Spontaneous (3 page)

S
howers in police stations can burn the sun off a sunbeam, and sweat suits from police stations have pit stains the size of pancakes, but you don't complain about those things, considering that you've lived through two spontaneous combustions. You simply go home washed and dressed in gray cotton and when your parents ask you what you need, you tell them you need to be alone, and they respect that, for the time being. Then you flop down on your bed with your laptop and you see the story invading every corner of the internet.

ANOTHER EXPLOSION ROCKS SCHOOL

MORE TERROR AT COVINGTON HIGH

WE RANK THE TOP TEN SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTIONS IN HISTORY

So you close your laptop and turn to your phone, which is blowing . . . spontaneously combusting. There are a ton from your
friend Tess, but the last text that comes in is from a number you don't recognize.

It says:

You were there for both of them. That must have been invigorating.

Not scary. Not sad. Not difficult.

Invigorating
.

You should be creeped out, but you're not. Because it's the first time that someone gets it right. Both explosions were exactly that. Invigorating. A terrible thing to admit, but it's in those moments of admitting and accepting your own terribleness that you realize other people can be terrible too. And if they can be terrible too, then maybe they can be vulnerable too, caring too, and all the things that you are and hope to be.

You fall in love, which is the stupidest thing you can ever do.

S
ince I had no new information about the explosions, the morning meeting with Special Agent Carla Rosetti and her suspiciously quiet partner, Special Agent Demetri Meadows, was as unproductive as the ones I had with the cops. The big difference this time was that my mom and dad weren't there. A lawyer named Harold Frolic was my counsel instead.

Frolic was a business attorney who helped my parents with any legal issues concerning their deli, Covington Kitchen. As delis go, it was an exceptionally profitable one, with a signature sandwich called the Oinker, which was a hoagie stuffed with different cuts and preparations of pig—prosciutto, pancetta, pork loin, and pork shoulder—and topped with Muenster cheese, pickles, and a garlicky sauce. The sauce was made from a secret recipe and my parents bottled and sold the stuff at local grocery stores under the
name Oinker Oil. The plan was to go national with it someday and Frolic was helping them with that process. In the meantime, he was also helping me by saying, “You don't have to answer that,” to every question Rosetti posed.

“But she
should
answer that,” Rosetti would invariably reply or, “It would help with the investigation. Doesn't she want the investigation to succeed?” Her partner, Demetri Meadows, simply sat there, feet up on the table, staring me down, occasionally petting the graying stubble on his cheek like he was stroking a fucking cat.

Frolic was unflappable, though. The only thing he let me talk about was what I saw, which again, wasn't much. Brian Chen popped. He was there, then gone. Then there was blood. Exactly like with Katelyn.

“You ever have beef with Brian Chen?” Rosetti asked me. “A reason to want him dead?”

Have beef. That's funny. Who says that? Special Agent Carla Rosetti, that's who. I wanted to answer, “I kissed him on a bus once and he pretended to be asleep instead of kissing me back. I was tempted to push him out the emergency exit, because that's a messed-up way to treat a dame. So sure, I had beef, but that was a long, long time ago. I got over the beef.”

Frolic didn't let me get a word out, though. “Don't answer that,” he said for the millionth time. And then, “Are we done here?”

Meadows stroked his cheek as Rosetti shrugged and said, “Appears you two are.”

Frolic looked like he wanted to gather up a bunch of papers and stuff them in his suitcase before storming out of the station, but he didn't have any papers or a suitcase. He took notes on an iPad
and wore a shoulder bag. So there was a tense moment where we all just stood there. Until, of course, Rosetti stepped back from the table and, quite literally, showed us the door. I regretted not shaking her hand on the way out. I was sure of my innocence, but I liked her, so skipping the gesture of respect was kind of a dick move.

My parents met us in the parking lot and Frolic high-fived my dad like I imagine guys do at strip clubs. Then we divided up into two cars and caravanned to the Moonlight Diner, where Frolic ate a burger and blabbed on and on about my rights. I listened to maybe ten percent of what he said (Constitution
this
and permanent record
that
), because I spent most of the time with my phone in my lap, staring at that text from the night before.

Invigorating. Invigorating. Invigorating. What do you say to that? I considered a few responses.

Who's this and how'd you get my number?

Invigorating how? Explain yourself, mystery texter!

I. Lurve. You.

What I finally settled on was:

Fuck you sicko.

About ten seconds later, there was a reply:

You don't mean that.

Then the volley of texts began.

Me: Hmmm . . . so you can read minds?

Mystery texter: I know you feel things.

Me: Perv.

Mystery texter: Come on. You have a soul. You have ideas.

Me: Flattery will get you NOWHERE.

Mystery texter: I only want to talk to you.

Me: Then what?

Mystery texter: IDK.

Me: You a dude?

Mystery texter: More or less.

Me: You breathtakingly ugly?

Mystery texter: Not physically.

Me: OK. Here's the dealio. You found my number. Now find my house. Ring the bell. Get past my parents. Prove you really want to talk to me. If you don't show up, then I won't ever know who you are and shit won't have to be awkward. Up to the challenge?

Mystery texter: Challenge accepted.

“At least do us the courtesy of occasional eye contact as we discuss your future,” Dad said.

My eyes moved up from my lap, skipped his scowl, and moved on to Mom's disappointed/sympathetic face. She mouthed,
We fuckin' love you.
Which wasn't weird because Mom swears a fair bit. Yeah, I know. Apples falling far from trees and all of that.

“I was checking the weather,” I said.

Dad motioned with his head to the window across from our booth. “Not a cloud in the sky.”

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I'm getting weird texts.”

Like everyone, I sometimes lie to my parents. I can never sustain it, though. I always end up telling them the truth. The more truth your parents know, the fewer things they suspect. No joke. If you're a kid who constantly lies to your parents then,
news flash
, they know you lie and they probably think you're a complete degenerate.

“Weird texts, as in threats?” Mom asked.

“No,” I said. “Some curious guy.”

Frolic took a bite of his burger and said, “Forward them all directly to me.” He used a voice that was supposed to sound wise and lawyerly, but considering he had a gob of ketchup on his cheek, it sounded a bit more like a skeevy old man asking a teenager to share her private correspondence with him.

“They're not of the . . . legal variety,” I said.

“Almost anything can and will be exploited by the FBI if they count you as a suspect,” Frolic said.

“She's not a suspect. She's not a suspect.” Dad said it twice because he thinks if you say something twice, the more likely it is that it will be true.

“Well,” Frolic replied, “I'll be seeing to it that the world knows and understands that soon enough. You have my word.”

I had to say it, so I said it. “And you have ketchup on your face.”

M
ystery Texter didn't show up at my house that day or the next. School was shuttered for the entire week, and all its homecoming festivities were put on hold, so the guy certainly had his opportunities to pop in. It's not like he even had funerals to attend. The Chen family didn't have the money that the Ogden family had and rumors were that they'd only be inviting close friends and family to Brian's memorial service. Fine by me. More crying wasn't going to help a thing.

The support group was canceled because Vince called it quits. He sent us all an email saying he would be pursuing other interests. Presumably, not hanging out with kids made of nitroglycerin. Who could blame him? My parents tried to book some immediate extra sessions with Linda for me, but she wasn't returning their calls. Either she was throwing in the towel as well, or she was too busy fielding requests from new patients. It's tough enough when one kid in your school blows up, even if you don't really know her.
When a second kid blows up . . . well, I don't care if you've never even heard of him. You take it personally.

“Kids blow up now. And I'm a kid. Therapy please.”

Every news organization in the world had arrived. Perched on a gorge and overlooking town, the Hotel Covington's parking lot was a hive of vans with giant retractable antennae. You couldn't go anywhere without someone shoving a microphone in your face. On the other hand, you couldn't stay home and zone out behind the TV or mess around on the internet because Covington High was all anyone could talk or write about. You couldn't even watch things on mute, because people were making explosion gestures with their hands. This included newscasters, which is a bit unprofessional and undignified if you ask me.

To keep my mind off things, I spent a lot of time with Tess McNulty. She hated terms like “bestie” and “BFF,” but Tess and I were two people who knew how to best distract each other, so I think we qualified. We'd been inseparable since elementary school and, at the age of nine, had decided to grow old together.

We were spending a few weeks down the shore at my grandparents' place after Tess's dad took off on her and her mother. One evening, the two of us were riding our bikes past these gorgeous Victorian houses along the beachfront, and we spied two old ladies sitting in beach chairs at the edge of a porch. They were wearing kimonos, holding hands, and smoking a hookah while dipping their toes in the sand. Which was obviously adorable.

“Let's be those old ladies, always and forever,” we pledged with the sunset as our witness.

Ten years later and the pledge remained intact. Only now we
were getting around in cars. Since I never drove and she always did, Tess was the captain. And since she rarely partook in mind-altering substances and I often did, I was the wacky sidekick.

In the first few days following the demise of Brian Chen, we must have logged five hundred miles on her Civic. She had a playlist called Drive, Fucker, Drive!
,
which consisted mostly of songs with loads of swears. Hip-hop, obviously, but also some punk and even some country of the shit-kicking variety. We played it full blast with the windows down and drove west into the hills and farmlands near Pennsylvania, where the autumn colors were popping. We turned off the GPS and took roads we didn't know.

This was something we'd done before, and almost always the plan was to get into adventures. Though our adventures usually consisted of getting dirty looks from old men as we pulled into rural gas stations. It's illegal to pump your own gas in New Jersey, so Tess and I would sit in the car with the stereo still on, singing along to songs about being “higher than a motherfucker,” and the geezers would stand there shaking their heads and mumbling under their breaths until we drove off in a fit of giggles.

Of course, Tess was never higher than a motherfucker. She was responsible like that. Me, not so much. For instance, the Dalton twins had sold me some shrooms a few months before. At a farmer's market, appropriately enough. I'd only taken them once, during a camping trip to the Poconos. They freaked me out at first, but then the experience mellowed and I eventually became “one with nature” and decided I was willing to give them another shot. I'd stashed them in the base of my bedside lamp and had been saving them for an outdoor concert or some event where my
ermahgerd-your-voice-is-f-of-rainbows! shtick would be tolerated.

During one of our drives away from memories of Katelyn and Brian, swear-singing with Tess wasn't helping me forget enough, so I insisted we stop by a Dunkin' Donuts. I bought a steaming-hot pumpkin latte and I dropped a double dose of shrooms in it.

“You're gonna make yourself sick,” Tess said.

“The opposite,” I said. “You brew them in liquid first to make sure you don't get sick. That's what Native Americans do.”

“In pumpkin lattes?”

“Well, they had pumpkins at least. Thanksgiving. Pumpkin pie. Duh.”

“Yeah. Duh.”

Tess was right. Twenty minutes later I was puking along the side of the road somewhere in the Pinelands. Tess rubbed my back and I imagined her hand was a bear's paw—but not a scary bear's paw, a cuddly bear's paw, a cartoon bear's paw—and it was at that moment I realized that shit was about to get loopy.

“Someone loves me,” I told her.

“I love you, baby,” Tess said.

“I know that, but I mean a phantom. Someone who lives in space between the spaces.”

“Jesus? Dumbledore?”

“Don't joke, Tess. You haven't got your real eyes on.” I meant this last part literally, because instead of her regular brown eyes, she had glimmering diamonds in her head.

“Let's get you in the car. You can lie down in the back. I'll play something acoustic. Something soothing.”

“Invigorating. Invigorating. Invigorating,” I said.

“Soothing,” Tess repeated in a voice that fit the word, and she guided me into the backseat.

“He reads my mind,” I said with a gasp. “Do you think he has especially big ears, like satellites that can read brain waves?”

“I have no idea what you're talking about,” Tess said.

As she pushed me on the chest and down into the seat, I handed her my phone, which was queued up to my texts. She took a second to read them and handed the phone back. “See. He loves me,” I said.

Tess leaned in and kissed me on the cheek and I felt little happy ants on my skin. “Well, whoever he is, he isn't here. And I'm guessing he hasn't shown up at your door yet.”

“Nope. He's a chicken.
Bock-bock-bock
,” I clucked, and I wondered why people said chickens sounded like that because I wasn't sure what they really sounded like, but I knew it wasn't that. Definitely not that.

My feet were dangling outside, so Tess lifted and placed them on the seat and closed the door to keep them in place. It sounded like the air hatch on a rocket ship sealing shut. Noise, then silence. Then a few seconds later, noise again and Tess was at the controls, firing up the engine and launching us into space. Music burst from the stereo like bats from a cave and I felt every curve and bump of the road. I laughed hysterically as Tess sang along to some dopey old thing from the sixties or seventies.

“You just call out my name, and you know wherever I am, I'll come running, to see you again . . .”