All the Rage(8)

They settle in a few rows ahead of me. Even from here, I can smell Alek’s cologne and it reminds me of last year, our heads bent together, scribbling about Romeo and Juliet for an English project and I thought it was a joke when Mrs. Carter paired us up; Paul Grey’s daughter, Helen Turner’s son. Two households both alike in dignity except there was no dignity on the Grey side, just Helen firing Paul the day he drunkenly called her a cunt in front of all the other boys in the auto shop because goddamn, it’s hard to work on something with an engine when you have a vagina for a boss.

Alek senses me watching. He turns in his seat and his eyes meet mine. I rest my middle finger across my lips; red on red, the most subtle way I can tell him to f*ck himself because I’m not stupid enough to say it out loud in a world that’s his fan club. He turns back around, rests his arm over Penny’s shoulder and brings his mouth to her ear. She gives him a playful nudge.

Sometimes I imagine taking a walk with him. I imagine leading him behind the school and into the trees. I imagine stomping on his skull until all his fine, sharp features have turned to pulp. Until all the parts of him that are too familiar disappear.

He’s looking more and more like his brother these days.





“could you drive me to the Barn before I go to work?”

Mom pauses at the bottom of the stairs, Todd close behind. They’re both disheveled and flushed and I don’t want to think about what they were doing before I got home. I toss my book bag against the wall and decide I like the look of it there, that this is what I’ll do every time I make it back from school until it’s second nature. A house isn’t a home until it becomes a habit.

“What do you need?” she asks. Todd slips past her and steps into the kitchen. I hear the fridge door squeak open.

“I’m down to my last bra. I’d bike but I’d be late for my shift.”

“Sure. Just let me get my purse.”

She ducks into the kitchen, tells Todd what’s going on, and then the short, sweet sound of their mouths meeting. She reappears with the car keys clasped in her hand.

“Be nice to spend some time together, huh?”

“Yeah.”


The Barn is a discount store about twenty minutes outside of Grebe, on the way to Godwit. Get everything and get it cheap, which means I can shop for clothes while she picks up groceries. We get into the sweltering New Yorker and roll the windows all the way down. The car doesn’t start the first time or the second time, either. It doesn’t start until Todd comes out and tells us there’s a trick to it. He jiggles the keys in a way that looks less like trick and more like luck, but it works. The engine roars to life.

“You’ll have to fill her up before you leave town,” he tells us. He stands in the driveway and waves as we pull out. I can tell Mom likes that he does that, sees us off.

“I’ll pay for the gas,” I say. “It’s my trip.”

“Don’t worry about that.”

We have to get gas from Grebe Auto Supplies because it’s the only station in town. It’s right next to Gina’s Pizzeria and there’s something disturbingly appealing about the combined smell of grease and gas. Mom pulls up to the self-serve pump and hands me her credit card.

“You want to do this? I’ll get us something to drink at Deckard’s.”

She heads into the convenience store on the other side of and just a little behind the station. I pump gas, finishing before she does, and wait in the car. The minutes eke by. When I glance back at the convenience store, I can just make her out. She’s only halfway in, talking to Mr. Conway, so that should take forever. Great. Dan Conway. Biggest mouth in town. Bet he’s trying to feel out our new living arrangements and whether marriage is next on Mom’s list even though in his eyes, it probably should’ve come first.

I drum my fingers on my knees and then a Cadillac Escalade EXT pulls up to the self-serve pump next to mine, music blaring. My stomach sinks when I see Alek behind the wheel, Brock playing passenger.

It never feels fair, seeing them after school.

Brock gets out with a credit card—not his—in hand. Alek never pumps his own gas, if he can help it. Alek never does a thing he can get Brock to do for him. I watch him rest his head against the seat and stare at the world through a pair of Ray-Bans. After a second, he leans forward and presses his finger against the inside of the windshield. He pulls his hand away and studies it, frowning. He pokes his head out the window.

“Hey, clean the windshield while you’re at it,” he says. Brock gives him the finger. Alek scans the station before his eyes settle on Gina’s. “You hungry?”

Brock raises his middle finger higher, but when he’s hooked the nozzle back on the pump, he reaches for a filthy squeegee because of course he would. Brock lives one street away from me now I’ve moved, a street where the houses don’t so much resemble chipped and broken teeth, but if you look close enough, you see their foundations are rotting. Brock is the eldest of five in a family that’s no stranger to handouts. Alek got him on the sweet side of high school and that’s the kind of debt you spend your whole life trying to repay, which is exactly why Alek got Brock on the sweet side of high school.

When he finishes, Brock takes the card and heads to Gina’s. Stops when he realizes Alek isn’t coming with him. “You gonna wait there?”