar was full of guys with mullets and those half-a.s.sed mustaches that they grew as soon as their faces sprouted the slightest bit of peach fuzz, so they never managed to attain real mustache status. The women, though that was the painful thing. They all had the sad look people get when the best part of their lives namely high school is dead and gone and they never managed to connect with anything afterwards. It really broke my heart, in a way, because these were the girls who were popular when I was in school so pretty and so full of promise, and now they all looked so broken.

The opening act a local blues-rock band was already on stage. Feeling pretty uncomfortable around all those people, I made a bee-line for the bar and ordered a beer (the bartender stared at me the whole time), then found a dark corner to stand in while I waited for Cheap Trick to take the stage. I hoped the beer would calm my nerves some, but it wasn't working. Staring into the crowd (which was growing bigger and bigger), I began to think I had made a mistake. When the opening band finished their set, I really started to feel panicky. I couldn't see the stage very well from where I was, and the thought of moving closer made my stomach do the shuck-and-jive.

I drank the beer too fast and the effects were swirling my unease like thick soup by the time Rick Nielsen came charging out on stage. I couldn't see much more than the top of his head (and his trademark little cap) from where I was, but I could tell he was capering around just like he did in the old days, banging out "h.e.l.lo There" from In Color. The other guys in the band followed right behind him, but I couldn't see a d.a.m.n thing.

I had to do it. I paid for this I paid for this and I deserved it. There were so many people in that room, though, and the way they all looked reminded me so much of the people I had gone to school with. My lungs were tightening in my chest. Collapsing, maybe. I could barely breathe. I thought about the tribe and how they must've felt as they were pushed across Europe, a little more of their existence slipping away each day.

Then I left my corner. I almost stumbled, I was so scared, but I pushed my way into the crowd and started toward the stage. I felt hot, sluggish. I tried to stay focused on the band Rick Nielsen flinging guitar picks into the screaming crowd, and how Robin Zander and Tom Petersson both looked a little older (but I swear Bun E. Carlos didn't look the slightest bit different) but the looks I was getting, I could feel them even if I kept my eyes somewhere else. People would stop dancing or cheering and just glare at me, like I was a t.u.r.d somebody had dropped into the middle of the room. And there were so d.a.m.n many of them, all thinking the same thing freak, ugly, creep it was scrawled across every face. But I was getting closer to the stage now, and the music and the guys in the band were starting to make me feel all jacked-up, like I was holding onto the battery cables from a motorcycle while somebody worked the kick-starter.

I was almost there when some guy backed into me, causing me to spill what was left of my beer. He turned around, face full of p.i.s.s, and I real quick tried to apologize even though it was his fault. He had the standard-issue mullet and AC/DC t-s.h.i.+rt with mirrored aviator shades hanging from the collar, and there were a lot of years of post-high school drinking engraved in his face. I wish you could've seen his expression when he got a good look at me. The anger in his beer-glazed eyes turned to vicious glee, the look school bullies get when they realize they've cornered somebody weaker than them.

"Hey ugly," he sneered, "why don't you watch where you're going?"

There was only a flash of the hurt that usually goes along with somebody saying s.h.i.+t like that to me. And as the hurt moved on, I stood there and I thought why? I've never called anyone names or done anything cruel to anyone even when I might've felt like it, real bad. All I wanted to do was to push this G.o.dd.a.m.n Cro-Magnon's face in, and I'm strong enough to do it, too. But instead I just thought about my dad and what he had carried around inside him, what our whole family had carried for so long, and how it had wound up in me, and I started laughing. I don't know where it came from, but I just laughed, real soft, and I stared at this guy like he was the ugliest son of a b.i.t.c.h I'd ever laid eyes on, and at that moment he really was. After a few seconds, the guy walked away, still trying to put off some tough-guy vibe but really just looking confused, and I went back to watching the band. Robin Zander was singing "Dream Police" and it was the coolest thing I'd ever heard and all of a sudden I didn't care anymore about all the people sneaking looks at me or calling me names or how hard it was to get out of bed every morning. I stayed for the whole show, even the encores.

When I got home, I put the guitar pick Rick Nielson had thrown to me on my bookshelves next to the autographed photo of Raquel Welch that I bought on eBay. My ears were ringing like crazy from the loud music. I poured myself a gla.s.s of Pepsi and took a seat on my couch, grabbing up the TV remote. A blood test, Westin wanted to give me. That was good. That was a good thing. It meant something.

I sat there watching The Bob Newhart Show and feeling just like a G.o.dd.a.m.ned unicorn.

The only thing I'll say about Six Girls and a Dozen Donuts is that it's based on an actual event that took place when I was 14 - only I didn't get into that car.

I often suspect I'd be a different man today if I had.

SIX GIRLS AND A DOZEN DONUTS.

All things considered, Robbie felt that making it through the day suffering only the indignation of having his face ground into the track was some kind of improvement. The last time Mike s.h.i.+plet had acted on his distaste for Robbie, he had been sent home early, his pants reeking of formaldehyde and fetal pig (the smell never came out of those jeans, either). Today he was sporting a sc.r.a.pe on his left cheek, but that wasn't so bad; in a way, he even liked it it made him look as if he'd been in a fight instead of simply crushed to the ground without a struggle.

Like a p.u.s.s.y, Robbie thought.

He was fifteen and unfortunate in that average-adolescent manner: the kind of kid that, depending on your particular bent, you either wanted to beat up or cling to in a desperate attempt to protect from all the evil s.h.i.+t you knew was going to come his way. Robbie's s.h.a.ggy hair appeared to have been rubbed with ham despite his regular bathing schedule, and his clothes... well, it's kind to say they didn't suit him. Thin like a whippet, everything hung on his body like toilet paper from a vandalized tree.

He tried to put the beating (although calling it that was to give it too much credit) out of his mind, think about something cool instead. Like the Spider-Man comic he had bought on Sat.u.r.day. It was number 29; officially the oldest in his collection, and in pretty good shape. When he got home, he thought he might sort all the different t.i.tles into separate stacks. They made boxes specifically for storing comics, but Robbie didn't care for them even though he knew it was the best method; he liked to see his comics, the garish colors and wild artwork spread out for easy enjoyment. Why spend all that allowance money for something you're just going to shove into a box?

It wasn't working, this line of thought. His big plans for his comic collection only seemed to prove what an incredible geek he was. His interests weren't entirely nerdy: he liked cars, old muscle-cars, and that was a cool-guy thing (although he had yet to learn how to drive, which took the edge off the coolness value somewhat). And of course he liked girls, but his inability to mutter more than a choked "H'lo" when confronted with one made them a subject he'd rather not think about at the moment.

An electric eye set off a chime as Robbie entered the Circle K. The meaty clerk glanced away from restocking the cigarette rack, noted that the intruding customer was a teenager, and put the task aside to glare at Robbie as if daring him to shoplift. Robbie shot a guilty look towards the clerk, inadvertently deepening the man's suspicions. He had never stolen anything in his life, but if Robbie knew someone was expecting it from him, he felt as if his pockets were already overflowing with contraband candy bars. He tried to give the clerk a little smile, but nervousness and guilt made it more of a sneer. The clerk, his face glistening from the exertion of filing packages of cigarettes in the appropriate slots, took a step to the left in order to get a better view of Robbie.

Gingerly, Robbie picked out a U-No bar. Holding it in front of himself as if it were a live hand grenade, he approached the counter and set it down. The clerk wordlessly rang it up and waited for Robbie to walk out before going back to his work.

Robbie munched his candy bar and contemplated the situation. He had no idea how to escape this nightmare of adolescent insecurity (not that he thought about it in those terms he just knew that as far back as he could remember, he had simply been terrified of everyone). The adults he knew all seemed to have their s.h.i.+t together pretty well, and even if that weren't the case, they at least weren't bothered by appearing uncool. With adulthood, Robbie felt, came some semblance of emotional stability (and the wherewithal to own a '73 Dodge Challenger); it was just a matter of surviving that long.

The real mystery to Robbie was the way some kids already existed on the coolness plane. Not Mike s.h.i.+plet; he was just an a.s.shole. But, say, Owen Weaver. Owen reminded Robbie of Dave Grohl from Foo Fighters: his hair was messy, but in a funky way instead of just lame; his clothes normal, yet a guy like Robbie would look like he was trying too hard if he wore them. Owen was always nice, too, even to Robbie and he didn't care if Mike and the a.s.sholes saw him doing it. And of course the girls just ate him up, hanging on him at lunch, slipping him notes in every cla.s.s, hungry just to be in his...o...b..t. But more than anything, the coolest thing about Owen was his lack of att.i.tude in the face of his own aplomb, as if he knew that something inside him was wired differently, and knowing was enough. Owen was the sort of person Robbie imagined would wind up being successful and loved by millions without ever breaking a sweat.

Robbie turned the corner onto his street, wadding up the U-No wrapper and stuffing it in his pocket. He was just about three houses down from his own when the car pulled up alongside him.

"You wanna riiide?" the girl in the pa.s.senger seat purred, her voice rising to set the hook.

Robbie came to a stop, his mouth open, waiting for something to tumble out. At the curb was a dark blue '67 Pontiac Catalina not a muscle-car, but capable of being transformed with a little effort. Some body damage on the right rear quarter-panel had been repaired with a haphazard smear of Bondo and paint a shade darker, like makeup on an angry pimple. Two girls grinned out at him from the back seat, a third crammed in next to them but unable to squeeze over to the window. Up front, the girl who had spoken to him had her elbows propped in the open window, her head resting on her arms. Another girl was nestled between her and the driver. They all looked to be sixteen or seventeen, but he didn't recognize any of them from school.

"We'll take you home," the girl offered again, smiling around a voice like chocolate syrup. Her black hair was pulled into twin pigtails atop her head and her eyes were ringed with dark makeup that made them seem preternaturally large, lemur eyes in a pretty girl's face. She scared the h.e.l.l out of Robbie, but in a way that made him feel like running around in circles and kicking tufts of gra.s.s out of the Fraziers' lawn.

Robbie silently fumed. They couldn't have shown up two blocks back, could they? He was twenty yards away from his d.a.m.n house! He'd look like a total loser if he jumped in, rode for two seconds, thanked the nice girls, and then ran inside to sort through his Spider-Man comics.

"Okay," Robbie blurted.

The scary girl let out a joyous yelp that made Robbie jump. The back door of the car was flung open. "C'mon," the girl seated there insisted. Nervously, he started to slide in next to her. "Uh-uh the middle," she said, not making a move to get out and let him in. Finally realizing what she had in mind, he timidly crawled over her and burrowed his scrawny rear end into the tiny s.p.a.ce the girls had made for him.

Robbie glanced around the vehicle in wonder. This was better than anything he had ever imagined while lying in bed with the lights off and a sneaker crammed under the door. He would've been overjoyed to ride in a car with any one of these girls, and here he was squeezed in with six of them, the luckiest Vienna Sausage on the planet. The smell alone clean, sweet, thick, a mix of mysterious soaps and undreamed-of musks was so delicious it made him woozy. He let out a single breathy laugh, immediately embarra.s.sed by the half-witted sound of it.

"How far you going, cowboy?" the girl at the wheel asked.

Think fast, r.e.t.a.r.d, Robbie fretted. "...Um, it's a couple miles away my house, I mean," he gibbered. "I live by the golf course."

"You're on," she said, stepping on the gas.

As the car pulled away from the curb, Robbie settled back in the seat, enjoying the crawly tingle of physical contact between himself and the girls on either side. The one closest on his left was nearly as scary as the girl riding shotgun; her chunky dark hair tinged with red as if streaked with blood, elaborate swirls of liner spilling from the corners of each eye, and purplish lipstick that made her mouth look like a swollen-but-fascinating bruise. The others were intimidating only in that they were cute girls, but the one who had let him in was most likely to haunt his masturbatory fantasies; her lazy eye and slightly protruding teeth a.s.sured that. In Robbie's book, these weren't defects but delights, blessings that turned a merely good-looking girl into a stunner.

"I'm Panda," she said, fixing him with one eye.

Well, that wrecked it. Panda? "Robbie." He stuck out a hand.

Panda snickered as they shook. "You got in a car with six strange girls, Robbie. You're a brave man."

Ridiculously, he blushed a little. "n.o.body's ever accused me of that," he said, pleased. Maybe she was okay despite the goofy name.

"I'm Rox," the driver said. "You go to Weldon?"

"Yeah." Robbie prayed she wouldn't ask what year he was.

"And you live by the golf course? That's a long walk," Rox said. "You're lucky Lupe wanted to give you a ride." The scary girl in the front seat turned to bare her teeth at him in a chimp-like manner. Suddenly, Robbie was intensely afraid that they were onto his ruse. His grip tightened on the schoolbooks he held in his lap.

"Lupe likes the strays," the equally-scary girl on his left snorted.

"Shut up, Trouble," Lupe said, making as if to slap the other girl.

Jesus, Robbie thought. Panda, Rox, Lupe, Trouble please G.o.d, let the other two be Susie and Tammy.

"You in a hurry to get home?" Rox asked, wheeling the car around a corner and onto Willard Avenue.

Yes, he almost said. Yes, I need to get home and play with my comic books. "Whatta you got in mind?" he said, amazed by the sound of his own voice.

"Just screwin' around," she said.