Fiction.

Somewhere in our storied 260 years of higher education history Americans decided that college was no longer for sharpening the mind and advancing human knowledge. No longer! College is now for drinking beers, throwing parties, and doin’ chicks. For four — or in my case six — years hormonal teenagers live in an unsupervised, alcohol soaked, reality-free bubble. College does not prepare you for any work place (other than, maybe, Hooters) that I’m familiar with. Classes, GPA’s, magna-this-or-the-other: it’s all basically a load of bullshit.

Here, however, is something that most certainly is not bullshit: real life — life after college — sucks. Real life is full of bills, laundry, divorced women who feel the need to tell you all about their ex-husbands, and pants that don’t fit anymore.

Seriously, I’ve had to buy all new pants.

Specifically, my real life is full of a job at a State owned server farm just outside of Blacksburg in the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center. I live in town six blocks from an apartment where I once witnessed three girls box each other unconscious wearing nothing but chocolate pudding. I ride the bus to work and sit in the same seat I hurled all over sophomore year after a rousing night of Edward Forty Hands. You can still see the stain; it’s shaped like a potato. Basically, every facet of my life reminds me of how the best days of my life are gone forever. Like, seriously, forever.

It’s not even like I’ve moved on to better days filled with excitement and challenge. No, I’ve moved on to Junior Help Desk Ticket Manager, which I’m pretty sure doesn’t mean anything. It certainly doesn’t have anything to do with Help Desk Tickets or managing if my daily routine is any indication. The job sucks, and they misspelled my name on my access badge: “Kaiser D. Sexilly.” Honestly. It’s “Saxille.” I’ve been called worse than sexilly, I suppose.

Shit, in this town it doesn’t even matter if you do things sexily or not. If you buy the drinks, the ladies — using the term loosely here — will drink them. And let’s face it: feed a college girl enough G&T’s and they’ll be up for anything. Sure, I can’t find a steady girlfriend that is my age, has a job, and isn’t in college, but I keep busy. It’s not as great as it sounds (it sounds fantastic though). Believe me, you can only handle five or six dozen overly tanned denim miniskirted females before you start to get bored.

Summary: the job sucks, the ladies suck but lack substance, and the town is excellent canon by which to measure just how far I’ve fallen. Which is why I’ve decided to get out of this place for a week or two. I’m leaving for Richmond tomorrow to attend a funeral. It’s a depressing reason to leave but, at this point, I’ll take it.

The dead man, the deceased, or whatever, is Chris Dennis. He played the drums for this excellent Dave Matthews cover band, Because of Dave Matthews, and lived with me and this other guy my sophomore year. He drowned yesterday while swimming in the river with a group of people out tubing. At some point he disappeared, but no one noticed when or where. Later that day his body washed up under a bridge.

Depressing.

Getting out of Blacksburg is going to be great, but I’m not overly excited about spending two weeks in Richmond — I’ve spent enough time there. I’m staying with my sister and her hipster husband Dan. I’d better get ready for a weekend with Bright Eyes. Tattoos, tight pants, and bad mustachios are why I left Richmond in the first place.

“Look at this asshole over here, revving his engine when I’m trying to concentrate,” I mutter to myself. “I ought to go punch him right in his cock.”

I glance over to the right, where the other car is making some kind of godawful racket. That’s when he pops into gear and takes off into the night.

“Shit.”

I floor it, squealing tires past the girl whose signal to start racing I had missed. By the first turn I’m a full second behind and losing ground, which I blame loudly on the fourth gear ratio.

Ha, who am I kidding. I don’t know a damn thing about cars. In fact, I’m not too good with a stick shift. But who cares? It’s not my car. I take the second turn a bit too fast and skid past a cop going the other direction. I’ve barely regained control when the siren starts.

“SHIT.”

It would be great to stop and have a chat with Kent’s Finest, but I’ve misplaced my license and, again, this isn’t technically my car. The antilocks engage as I swerve the car into a dusty side-street, then I jump out and start pounding pavement. You can always get away from cops if you act fast and remember one thing: they’re fatter than you.

It’s fully morning and I’m fully sober when I walk into the apartment. I don’t even look at my prick roommate before I start busting his balls. Call it a habit.

“Hey, asshole, I ran into your sister at the race last night. I think her butt’s getting bigger now that she’s 17. I like it.”

“James! Buddy! Why don’t you sit down and explain that to Officer Bruce here.”

Shit.

I turn around. Prick Roommate Peter, looking like he just nailed the prom queen, is sitting on the couch across from the hickest cop I’d ever seen in my life. We’re talking toothpick, drawl, and serious chins.

“Doin’ some racin’ last night, son?” asks the cop, looking me up and down. “We ran across Peter’s car out off 43 up near to Streetsborough. Says he thinks you took it. You wouldn’t know anything about that, now, would you?”

Cop #2 saunters in from my bedroom and looks at me. “Mr. Wood!”

“Officers,” I begin. My head starts to pound and I’m suddenly hungry, but fuck it. I hate cops.

“All I was saying was that Peter’s sister has a great ass. And you can go ahead and put that down in your report.”

Peter smiles wider, if possible.

The pigs look at each other. Hick Cop sighs, then says, “Look, you keep your hands off Peter’s car, here. I’m letting you off with a warning, but if you put even a nosehair out of line, I’ll personally nail your balls to the jailhouse wall.”

“Hey, Bruce, you think we’re about done here? I’m starving.”

Peter’s smile slips. It’s beautiful.

Hick-Cop looks at Peter. “Yeah, I reckon we’re about done. You have a good one now.” He turns to me. “Nails. Balls. Think about it.”

The cops safely out the door, Peter looks at me, but doesn’t quite meet my eye, because he is a pussy. “You’re back in Ohio just one day, and you’re already almost arrested? Can’t you stop being a complete asshole for one whole day?”

“Come on, Petey. Your sister missed me.”

“Okay look, I can’t deal with it anymore. You’re out of this apartment, today.”

What? “Aw, fuck, Pete, I was just kidding about your sister. I take it back. She has a tiny butt.”

“I don’t care. You’re out. I’m not dealing with your shit anymore. Out.”

Oh well. It’s back to Richmond, I guess. Ma’ll be surprised to see me back so soon, but she did want me to stick around for that girl’s funeral.

I actually got summoned to my guidance counselor’s office today. Who knew they really did that? Well, they do and they do it to me.

To make matters worse, rather than sending a discrete note, they called me over the intercom right in the middle of art class, the only time of the day when I’m not hating my life. My schedule didn’t let me take art with the rest of the seniors so Mr. Temple, my teacher, worked it out for me to do an independent study during the time he teaches Art I to a bunch of freshman who either don’t know anything or don’t care. It’s not too bad, though. He’s set me up a spot in the back of the room so I can have my own space to work. I decided to do my independent study on printmaking. I’m doing a series of pieces inspired by traditional Japanese art. In fact, I was halfway through inking the plate for my first piece when the school secretary’s voice crackled out over the P.A. that I was to report to Miss Gregory’s office immediately. Being that I’m in high school and it is by definition awesome, I was assaulted with choruses of “ooooooooooooooooooooh” and “Someone’s in troooooouuuuuuuubllllllllllle” as I quickly washed my hands and bolted out of the room to avoid any further undesired attention from my classmates.

I wiped my hands on my jeans and started down the hall to Miss Gregory’s office. I knew exactly why she was calling me to her office, but I clung to the slim chance that it was something else. Maybe someone had started a rumor that I was pregnant and she wanted to see if it was true. Or maybe she had gotten a line on a scholarship at SCAD (that’s Savannah College of Art and Design to you) and she couldn’t wait to tell me.

Yeah right. I knew why she wanted to see me.

Chemistry.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate chemistry. Ok, yes I do, but it’s not like I’m rude about it or anything. I go to class and I’m polite to the teacher and all. I just don’t so much do the work. It turns out that not doing the work means that you fail. And failing chemistry doesn’t make graduation a particularly real possibility. Teachers, guidance counselors, and especially parents don’t really like it when you don’t graduate. Neither do colleges.

Miss Gregory’s office door was open when I arrived. She looked up as I got there and didn’t say a word - she just nodded towards the chair facing her desk. I slumped down in the seat and stuffed my hands into the pockets of my sweatshirt. Miss Gregory slowly got up, walked around the desk to shut the door, and sat back down. She leaned back in her chair and pressed her finger tips together. She did not look happy.

I decided to make the first move. And by move, I mean idiotic babbling, a teenage girl’s second most valuable weapon. It’s goal is to put forth as many words as possible in at an ultrasonic pitch as to confuse the listener to the point where he/she will do anything to get you to go away. And it went a little something like this:

“Miss Gregory I know why I’m here and I know how serious it is but it’s just that I don’t like chemistry and I never have and I haven’t liked it since I started it but the problem is even if I started to like chemistry now I’m too far behind to ever know anything and all those symbols and numbers make me nauseous and I’ll do anything I’ll do summer school or tutoring or whatever because I know that I need to graduate because college is the only way for me to get out of this town it’s just I don’t understand anything in chemistry and if you look at my record you’ll see that this is the first time I’ve ever even come close to failing something and I don’t know what to do.”

Miss Gregory just looked at me, an unreadable expression on her face. I started to think maybe I needed to conjure up some tears to get some sympathy - that would be a teenage girl’s *most* valuable weapon, one most used by the more spoiled variety but useful in a pinch to even to girls like me. Miss Gregory has been my guidance counselor since 9th grade and she knows me really well, so there was little chance she’d really fall for it. But, it was worth a shot.

I was ready to start the chin-trembling when Miss Gregory took a deep breath and cleared her throat.

“Lauren, I would love it if this meeting were about your grade in Mr. Goode’s class. And believe me, we will be addressing it and soon. But unfortunately, I called you in to see me because of something else. I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

“What?” I asked her, my eyes wide.

“I just got a call from your mother. She’s on her way to pick you up but she wanted me to talk to you before she got here. Your cousin Courtney’s body was found last night. In some cemetery in Richmond.”

Courtney. A cousin, yes, but someone I hadn’t seen since we moved from Richmond to Allentown when I was 10. We had been back lots of times during the summers, but Courtney was always off at some cheering camp thing. I wasn’t sure how to feel about it - on the one hand it was shocking and tragic, on the other it meant a trip to back to see my family in Richmond and a break from Mr. Goode and his periodic table for a few days.

Is it bad to be excited for a funeral?

I have a secret.

It’s not a huge secret!! It’s not like I stole money or have a crush on my best friend’s boyfriend or anything! Although I did once forget to charge a guy I liked for his drinks and never said anything about it to my manager, but it wasn’t my fault! I was nervous, and I thought he was about to give me his number, but it turns out when he said “You’ve got my number!” he just meant that I had brought him his bottle of Stella without him even having to ask for it. I always forget to play it cool. So when he said I had his number, he meant it, you know, like a METAPHOR. “You’ve got my number!” “You really have me pegged!” “You sure are obsessed with me!”

I spent a good twenty minutes trying to figure out how to let him know that, actually, I didn’t have his number at all and I wasn’t sure why he thought I would have it in the first place, but that I was really interested in not only getting that number but calling it repeatedly and inevitably freaking him out by saying something retarded like “At what point am I allowed to call you ‘baby’?” As his beer dwindled, I decided to go over to his booth and casually slip him my number while I was bringing him a new bottle. Well, of course, I tripped and spilled the contents of that bottle into his lap. Frantic and fumbling, I started to wipe up the mess with the towel I keep tucked in my belt, and without even thinking about it spouted out the most offensive thing I could have possibly said.

“I am so so sorry. Oh my God, I hope these jeans weren’t a present from your mom or something.”

As soon as it was out of my mouth, I sensed it was the wrong thing to say, and it doesn’t help to say the wrong thing when you’re bending over the lap of the guy you have a crush on, aimlessly batting away with an already dirty towel at the parts of his anatomy that you fervently do not want to be frightened of you. I felt him freeze.

“My mom passed away last month. And these jeans were a present from her.” My heart stopped. Are you kidding me?

“I…”

“Just get me my check, please.”

The stammering ridiculous person in that exchange was me, obviously, and the guy roughly pushing me away and getting out his car keys was him, obviously. Then those demons that possess me and make me act ridiculous in front of nice, decent guys decided to gather together all their strength together for the grand finale. Without any further hesitation, I reached into my back pocket and blurted, “My mom’s dead too! Here’s my number!”

And with that, he left.

So I suppose I didn’t technically forget to charge him. He technically walked out on his tab. But it’s not like I ran after him. It’s not like I said “Sir, sir! Please! Wait, let’s just start over! My name’s Amelia, I know I’m sort of awkward, but I really mean well, and my mom really did die eight years ago, I didn’t just say that because YOUR mom died, I just meant that I totally understand how awful and crippling that experience is, and I really felt for your pain, and apart from that I really like you, even though you’re probably doing something really great and helpful for the world, and all I’ve done is to drop out of college to come back to Richmond and wait tables at a bar, and also you owe me $4.50!” I guess I could have tried to catch him.

But I didn’t. I just stood there, mortified, as the bartender – this vicious hipster kid that I hate more than anyone in the world – started singing that stupid old song “There She Goes” until he stopped short to shout, “Jesus Christ, whoever’s messing with the lights again needs to curl up and die, and I’m not even kidding!”

And that’s my secret. My stupid fucking secret. I can’t cook, I can’t play sports, I can’t talk to a guy I like without spilling beer on him, and I can’t get through a single night without waking up crying for my dead mother, but I can make light brighter and shiny things shinier just by thinking about it. Isn’t it just precious? I make things glitter. Isn’t it just adorable? I’m the most useless superhero in the world, and it’s absolutely fucking perfect.

I stepped onto the bus and took a quick survey of the empty seats: six total with four adjacent to various females. The vacant seat nearest the front cozied up to a girl whose hobbies were probably field hockey and The Mists of Avalon, not even worth investigating.

Taking the bus is just one of countless indicators that I’ve fallen from grace. I never leave the ‘burg therefore I don’t own a car. I don’t own a car therefore I must take the bus to Richmond. On any normal bus this would mean four and a half hours of sweaty hellacious tedium — probably seated next to an overweight middle aged divorcée whose fat rolls spill over into my chair. The bus doesn’t bring out the best crowd.

Luckily Blacksburg does not have a high percentage of fatties. In fact, it has a high percentage of the fine hunnies. Even the finest of hunnies sometimes lack a mode of transportation back to see their parents … when they are needy and homesick. Hey, I’m just saying.

I took a couple steps forward and purposefully dropped my iPod near the next open seat right under a beautiful blonde. While picking it up I briefly touched the blonde’s foot and my mental Rolodex began to spin.

That’s the easiest way to describe it. When I touch a woman I get a mental image of a card containing intimate details of her life. I don’t know how or why it happens. It’s abnormal, weird, and freakish but it can be tremendously useful. It isn’t like an autobiography or anything, just a few personal data. Actually, it is information pertaining only to the second time she had sex. Rather specific I know, but if you know what you are looking for it is all the information you’ll ever need.

I pulled up the blonde’s card:

NAME: Naomi
DATE: Last year on our third anniversary.
PARTNER: Dale, he’s my boyfriend!
SETTING: His dorm room on the third floor of Pritchard.
PARTING THOUGHTS: “I hope Dale is the one. He’s such a great guy!”

The blonde, Naomi as it turned out, was obviously not a likely candidate for a late night bus hookup. She did the dirty for the second time just a year ago (in the largest all male dorm on the east coast — gag). Plus she wanted to marry the guy. Way too complicated.

Moving further towards the back I came to the next open seat and brushed against the arm of a cute girl wearing glasses:

NAME: –
DATE: –
PARTNER: –
SETTING: –
PARTING THOUGHTS: –

While exceedingly cute and hookupable she either was a virgin or a virgin minus one. The cards only have information about the second time they’ve had sex so some people have blanks. Cases like this can go either way. She could be an “everything but the whole enchilada” type of girl, or she could be a “I kissed dating goodbye” type of girl. The former is perfect for a bus related good time, the later not so much. I’d rather not take the chance.

I pressed onward. I’m convinced that if you ask ten people where their first sexual encounter took place nine will say “on a bus.” Think about it: field trips, church camps, band competitions. When you’re young there aren’t too many dark and semi-private places where you can get close to some fine hunnies. You’re options are basically a long nighttime bus ride or Yogi Bear’s Cave at King’s Dominion — don’t knock the cave unless you’ve tried it. For some mysterious reason the bus retains its magical make out vibes for people well into their college years. You just have to find the right person.

I took the last empty seat next to some post-goth rock-and-roller chick with two tattoos of sparrows half covered by her wifebeater. She introduced herself as “Blade,” and I made a joke about American Gladiators. As we shook hands I brought up her card:

NAME: Jennifer Lingwood
DATE: It’s been at least four or fives years now.
PARTNER: Some guy at a show downtown who had a beard and an awesome tattoo of a skull dripping blood that was on fire.
SETTING: His studio apartment on Franklin for about three hours.
PARTING THOUGHTS: “God I love beards.”

Luckily I have a beard.

After three hours Jennifer, or “Blade,” fell asleep with her face pressed against the window. I thought about my sister Diana and how she never approved of my spontaneous encounters. I’ve never approved of her annoyingly lanky and overly emotional husband, so I guess we’re even. I knew just how the rest of tonight would pan out. She’d pick me up, we’d hug (I’d try to ignore her card, it’s always awkward), Dan would put on some shitty Bright Eyes album and talk about how he was the next Bob Dylan. He’d also probably talk about how the Beatles influence on modern music is overrated. Then we’d go to Grandma’s.

Grandma’s is the hipsterest hangout bar in Richmond. If you love tight denim pants and weird fashion mullet rat-tail haircuts you’ll love Grandma’s. We’ll get there and Dan will see about thirty people he knows and disappear into the crowd until close. Diana and I will get a table in the back and she’ll berate me for a couple hours about how I need to stop pretending that I’m still in college. I’ll drink about six beers and occasionally wander through the crowd flipping through my infinite Rolodex of second time sexual encounters.

I can’t wait.

“You’re hair is pretty. What’s your name?” I said in my best-behavior voice to the tall blonde waitress filling drinks behind the bar at Grandma’s.

She smiled in exactly the shy sweet sort of way that makes me want to puke. “Amelia.”

“Now you just need a tit job and a fucking tan, and you’ll be just about right.” Her face crumpled into darkness as she scurried away with the drinks. The bartender laughed and shook my hand.

“Excellent work, bro,” he exclaimed in delight. “I couldn’t have said it better myself. Need another drink?”

The man has a way with words. “A thousand more beers, please,” I ordered with an expansive flick of the wrist. It’s not that I don’t like girls, it’s just that they’re no fun unless they’ve got spine. I began to look around for further entertainment as the first of the thousand beers is set before me. I take that back: they’re plenty of fun, just in a different way.

My eye alighted on some woman nagging what appeared to be a fully adult man next to her in a very un-adult way. This could be good.

“Kaiser, I’m not saying you have to stop having fun, but you do need to stop starring in your own personal porn film and start to take your career a little more seriously.”

It’s not that I necessarily get off on people’s pain and suffering. It’s just that people need to lighten the fuck up most of the time. But also, and let’s be honest here, pain and suffering can be pretty hilarious, so I decided to listen in. It was easy, because this Kaiser guy was sitting right next to me and the women had a voice that apparently went up to eleven.

“I told you,” whined Kaiser. “I do take it seriously.”

Oh, fantastic. What a pussy. I absolutely have to butt in. “Come on, son. Buck up. ‘The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams,’ you know”

Kaiser turns. “What! Who’re you?”

“That’s what I was trying to say!” chirps the harpy two barstools down, flashing me a toothy grin full of gaps between teeth. “Eleanor Roosevelt said that!” I could have sworn it was Dylan, but I’m pretending to be on her side.

By this time, Kaiser is swiveling back and forth, looking hunted. “Look, I don’t want to have this conversation, all right? Can we get drinks maybe someday?” he asks of the bartender, who appears to be in some kind of impassioned discussion down at the end of the bar with some superhipster types.

“I just don’t want to see my brother throw his twenties away on beers and babes. You know how Mom is.”

At this, the poor guy just mumbled, staring hard at the bar. I knew he was trying hard to restrain himself, but I personally have no respect for restraint. I followed a hunch and pushed a little harder.

“Come on, Kaiser. Speak up. Don’t be a pussy. It’s not like she’s never done anything wrong.”

Kaiser’s next words filled me with a warm glow. “I said,” he turned to face his sister, “at least I didn’t screw my best friend’s dad in high school.”

“How did you know about that? I didn’t tell anyone.”

Kaiser kept his mouth shut as she worked herself up. I looked at him with newfound respect. Now here is a man who knows how to fuck with someone properly.

“I … I can’t believe this. You can find your own way home,” she said, edging through the crowd towards a tall scruffy guy with ironic glasses on and making wild arm movements towards the door. Kaiser shook his head.

Either my heart is suddenly filled with an upswelling of gratitude and affection, or I’m further into the thousand beers than I think. “Dude, that was incredible.” I nod to the bartender for another beer while shaking my head, chuckling. “I take everything back. You’re a genuine prince. I’m James. Have a beer.”

My parents and I got to Richmond to make Courtney’s 1:00 service at St. Paul’s. Needless to say, it was weird. Courtney was just 7 months older than me and we buried her yesterday. Her mom, my Aunt Carol, is a complete wreck. They still haven’t officially released the autopsy report so my parents haven’t gotten into specifics with me about how she died. Honestly, I don’t want to know. The only details I got were that she was found sprawled out in front of one of the mausoleums at Hollywood Cemetery.

After we got back to Aunt Carol’s house, I went up to the guest room to change. I heard a burbling sound coming from the floor. I managed to dig my cell phone out of my jeans pockets before it switched over to voice mail. It was exactly who I needed: Lily my best friend from elementary school. She is exactly the opposite of me: she’s loud and obnoxious and wonderful. Her parents are big wigs who own a mansion on Monument Avenue and rue the day that Lily entered puberty. Since then she has been involved with every guy that has looked at her (and they all do) - not necessarily physically but always dramatically.

“Lily!”

“HOLA, BITCHEZZZZ!” she screamed into the phone. “Sucks about Courtney, huh?” Lily always had an overwhelming sense of appropriateness.

“Yeah, well,” I answered, realizing for the first time that I was actually pretty freaked out about the whole thing.

“Anyway,” said Lily. “Come hang out with me and Tom tonight.”

“Who?”

“Tom. That guy I told you about. The one who’s a senior at VCU.”

“What is he doing hanging out with you? You’re only 17,” I reminded her, sensing the late night phone calls to me and threats to run away to her parents that were guaranteed to come out in the following weeks.

“Hey, I’m hot. What can I say? But seriously, come hang out. You don’t want to spend the whole night cooped up in your aunt’s living room watching everyone cry, do you?”

That was an easy one to answer. We planned to meet up at 10:30 at Grandma’s, the most hipster place in the entire world - apparently Tom fit into that category and I was sure Lily would show up looking the part. But they have really good zucchini fritters, so it’s easy to look passed the gross haircuts that they all seem to think are really cool.

My mom was unusually reasonable about letting me go out. She was too tired from the funeral to argue, and the fact that I told her I was going to Lily’s house and not a bar (which Grandma’s technically is) probably helped things. Let me say something here: I don’t usually lie, particularly to my mother because she can pick it out pretty easily. But, I can sense an opportunity as well as the next girl. So, lie I did.

Anyway, I got to Grandma’s about 10 minutes late, but still before Lily and Tom. Just as I sat down on the sidewalk near the entrance, I got a text from her: omg so late be there soon. Typical.

I waited for about 15 minutes and still no Lily or Tom, but lots of tight denim. I decided to go and stand around *inside* because it seemed less lame that standing around *outside.*

Now, entering a bar can prove to be difficult when you are 18. Despite my clean track record, I have been in many bars, usually with Lily. I have never gotten caught and I have never tried to get any alcohol, just so you know. Anyway, if you do it enough, you start to learn how to go about it. The best thing to do is have your ID in your hand, ready to show whoever is in charge of the door. I don’t have a fake ID, I just use my real driver’s license. If you look like you’re not scared of someone seeing it, they typically don’t ask for it. When you walk by the door, make enough eye contact to warrant a quick smile, but don’t stare. Being really tall helps, too. For some reason, people don’t typically think 178years olds can be 5′11″ which I am.

I saw a swarm of people heading towards the door, so I thought I’d just mingle in with them to get inside. Things were going great and was just about to slip my ID back into my pocket when I felt someone’s hand wrap around my wrist.

“Hold on. I need to see that.”

I looked up and was face-to-face with a blond girl who I recognized as one of the bartenders (which is weird because I hadn’t been there for a year and usually people cycle through Grandma’s pretty quickly). I remembered her as being really nice, but she sure looked pissed off right then.

“Please don’t make this harder than it has to be. Just let me see it,” she said. I sighed and held up my very underage ID, a bit nauseous from the unknown of what was going to happen next.

“Do you know how much trouble we could get in if people found out you were in here? I’m sorry, but I’m not going to lose my shitty job because some teenager thinks she can do whatever she wants. Come with me.” She was still holding onto my wrist and started to pull me out the door.

That’s when everything hit me: Courtney’s death, how much trouble I could potentially be in if I got caught for this. My chin started quivering uncontrollably. I actually started crying, but for real this time.

Just as we made it out the door and the bartender turned around to officially kick me out, I felt it. What started as the normal tickle in my nose and lump in my throat turned into a dull ache moving up my cheeks and into the corner of my eye. The bartender stared at me. I was sure she was about to lose it on me, the annoying teenager whose mere presence could not only get her fired, but who now was crying like a tool in front of the city of Richmond. Seriously, I wanted to sidewalk to open up and swallow me.

But suddenly, she lifted her hand up to my face and plucked something out of my eye. It was a penny. She looked up at me and smiled.

My walk home from work at 4 a.m. most mornings is something that would have caused my mother to lie awake in barely-controlled hysteria until she heard me walk in the door. The twelve blocks between the bar where I work and my house is not the nicest stretch of road, what with the bums who are constantly either asking me for cigarettes or loose change and that particular night I needed some air on my face, which would hopefully make my heart rate finally slow down.

I’m not going to pretend that I had some sort of clairvoyant knowledge that something was just around the corner, something huge. Let’s face it, I took a job that completely kills any possibility of a social life for a reason. I don’t mind being alone. I’m not ambitious. I just want to make sure my dad is taken care of, but I don’t want to be awake during the day when he tries to talk to me. I’d rather get up at 2 p.m., do some grocery shopping, clean a bathroom or two, and head off to work while at the same time congratulating myself for yet again avoiding Dad’s defeated, blank stare of grief. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve looked him fully in the eye since my mom died.

I’d become so accustomed to this routine that I thought I enjoyed it, I guess. At any rate, I wasn’t prepared at all for how impossibly elated I would feel when I met a teenage freak of nature who cried on a, thankfully, deserted sidewalk when she couldn’t get into a bar.

It wasn’t something I had been expecting, it wasn’t anything I had been waiting for, but I knew as soon as I saw the first ordinary, copper penny slide out from between her swollen eyelids that she wasn’t just any freak of nature, she was a fellow freak of nature.

I’d hazard a guess that a girl who cries pennies (and yes, in case you’re wondering, it is painful to witness) would be completely caught off guard by someone who threw back her head and laughed as penny after penny landed in my hands. But I couldn’t help it. I recognized that agonized look on her face. I even shed a few tears of my own (the normal, salty kind) before I resumed the grip I had on the poor girl’s wrist to keep her from bolting.

“What’s your problem?” she spat, using her free hand to cover her eyes and pulling with all of her skinny high school girl’s might. “Let me go!”

At this point the laughter and tears had fused together into loud gasping hiccups that I’m sure made me sound completely insane. “You can’t…” I panted. “Please, just hang on and let me catch my breath.” I didn’t mean to scare the kid, but she wouldn’t stop wriggling, and I needed to just cut to the chase. So when she didn’t seem to notice the scattered coins on the sidewalk flashing like crazy, I directed my attention to the streetlight above our heads, and I guess I thought harder than I meant to because the burst of light it produced lit up the street. Even hiding her eyes behind her hand, she couldn’t help but notice that.

“What the hell was that? Lightning or something?” There was still some rancor in her words but at least she’d stopped struggling. When I didn’t answer, realization dawned. “Did you do that?”

I couldn’t stop smiling long enough to answer, so I just nodded.

“What are you, some kind of freak?” she asked, but I could hear her voice catch on the last word. At this moment, somebody shouted from inside.

“Amelia! What the fuck! Come on! People are waiting!”

I hugged the girl as hard as I could, without hardly realizing what I was doing. She stiffened at first (when have I ever been smooth at anything?) and was probably still in shock when I grabbed the pen out of my back pocket and scribbled my name and number on the back of her hand. I glimpsed her out on the sidewalk later, gazing up at the streetlight, but the next time I checked, she had gone.

I’m not sure why I left her my information. All I know is that I didn’t realize how alone I was until I saw those pennies and I saw in her face that this wasn’t new, that she’d been dealing with this her whole life. Even if I never see her again, I will know that she exists, and if she exists, maybe other people exist who also have things that they’re ashamed of or that set them apart. The idea is so liberating, I can barely describe it.

Green. Yellow. Dazzle.

That’s the game I play with myself when I walk home, usually at the expense of some poor tired clubber, escaping the jaws of another one night stand by quietly fleeing home before the sun rises. If they’re not paying attention, bam, that red light will go off like a firecracker, and you can bet they stop the car then. I also pretend to be shocked, as I’m walking down the sidewalk. “Goodness gracious, did the city spring for some extra-watt bulbs with strobe effects? I must write the mayor a letter!” I peek into their car windows when I can, and I laugh to myself if they’re pale and trembling. I feel bad startling them, but I have so few vices that I feel like it’s okay to get away with this one tiny prank.

The night I met Lauren, I was playing the game with a little extra verve, adding some glimmering streetlights to the mix. I felt like skipping. Up ahead, a couple of dark figures sat on a low wall next to the sidewalk. Instead of pulling my bag closer to my body and hunching my shoulders like I usually do, I squared up and started fishing around for my pack of cigarettes. Tonight is cause for celebration, I thought. Ease up on the bums and give them a smoke if that’s all they want.

“Whoa, whoa, it’s the blonde that was in such a hurry to get rid of us!”

I slowed down a little and subtly cast more light in their direction from a nearby streetlight. Shit, it’s those two drunk assholes that we basically had to push out of the bar at closing, during which one of them had the grace to mention to me, yet again, that I could use a specific kind of plastic surgery.

I ducked my head down and tried to just ignore them. The dark one, the one who liked to comment on other people’s tits, got up and stood directly in front of me, and I noticed that the frat boy in the orange Tech shirt had been leaning on him, too wasted to sit up on his own. He slumped over sideways.

“Where are you going?” the dark one said.

“Home, if that’s all right with you.”

“What if it isn’t?”

Let me say one thing, I am really, really good at not making eye contact, but this guy looked at me with such hatred that it was impossible to look away even as I squirmed under his gaze.

The frat boy burst out laughing. I could tell from my lengthy experience with drunks that he was about just moments away from puking all over my feet. “James,” he said without opening his eyes. “That is not the way to talk to a honey.”

James flared his nostrils but didn’t get out of the way. There was complete silence until the frat boy burped so loud that I dropped the lighter I’d forgotten I was holding. He laughed again, and when I knelt to pick it up, he swung out his arm clumsily and brushed my shoulder.

“Amelia. February 4, 1998.”

I backed away and lit up the sidewalk with the streetlight even more. What in the world was going on here.

James’s jaw was set and the light made his eyes flash. The frat boy kept laughing and mumbling at the same time “His name was Ben and he took pictures of you.” What the fuck. “He took pictures of you while you were sleeping and showed them to all of his friends.” What the fuck what the fuck. The frat boy, still slumped over with his eyes closed and beginning to hiccup through his laughter was really pleased with himself now. “You thought he loved you and he fucking took pictures of you!! That is…classic!”

James’s mouth curved slightly upward and he finally stepped aside, but not in enough time for the frat boy’s inevitable vomit to miss my only comfortable work shoes. I was too angry to care. The stoplights began to show green, yellow, and red at the same time, and the streetlights flickered so violently that I barely noticed that James’s face was now illuminated by flashing blue. It wasn’t until I heard a car door slam that I realized a police car had pulled up.

“Are these guys bothering you, Amelia?” Oh thank God, it was the cop that comes in and hovers for us some nights when we have a particularly shady crowd.

“Oh, hi, yes…well, I’m just trying to go home.” How do I describe to him what just happened? A guy looked at me funny and another guy pulled one of my most humiliating memories out of nowhere? I don’t think so. “They’re just drunk and I just need to get by, my dad will be worried.”

The officer sighed and patted me on the back.

“You want a ride in the cruiser? Let me just see what these gentlemen have to say for themselves and I can take you straight home.”

That’s the last thing Dad needs, me pulling up in a cop car. “Oh, thanks, but no, I’m fine, really, I’ll just walk from here, it’s not too much farther.” It took me a few minutes to assure him that this was true, but finally he let me go with a worried look. I heard more vomiting behind me as I turned the corner, and I knelt down and untied my shoes and pitched them under a parked car. I’d rather let the penny in my pocket remind me of this evening, not the stench of a drunk asshole’s half-digested lager.

The blurry man-shaped blob seemed to be talking to me or at least talking in my general direction. I couldn’t quite make out what it was saying, but it seemed rather serious. Also, something I previously ate tasted suspiciously like vomit. The blob spoke up:

“Could you please step back onto the sidewalk? Sir. Step onto the sidewalk.”

James stepped out into the street, took my drunk ass stumbling with him, and looked after the blonde — Amelia — wistfully. Actually, he is way too much of an asshole to feel wistful. I’m sure he was trying to get a better view of her tight jean cutoffs bouncing into the night. The fading rhythmic sway of her ass reminded me of something I’d done and regretted but couldn’t quite call to mind.

“Sir I’m going to ask you one more time: step back onto the sidewalk!”

James swung around to face, what was apparently, a cop while simultaneously spinning me into the front end of a parked Ford Explorer. I crumpled onto the curb. “James! Hey, asshole! Whoa … did you know these curbs were granite?” James stared at the cop, the two of them separated by six inches, poked him square in the chest, and said, “Back up dickweed, I don’t need to smell what you had for dinner.”

Even from my limited experience with cops I knew this was not the wisest of decisions for James to make. Before he could do anything, and before I could get a word in to plead our case, the officer pulled some kung-fu jedi Jackie Chan shit and had James pinned up against his squad car. “Don’t you ever touch me asshole. What could you possibly be thinking?”

“Guys, this granite curb is soooo smoooth. Seriously. Smooth?” I offered as I pressed my face on the curb.

The granite felt nice and helped my eyes focus. As I reclined on the sidewalk I looked up at James’s face — which was held firmly against the hood of the cruiser — and he winked at me. This was weird as I certainly didn’t expect him to roll like that, not that there is anything wrong with it.

Just so he wouldn’t get the wrong idea about me I explained “Brah … duuuuuuude.”

The cop pulled out his radio and began to chat it up with the sexy sounding broad on the other end of the line. James’s eyes closed as the cop began to speak. “Dispatch we’ve got a …” he paused as if looking for the proper word. “… donut. Over” he finished. Dispatch squawked out of the handheld radio, “Did you say donut?” Apparently he either did not hear dispatch’s question or didn’t give a shit because he holstered his radio and let James off of the cruiser.

“Listen,” the cop began “I’m going to let you off with a warning. That girl, Amelia, has had it pretty rough. Next time you see her leave her alone. I’m off to grab some chow. I’d suggest you hightail it home right now. Got it assholes?”

He turned to get in his car as a second squad car blew through a red light and skidded to a stop in front of our little sidewalk party. “Sanders! We’ve got a problem! Reported double murder suicide at Navy and Stuart. The radios aren’t working and we’re cut off from dispatch. We need to get over there.” Both cars sped off in the same direction of Amelia’s ass and tight jean cutoffs.

Feeling a bit sobered I stood up and stared at James.

“What just happened? Did you just call that cop a ‘dickweed?’ How did you get out of that? Double murder? Navy and Stuart? I used to bang a chick who lived at Navy and Stuart. She was totally smokin’. Seriously, what just happened?”

“God, you are such a little bitch. Give me a second, OK? James finally stepped back onto the sidewalk, turned to me, and sighed.

“Let’s just say I have a way with cops.”

Yeah, that was an understatment. “I’m going to need a better explanation than that. You basically punched that cop in the face and all he did was mumble something about donuts.”

James quickly glanced around. “You aren’t going to believe me and I’m drunk as shit — which I guess is about drunk enough to tell you: I can make cops crave donuts.”

“What?” I stared at him blankly. “Don’t all cops crave donuts? That’s like making sorority girls crave wang.”

“No man. Like. I can get into their heads, make them drop everything, and need a donut. It only works on cops, and it’s only donuts. That’s how I got out of our little fix. I made Officer Pain in My Ass realize that he needed to get over to Krispy Kreme on the double.”

I wish I had been sober. The twelve or so beers made processing this new information difficult. Maybe James had an abnormal, weird, and freakish ability just like me! It seemed overly specific and unexplainable — just like mine. He also used it to to his benefit, which, on further reflection, made me wonder just what other shady situations he had used this donut power to get out of. I decided to tell him about what I could do.

“Dude I need to tell … ” but James cut me off. He had an excited look on his face.

“Kaiser. Let’s go over to Navy and Stuart and see what the fuck went down over there. I can get us past the cops with no problem. You said you knew a girl who lived over there, don’t you want to see if she’s OK?” He smiled a thin greasy smile that, even considering how drunk I was, made me feel uncomfortable.

“James. You want us to sneak into a murder scene just so we can see ‘what went down?’”

“Kaiser. I’m going and you’re coming with me.” His eyes closed briefly and he smiled. “And you’ve got no choice asshole.”

“Come on, Kaiser, haven’t you heard that a girl will say no nine times before she says yes?” The second-floor apartment’s fire-escape kitchen door didn’t look like it would ever close properly again, thanks to some overly assertive police action. We let ourselves in. “Of course girls aren’t going to just tell you what they want. You just have to keep pushing for what you want until she lets up.”

Kaiser swayed a bit, but seemed marginally more sober. “Hey, look, man, I don’t even remember the last time a girl said no. I don’t know if it’s too soon to bring up the newly departed, but all I had to do was make a suggestion and Georgia pulled me right up on the dining room table.” Kaiser had figured it out by then. There was only one apartment building at Navy and Stuart that was crawling with cops, and only one apartment wrapped in crime scene tape: Kaiser’s ex’s. But from what I’d gathered so far, you couldn’t throw a PBR in Richmond or Blacksburg without breaking the oversized sunglasses of a chick Kaiser used to bang.

The kitchen we were standing in was illuminated with what felt like the brightness of the fucking sun, so it took a while to see the awful paint job and lame cliche black and white photos in the dining room beyond. The fact that there was an eerily swaying body hung up by the neck to the dining room’s ceiling fan didn’t improve the overall decor much, I felt.

Kaiser took one look, then dry-heaved into the sink. Maybe he’s not as sober as I thought. “Aw, fuck. That’s definitely Georgia’s roommate. Holy Christ.”

The girl wearing the rope necktie grinned over at me, but I blocked her out of my mind. I’m surprised they hadn’t taken her down yet, but I know about as much about double-murder-suicide investigations as I do about cars. Maybe they need her to dry out first, I dunno. I had more important things to think about. While Kaiser was trying to spit, I scanned the fridge. The photo I was looking for was on the left corner of the freezer. I don’t think Kaiser noticed me pocket it. “Was that the dining room table you nailed Georgia on, pushed up against the wall to make room for the hanging?”

“Definitely too soon. Come on, James. This isn’t all that cool at all. I prefer my honeys to be alive and slightly moist. What say we make like a tree and get the fuck out.”

I was already pushing through the dining room and into the dark living room, where a streetlight outside the window illuminated what looked like a couple awkwardly cuddling in a puddle of Kool-Aid. I wasn’t sure if the blond chick was tan or just bloody, but the beefy Italian laying face-down underneath her clearly had blood all over his pink popped collar. The knife handle was still pointing mostly upwards out of her back. Jackson Pollack appeared to have been in charge of blood application to the overall scene, though what may once have been a pretty illuminating trail of footsteps in the blood all over the wood floor has been obscured by what appear to be police boots. No wonder the pigs were grouped sheepishly outside looking like they’d been chewed out, waiting for a medical examiner to show up. That is, until they decided to make a donut run.

“Don’t you want to figure out what the hell is happening?” I asked. “Do you honestly believe that the RPD is going to get this one right?” I try the light switch, careful not to leave prints. No luck — bulb was dead. “The City of Richmond doesn’t know its ass from a hole in the ground on Broad Street. I figure, why not take a look around? It’s not like we’re hurting anything.” I crouch down to take a closer look at the knife in the girl’s back. The smell was overwhelming.

Kaiser doesn’t answer, but moves closer to the body hanging from the ceiling. As I turned to ask him if Georgia was, in fact, the slutty looking blond who was just a few steak knives away from a knife block, he reaches out and touches the hanging body’s foot, then freezes. I can’t help thinking that he’s just left a championship quality set of prints on the toe of her Converse All-Stars, and it would be so simple to just leave them there. The RPD isn’t stupid enough to miss that.

“Come on, don’t be such a pussy. It’s just a dead body of some random chick. It’s not like she’s the one you used to screw.”

“Number one, stop calling me a pussy or I’ll put that knife in yours. Number two, enough bullshit, James. How long have you known Lindsay Meyers?”

A glint of light from under the couch catches my eye as I holler over my shoulder, “…the fuck are you talking about?” It’s a cell phone. I flip it open. It says LILY IS FABULOUS on the screen. I shove it in my pocket with the photo, then get up to look at James.

“The honey whose corpse you appear to be raiding used to be Georgia. This, however, is Lindsay. You’ve met her before. Don’t fuck with me, James.”

“Uh, I’m not sure if I follow.” Good old Kaiser. Son of a bitch. How much does he know?

“I’ll spell it out. Your penis has been inside her vagina. Don’t be glib, asshole.”

Oh. That much. I’ve got to figure out how Kaiser keeps figuring these things out.

Fortunately, the cops did something right for once, choosing exactly this moment to charge noisily up the fire escape stairs. “We’ll talk about it later,” I said. “Those might not all be police.” Something else was bugging me. Oh, right. “And wipe your stupid fingerprints off that girl’s shoe.”

It was right outside the front door of the apartment when we heard it: the unmistakable nails-on-chalkboard sound of a girl trying to stifle sniffling.