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dynamoe · 2 years

Text

⚠️TW: alcohol, bullying, mental anguish, attempted intimacy, injury + blood

🗿 FROM DISTANT STAR TO THIS HERE BAR 🍹

“Why are we here?” Billy sulked, his voice raw and hoarse.

The distant sounds of vibes and conga drums punctuated by bird calls played on the house music. The dim room was lit only with gently glowing lamps made from taxidermied puffer fish and boat floats, each casting pools of colored light on dusty bamboo structures and overgrown ferns. Empty, and neglected, the faux island paradise had fallen on hard times. Only one or two patrons were feeling the call of the Pacific in a landlocked cinder block room with a dropped acoustic tile ceiling.

“It’s a rite of passage to get wicked fuckin’ drunk in public after heartbreak,” White reassured as he pulled a pineapple wedge from the rim of his glass, “It’s good for the soul.”

← back to 2021's Master Billy & Mr. White

“Why couldn’t we just get drunk at home?” Billy slumped on the bamboo-framed bar top, resting his head on his hands.

“The package store’s closed. All we had left was Bailey’s and margarita mix and I’m not making that mistake twice.”

Billy wiggled his extra-long straw in the Scorpion Bowl in front of him, a rum punch intended to be shared by a whole table served in a wide bowl surmounted by a ceramic volcano shooting blue sparks into the air, an element of risk to a room soaked in high proof rum and festooned with flammable raffia skirts.

“No one comes in here anymore but if some schmoe starts staring, just pretend you’re part of the decor. Act like an audio-animatronic pygmy.”

Billy raised a middle finger an inch from Pete’s face. “Fuck off. Why would I be a pygmy? Pygmies live in the Congo Basin of Sub-Saharan Africa.This place has a vaguely pan-Polynesian aesthetic.”

“Well, they say the Gods must be crazy!”

“That was a Kalahari bushman,” Billy muttered, “That’s 2500 miles away from the Congo. I know you’re literally the whitest guy alive but can you not lump all tropical-zone-dwelling people in one category?”

“Political Correctness gone mad!”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“No idea,” Pete admitted, “I heard it on cable news a couple times and it seems to make people who own flag bandanas really mad.”

“Ughhhhh. I just want to go home and go to bed,” Billy moaned, slumping even further onto the bar top, hard enough to stamp an impression of wickerwork onto his palms and cheek.

Pete launched his counter-argument to keep Billy where he could see him (and out of another marathon crying jag in the trailer’s shower), “C’mon, pally— all the drinks here taste like that Del Monte fruit salad from a can!” Pete swigged from a ceramic skull mug with a Carmen-Miranda's-worth of fruit garnishing where the crown would have been, “And take those stupid glasses off. I keep waiting for Mr. Peabody to burst in and shove you into the Wayback Machine.”

Billy took off the glasses Alison gave him, flung them onto the table.

“What I’m curious to see is, at the end of the night, you break down sobbing or get fighty,” Pete bit the maraschino cherry off the end of a tiny plastic sword.

“You're a terrible friend, White” Billy stated the obvious, “You're supposed to be making me feel better not insulting me to my face.”

“I called it on the first day you met this girl,” White said, “It always ends badly. That’s why you should never love anyone. You only get hurt.”

“That’s awful advice. Never? Just be alone forever?”

“No.You got me and you got the company! And science.”

“I can’t fuck science.”

“Not YET,” Pete said cryptically, his eyes lowered suggestively. Billy shuddered at the implication.

“It’s fine,” Billy tried to reassure himself as much as Pete, “I’m fine. We’re still friends. It’s fine.”

“Fully grown-up-type adult guys chasing after underage girls? You know who does that? Insecure assholes with small pricks,” Pete scowled, “Ted Nugent, Billy. Jailbait! Are you Ted Nugent?”

“I didn’t seek her out because she’s in high school,” Billy insisted, “I’m not, like, a chicken-hawk. Is that the word?”

“‘Chicken-hawk’ is for gay dudes who diddle little boys, Billy.”

“Well, I don’t know the term for what you’re accusing me of. Lechery?”

“Joey Buttafuoco? Jerry Lee Lewis? Gary Puckett & the Union Gap?” Pete broke into song, “Whoa, oh, oh, young gahll/Get awt of my maind/My love fah you is way outta line/ Bettah run, gahl…”

“It’s not even like that,” Billy cut him off, “She thinks I’m a kid. How can I be a predator when she thinks I’m a freshman following an upperclassman around, begging her to ask me to the Sadie Hawkins Dance or some bullshit.”

“You showed her your ID? Your real one, not the fake one we made to get discounts.”

“That’s what STARTED all this. I tried to rent Barry Lyndon and she said it was a fake ID. Now I’m an emotional wreck. This is all Kubrick’s fault.”

“Wang Dang Sweet Poontang, Billy!” Pete belted, “Just hook up with someone your own age, fer Pete’s sakes.”

“Ok. Sure. I’ll just pop over to MTV Spring Break and have my pick of the class of ‘95,” Billy said sarcastically, “I’ll probably never have a girlfriend. I’ll die a virgin.”

“Cheer up, pal. You never know. One day you might meet a perv with a specific set of overlapping kinks.”

“Great. I can be the pseudo-toyboy methadone to an ACTUAL pedophile who can’t get the genuine Black Tar child-sex,” Billy said grimly, disgusting himself as he said it.

Pete remained buoyant, “You could just hire an escort.”

“I don’t want that,” Billy snapped angrily.

“Fine. I’ll get you a cantaloupe and a greased garbage bag. You can have a three-way with the microwave.”

Billy blushed furiously red. Pete wasn’t supposed to know about that. He made sure Pete was out of town that weekend.

“It’s inevitable. I was always going to end up having to pay. Look at me. Toulouse-Lautrec was a rich, famous artist with a huge dong and he still had to pay for whores,” Billy sniffed, indignant, “...AND he was a foot taller than me.”

Pete called to the bartender, “Hey Tiny Bubbles, gimme another Bali Hai and something blue and on-fire for the kid,” He slammed a 50 dollar bill on the bar top.

“Where’d you get that money? Why do you have money?”

“I earned it in less than 60 minutes, if you can believe it,” Pete fanned out his takings from the day’s donations. A couple hundred at least.

Billy thought and then looked stricken.“Oh my God. White, are you a prostitute?”

“No! Christ! The radio show. The radio show I broadcast every night. Fans sent me money.”

“People who don’t know you are sending you $50 in the mail. Why?”

“My listeners send money to support my broadcast, same as the PBS pledge drive you send money to so you can watch dork shows like NOVA and a million hours of Ken Burns talking about baseball.”

“Oh, I liked Baseball,” Billy reminisced, momentarily distracted from his own problems, “I mean, I don’t like actual baseball— I mean the documentary called Baseball.”

“They actually don’t seem to listen for the songs; they listen because they like to hear me talk.”

“They all got some kind of Cliff Clavin fetish?”

“Watch it, Mushmouth.”

“The only difference between the way I talk and the way you talk is you have 15 million idiots clumped in the Mid-Atlantic enabling you,” Billy snarled, “So you have a ‘regional dialect’ but I have a ‘speech disorder.’”

“The sassy assassin assassinates sassily,” rattled off White easily.

“Schay a rhotic R, you Masschhole shithead,” Billy threatened, stabbing a finger in his face, “I fucking dare you.”

“I’m not even from Massachusetts, dipshit. Massaaachhhhuuettes…” White stretched out each of the esses to rub it in.

They glowered at each other and went back to their drinks in silence. The CD playing the house music started skipping noticeably. The bartender switched it out for a different album with less soothing atmosphere; some kind of Putamayo Greatest Hits that sounded like the entire Tower Records World Music Section shoved into a blender.

“A girl like that, she’s never going to understand you—” White pronounced like it was indisputable truth, “Understand us. What it’s like to be a—”

“A ‘freak,’ right?” Billy finished mockingly, “That’s classic cult leader psychological shit. Isolate and indoctrinate. It’s gaslighting, dude.”

“No, it’s the voice of experience, pally,” White said, “I’m saving you from the bullshit I had to live through but you didn’t wanna listen.”

Billy sighed with irritation, “I’m sorry a girl you liked made fun of you being pigmentally-challenged in college but that’s not representative of everyone in the entire world.”

White shook his head sagely, “I was exactly where you were. I was you, pally. Maybe a lot less smart but overall less genetically fucked… and I was a big fat sucker believing she actually liked me for me.”

“So if I fall for a girl with no arms you’d be OK with it?” Billy proposed, “When I start a long distance romance with Koo-Koo the Birdgirl, because she’s one-of-us one-of-us, we’re all good?”

Pete twirled the little paper umbrella that came with his drink, making a sour expression.

“Admit you’d find some other reason I shouldn’t be dating her,” Billy accused, “You don’t want me to date anyone!”

“I want you to avoid being put in this situation again and again because you wear your heart on your sleeve. It’s a rigged game, Billy! You’re never gonna win!”

“In the beginning of the conversation I’m taking advantage of HER because I’m a scumbag targeting a child but now you’re back to arguing she’s taking advantage of ME because I’m an unlovable freak and she’s normal?” Billy summarized Pete’s points.

“Learn not to give a shit and you won’t end up hurt!” Pete shouted back, his personal philosophy in a nutshell.

“This was never about me. You’re objecting just to object because you’re terrified I’m going to go off to live my life instead of sticking around to be your fucking little sidekick.”

Pete knew he was spewing toxic bullshit but it’s how he got through life. He also knew Billy would never agree to it. Billy felt everything too much. He was either furious or ecstatic about everything, and switched between those on a dime. He was so squishy and vulnerable and big-hearted. No malice anywhere in him.

“At least you can stop pretending to be this Alison girl’s friend,” Pete offered, “Since you got a hard ‘no’ there’s no point in sniffing around.”

“I wasn’t pretending. She was my friend. Is my friend,” Billy argued.

“Why bother?” Pete droned.

“Because I like spending time with her. I enjoy her company. I wasn’t just trying to manipulate her into having sex with me. That would be sociopathic.”

“Yeah right. No one can be friends with a girl. Even girls can’t be friends with girls,” Pete said snidely.

“I can and I will and I AM. I’m GOING to be a friend and I have no ulterior motives.

“It’s your funeral, fella.”

Billy jumped up from his stool and walked out, knocking over the dregs of his Scorpion Bowl. The Sterno flame in the volcano slid over the bar, setting two napkins and the edge of a woven palm mat ablaze. The bartender calmly approached with an extinguisher, sprayed down the area and Pete.

“Happens all the time,” the bartender shrugged.

“Yeah, I figured,” Pete said, wiping fire-retardant foam from his sleeve.

🍦DÉTENTE: The Good Humor Thaw🍦

“I didn’t expect to hear from you,” Alison admitted, taking a bite of the ice cream sandwich.

Billy shrugged. He knew her well enough to read the subtle shades of difference between a frown of discomfort from her baseline resting neutral glower. He deduced by an almost imperceptible angle at the corner of her mouth she was feeling unsettled just being in proximity to him.

“We're friends,” Billy said casually, underlining the thesis of this entire conversation, “I said I’d be a friend and I meant it.”

They parked across from the Air Force Academy Chapel— neutral ground— and sat on the hood of the cooling Death Angel station wagon. The peace-offering with which they broke bread was a pair of freezer-burned ice cream sandwiches bought at a gas station.

“I won't insult your intelligence by pretending that I’m totally over it, but I’m not trying to trick you. Or guilt trip you,” Billy elaborated as the triangular planes of the Air Force Chapel caught the waning rays of the setting sun.

“Do you think when they designed this thing they meant it to look like the blade guard on hair-clippers?” Alison asked, “Because all Air Force cadets all have buzz cuts.”

“Casting 'God' as the universal barber?” Billy further hypothesized, turning his head to the stacked isosceles triangles of the chapel made of glass and aluminum, “There's been worse metaphors in religion.”

As dusk settled the modernist non-denominational house of any-and-all-supreme beings lit up in a gentle lavender wash, looking even more alien on the Academy campus.

“So, we're still gonna be friends?” Alison repeated, her head still turned to the chapel so Billy couldn't read her expression and her tone didn't give any clues to how she felt about it.

“I can’t make you like me if you don’t. That’s not your fault. So why sacrifice a friendship that’s working just because I can’t get everything I want.”

“That’s, like, unsettlingly mature of you,” Alison said in either sarcasm or awe or a little of both.

“I am a scientist and I approached it rationally.”

“It's my birthday tomorrow,” Alison said, still emotionally flat.

Billy was caught off guard. She'd never mentioned it before and this was one of those key data points friends needed to have on file for awkward commemoration, or so it seemed in sitcoms. He knew White's birthday was either in January or in June but he seemed to change it whenever he wanted Billy to pick up a check. His birthday had come and gone before he even met Alison so it wasn't relevant.

“Happy birthday,” Billy said weakly, “I should have put a candle in your ice cream sandwich.”

Alison shrugged him off, “I'm not doing anything to celebrate it now, but I still want to do that road trip for spring break.”

“But driving all the way to Graceland’s probably not in the cards, but I was looking up some weird stuff in Roadside America. There’s a dinosaur theme park owned by a cult about 5 hours north of here.

“Wow,” Billy said, overwhelmed. Her awkwardness dissipated by enthusiasm for crap yet again.

“And some atom bomb testing grounds on the way, plus we'd dive through the county with more alleged alien abductions per capita than anywhere else in the country. There's probably a sign or something for that to take photos of.”

“Sounds amazing. I'm in. Just tell me when.”

Alison smiled, he could see just the edge of her face illuminated by reflected light from the chapel, “Awesome. I'd hate to miss out doing something big and dumb on my last ever Spring Break.”

“Give me your list of sites and I'll plan a route on the Trip-Tik,” Billy offered, “I'm good at navigating.”

The colors of the Chapel's under-lighting shifted from lavender to blue to a greenish turquoise as they were talking. They finished their ice cream sandwiches and admired its planes, calm in having their status quo restored.

“There’s a comic book signing downtown on Thursday. Wanna go?”

“Comic books? Like superheroes?” Billy asked incredulously, “Doesn’t seem like your thing.”

“No, no, no,” Alison reassured him, “They’re indie comics so it’s more about depression and hating things, not anything exciting actually happening.”

“Oh, is that good?”

“They're all Canadian for some reason, the comic book authors coming in to talk about their work and sign. I want to see if they're as ugly as they draw themselves in their comics.”

Billy sighed, “Sure. Sounds good”

He got a reset. Like he never even said that he jerked off to her in a bowling alley bathroom or cried for three hours in a shower after she turned him down. Memory-holed. Those things didn’t happen. Everything’s COOL. Cool cool cool. Right?

🎒THREE O'CLOCK HIGH/LOW 🎒

She told him to meet her at her school at four and they’d drive to the book signing from there. He took the bus after his shift at the library. He arrived early but didn’t think he should just walk in. He hung back outside the school grounds on the other side of a chain-link fence. He found a bus stop bench to wait on that had an ad for her mother Twinkle’s Real Estate business printed on it, her hungry-looking grimace demanding all bus patrons sell their homes and win their future through her machinations.

Boring suburban high schools in boring suburbs. Half-formed teenagers milling around in twos and threes towards their cars or the bus after the bell went. Billy graduated ten years ago but high schools still smelled the same— of cafeteria pizza, BO, and industrial cleaning products. There were small differences of course. His high school was private and everybody wore a uniform. Back then there was more Mr. Mister and Lionel Richie coming out of car stereos, but otherwise it felt the same.

He spotted Alison come out the main building doors way across the parking lot. He leapt onto the bench and waved but she kept looking down, hunched over with books in her arms. A “don’t fuck with me” scowl on her face so angry he could see it from fifty feet away. She looked like a different person and completely miserable. Billy decided to risk it and go closer to the school to catch her attention.

He never felt that five year age gap between them more vividly when they were hanging out and she started going off on how “everyone hated her” at school, complaining about how everyone was “a total bitch.”

Alison didn’t really have any other friends or seem to want any. The complaints were so repetitive and so short-sighted. Everyone always thinks they’re “hated” in high school but it’s inside their heads. Every kid is self-obsessed; they don’t have the energy to hate anyone else, Billy concluded looking back on his own time served.

“Alischon!” Billy shouted trying to penetrate the cloud of loathing and get her attention. She was standing at a bank of lockers, putting books in and taking books out. A passing student accidentally-on-purpose smacked their hand into the open locker door, slamming it on her head.

“I’m here! I made it,” Billy announced, running up to her.

Alison seemed startled, “Billy!”

“You told me to meet you at your car, but I was a little early. I saw you from up there,” Billy pointed to the bus bench.

Alison scowled and then closed her eyes hard like she was having a migraine.

“I should have waited.“ Billy realized what was going on. His enthusiasm flagged, “You’re embarrassed to be seen with me.”

Alison let out a breath, trying to bridge her in-school and out-of-school modes, “Of course not, chowderhead,” she threw all the books in the locker and closed it.

She squatted to meet him at eye-level and said in a low mumble, “I don’t like who I am when I’m here. I didn’t want you to see it.”

He didn’t entirely buy it, but observed she did seem uncharacteristically tense. She hugged him and Billy could feel a tremor in her arms. Someone running down the hall threw a bag of wet garbage at her, catching Billy on the side of the head.

“I fucking hate this place,” Alison stated, pushing a banana peel off of Billy’s ear.

“Is it Bring Your Little Brother To School Day?” mocked a thick-necked teenager wearing a baseball cap and a Big Johnson t-shirt, “Gonna show him the ropes of being a LOOOOOSER.” Three other guys leaning on his Jeep behind him hooted and laughed.

Billy tried to look away. He was causing problems. Ignore them. Just walk towards the car.

Another kid in a CO-ED NAKED LACROSSE t-shirt blocked Billy’s path and picked him up, dangling him by the arm.“He don’t look like a zipperhead. Your dad sleepin’ around on your mama, Kahan?”

“Beat him like a red-headed stepchild!” heckled another in the background.

“Leave him alone!” Alison shouted. She looked like a wild animal.

The bullies got the reaction they wanted. He dangled Billy above her grasp, “Aw, I’m not going to hurt your widdle baby brother. He’d rather be with me instead of a stank-pussy garbage witch like you.”

“Surely there’s a better way to resolve this,” Billy offered weakly from mid-air, feeling his shoulder get more dislocated by the minute.

“Put him DOWN.” Alison roared, the monotone and the ironic distance gone, “MOTHERFUCKERS! I’LL KILL YOU.”

“Man, what a face. Looking like shit runs in the family. I’ll put a bag on his head while I’m fucking him up the ass.” His posse howled with laughter.

Alison wanted to rip his throat out with her teeth. Dig out his eyes with her fingernails. Leap up and kick his head clean off his body. But she couldn’t do any of that in real life. She could just look at the ground and shake with fury. “Fuck you. Fuck all of you.”

The bullies looked at each other. Was that it? Boring.

She just stood and looked at the ground muttering, “Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you.”

The one holding Billy threw him on the pavement and the pack walked off, sniggering to themselves.

Billy ran to her, still hunched over looking down. The pain in his shoulder was killing him but he was worried about her, “Alischon…”

She felt so angry and so wronged it just came out. To get the last word and school them into shame.

She stood up and whipped around suddenly to the departing mob and shouted “He’s not my brother he’s my BOYFRIEND, YOU ASSHOLES!”

Billy lit up, “Really?”

This wasn’t the “Eddie Murphy shutting down a heckler at the taping of Delirious” material she needed to make this mic-drop moment work. If anything, it was exactly the opposite.

“Kahan’s a pedo!” the teenager in the Big Johnson shirt roared, laughing.

“Kahan’s fucking her brother!” another meathead yelled.

“IN-CEST! IN-CEST! IN-CEST!” The whole group chanted as they walked in silence the rest of the way to the car.

Alison slipped behind the wheel and collapsed into the seat, a thousand yard stare and then let out a muffled scream with her fist crammed in her mouth.

Billy wanted to help but didn’t know what to do, “I’m sorry I made it worse.”

She pulled her asthma inhaler from her pocket, shook it violently and took a long hit. Her eyes still looked feral, switching between panic and rage

“You didn’t. If you weren’t here they’d be yelling at me about something else. Calling me a lezbo or a Satanist or… chanting some other two-syllable word,” she muttered through gritted teeth, “Every damn day. Four years of this.”

“Can’t you complain to a teacher?”

“No one cares,” She stuck the key in the ignition and the Angel of Death Wagon rumbled to noisy life, “Fuck this place. Let’s just go somewhere else. Anywhere else.”

💋 WILLIAM, IT WAS REALLY NOTHING 🚑

They drove in silence for a while. Going to a book signing seemed strange after what happened.

Billy cleared his throat, “What you said, um, am I really your boyfriend?”

“I dunno. Sorta?”

“Not an answer.”

She looked at the road, avoiding meeting his glance as Billy’s one eye bored into her.

“Am I?”

“When those assholes picked on you I suddenly thought what if you really got hurt. If they put you in the hospital or, like, KILLED you—”

“School bullies don’t commit murder in cold-blood, Alischon,” Billy quipped lightly, “In a public places. With witnesses.”

Alison looked down at him, tears welling in the corner of her eyes, “I fuckin’ lost it. I had to say something. You got killed because you were with me. It’s my fault.”

“I wasn’t killed. I’m still alive!”

“It’s not fair to you. I’m a fucking mess of person with a dog-shit life and no one deserves to be sucked into to that. I can’t do that to a boy with their whole life ahead of them. A kid can’t handle that.”

“I’m not a FUCKING kid,” Billy shouted, “I’m not a kid! You know that but you won’t admit it.”

“I’m a bad person and I’m bad at this,” Alison struggled for words. The anger was receding the further they got from school but she still felt frantic, “I can’t do ‘sincerity’ or ‘emotions.’ I don’t feel what other people feel. I’m broken.“

“Just pull over. We need to talk about this.”

“I need a friend. I need you to be that for me. If you were gone, I’ll probably kill myself before graduation.”

“Alischon, GODDAMNIT, pull over!”

She approached a scenic overlook spot on the side of the highway with room enough to park. She swerved the Death Boat into one of the slots and the car idled noisily.

“So if I say ‘yeah’ and it all falls apart— and it always does— then I’ve lost the only person in the world who doesn’t want to force me to eat shit —LITERALLY EAT SHIT— every day of my life. Some dumbass ‘hurt feelings’ argument and all of a sudden we hate each other forever…”

She ran out of ways to look away and had to face him, the panic was all over her face, “You matter to me too much to risk it. I can’t survive this alone.”

He had started to see what was going on behind all the defense mechanisms and why she was how she was, “I’m not going to abandon you.”

“You will. Eventually everyone does,” Alison stated emotionlessly, “But I need you to hold on until graduation. Until I can escape.”

“But… maybe… I need you, too,” Billy said. She looked up, confused. She hadn’t considered anything from his side. “I’m not a hero flying in to save you from your life. I’m just some guy,” Billy demurred,

“Why the fuck would you want to be with me?”

“You look me in the eye when you talk to me. You treat me like a person you’re happy to see and want to have around. You’re as mean and insulting to me as you would be to anyone else.”

“That’s kind of a low bar, isn’t it?” Alison asked.

“Low bars seem pretty high to me,” Billy shrugged.

“It’s a good thing you don’t have any money because you’re a classic mark for a gold digger.”

“If a gold digger made me feel like you make me feel, I’d give them every penny I had and it would be worth it.”

Alison smiled despite her wet eyes and her panic jitters.

“It’s not a rescue mission,” Billy reassured her, “It’s mutually-assured destruction.”

A long pause. The car sputtered.

Billy threw caution to the wind. “Fuck it.” He leaned over to the driver’s seat, put his hands on the sides of her face and slammed his mouth onto hers in an intensely-felt, terribly-executed kiss.

The impact of his forehead slamming into her made a hard crack that resonated like a bat hitting a home run at the bottom of a cistern.

He attacked her mouth like a horse eating an apple. She attempted to kiss him back, less forcefully, but was overpowered. He sucked on her lip like he was siphoning from a gas tank using a hose with a knot in it. Her hand searched blindly for her asthma inhaler. Then he tasted iron.

As she pulled away he noticed the smear of blood below her mouth. It was still trickling in a stream out of an open tear in her skin. “I think you split my lip.”

“Oh God. OH GOD. I’m so sorry,” Billy looked horrified, “Are you OK?”

“It’ll stop soon,” she found some paper napkins stuffed in a cup holder, dabbed at her bloody lower lip. Then her finger felt the point of impact on her forehead starting to swell into a goose egg.

“Good enthusiasm, needs to be directed better,” she tried to reassure him with a smile but stopped in pain “Ow. I think I just tore it more.”

They were just a few minutes away and she seemed lucid enough to drive, so they made it to the trailer.

Billy burst through the front door startling Pete washing a dish. She followed meekly after, a little wobbly from blood loss.

“Sit there,” Billy ordered her onto the couch, all business, and scrambled with purpose back to his room.

Pete looked over. Alison had dried blood all over her mouth and shirt and a spreading, fist-sized bruise between her eyes, like a bindi that exploded.

Pete just stared at her. “What the hell happened to you? Did Billy do THAT?”

“I-It’s my own fault,” Alison emoted skittishly, “He demands his dinner on the table as soon as he’s home from the office and he works so hard at the Patriarchy Factory. It’s his duty as husband to slap his wife around as discipline—”

“BILLY, WHAT DID YOU DO?” Pete shouted at the back room.

Billy returned with a first aid kit and a flashlight. He gave Alison some gauze for her lip.

“Why aren’t you at work?” Billy asked, opening his textbook to the chapter on diagnosing head trauma.

“Carbon Monoxide leak in the building. They sent us home early.”

“Follow my finger,” Billy told Alison, moving his index finger in a line and watching her pupils.

“Can you drive her car?” Billy said to White under his breath, hoping she wouldn’t hear him.

Pete glanced doubtfully at the smoking clunker outside, “Do I want to?”

“We should take her to the hospital to get her checked.”

“Jesus, Billy. What happened?”

“I accidentally head-butted her. I can see a hematoma on the surface, but I need an x-ray to see if I did any real damage.”

“You gotta register this thing as a deadly weapon,” Pete tapped his forehead, “There’s blood all over her mouth. Your head didn’t do that.”

“I kissed her,” Billy said flatly.

“You kissed her.”

Billy looked up and nodded.

“The ER’s gonna have to put that on the admission form as cause of injury, y’know.”

Against all medical ethics, Billy felt secretly proud to have official, legal documentation of what the best thing that ever happened to him (and what he assumed must have been a personal low-point for her).

They sat together for three hours waiting at the ER to get checked. He stayed by her side, holding her hand. She was fine. Just surface injuries. The bruise lingered on her face for more than a week, a visual reminder the first time kissed a girl and she kissed him back.

“Happy Birthday, Alischon."

Chapter title is a reference to After School Specials and Welcome to the Dollhouse's Special People's Club.

"Package store" or "Packie" is New Englandish for liquor store.

The Air Force Academy Chapel does look like the end of hair clippers, right?

These chapters seem to get longer and longer. The word counts of each installment seems to grow like bacteria, eventually they will blot out the sun and kill all life on this planet.

Part 1 - 3389 words

Part 2 - 5012 words

Part 3 - 1878 words

Part 4 - 7503 words

In its fifth installment, Tomorrow's Just Another Day (23,145 words) is now almost as long as Boy Genius is at nine (24,812 words)

Brevity is not my strong suit.

(more notes as I think of them)

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