It was a while before they cleaned out Marybeth's locker. In the first few days after That Night, nobody even thought of it. Too busy hugging and crying. And then there were funerals, and the mayor made a speech about how their fair city would never again be compromised by such a threat. It was a town, and everyone knew it was a town, but they all agreed that the mayor's words had been very stirring. Casey's mom bought a big red, white and blue ribbon rosette and wore it on her lapel.
Later, there were the not-funerals. Memorials. The photocopied fliers with holiday snaps and 'have you seen this man?' headlines turned yellow and crinkled up at the corners and fell off the phone poles.
Eventually, though, somebody remembered the locker. Delilah would always say that it was Zeke, but Zeke said that it was Delilah, and everyone else was just terrified that it hadn't been them. That it had been so easy to forget such a huge potential threat.
So one day they hung back after class, and Stokes said 'hey, the gang's all here' in her old sharp clever voice, and they all grinned because it was kinda cool to be back doing stuff like this again. Normal life wasn't nearly rush-inducing enough for them anymore.
Stan and Zeke used a crowbar to pry the door open while the girls kept watch, but even the teachers had gone home and there was nobody in the hallways but them.
"We few, we happy few..." Delilah muttered. "You guys got it yet?"
"Yeah, almost," Stan answered. "Wait." The hinges made a high, thin screaming sound. "Okay, done."
"Careful," warned Casey, as if they needed reminding. "They can lie dormant."
"Thanks, Captain Exposition," Stokes said. "We wouldn't have thought of that."
"Fuck you, preppie." Casey's retort had no sting to it - couldn't, when his mother had ironed his goddamned jeans that morning.
They'd all done it, in their own ways: Zeke by joining the team, Stan by getting average grades and playing no sport. The girls by being fresh-faced, neither glittering nor harlequin-dark. Casey with a little less obvious cleverness, a little more evident confidence.
Blended into the crowd. Not outsiders, not stars. Just faces, easy to forget. Nobody would ever think twice about them or suspect them of rebellion. Covert ops.
Marybeth's locker had almost nothing in it. A notebook, unwritten-in. A walkman with a copy of Lisa Loeb's first album in it but no batteries. Two light blue hair elastics and a plastic comb with some water-pale strands still looped through the teeth. Some pennies and a cobweb in the lower lefthand corner.
"Guess it really is over," Stokes said quietly.
They all knew that she was wrong. It would never be over, for them.
zeke has to drive over to Sullivan because the pet shop in Herrington doesn't have any white mice, just some wan-looking goldfish floating through the murky water with unenthusiatic wiggles. all the water in herrington is murky, and in summer it give the humid air a smeared, blurry density that hurts his eyes to drive through.
this time he drives with the window open, forearm resting on the brilliant shine of the chrome trim, cigarette shrinking in the hot wind. the air clears five miles out of town, the horizon on all sides becomes crisp, golden wheat fields and blue blue sky, liquid black highway.
the pet store in Sullivan is bigger, cool and almost damp inside with painted concrete floor and the musty smell of dog food. the mice dart around a large, thick-glassed enclosure, sharp movements amidst yellow straw, and zeke leans over with hands in his pockets to peer into it at ground-level.
the shoebox scuttles and scratches in the passenger seat on the way home, and zeke glances at it every so often on the long, straight stretches of road, tricked by suprise into smirking at the tiny pink nose that appears at the pencil-punched holes in the lid every so often.
when he gets into his garage he tips the box into the old bird cage he's found for the occassion, and watches as the small ball of white fur with whiskers and ruby eyes picks itself up and tiptoes around the base of the cage, head bobbing as it sniffs its way around.
zeke grins despite himself. "hey, buddy," he says at length, his voice quiet but solid in the empty silence of the crowded garage. "what's your name, huh?" he pokes a finger through the thin bars of the cage, wiggles it.
the mouse creeps closer, sniffs, takes a bite. "ahh, jesus, you fucking cunt!" zeke yells, whipping his hand back and shaking it violently. "bastard," he says at length with an air of almost-disbelief, moving back to the cage and peering in again. he laughs. "you little shit."
Casey was never popular, but he was happy enough in the way kids can be for no real reason. He had an ant farm that was the envy of every other kid in his grade. His favourite toy was his erector set, which meant that at seven years old he was unable to tell anyone what his favourite toy was. Not only was he babyish, but he said words that sounded rude without doing it to be badass. Words like that were only cool if you said them and knew that you were being bad.
Casey didn't think even the really gross words were all that impressive. A bastard was just someone whose mom and dad hadn't gotten married. A bitch was a girl dog, like Minnie who he'd had when he was little and who had gotten sick and gone to live on a farm in the country. Shit was just a different word for poop, and fuck was something that had something to do with birds and bees and people wanting to get married, or something. Except sometimes his dad was a fucking bastard!, when Mom had had a couple of drinks with dinner, and if fucking was to do with getting married and a bastard was to do with not getting married then it was all a bit too dumb and weird for Casey to bother with.
But even when Mom and Dad were fighting a lot, things were okay. He had a crush on his science teacher, who knew how to make two different coloured liquids make smoke, which was the coolest thing Casey had ever seen. He loved smart people, people who could do stuff nobody else knew about. He made passes at all the girls who wore glasses.
He watched movies about ordinary guys who lived on planets covered in sand, who came home from shopping and found their families dead and who had swords that glowed like the coolest toys ever. Casey would daydream about that happening to him, but knew that if something happened to Mom and Dad he'd just have to go live with Aunt Linda out in San Francisco.
On his eighth birthday, two things happened to change Casey's life: he got his first wedgie, while waiting in line for the water fountain at recess, and his dad gave him twenty dollars to spend at the mall.
Casey thought about buying flowers for his mom and a sports magazine for his dad, but they were rich like all the grownups were and this twenty dollars was his. He thought about buying a poster for his wall, a picture of some flowers with bees and butterflies flying around in the blue, blue sky.
But whenever Casey did something like that, Dad muttered stuff about sissies and 'Frisco freaks, and whenever he did that Casey would feel weak with terror. San Francisco was where he'd go if Mom and Dad got killed by Storm Troopers, and Casey didn't really want that (mostly), so he thought he'd better not buy the poster just to be on the safe side.
He thought about buying a music tape, and learning all the words so he'd be able to talk to the other kids who had money to buy music tapes. But Casey hated all the stuff that Radio Herrington played, and those kids were all weird and tough and didn't like science.
Then, when it seemed like the shopping trip was a total washout, Casey saw it. A secondhand camera with no case and a cracked lens cap. It was the coolest thing he had ever, ever seen. Maybe even cooler than his erector set. Certainly cooler than dirty words. As cool as... as school.
sometimes casey smokes and drives while zeke sleeps, sometimes it's the other way around. it was difficult enough to convince zeke to let casey behind the wheel of his precious gto; zeke always stands slouch-hipped by the petrol pump while casey trawls dazedly in the cold flourescent aisle of the gas station, browsing through the many brands on junk food in search of something that won't make him want to puke afterwards.
the vibration on the road gets to feel like an itch over his skin and sometimes the urge to pull over and just... scream or roll in the sand or run or something means he has to carefully unhook his fingers from the wheel and consciously unclench his teeth when they stop for the night. most of the time they sleep in the car, sometimes if it's warm and the ground flat enough zeke will lie out a few yards away; on such occassions casey never fails to ask zeke how he wants his roadkill cooked for breakfast.
every missing seam in the sewn rib of the vinyl seats, every sharp edge of plastic where cigarette tray lids have been broken off, every growing crack in the windscreen and every ripple of the dent in the back passenger door where someone opened their door onto it in a parking lot; casey has these things memorised. the american countryside forms a matte corridor for the car to slide through as if in a slipstream of the way things Could Have Been.
I can see them, in the hall, hear Stokes; the quiet around them is palpable, cocooning them in their shared experience, protecting and hiding them from the others who don't remember how it was...
"Why don't I just use you? You're... well, you're you," Casey said.
Delilah scowled. "Because I'm the editor, asshat, and the last five field trips you've used me as the 'student who's learning out in the real world' in the photos. Head of everything or not, I'm getting overexposed." She paused, then repeated her earlier words. "Go ask Zeke."
"He won't do it."
"So bribe him. Whatever demographic it is that that stoner dipshit fits into, that's the one we need to get reading the paper."
Casey sighed, frowned, sighed again. "I'm only doing this because I want to take more pictures of the exhibits."
"Freaky-ass bugboy," Delilah said, not without mild affection. "You and insects, Casey. What's up with that?"
"Spiders aren't insects, they're -"
"I'm not four, Case. I know that. Stop procrastinating."
Casey went over to where Zeke was perfecting the art of looking bored and interesting at the same time.
"Can I grab some photos? For the paper. I need ones with a student in them."
"Gonna put me up on your porn site, Conner?"
"Only if you pout pretty."
Zeke snorted. "Okay, whatever. Where do I stand?"
"Over here, near the case. Yeah, that's good. Now, um, look at the worksheet. Yeah, unfold it from a paper plane first. Good... ow, fuck, goddamit."
Casey let the camera drop back against his chest on its strap.
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Later, there were the not-funerals. Memorials. The photocopied fliers with holiday snaps and 'have you seen this man?' headlines turned yellow and crinkled up at the corners and fell off the phone poles.
Eventually, though, somebody remembered the locker. Delilah would always say that it was Zeke, but Zeke said that it was Delilah, and everyone else was just terrified that it hadn't been them. That it had been so easy to forget such a huge potential threat.
So one day they hung back after class, and Stokes said 'hey, the gang's all here' in her old sharp clever voice, and they all grinned because it was kinda cool to be back doing stuff like this again. Normal life wasn't nearly rush-inducing enough for them anymore.
Stan and Zeke used a crowbar to pry the door open while the girls kept watch, but even the teachers had gone home and there was nobody in the hallways but them.
"We few, we happy few..." Delilah muttered. "You guys got it yet?"
"Yeah, almost," Stan answered. "Wait." The hinges made a high, thin screaming sound. "Okay, done."
"Careful," warned Casey, as if they needed reminding. "They can lie dormant."
"Thanks, Captain Exposition," Stokes said. "We wouldn't have thought of that."
"Fuck you, preppie." Casey's retort had no sting to it - couldn't, when his mother had ironed his goddamned jeans that morning.
They'd all done it, in their own ways: Zeke by joining the team, Stan by getting average grades and playing no sport. The girls by being fresh-faced, neither glittering nor harlequin-dark. Casey with a little less obvious cleverness, a little more evident confidence.
Blended into the crowd. Not outsiders, not stars. Just faces, easy to forget. Nobody would ever think twice about them or suspect them of rebellion. Covert ops.
Marybeth's locker had almost nothing in it. A notebook, unwritten-in. A walkman with a copy of Lisa Loeb's first album in it but no batteries. Two light blue hair elastics and a plastic comb with some water-pale strands still looped through the teeth. Some pennies and a cobweb in the lower lefthand corner.
"Guess it really is over," Stokes said quietly.
They all knew that she was wrong. It would never be over, for them.
no subject
this time he drives with the window open, forearm resting on the brilliant shine of the chrome trim, cigarette shrinking in the hot wind. the air clears five miles out of town, the horizon on all sides becomes crisp, golden wheat fields and blue blue sky, liquid black highway.
the pet store in Sullivan is bigger, cool and almost damp inside with painted concrete floor and the musty smell of dog food. the mice dart around a large, thick-glassed enclosure, sharp movements amidst yellow straw, and zeke leans over with hands in his pockets to peer into it at ground-level.
the shoebox scuttles and scratches in the passenger seat on the way home, and zeke glances at it every so often on the long, straight stretches of road, tricked by suprise into smirking at the tiny pink nose that appears at the pencil-punched holes in the lid every so often.
when he gets into his garage he tips the box into the old bird cage he's found for the occassion, and watches as the small ball of white fur with whiskers and ruby eyes picks itself up and tiptoes around the base of the cage, head bobbing as it sniffs its way around.
zeke grins despite himself. "hey, buddy," he says at length, his voice quiet but solid in the empty silence of the crowded garage. "what's your name, huh?" he pokes a finger through the thin bars of the cage, wiggles it.
the mouse creeps closer, sniffs, takes a bite. "ahh, jesus, you fucking cunt!" zeke yells, whipping his hand back and shaking it violently. "bastard," he says at length with an air of almost-disbelief, moving back to the cage and peering in again. he laughs. "you little shit."
you love my icons thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis much
Casey was never popular, but he was happy enough in the way kids can be for no real reason. He had an ant farm that was the envy of every other kid in his grade. His favourite toy was his erector set, which meant that at seven years old he was unable to tell anyone what his favourite toy was. Not only was he babyish, but he said words that sounded rude without doing it to be badass. Words like that were only cool if you said them and knew that you were being bad.
Casey didn't think even the really gross words were all that impressive. A bastard was just someone whose mom and dad hadn't gotten married. A bitch was a girl dog, like Minnie who he'd had when he was little and who had gotten sick and gone to live on a farm in the country. Shit was just a different word for poop, and fuck was something that had something to do with birds and bees and people wanting to get married, or something. Except sometimes his dad was a fucking bastard!, when Mom had had a couple of drinks with dinner, and if fucking was to do with getting married and a bastard was to do with not getting married then it was all a bit too dumb and weird for Casey to bother with.
But even when Mom and Dad were fighting a lot, things were okay. He had a crush on his science teacher, who knew how to make two different coloured liquids make smoke, which was the coolest thing Casey had ever seen. He loved smart people, people who could do stuff nobody else knew about. He made passes at all the girls who wore glasses.
He watched movies about ordinary guys who lived on planets covered in sand, who came home from shopping and found their families dead and who had swords that glowed like the coolest toys ever. Casey would daydream about that happening to him, but knew that if something happened to Mom and Dad he'd just have to go live with Aunt Linda out in San Francisco.
On his eighth birthday, two things happened to change Casey's life: he got his first wedgie, while waiting in line for the water fountain at recess, and his dad gave him twenty dollars to spend at the mall.
Casey thought about buying flowers for his mom and a sports magazine for his dad, but they were rich like all the grownups were and this twenty dollars was his. He thought about buying a poster for his wall, a picture of some flowers with bees and butterflies flying around in the blue, blue sky.
But whenever Casey did something like that, Dad muttered stuff about sissies and 'Frisco freaks, and whenever he did that Casey would feel weak with terror. San Francisco was where he'd go if Mom and Dad got killed by Storm Troopers, and Casey didn't really want that (mostly), so he thought he'd better not buy the poster just to be on the safe side.
He thought about buying a music tape, and learning all the words so he'd be able to talk to the other kids who had money to buy music tapes. But Casey hated all the stuff that Radio Herrington played, and those kids were all weird and tough and didn't like science.
Then, when it seemed like the shopping trip was a total washout, Casey saw it. A secondhand camera with no case and a cracked lens cap. It was the coolest thing he had ever, ever seen. Maybe even cooler than his erector set. Certainly cooler than dirty words. As cool as... as school.
no subject
the vibration on the road gets to feel like an itch over his skin and sometimes the urge to pull over and just... scream or roll in the sand or run or something means he has to carefully unhook his fingers from the wheel and consciously unclench his teeth when they stop for the night. most of the time they sleep in the car, sometimes if it's warm and the ground flat enough zeke will lie out a few yards away; on such occassions casey never fails to ask zeke how he wants his roadkill cooked for breakfast.
every missing seam in the sewn rib of the vinyl seats, every sharp edge of plastic where cigarette tray lids have been broken off, every growing crack in the windscreen and every ripple of the dent in the back passenger door where someone opened their door onto it in a parking lot; casey has these things memorised. the american countryside forms a matte corridor for the car to slide through as if in a slipstream of the way things Could Have Been.
perfect
don't think you get away that easy, h0r.
Delilah scowled. "Because I'm the editor, asshat, and the last five field trips you've used me as the 'student who's learning out in the real world' in the photos. Head of everything or not, I'm getting overexposed." She paused, then repeated her earlier words. "Go ask Zeke."
"He won't do it."
"So bribe him. Whatever demographic it is that that stoner dipshit fits into, that's the one we need to get reading the paper."
Casey sighed, frowned, sighed again. "I'm only doing this because I want to take more pictures of the exhibits."
"Freaky-ass bugboy," Delilah said, not without mild affection. "You and insects, Casey. What's up with that?"
"Spiders aren't insects, they're -"
"I'm not four, Case. I know that. Stop procrastinating."
Casey went over to where Zeke was perfecting the art of looking bored and interesting at the same time.
"Can I grab some photos? For the paper. I need ones with a student in them."
"Gonna put me up on your porn site, Conner?"
"Only if you pout pretty."
Zeke snorted. "Okay, whatever. Where do I stand?"
"Over here, near the case. Yeah, that's good. Now, um, look at the worksheet. Yeah, unfold it from a paper plane first. Good... ow, fuck, goddamit."
Casey let the camera drop back against his chest on its strap.
"You okay, man?"
"Yeah... something bit me, I think."
Re: don't think you get away that easy, h0r.
Re: don't think you get away that easy, h0r.
oh, wait! *inserts HUGE FLAGPOLE BEARING THE AMERICAN FLAG GOD BLESS AUNT MAY here*Re: don't think you get away that easy, h0r.