Josh
I’ve been thinking about the accident pretty much all the time. The sounds of the ambulance. The sun beating down on me as they pulled me out of the car. How it’s really true that time speeds up and slows down and your brain goes all whacked out in moments like a car wreck. I wouldn’t say I think about it constantly, but basically I think about it pretty much a lot. I think about Officer Daniels interviewing me in the hospital. I think about Mrs. Fitzsimmons sitting on my dad’s recliner asking me all those questions.
It’s weird, the things I think about when I remember the wreck and everything that happened afterward. Like maybe my brain is trying to make it so I don’t think about what happened right before the accident and Brandon’s dying. It just focuses on the stupid stuff instead. Like Officer Daniels’s chewed up pencil. Or Mrs. Fitzsimmons’ glass of sweet tea.
But I still think about it. I think about it during football games (we lost our last one against Johnston) and I think about it while eating mystery meat in the cafeteria and I think about it in English class. We’ve been reading a book about the olden days when this lady supposedly did it with some guy and they weren’t married and she had his baby, and that was a huge deal back then. So she had to wear a red letter A on her dress all the time. Kind of messed up, I guess.
I think about it until I can’t think about it in any new kind of way. Until my brain gives out and goes fuzzy or blank.
Sometimes I think about the ride home from Elaine O’Dea’s famous party. The one where Alice did what she did. Anyway, Elaine made this big deal about me not driving home drunk. I think she promised her parents, but I just wanted to go. After that text about Alice, it just felt like it was time to leave. Brandon kind of mumbled could I give him a lift? Could he crash at my place? “Okay,” I said.
He was so wasted I had to help him into the car. Sometimes, when my brain remembers this night, it remembers little things, too. Like Brandon smelling of booze, and the prickle of his stubble rubbing against my face as I tried to hold him up and get him into my dad’s Chevy S-10. And the way he kept laughing at everything even when nothing was funny.
Anyway, I was drunk, but he was way drunker, and that’s why I was the one to drive us back to my house.
Healy is a dead zone after midnight. Sonic, McDonald’s, Walgreens, the Curl Up and Dye, Auto Zone, the Healy Advocate, the Sno-Cone Shop, Burger King, Wendy’s, Chik-fil-A: no lights on in any of them. Nobody walking anywhere; hardly any other cars. Not even the Wal-Mart in Healy is open twenty-four hours. Drunk driving late at night is pretty safe around here, I guess.
Making our way home, I looked over at Brandon, and he was slumped against the passenger window. But his glassy eyes were open.
“Did you really do it?” I asked.
“Do what?” he said, kind of slurry.
“You and Tommy Cray … and Alice.”
Brandon got this smirk like he was getting some image back in his head.
“Yeah, we really did it, man,” he answered me. “Fuckin’ awesome, too. Alice is hot. Even with that short hair and shit.” He started laughing again as he rambled on.
“Tommy didn’t mind sloppy seconds?” I asked, kind of not wanting to ask but asking anyway.
“No he didn’t,” Brandon said. “She couldn’t get enough. Me twice and Tommy once. I’m gonna have to hit that again soon.” He yawned so wide I heard his jaw pop.
We got home, and my mom and dad and brother were all asleep. A good thing, I thought to myself as I helped Brandon down to the floor of my bedroom. I gave him an extra pillow. Sophomore year at school, they had this guy come in and talk to us about alcohol and drug abuse, and the guy said you should always put a drunk person on his side, so he doesn’t choke on his own vomit. I guess the principal got mad at that later on because he thought the comment encouraged drinking, but it’s the only thing I remember from that whole speech.
Brandon was passed out, so I sort of squatted down on my knees and got behind him. I tucked my hands under his back and rolled him over. Brandon had muscles all over. I could feel them under his red-and-white Healy Tigers T-shirt. It was easy to see why the girls were all hot for him.
So I was on my knees, Brandon was on his side, and I stayed there. I stared at the back of his neck where his hair was growing together into a point, right in the center of his neck. His hair was short, brown, sort of curly. I put a finger right there, right at the back of this neck. And I touched his hair. First one finger. Then two. Then my whole hand was touching the back of his neck and his hair. I mean, I was so wasted. But I touched. His hair was softer than it looked. A lot softer. The light from the street lamp outside my window lit up his whole face. It was that perfect kind of face you see on guys who pose for aftershave ads in magazines. I don’t know if Brandon had any idea how good looking he really was.
His breathing was slow, and for a second I worried maybe it was too slow. Then I worried what the hell Brandon would do if he woke up and saw my hand on his neck, touching his hair like some weirdo. I pulled my hand away real fast and stood up. I stared at him for a while, maybe for as long as a few minutes. The ground sort of rocked under my feet like it does when you’re drunk and tired. Then I pulled my shirt and jeans off and got into bed. The next morning, I didn’t remember falling asleep.
The other day some of the guys from the team and me snuck into this girls’ bathroom on the second floor when we were supposed to be in Study Hall. There was some freshman chick in there just washing her hands when we walked in; she walked out real fast because she knew why we were there.
“Check this out,” one of the guys said, pushing open the door.
Alice likes it fast and hard.
Alice did it with my grandpa. And she liked it!
RIP Fitzsimmons! Alice Franklin = Killer/Whore
Flush if you’ve done Alice.
“Man,” I said, not sure what to think. I mean, it was pretty crazy just the amount of graffiti. You could see one part where maybe the janitors had tried to clean it and then given up. It was everywhere, all over the place.
“Some of the girls started it, man,” one of the guys said, laughing. “Like a week ago. But check it out. It’s totally everywhere.”
Alice Franklin is a whore, slut, ho, bitch, and a killer, too!!!
It’s the slut’s fault!
Screw you, Alice! Healy Tiger #35 FOREVER.
I thought about the accident again, but my brain wouldn’t let me replay it. It just kept jumping all over the place. I could hear Mrs. Fitzsimmons’s voice in my head.
“So you could say she was distracting him with her texts?” Mrs. Fitzsimmons asked.
“Yeah,” I answered. “You could say he was distracted.”
My mind sort of jumped back to grade school, to the fourth grade, when I used to sit behind Alice and throw really small wads of paper at her hair just to annoy her. But it was all funny back then. Alice used to turn her head and roll her eyes at me, but then she would just laugh, this loud, crazy laugh she has, and I would try to look all innocent like I didn’t know what she was so upset about.
And then I would laugh, too.
Then my head was back in that stall, looking at the graffiti.
“Add something,” one of the guys said, handing me a Sharpie. He’d already taken the cap off.
I tried to think of something, but I just kept thinking of those little white wads of balled-up lined paper sitting in Alice’s real dark hair. Her hair was longer back then.
“Come on, man, hurry up. We gotta get out of here,” somebody else said.
Finally it came to me, and I put down Alice did Dallas. All the other guys laughed and they were happy it rhymed.
Later on, when I was hanging out in front of the school with some of my buddies, I saw Alice walking home alone, buried in that sweatshirt. You couldn’t see her dark hair since she had her hood up. I looked at her for a few seconds, but I don’t think she ever saw me. Anyway I hope she didn’t.