“Whatever the opposite of a chode is, this is it,” Marlena said.
In those days, if you entered Kewaunee from the south, heading up Charlevoix Avenue, the Big Boy was the first landmark you’d see before reaching downtown proper. The diner shared a long building with an arcade and putt-putt course called the Jungle. The Big Boy himself was perched on a stone pedestal, maybe three feet off the ground, with his white-and-red-checked overalls and duckbill hair, a giant burger balanced on his outstretched right hand, his eyes blue and maniacal. The restaurant closed at ten, the Fifth Third Bank on its right closed at five, and the Walgreens across the street closed at eleven. Jimmy and Greg drove us out there at three in the morning, the penis and a can of black spray paint between us in the backseat, me and Marlena both in dark colors, knit caps pulled down to our eyebrows and rolls of duct tape on our wrists. Ryder, whose paranoia had reached hysterical levels, refused to come.
“This is just like in A Clockwork Orange,” I said.
“Oh, yeah, totally,” said Marlena. “It totally totally is just like something from some obscure thing that nobody’s ever heard of but you.”
“Eat a peen, philistine,” I said, and tilted the penis until it prodded her cheek. Jimmy laughed, taking my side, and I quietly forgave him.
The drive from Silver Lake all the way to the far end of Kewaunee took nearly forty minutes, a Thursday night, even the main roads completely free of cars. Nothing in town stayed open twenty-four hours, except a BP station way back toward Coral. The streetlights were shut off, except for one on the corner, shedding watery light onto the deserted intersection.
Jimmy parked two blocks away, and Greg kept watch for police cars up on the road. First we had to dry off the statue with our coat sleeves, since it was already slicked with dew, moisture on the verge of ice—March, and still the parking lot was wreathed with dunes of exhaust-stained snow. Marlena held the penis to the Big Boy’s body while I tried attaching it with the tape, using my teeth to tear the strips from the roll, but she was stoned and giggling and kept fidgeting, and every time I thought I’d used enough tape, the second we let go the penis clunked to the ground.
“Mar,” I hissed. “Stop. I can’t do this with you moving.”
“It’s heavy! And I’m freezing.”
“I told you to wear gloves. I told you you’d be cold. You always do that. You don’t wear the right shit and then you complain.”
“Car,” Greg stage-whispered, and Marlena and I leaped off the pedestal and into the bushes behind it, breathing hard, the penis half stuck on.
Eventually I figured out that we’d have to tape the dick just between the Big Boy’s slightly parted legs, right up against the swell of his belly, in the little trapezoidal space there, and the tape had to go all the way around like a belt. Just to be sure it would stay until the morning, we wrapped until the tape was gone, figure-eighting it around the balls so that the lower half of his overalls was mostly silver by the time we were through. Marlena spray-painted Mr. Ratner across the Big Boy’s back, and then the word Ratner again and again, on the topmost burger bun, over the neon-blue BIG BOY on the Big Boy’s chest, even on the base of the pedestal. The dick was covered with the word PERV—we’d done that ourselves with permanent marker, as soon as the glue dried.
“Car!” Greg said, but it didn’t matter, we were done. Marlena snapped a photo with Jimmy’s fancy phone, and the three of us ran, ran, ran. That’s what I remember most, our bodies slicing through the night, Marlena’s hand in mine, the rows of sleeping houses looking on, our breath silver in the air, how we slammed the car doors and Jimmy sped us away, the windows down and the freezing dark whipping our hair, laughing for thirty minutes straight. We had so much time. Eight months and a handful of days before they found her in the river, enough time to stop what was coming, if we’d known to look for it.
Together, we had power. We were capable of revenge. Like I said—the two of us made one perfect, unfuckwithable girl. Nothing could hurt us, as long as we weren’t alone.
*
Mr. Ratner lived just down the street from the Big Boy, and would have to drive by to get to KHS. What’s more, he ate there at least two days a week for breakfast, or so said Tidbit, who worked as a cashier at the Jungle. She said he sat with his wife and his four-year-old son in a booth by the window, overlooking the parking lot and the Big Boy statue.
As soon as he entered the classroom, five or so minutes late, the class started to giggle. He didn’t acknowledge it. He said that we’d be watching a movie, his face expressionless. Bill Nye, something about volcanoes. Several times, he stepped out of the darkened classroom. Through the narrow window in the door I could see him talking to other adults, to Mr. Lacey, to a police officer. The movie ended fifteen minutes before class was over.
“You can go,” he said, and we filed out of the room. I packed my things slowly, but he didn’t seem to notice or care, though he usually took special pleasure in stopping me on the way out the door, telling me I needed to focus, that he’d seen me texting under my desk. What had he felt, when he pulled up to the stoplight? Had he felt seen? Had he known why? I banished a flicker of pity.
The next day we were front-page news. A first and last for all of us, I’d guess, except for Marlena. The article contained a quote from Janice Ratner, Mr. Ratner’s wife, who, in the photo they ran, looked pretty and not much older than Marlena and me. “This is a small community,” said Janice. “And I hope whoever did this thinks long and hard about how it impacts our family, how I had to explain this to my little boy.” Mr. Ratner declined to comment. They removed the penis and spray-painted the Big Boy black from head to toe, the only way, we assumed, they’d been able to cover up Mr. Ratner’s name.
“Do you feel bad?” I asked Marlena that night.
“He got what he deserved.”
“But I didn’t think about his wife.”
“We did her a favor.” Marlena rolled over, so her backside was edged up against the length of my arm. She was a bed hog. “She should know who she married.”
“You think? Maybe it’s better for her not to know. They’ve got a kid.”
“Don’t be stupid. That kid’s way better off without him. Perv rubs off. How do you think guys like that grow up to be pervs in the first place?”
“I guess.”
“Tell me a story,” said Marlena, half asleep.
“You wouldn’t like what I’m reading. It’s about an orphan governess who’s in love with her ancient boss, except he’s got his crazy wife trapped up in the attic. And she’s obsessed with God.”
“See? It’s not just you. No one thinks about the wives. Does the governess know about her?”
“She thinks it’s complicated.”
“No. I don’t want that. No silly girls. Tell me something else.”