As the men chopped the monkey corpse into pieces, expertly severing arms and legs, Penny spoke from her seat on the sofa, “Where’s the beef?”
The basement burst into laughter and Maddie wished she’d been the one to crack a joke.
They finished Side A of Faces of Death. A man whose bungee cord was too long smashed his legs into a concrete underpass (Moron! the boys shouted). An unsteady recording of cows butchered at a slaughterhouse made Maddie feel seasick. Last, some guy tweaking hard on PCP charged cars on a freeway. When he flipped over the back of a station wagon, only to get back on his feet, the boys launched off the sofa, roaring. Dude, it’s the fucking Energizer Bunny! John Anderson yelled.
The commentary on the videos rolled out nonstop. Like the boys were watching a Super Bowl game. Penny and Vanessa were just as crude, flinging their hands, fingers shaped like guns, at the screen, moves Maddie knew they’d seen in hip-hop videos on MTV. “Bam!” “That guy’s gonna make it—not!”
Gabrielle was close to tears and Bitsy played delicate—covering her eyes and squealing, clutching Gerritt’s arm. Maddie knew she had to say something. Make herself part of the group. She’d barely spoken, and while some of the guys, like Austin Drake, who was so quiet it was creepy, could get away with staying mute pretty much all the time, camouflaged by their forties of Crazy Horse malt liquor and their Marlboro reds, it wasn’t the same for a girl. Girls weren’t allowed to be invisible.
“You know,” she said, startled by heads swiveling to look at her. “That shit’s not real.”
“Whaaaat? You crazy, girl,” Vanessa said, shaking her head.
Maddie wanted to back off, give up, but she caught Bitsy’s icy stare, challenging her.
“Look,” she said, “there’s the same guy in three of the clips.” She pointed to the screen. “Rewind back and you’ll see.”
“Buzzkill,” Ricky Bell said, and everyone laughed, and Maddie remembered how her grandfather, a few days earlier, had called her stubborn. Said no man would want her.
“You guys, she’s right,” Penny said. “I totally saw it too.”
Instead of feeling relieved to have Penny back her up, she knew it only made her look worse. Weak. Even more than Penny, who was supposed to be the weakest link in the crew.
They watched Side B as a crumpled baggie filled with the much-anticipated magic mushrooms (Gabrielle yipped with delight) was passed around. Maddie almost gagged from the smell. Like something left to rot in the woods. When she was sure no one was looking, she passed it on. She’d taken a bong hit halfway through Side A and was already more stoned than she could handle. Not the warm, mellow high she’d felt on the beach but a shaky buzz—her heart thwacking so she could hear it. Her fingertips tingled. Her chest tightened. Was she bugging out? Normally, she’d call Vinny and beg for a ride home, but not after the fair. Who knew what he’d say to her? She felt herself teetering on the edge of a full-blown bug-out—her pulse like the rhythm of a dance song (badum, badum, badumbadumbadum), sweat popping above her brows—and she refused to look like a wuss in front of her cousins.
A montage played on the screen—clips of people killing themselves by hanging, shooting, jumping off bridges. A triumphant symphonic score played in the background, reminding her of the John Philip Sousa Memorial Band, who played on the town green every Friday summer night. Staccato drumbeats punctuated every impact. Oh! Ow! Ooh! The boys, and now the girls too, echoed each moment like they were missed goals in a soccer match. So much death after death that Maddie felt nothing when she knew she should feel horror.
A parachutist fell into a pond of snapping alligators; a cult in a desert ate gray chunks of human flesh; and, finally, a black guy—he couldn’t have been more than eighteen—was shot in the head at his own wedding ceremony, his bride’s puff-sleeved white dress splattered red.
“Aw, shit!” Gerritt cried. “There goes that Marshall kid.”
The boys high-fived. Like they were geniuses, Maddie thought with a silent eye roll.
As the credits rolled, the kids revisited the facts that had arrived piece by piece that week—from eavesdropping on their parents, mostly. The story they’d strung together was this: when Helen Marshall, the admiral’s wife, had died, Leslie Day Marshall, once exiled from the island for marrying a black man, became the richest in all of Avalon. And, Maddie thought, the fairest.
Vanessa whispered, “My mom said she’s a grave robber. Didn’t even show for her own mother’s funeral.”
“My dad’s flipping out,” Penny said, “because she might take over the factory or something.”
Bitsy laughed. “Like they’d ever let a woman run Grudder?”
“Dude,” Gerritt said as he tucked a wisp of blond hair behind Bitsy’s ear, a gesture that made Maddie give Spencer a quick glance. “Think of all those fighter jets that would get deployed every time she went on the rag.”
“Ha-ha,” Bitsy mocked. “So funny I forgot to laugh.”
They kissed, their lips locking for ages and Bitsy caught her staring. She smiled and Maddie was sure she was about to announce a game of Spin the Bottle. Bitsy leapt off the couch and skipped toward her—a shift so fast, Maddie had to stop herself from flinching.
“Bitsy,” Maddie said. “Hi?”
“Sweetie.” Bitsy’s breath was fruity from berry wine coolers. “Did Spence tell you about his surprise?”
“Um, no.”
Spencer popped another tape into the VCR, the machine whirring as it rewound.
“And for our next feature film, ladies and gents,” he announced as he dimmed the lights so there was only the blue glow of the screen.
“You’ll see,” Bitsy sang, and ran back to the couch on tiptoes so the watery light reflected off her smooth legs.
The boys burrowed into the sectional—the girls took their places, one on each boy’s lap. Bitsy and Gerritt, Vanessa and Austin, Gabrielle and John, and, finally, Penny hunched over on Rolo’s wide thighs. Ricky was busy rolling spliffs—a mound of marijuana shake and rolling papers set in front of him on a TV tray like a kid’s arts-and-craft project. Maddie knew Penny would rather be sitting on his lap.
She considered heading for the bathroom upstairs—who knew what Spencer’s plan involved—and she didn’t want to have to sit on the crowded couch with his boner poking into her butt cheek. He pointed the remote at the TV and the movie started and she knew it was too late to slip upstairs because it would look like she was running away, and, then, she wanted to.
The screen filled with naked mustachioed men and their erections. The girls giggled and the boys hollered. The porn was shot in a basement nothing like the Foxes’ with its sponge-painted walls and decoupage knickknacks arranged on sweet cedar shelves. In the video, sheets were tacked over the windows. The cement floor bare. A tired-looking woman with big breasts lay on the ground. The kind of fake boobs that didn’t jiggle, Maddie thought, only lay there like hardened mounds of clay.
“She must be cold,” Penny said.