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the fifth chapter, which starts out strong, but has a weak ending
It didn’t take long for us to hit the interstate. Kevin had plowed his way through at least a dozen miniature Twix bars at this point.
“These things are better than macaroni and cheese, I swear,” he swore. “That’s saying something coming from me.”
“No kidding…how many boxes do you go through in a typical week?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Depends. If my parents are home, maybe two or three. If I have to cook all of my own meals, I can knock out like ten.”
“Are you at all concerned about how healthy that is?”
He laughed and shook his head. “Trust me, it’s good for me. I can feel it,” he said, rubbing his stomach.
There was silence. I changed into the fast lane and passed a few cars that were going slower than my preferred speed of whatever the current speed limit was plus five miles per hour so I could get places faster but slow down easily if I saw a cop.
“Hey,” said Kevin softly.
“Yeah man?” I responded.
“Have you considered No-Shave November?”
The question caught me off-guard. “Well…kind of. I mean, if I could just like, stay at home for all of November and then have some big reveal in December, yeah, I probably would. But since I have to go to school, people would see me with my nasty one-week-in scruff and just think I was a slob. I would have to be totally confident in my beard-growing abilities.”
“Yeah, I see where you’re coming from…nobody wants to be the guy with a lame beard. That’s just embarrassing. But…I think I’m going to give it a shot this year,” he said confidently.
I raised my eyebrows in surprise. “You think so?”
“I just feel like this year’s the year. I mean, I couldn’t do it my freshman or sophomore years, but this year, I believe in myself,” he said in a manner that was far too heartfelt for the subject at hand. “This is my year, man.”
“Well, I’m not about to stop you,” I replied. “It’s a bold move for sure, but if nobody took the risk, there would be no No-Shave November.”
“And that, my friend, would be a shame.”
We drove for another hour or so with the conversation meandering aimlessly through the limited field of topics available to high schoolers: girls, school, parents, and miscellaneous griping. The discussion of the latter resulted in Kevin coming to the realization that he was hungry, despite having accomplished the superhuman feat of devouring nearly an entire bag of fun-size Twix bars.
“Taco Bell, McDonald’s, Panda Express, Subway,” I read from an informational sign on the side of the road.
“Normally, I’d say Panda, but I could really go for a couple McChickens right now,” said Kevin.
“Normally, I’d say Subway, but I’ve been getting bored of clear arteries lately,” I added.
I took the offramp. We wound up in a small shopping center that seemed like it had been built in the wrong place—it was in the middle of nowhere on the side of the highway, but still had a sizable grocery store and a handful of restaurants and some clothing stores and two gas stations which seemed superfluous to me. What was this shopping center trying to prove? Luckily, I was able to squeeze the Volvo in between two hulking SUV’s in front of McDonald’s, which wasn’t a standard McDonald’s but the rare and wondrous McDonald’s where the play area is twice as large as the restaurant itself. Even better, it was totally deserted. Kevin and I raced inside, eager to relive another piece of our childhood. I had always loved the play areas, even though my mother continuously warned me that they were just big plastic germ incubators and to wash my hands before and after I played otherwise I would get some horrible disease and we could never go to McDonald’s again. Fortunately, I did not know what an incubator was in my youth, so her cautionary blathering didn’t scare me in the least.
Inside, the restaurant was crawling with the usual suspects: a large family (and not large in the sense that there were lots of members), a super-organized soccer mom who was passing out disinfectant wipes and had apparently forced her kids to get apple slices instead of fries, a businessman on break but still incessantly jabbering on a Bluetooth headset, and a guy sitting in a corner booth reading a newspaper and looking way too classy to be spotted in a McDonald’s. There wasn’t a line, so we hopped right in. Kevin ordered his flock of McChickens and I asked for a double cheeseburger and a McFlurry.
“I can’t believe you, man,” said Kevin disapprovingly.
“What?” I asked, unsure of what crime I had committed.
“You always get the McDouble, not the double cheeseburger. The McDouble’s thirty cents cheaper. You know what you get on the double cheeseburger with that extra thirty cents? One more slice of cheese.”
His lesson in fast food economics was cut short by a rumbling of engines. An armada of Cadillac Escalades in every shade of a monochromatic rainbow swarmed the building. They parked as a fleet, all perfectly spaced. The trunks opened and children began to crawl out of the vehicles; there were maybe fifteen of them altogether. Their leaders were three bleach-blond mothers whose faces had been lifted more than the truck of a redneck who had something to prove.
“My god,” I whispered.
A worker who already looked exasperated rolled her eyes and screamed, “Phil, start some Happy Meals!”
Kevin and I sat down just as the group came in. I had to stifle my laughter. All of the kids were clearly from an affluent background—there were fur-lined jackets, leather oxfords, and premium polos abound. It was like a tiny army of douchebags had invaded McDonald’s.
“Wait…oh shit,” muttered Kevin mid-bite.
“What’s wrong?”
“Spencer, those are kids. Why do kids come to McDonald’s?”
“…oh shit.”
We started chowing down as fast as we could. My McFlurry was giving me a hellish ice cream headache, but I couldn’t stop. Kevin tossed me a McChicken that he wouldn’t have time to finish, even though he had one in each hand and was alternating between them so quickly I wondered how he had time to swallow. Somehow, we managed to make it through the food. I picked up the plastic tray to deliver it to a trash can.
“Dammit Spencer, leave the tray, let’s go,” said Kevin. He got up, holding his side. The look on his face indicated that he had not planned to eat those McChickens so quickly.
I held the door open for him as he hobbled through. The play area was still empty. Normally, the staff would’ve remarked on our entering and might have even asked us to stay out, but they were preoccupied with the sea of little rich kids up front. Kevin kicked off his moccasins and stuffed them in one of the shoe cubbies, which were clearly designed for shoes smaller than size twelve because his protruded a few inches from the edge of the plastic. He didn’t wait for me to take off my high-tops, electing to dive into the first tunnel he could find. Perhaps he was trying to teach me a lesson; that I would miss out on things due to my choice in footwear. He might have been right, because by the time my shoes were off, I had no idea where he was in the labyrinth of tubes. I chose the same one he did and started to crawl.
It was immediately apparent that I had either outgrown the tubes or become terribly claustrophobic. I had no choice except to press onward because it was a physical impossibility to turn around. A T-junction loomed in front of me and I chose to go left. I ended up in one of those little boxes with a window that serve the purpose of reassuring your mother that you haven’t been trampled to death in there. I surveyed the scene below me. The kids were all eating now, taking up four tables. All of a sudden, to my horror, they simultaneously rose and stormed through the door to the play place.
“Shit!” I exclaimed. It was quickly becoming the word of the day. Kevin must have heard my cry in the tube network.
“What?” he replied, although I could not discern from where.
“The rich kids are coming!”
“Oh shit, get up here!”
I wasn’t completely sure where up here was, but up I went. I turned around in the observation booth and started back up the tube, past the steering wheel room, through a particularly challenging spiral section, and, finally, to a second windowed room (this one looking out over the parking lot) where Kevin was sitting, legs criss-crossed.
“Hey bud, glad to see you,” he said, grinning.
“They’re coming, man,” I responded, feigning shortness of breath to add drama to the moment. He picked up on my cue and dropped his smile.
“How many of them are there?” he demanded.
“It’s hard to tell…ten, twenty, maybe sixty,” I responded. I grabbed the neck of his hoodie. “Kevin, I don’t want to die, I don’t want to—”
He slapped me and pointed a finger at my nose. “You listen here, soldier. You’re gonna make it out of here alive. You’re gonna see your wife and kids again.”
“Jesus, Kevin, I was just messing around; it was totally unnecessary to slap me,” I said, rubbing my face. It didn’t really hurt, it was more the principle of the thing.
“Oh, excuse me: you’re gonna see your husband and kids.”
“Dammit Kevin.”
“Hey, you’re the one who listens to Coldplay. I’m just going by the signals.”
I sighed, but there was no time to glare at him angrily. We heard the telltale shrieks of small children wriggling through the tubes nearing closer and closer with alarming speed. It was hopeless. We were going to have to confront these kids in a cramped box with Plexiglas windows and an unidentifiable stain on the floor that just made me frown.
“They’re here,” whispered Kevin.
And indeed they were: a group of four kids emerged from around the corner and spotted us. Some of them were fearful, others were intrigued. No matter what their emotions were, both parties froze. We stared at each other, in a clear deadlock. Finally, the presumptive leader of their group edged over to us and sat down. He was a blond boy of maybe six years old. His bright blue eyes darted between Kevin and myself as he studied us. I could make out the Abercrombie moose on his black cable-knit sweater.
“You guys aren’t kids,” he said crossly.
“That’s true, but we aren’t grown-ups either,” reasoned Kevin.
The boy thought it over and determined it a satisfactory answer. “I’m Kevin. I’m six and a half years old.”
Big Kevin brightened. “Hey, I’m Kevin too! But I’m seventeen years old.”
“I’m Spencer. I’m sixteen and a half.”
“Cool. Do you guys like Pokémon?”
“Oh, definitely!” replied Old Kevin, enthused. He leaned over to me and whispered, “This kid is way cooler than his sweater originally led me to believe.”
“My favorite is Rayquaza. He is the Sky Dragon Pokémon. He is very powerful and big. What’s your favorite?” asked Little Kevin.
“I like Gyarados,” replied Big Kevin excitedly.
Little Kevin looked disappointed. “Oh…Gyarados is an old Pokémon.”
Uh-oh, I thought.
Big Kevin’s grin vanished instantaneously. “What’s wrong with the old Pokémon?”
“Well, they’re boring. And they aren’t very cool,” explained Little Kevin. He sure had a way with words.
“Well, I think that the old Pokémon are the best Pokémon,” retaliated Big Kevin.
“No,” replied Little Kevin, shaking his head. “The old ones are bad. Nobody likes them.”
“Maybe I like them,” shot back Big Kevin.
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes I do.”
“No you don’t.”
“Yes I do.”
“You’re stupid,” giggled Little Kevin.
“Well you’re a little moron who doesn’t know the difference between a quality Pokémon and some shitty new one!” roared Big Kevin. The tubes reverberated with his rage. Suddenly, he went from furious to terrified.
Little Kevin began to cry.
“Shit,” muttered Big Kevin under his breath.
“You’re mean!” sobbed Little Kevin.
“No no no buddy! Kevin! I’m sorry, man, I didn’t mean it! You’re really smart!” blurted Big Kevin, but the compliments couldn’t come fast enough.
“I’m telling!” shouted Little Kevin, and with that, he and his posse disappeared back into the multicolored tunnels.
“Dammit, come on Kevin, we gotta go,” I said, frustrated.
Big Kevin buried his face in his hands and groaned, “What the hell did I just do?”
“You got into a shouting match with a six-year-old in a McDonald’s play area over Pokémon, now let’s get out of here before he tells his mom!” I exclaimed.
“Ugh, that’s what I thought I did…”
“Yeah, you were pretty much a dick. Now let’s go.”
He pried his hands off his face and followed me to the top of the tube, where we found a slide that led us back out. While flying down the chute, I thought that every building should have an exit of this style. We found Little Kevin and his crew putting on their shoes at the bottom. Big Kevin and I snatched ours out of the cubbies. While we made our escape, Little Kevin got in a few parting punches at Big Kevin’s legs.
“Meanie!” he shouted.
Big Kevin slipped on his moccasins and I didn’t even bother attempting to put my shoes on. We hurried back into the restaurant and didn’t make direct eye contact with the group of trophy wives who all had iPhones in hand and were discussing how great the Facebook was (all the plastic surgery in the world cannot mask the age that is revealed when someone puts “the” in front of the name of a social networking site). Once we were outside again, I nearly sprinted to the Volvo. I glanced over my shoulder and saw a bawling Little Kevin and an indignant mother staring directly at us through the window. We jumped in the car as quickly as we could. I jammed the key in the ignition and turned it just as Little Kevin’s mom stomped out of the McDonald’s, son in tow.
“Go go go go go go go,” chanted Kevin.
I threw it into reverse and backed out faster than I ever had. Kevin was rolling down the window.
“What are you doing?!” I cried.
“YOU BETTER STOP THAT CAR, YOU LITTLE FUCKERS!” shrieked the woman.
My stomach dropped even though I had no intention of heeding her words. I glanced over to find Big Kevin flipping them not one, but two birds.
“Christ, Kevin!”
“YOU WILL RESPECT ME! I’M TIMOTHY WELLER, BITCHES!” screamed Kevin. He proceeded to laugh maniacally until we had driven out of earshot from them. Then he rolled up his window and collapsed in his seat, eyes closed.
“Timothy Weller, huh?” I asked, amused.
“I wanted to see what that name would sound like in badass context,” he explained. “Spencer?”
“Yeah?”
“No more McDonald’s for the rest of the trip.”
“Good call,” I responded, taking the on-ramp and getting back on the interstate.
Text with 4 notes
the chapter following the third chapter but preceding the fifth
Kevin let himself in at precisely half past ten, as promised. While he had changed clothes, the basic components of his outfit remained the same: a zip-up hoodie, broken-in jeans, and beat-up moccasins. I was sitting on the stairs lacing up my black high-tops. He scoffed at them.
“I don’t think I’ll ever quite understand those things,” he said, shaking his head. “I mean, I know you want to look artsy or whatever, but is it really worth the hassle every time you have to take them off and put them on?”
I could’ve argued with him and informed them that no, it wasn’t because I wanted to look artsy or whatever, but rather because I have narrow feet and they fit just perfect and never slip off which is more than you can say about your precious moccasins so just shut up, but I didn’t want our trip to start off on a sour note, so I just looked at him and said, “Yes.”
“Well, that’s your choice, I guess…” he conceded. He set down his duffel bag, stuffed his hands in his pockets, and rocked from heel to toe a few times. The moment I had finished tying my other shoe, he announced, “Alright, we’re leaving.” He hooked his duffel bag with a swoop of his arm, opened the door, and walked out.
With the aid of the banister, I managed to hoist myself up. I slung my backpack over my shoulders and adjusted the straps so it fit just right. As I made my way to the door, I began to feel apprehensive. What if my parents came back early? What if somebody decided to rob us? What if Publisher’s Clearing House finally showed up while nobody was home?
“Come on, man. That hotel reservation’s non-refundable,” said Kevin impatiently. I turned my head in his direction and he must’ve been able to tell I wasn’t feeling too good about all this. He came back in, put his hand on my shoulder, and shook me a little bit. “Everything’s going to be fine. We will leave as soon as we wake up tomorrow, I promise. Nobody will ever know.”
I looked down at my feet. “Okay.”
He nodded and patted my arm, then went back out to the driveway to get into the Volvo. I followed him, dragging the door closed behind me. I turned around and, sharply inhaling, stuck the key in the deadbolt and locked it. Something about the click it made sounded final, but reassuring. I breathed out and ran to the car, suddenly invigorated. Carelessly, I tossed my backpack into the trunk and slammed it shut. I nearly jumped into the driver’s seat, and I didn’t even have to coax the engine to start. It seemed to know that this would be a terribly unfortunate time to break down. Kevin had already flicked the heater on, making him the official temperature technician for the trip. Suddenly, it hit me that Kevin hadn’t plugged his iPod into the radio transmitter, which was usually the first thing he did. I took full advantage of his momentary lapse in routine and dug my iPod nano, Boris, out of a compartment on the door and fired up a playlist. As soon as Kevin realized what had happened, he groaned.
“You got to be kidding me,” he whined, throwing his head back in despair.
“My music’s fine,” I said defensively.
“No. It isn’t. Because you listen to Coldplay.”
“At least I can pronounce the names of the bands I listen to.”
“…well played.”
I bathed in the glory of my victory for a bit. Just as we were leaving the neighborhood, Kevin bolted upright and looked at me, eyes wide.
“Snacks!” he exclaimed. “I forgot snacks!”
“Calm down,” I said. “We can stop at Safeway on our way to I-5.”
He leaned back in his seat and relaxed, then suffered through my music in silence for a few minutes.
“Turn right here,” he instructed.
“Kevin, I’ve lived in Redgrove just as long as you. I know where I’m going.”
“Just wanted to remind you.”
“I don’t need a backseat driver.”
“Technically, I’m a passenger seat driver.”
“No, technically, you’re a smartass.”
He punched me in the arm so I jerked the steering wheel a few times.
“Spencer. Seriously. Don’t do that,” he said. There wasn’t a trace of sarcasm in his voice.
“Now hold on,” I began, furrowing my brow and doing my best to look cross. “I contend that this is not entirely my fault. I assumed that somebody I trust enough to sit in the copilot seat would have the common sense to refrain from punching the man who is currently in control of a vehicle weighing nearly two thousand pounds and traveling at roughly forty miles per hour.”
“Huh,” remarked Kevin. “Funny that you called me a smartass.”
I smiled and drummed my hands on the steering wheel as I pulled into the Safeway parking lot. The place seemed surprisingly empty for a Saturday morning, so finding a spot was no problem. I killed the engine and we exited the Volvo simultaneously, which looked either really cool or really lame.
“This is all on me,” said Kevin. “Go crazy.”
I was a bit disappointed that he chose to say those words in front of a Safeway rather than a Best Buy, but I would take what I could get. As we approached the automatic doors, Kevin waved his hands with a flourish, as if he was commanding them to open.
“Alright, I’ll get actual food and stuff, you just focus on the junk,” said Kevin.
“Any requests?” I asked. If he was paying for this, I at least wanted him to get what he wanted.
“Twix. Lots of Twix. Here,” he said, tossing me a red shopping basket with the Safeway logo emblazoned on the side. I grimaced.
“Come on…a basket? Baskets are like, the man-purses of grocery containment units.”
“You’re just getting candy. You don’t need a cart,” he said, walking away.
“You can’t make racecar noises with a basket!” I shouted to him.
He glanced over his shoulder and commented, “Shut up, you look fabulous.”
It was clear that he was insinuating something with that last word. I rolled my eyes and found my way to the candy aisle, making sure that I walked there in the most manly way I could possibly muster. After comparing the prices, I found that the bag of fun-size bag of Twix, while a misnomer of gargantuan proportions, was the most cost-effective option. I figured three bags would do it. I tossed in a bag of candy corn for myself, along with some Reese’s cups, Milky Ways, and a smattering of Air Heads. Then I set off to find Kevin.
It didn’t take me long. I spotted him in a checkout line about six stands down. As I came closer, I noticed his cart (which he took without even considering the basket—the hypocrisy outraged me) was nearly filled to the brim with food, and it wasn’t junk food, it was food food. I spied a rotisserie chicken, still simmering, buried under a loaf of bread and a pack of lunch meat.
“You know, I was just going to get a few things, and then I remembered better safe than sorry and I figured we might as well stock up,” he explained.
“That’s all well and good, but…I could understand this much food if we were going to be gone for like, a week, but one night? Isn’t it a little much?” I asked.
“Hey, you don’t have to pay for it. How’d the candy run go?”
I overturned my basket into the cart and he poked through my vast harvest.
“Well done on the Twix…oh Jesus, candy corn?” He fished it out, disgusted. “You actually like this stuff?”
I snatched it out of his hand. “Fine, I’ll go put it back.”
Kevin sighed. “Come on Spencer, it’s no problem. But seriously, just because you’re holding the purse-thing doesn’t mean you have to be a bitch.”
An older, bespectacled woman wearing a presumably hand-knit sweater with a kitten on the back slowly began to turn around. Kevin managed to look away before he was hit with the full force of her death glare. She turned her gaze to me and narrowed her eyes. I could feel my ears reddening.
“I do not appreciate that language, young man,” she spat.
“Y-yes ma’am…really sorry…” I stammered. Then I stared at my shoes. I had no intention of looking up ever again.
Kevin took care of the transaction, which ran a little under a hundred dollars. We declined the bagboy’s offer to take our groceries out to our car for us.
“Man, we should’ve made him cart out our stuff for us, just to make him mad,” Kevin joked.
“You’re kind of a dick sometimes, you know that?” I responded.
“Hey, I’m just bitter because I wasted my whole summer helping idiots who asked ‘Is a guitar the one with the six strings?’ I like people to earn their money sometimes,” he stated. It was of no use explaining the Golden Rule to him.
We loaded everything into the back of the Volvo. Kevin ran the cart back to its stall, pushing it a couple yards to give it momentum, then riding it the rest of the way there. He returned looking pleased with himself, and in a few minutes, we were back on the road.
Kevin only lasted four minutes before he tore into his first bag of Twix. He wasn’t speaking due to the fact that he was stuffing his mouth, but I couldn’t complain: he wasn’t critiquing my music.
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