Giant Nut Head does not have a nut for a head but this crush is treating him like a shell between levers. It’s not a crush, it’s a smash: a glass underfoot, a thumb in a car door.
It’s important that everybody knows.
“It’s bad,” he sighs, “really bad.”
“Yup,” says Kent.
“I wish I could tell her,” says Giant Nut Head, with deep mystery. “I can’t. But if I could…”
“Uh huh,” says Maddy.
Giant Nut Head chuckles. “Well. Thus always ’twere love!”
“Mm,” says Kent, looking at Maddy, who is desperate to fuck if this kid would just leave.
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
“Wouldn’t it be great if you had, like, a remote control?” says Destiny. “But for real life.”
“There are so many bad movies about–never mind,” says Kent. “What would you use it for?”
“Oh, y’know, pausing things like Zack Morris, or we could just dub over our whole first date,” she says, rolling her eyes.
Pause.
“You said you had fun,” he says, a wounded animal.
“I just meant–”
“I thought you liked the planetarium!”
“eeeeeBaSookuDeaboDooZHEEEP,” says Destiny.
“Making sound effects with your mouth doesn’t rewind–”
“Wouldn’t it be great if you had, like, a remote control?” says Destiny brightly.
Maddy stretches a recipe. Kent fiddles with his father’s old turntable while Destiny sells her aunt’s LPs.
H.G. talks to his cat a lot; Eola writes stories on paper airplanes. Adamkin collects playing cards from the gutter. Landrey does her homework in Sharpie and it bleeds through six looseleaf pages. Annabelle loans her a Bic #2.
Theo died, two years ago, of “complications.” Tally sits in his old desk.
What if there’s exactly one person in the world for you?
What if you’re not the one for them?
Jeremiah scuffs his soles in time to the beat of his iPod heart.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Maddy likes her new camera, and she’s filling it up tonight. She gets Gene yawning monstrously, J.P. wearing a tiny coat, and Annabelle and Vey flipping it like Johnny Cash. She sneaks a shot up Ruth’s skirt; Ruth laughs, smacks her upside the head and kisses her. It’s a good night.
She’s heading for the porch when suddenly there’s Kent. He looks bored, but the corners of his eyes say he’s just held together: a landslide on a leash. It’s painful to see. Maddy feels herself sober up.
“Been a bad day,” he mutters.
Maddy nods slowly, then takes his picture.