Saturday…Back to Life

BENDER

Bender strode purposefully across the deserted football stadium, every fiber of his being pulsing with energy.

So this is what it feels like to be alive.

He punctuated the thought with a fist pump in the air, the pull of the earth's gravity the only force preventing him from taking off into the bold blue heavens like Superman himself. It wasn't enough, and a bellow soon followed, piercing the air like cannon shot.

Ma had often quipped that he looked like a bull when he was like this, nostrils flaring, eyes focused and dangerous. And he was large and lumbering, his broad frame belying his middling height.

As a strong breeze whipped his denim jacket and woolen scarf, the trace of a fragrance wafted past his face. Sophistication. Class. And musk.

Claire.

Absently, he touched the diamond earring newly nested in his left ear as the corners of his mouth lifted into a grin.

Claire.

It's a fat girl's name.

His face burned at the thought. Why the hell did I say that?

It had just popped out. It was seven something freaking o'clock in the morning, and John Bender preferred to sleep in on Saturdays. Then she had eyed him with that prissy sneer all the queenies appeared to have perfected, and he wanted nothing more than to shock it off. It wasn't a name he liked anyway. Too fussy. Bender liked simple names on girls, like Cathy and Gina and Tammy. But a name like Cathy would never settle well on this one with the flaming red hair and biting sarcasm, this one who had reached through his pain, opened the door to his soul, then turned and left him standing there to gape at her retreat.

As Bender turned onto Hughes Street, the familiar battered trailer park greeted him somberly. It had probably been nice once, kept up with mowed grass and landscaping and maybe even the occasional neighborly cookout, but somewhere along the way the Sunnyvale Mobile Home Park ("Just the place to rest your rump!" a weathered sign still boasted) had gotten lost and found its way to hell before the Benders moved in three years ago. He avoided it when he could, but his belly howled for fuel.

As he strode toward #350, a particularly sad abode with faded green siding and a sagging wooden porch, he spotted his buddy Russell leaning against the side of the house, smoking one of his foul Camels.

Russell spread his hands impatiently. "Dude, where you been all day?"

Bender scooped up his basketball from the patch of grass they called a yard and dribbled it under and over his legs, under and over like a pretzel. "I had detention."

"Detention? For what?"

"Remember the fake fire alarm on Thursday?"

Russell guffawed. "That was you?"

Bender took on a mocking Vernon voice. "Young man, I was only performing my civic duty of ensuring that our children are properly drilled." He punctuated this with a shot to the basket, attached to a lonely pole by the street. No net. The ball bounced loudly off the rim and rolled into the yard.

Russell opened his mouth with what was surely going to be a smartass retort, then snapped it shut as he studied Bender's face.

"Damn, brother," he chortled. "How much did it cost and where can I get some?"

Bender shook his head and clapped Russell on the back, brushing past him and up the steps to the porch and inside, leaving Russell gawking at him.

What I got you could never hope to get. And I ain't sharing.

ANDREW

Andrew shut the car door and met his father's eyes.

I hate you. God, I hate you.

Even the wonder and beauty that was Allison could not break this wild stallion of hatred for the man sitting mere inches from him, the tension between them so thick it was almost suffocating.

They rode in silence until they were out on the main street. But it never took long for his father's words to spill out, cutting and accusing. "That will be the last black mark on your record, young man. Discipline problems will blow your ride. Is that understood?"

Lips parted, barely a whisper slipped out. "Yessir."

"Your mother and I didn't raise a loser. We raised a winner. Don't prove it to me, prove it to yourself. Even winners stumble and fall from time to time…"

The rest was lost on Andrew as his mind wandered a different path. The road to reverie. And down that path, barely visible but becoming clearer with each step, stood Allison.

His mind replayed the moment when she had emerged. There he had been, perched on the wooden rail in the library, probably looking like a moron, fingering the delicate cross around his neck, deep in thought.

He had been given much to think about. For the first time he had articulated, to a group of mostly strangers save a passing acquaintance with Claire, his personal hell of homespun misery. He had torn open a stinking feedbag of family filth and force-fed them all from it with a wrath greater than anything Vernon could ever dream of conjuring. And the wild thing was that they had taken it in, every single one of them, silent and wide-eyed as he flung it around. Even Bender, a guy he had almost come to blows with earlier in the day. Bender hadn't been his problem, he realized now. Andrew had brought a load of baggage to this party, and now here he sat (in the damned school library of all places) with his baggage spilled out and strewn everywhere. Hell, I carry more shit in my purse than Allison. Now the question was what to do with it. Could he leave it here? Burn it? Did he have to go around and retrieve each piece to be dealt with later? Andrew was not naïve. It wasn't going to just disappear on its own, but for the first time in a long time, his head felt clearer and he saw before him several paths he could take besides the one his father was driving him down like a bridled colt.

Then she had emerged, like a butterfly from a cocoon. Allison. Her dark hair swept away from her face, her pale skin shining, her deep brown eyes darting around as if seeing their world for the first time, her lips like painted roses. Time slowed, then stopped, as their eyes locked. His body dropped on its own and moved toward her as if in a dream. She had some exchange with Brian, but Andrew barely registered it, and then she stood before him. Her eyes, so beautiful, but full of suspicion. Uncertainty. Fear. The butterfly thinking to flee to the comfort of her spun cave. He could not let that happen.

So he opened his mouth to say something, anything. "What happened to you?" You idiot.

She tried to blow it off. "Why? Claire did it." No big deal. But her eyes implored him. Am I beautiful? "What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong." He reached toward her. "It's just…so different. I can see your face."

Allison seemed to relax a bit. "Is that good or bad?"

"It's good."

Then she broke into a smile, a brilliant, blinding smile, and Andrew lost his heart in that one moment. He had already fallen for her in a way that was different, because she was different. Allison was scathing and self-defeating and undeniably real, and unapologetic about all of it. Most of the girls he knew pretended to be normal, pretended like he did. They even pretended to be impressed with his jock image, his jacket, his trophies. Didn't they see that he wasn't much of a man at all? Couldn't they see that his whole life was a game, that he was a fake? Allison was not impressed because she could see through the façade, to the point where she had cut both Claire and him to the core with staggering clarity.

"He can't think for himself." She had nailed him without missing a beat.

Allison pretended too, protected herself, but did it by making absolutely sure she would not be approached, would not be pulled in to the same movie everyone else was starring in. She had begun the day as a wounded girl who looked at no one and spoke not a word, but now she had shed the costume, the baggy clothes and curtain of hair - and bag of shit - and stood before him a young woman, beautiful and fragile and more real than ever.

Something deep within him, suddenly awakened, leapt up in his belly when he kissed her, and he almost thought he could hear a humming like a tuning fork when their lips parted. Andrew caught a glimpse of Brian grinning goofily at them from his seat before he pulled Allison into an embrace and closed his eyes as he drank in the faint sweet scent of makeup, hair spray, and….

"Andrew! Are you listening to me, boy?"

Eyes snapping open, Andrew quickly took in his surroundings and realized the car was parked in his family driveway. In his periphery he could see his father turned toward him, one hand on the wheel and one on the seat back, eyes flaring. Then, to his mild shock, his father slumped a bit and turned to face front again. "Go on, son."

Andrew quickly escaped the vehicle and walked quickly into the house and up to the second floor, his twelve year-old sister Heather emerging dreamily from the hallway bathroom with a Duran Duran magazine spread in front of her face and then squeaking in protest as he brushed past her to lock himself in his bedroom. Sweeping clothes and textbooks off his bed, Andrew laid flat, laced his fingers across his chest, stared at the ceiling, and counted the hours until Monday morning and school. And Allison.

CLAIRE

Dropping into the seat beside her father, her lips still tingling, Claire gazed at John as the car pulled away, then lingered on the side mirror as he grew more distant.

"Claire Bear?" Her father's voice broke through the reverie.

"Hi, daddy," Claire chirped as she flashed him a smile.

"You look pretty happy considering you just got out of detention. Not so bad, I guess?"

Claire chewed her lip as her eyes sparkled in their knowing way. "No, not so bad. Actually, it turned out pretty good."

They stopped at a traffic light. His eyes weighed her. "Claire? You all right? You seem a little…different."

Claire flipped a hand in his direction. "I'm fine."

"Claire?" His tone was serious.

"Yeah?"

"Who was that boy you were talking to?"

He knows. Maybe not everything that happened, but he knows something happened.

Trying in vain to keep the heat from rising in her face, Claire put on her best innocent face. "What boy?"

Eyebrows raised. "The boy you were…talking to…back at the school."

"Oh, nobody. Just one of my fellow inmates." She forced her fingers to stop fiddling with her purse strap and stared out her window, suddenly very interested in a weathered old lady waiting at a bus stop. A few seconds passed. A few seconds more. Then the car began to move forward and she allowed herself to breathe again.

I'm not a tease. I'm NOT a tease.

You want to, but you can't. But when you do, you wish you didn't. Right? Allison's voice.

Right?

John was free, back out in his world, and the dreamy euphoria crystallized into fear. Would he say anything? Who would he tell? Would he brag about it? Who would know on Monday morning, or before then?

Closing her eyes, Claire leaned her head back, hugged herself, and tried to flush it all out of her mind. But John's face kept swimming up into her vision. And he was smirking.

ALLISON

She had him. God knew how, but she had him. And now she had a souvenir as well. As the car pulled away, she dragged her huge bag onto her lap and ran her fingertips over the circular terrycloth badge she had ripped off Andrew's letterman's jacket. She smirked. Now it's just a man's jacket.

She looked out the window and caught her breath when she spotted her reflection, a face she hardly recognized anymore.

Glancing at the back of her parents' heads, both silent in the front seat, Tina Turner on the radio, Allison wondered if they had even noticed. Nothing indicated that they had. Her dad's shoulders were slightly slumped, wrist resting on top of the steering wheel, only the slightest movements of the wheel indicating that he was even driving. And well, she was used to seeing the back of her mom's head. When she actually had occasion to face her, the eyes darted away, always away.

They ignore me.

She had whispered that cruel, undeniable truth. Sporto had pulled it from her. And he, this beautiful stupid jock, had understood. Not so stupid then.And not so perfect. His life sucked too, in its own stinking dysfunctional way.

The way he had looked at her after Claire had spent forever poking at her eyeballs with little sticks and wands and scratching and pulling at her hair. No guy had ever looked at her like that. Well, Kurt Johnson had kinda looked at her like that, but he was a freaking creep. Sporto hadn't looked at her like I want a piece of that. He had looked at her like…like he…well, it was different. Andy. His name is Andy.

And Claire. Girls like Claire never looked at girls like Allison at all. If they did, they looked away quickly, maybe rolling their eyes at each other and giggling like stupid little Care Bears. Allison had learned to turn it into a game. How invisible can I be in a building with hundreds of people?

And oh my God, how Claire had howled at her when she admitted she was a virgin too! Allison snorted aloud at the thought, then held her breath as she waited for a reaction from the front seat. Nope. "What's Love Got to Do With It?" had all their attention. Pretty appropriate really. Damn you, Robbie. Perfect, beautiful Robbie. He would always be fourteen, he would always be strong, he would always be their only son. And they would never forgive her for living instead of him.

BRIAN

Head still slightly buzzing, Brian floated home with a dreamy grin on his face, barely registering his dad's pressing questions about getting all of his homework done. Truth be told, no homework had been completed whatsoever, unless one counted the unimpeachable letter Brian had written on behalf of the Breakfast Club. They had unanimously entrusted him with the task, and he had delivered in grand style. It was the first time anyone other than his friends had trusted him with anything, and his admittedly scrawny chest puffed a bit with pride. Guys like him would someday be entrusted with billion dollar space programs and millions to research a cure for cancer, but in high school? In high school you got your ass taped and stashed in a locker by a bunch of assholes who couldn't even score above the teens on their ACT.

It wasn't Bender who had given him pause when they gathered in the library at 7:00 that morning. Yeah, Bender could have easily kicked his ass, could have wrung him out like a wet towel. Yeah, Bender screwed with his lunch and made fun of him and his friends and his family, but Bender was wounded as he was wounded, and he bullied because he had been bullied. That's for sure. His pop gave him cigarettes? For Christmas?

No, it was Andrew Clarke who had sparked a slow burn of resentment within Brian's belly. Guys like him were above the law, or so they thought. They were popular and well-liked. And protected. They brought pride and prestige to the school along with their trophies and newspaper headlines. The Academic Bowl and Odyssey of the Mind ribbons and trophies somehow never made their way into the glass cases in the cafeteria. And when Brian learned that Andrew was the one who had humiliated Larry Lester... Claire had laughed…at first. And what made it worse was that Andrew had no clue Brian was one of Larry's friends. Actually, Brian doubted Andrew had a clue that Larry even had friends.

But then it had all spilled out, and the cool tough guy athlete façade had crumbled before their eyes. Who would have guessed they had the same nagging, perfection demanding parents?

Brian pushed the thought away and unclenched his hands. He had almost lost his cool vibe, but he stretched his fingers out and found zen again. He never would have believed it, but an understanding had been reached between the two of them. Among all of them. It remained to be seen if Andy or Claire, or even Bender or Allison for that matter, would treat him like anything resembling a friend on Monday. He wasn't sure how much that even mattered now. He had seriously considered taking his life (with a flare gun, so he couldn't even do that right) and had come through it a different kind of man. Had this really been set off by something as stupid as a ceramic elephant lamp?

Brian laced his fingers behind his head and grinned, basking in a newly birthed confidence that was both strange and welcome. Today he had shaken off the heavy chains of family demands, the suffocating status structure of high school, the enormous pressure he had placed on himself. With the noise silenced, he could finally hear adulthood and freedom calling his name. Brian Johnson could hold his smoke and a lot more besides. Oh yes he could.

THE END

Coming soon: Monday