Chapter 53
Clint has been living in the garage for a whole week since. Not as good as leaving our home altogether, but I'll still take it for now.
“Jesus Pineapple Christ, Clint, what has gotten into you? It's a little bug,” Dinah had said to him after his scream woke up the entire neighborhood. He ran to his gun rack to grab his flamethrower.
“That's not a bug, that's a monster! And it's in our HOUSE,” he cried, stamping his foot in protest. The tip of his flamethrower tapped against the glass of the terrarium, angering Arachnodesiac enough to do his warning dance.
“It's my science project,” I said. “I have to keep it alive to pass the class. Please don't kill it!” I wrung my hands together, got on my knees, and begged. “See? It's dancing right now. It likes you!”
Dinah wrapped her arm around Clint's elbow and pulled him away. “Let the kid do his science project so he can graduate. Otherwise, we're stuck with him forever, okay?”
“It can be cute. Just imagine it's wearing eight Converse shoes,” I said. “Maybe we could all do a game night together. Just pull out my grandma's old Twister mat.”
“You people are crazy. I'm not staying here,” he said, then gathered his things to move into the podcast studio.
Now that I've sprayed a metaphorical bottle of Clint B Gone, I've got other things to focus on. Today is the last day of February, which means the final dress rehearsal before we open tomorrow night—which happens to be my eighteenth birthday.
I practice my elephant umbilical cord speech exercises while waiting for Felix in the driveway. When he picks me up, we're both silent during the drive. Our rides to school have been increasingly quiet.
“Guess what?” he asks.
“Hmm?”
“Roland and I won first prize at UIL. I wanted to show you the video.” He scans around the front of the car for his phone. “Crap. I left my phone at home,” he says, then takes us on a detour to his house.
I wait in the hall as he runs upstairs to his room. On the table, I see an opened letter with a University of Texas at Austin logo on it and peek inside.
Congratulations, Felix!
I see flashes of words like “computer science” and “scholarship” and my knees grow weak. The stairs rumble with Felix's footsteps, forcing me to drop the letter before I can fully read it. When he's back, he has the video already open to show me.
“Roland and I developed an app that detects rotation on radar in any given area and sends a warning to everybody.”
I feel a sharp sting at the words “Roland and I.” The video stings even more—both of them dressed up in suits, getting a standing ovation in front of a crowd that probably doesn't even have Roland's parents.
Felix makes a speech about how I lost my family in a tornado and they hope this never happens to anybody else and it's dedicated to me and derp-derp-derp.
“Very kind of you,” I say half-heartedly.
“Yeah, I can tell you're really impressed,” he says, shoving the phone in his pocket.
Back in his car, I'm still trying not to freak out about the college thing. Halfway through the ride, he's said nothing. If he can just keep it that way until we get to school, I can avoid a meltdown.
“You ready for opening night?” he asks.
“As ready as I can be,” I say. “So… about that lease for our apartment. I need your signature before we put in the down payment.”
“Wow. Happening so fast.”
“You're acting all tense right now.”
“I'm not tense,” he says defensively.
“Then sign the lease.”
“I will. It's Friday. Let me focus on school today,” he says.
“No. Now. Stop the car and sign it.”
But he doesn't respond. The car goes faster.
“I said stop the car,” I say again more firmly. He ignores me. “You are acting like a serial killer right now.” I open the door while he continues to drive.
“What the hell are you thinking? Close the door!” he shouts.
He hits the brakes and we stop. I rip off my seat belt and get out of the car, slamming the door behind me.
Felix leaves his car and follows. “Why are you doing this?”
I stomp away from him, refusing to look back.
“You stepped in dog shit,” he says. I stop and take a whiff without even looking down. Sure enough, I did.
“Dammit,” I mutter. I rub the bottom of my shoe over the grass to get it off but end up making a bigger mess of it all over the sole. I take off the shoe and chuck it angrily across the grass, then storm off, wobbling with only one shoe.
Felix follows me for a whole minute, asking me to stop.
“Will you please talk to me?” he asks.
I turn around. “So you're going to UT? I thought you wanted to run away to California with me.”
Felix stammers through several attempts at a response and stops.
“I don't know what I want, okay?” he finally says.
“My parents made me apply to UT last semester.
Now they're offering me a partial scholarship, and my mom's company is offering to pay the rest in addition to the money I got from my grandfather.
I'm under so much pressure right now my mind's about to explode, so give me a fucking break!”
“You give me a break!” I continue walking, with Felix pursuing me from behind.
“I am! I'm not the one on your ass right now!”
“You're literally following my ass as you say that!”
“I have your shoe!”
“I don't want my shoe!”
I walk for what feels like forever until I turn around and Felix is gone. My shoeless foot starts to ache, so I hobble back to the road to get my shit shoe.
I storm down the sidewalk, looking angrily at the ground.
I don't know how I'm going to get through the dress rehearsal tonight without breaking down in tears.
There's something tugging at my heart, asking me to go back to apologize to him.
Another part of me is still furious and feels righteous about what I did.
A car pulls up next to me. I'm not looking. I don't care. It could be a serial killer that's come to kidnap me. Fantastic. That would be the most optimal result I can think of today.
I can hear their window slide down.
“Wade! What happened to your foot?”
It's Ms. Easterling.
I know she means well, and I know she does care, but I don't want to talk to anybody in the world right now. I know she's going to give me that sad, sympathetic look that makes me feel pathetic.
“Are you okay? Do you want to talk?”
“Leave me alone,” I say softly, so as not to sound like I'm angry at her.
“Is there somebody I can call for you?” She's so aggressively sweet and caring. It breaks my heart.
Somebody honks at her from behind.
“This tranny bothering you, kid?” they yell from their car window. Several other men are in the car, too.
Oh no. It's a group of Dinahmiters.
“Don't listen to them. They've been following me around for months,” Ms. Easterling says.
I flick them off and walk up to her car anyway.
“Hey! Don't get into his car,” the driver yells at me.
The man steps out his car, brandishing a full-on assault weapon, then runs over to Ms. Easterling and points it at her. She flinches and covers her face with her arms.
“STOP!” I scream at him.
“Leave the kid alone,” he says.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I shout at him. “She's my teacher.”
“I've been watching this guy for a while now.
He's my next-door neighbor,” the man says.
“I remember him being on my baseball team in high school.
Now he's dressing in ladies' clothing and thinks he's a woman, right around the same time we've had that thing in the woods messing with people's sexualities and private parts.
He's one of them now, and he's trying to get you in his car and groom you with his Sasquatch mind control.
Please back away from his vehicle, and I'll take care of this.”
My face burns red. I am shaking.
“THERE IS NO GAY SASQUATCH, YOU STUPID REDNECK. The only thing that happened was the circus clown riding a unicycle around your skull fell and broke his neck and NOW YOU DON'T HAVE A brAIN ANYMORE.”
“The only circus I see here is a freak show featuring a man wearing a dress,” he says, now pointing the gun at me. I don't care. He can shoot me and put me out of my misery.
“Here, have a shoe!” I throw my shit shoe at his chest, caking his shirt in dog shit. Once the scent hits him, he squeals and drops his gun.
“Wade, don't make it worse!” Ms. Easterling says, her voice getting louder and more nervous.
I run up to the gun and kick it away from him, then jump into Ms. Easterling's car.