You might think a semiskeezy place like Liquor Mania — right on the main drag and exposed to every set of eyes this town can muster — is not the place for someone looking to avoid unnecessary trouble. Especially if that someone is sixteen. And you’d be right, but I don’t even have to go in. All I have to do is wait outside while Aaron goes in and tries his fake ID.
Aaron is seventeen already and looks even older than that. His fake ID is top of the line, too, but you don’t want the guy behind the counter to see a bunch of obviously underage dudes waiting outside for their friend. So we make ourselves scarce. There’s a bench outside the post office, just down the street. Rudy and I sit on it and plaster these responsible-citizen looks on our faces. The goal is to look friendly and positive without looking deranged or stoned. Rudy’s T-shirt features skeletons arranged in all the major sexual positions, so it’s a fine line.
Meanwhile, Mars goes into the post office to check out the wanted posters. They have, like, a wall calendar of the FBI’s most wanted in there. The post office in Stanton is too small to have one, so Mars likes to check it out when we come here. It’s not really a calendar, it’s just that it’s one page after another, so you have to flip through and look at them one at a time. It lists their names, their crimes, “known aliases,” and things like that. It’s actually pretty cool.
Anyway, Rudy and I take the opportunity to talk about him. “Man,” I say, “I was about to smack him in the head on the ride over.”
“Yeah,” says Rudy. “Saw that.”
“Was he this bad before?” I say.
“Before what?”
“Before, you know, before I went away,” I say.
“Yeah, I know,” says Rudy. “I was just being a jerk.”
“Yeah, should’ve known.”
“How?” says Rudy, setting up one of our standard jokes.
“Your lips were moving.”
“Yep,” he says. “Anyway, the answer is yes, he’s always been like that. You just didn’t used to be so defensive.”
I nod. It’s true.
And then, speak of the devil, Mars comes bounding down the stairs, all full of secondhand criminality. “He out yet?” he asks.
Our eyes have been on the door of the store pretty much the whole time, so we don’t have to look over to answer. “Not yet,” says Rudy.
“Well, that’s a good sign, right?”
“Could be,” I say.
“Don’t be so negative, man,” he says.
“What?” I say. “I wasn’t.”
A minute later, Aaron pushes his way out the door, empty-handed.
“Dammit,” we all say, or words to that effect.
Aaron spots us and walks over. “Guy’s a jerk,” he says.
For a while, it seems like that’s all he’s going to say, and it pretty well sums it up. Depending on who you ask, there is either a special place in heaven or a special ring of hell for liquor store workers who do their job honestly. But then he adds, “They’ve got these sweet two-liter jugs of vodka, dirt cheap.”
None of us says anything; we are devastated by our loss. That is the absolute top of the charts for us: cheap, strong, and clear, so you can mix it with anything. Beer is in last place: bulkier, weaker, more expensive, and just try putting one in your Gatorade.
“I wasn’t greedy or anything,” says Aaron. “Just got one, stood up straight, did everything right.”
“So what? He didn’t buy the ID?” says Rudy.
“He just wasn’t sure,” says Aaron. “And he wanted to take my picture with that stupid little camera on a stick. I was like, ‘No way, man.’”
“But you could get the vodka if you let him, right?” says Mars.
Aaron wouldn’t take that kind of second-guessing from most people, but with Mars, he shrugs it off. “Not anymore,” he says.
“Those things should be illegal,” says Rudy.
The irony isn’t lost on any of us, except maybe Mars, but it’s true. More and more stores around here have these little digital cameras by the register, and they can snap pictures of your face when you buy liquor or cigarettes or whatever. It’s not even clear what they do with the pictures, but it’s kind of spooky, you know, having your picture taken like that. It’s like they’re getting the mug shot done in advance.
“Time for Plan B,” says Mars.
“You really gonna do that?” says Rudy.
“Hellz yeah,” says Mars.
“You are one crazy dude,” says Aaron, the smile returning to his face.
“Never denied it,” says Mars, smiling back.
Mars starts across the street. He has this idea that he’s sure will work. He says he has a cousin who tried it and scored a full case of booze.
It’s pretty simple: Go into the store and ask to use the bathroom. Don’t do anything suspicious like wear a big jacket that you could stash something in. Just maybe buy a soda and say you really need to go. Then when they let you back there and turn around, look for a side or back door and unlock it. Or maybe wedge something in to keep it from closing all the way. Then you just flush the toilet, say thanks, leave — and head right around back.
So that’s Plan B. How many of the one million things that could go wrong can you name? I’m up to around 999,996 when Mars comes back out the front door, carrying a can of Sunkist. He opens it and takes a sip while he’s waiting to cross the street. His expression is totally blank, which it probably would be either way.
“Well?” says Aaron, once Mars reaches us.
His face is still unreadable. He likes to do that when he has good news, and I think this is it: He’s going to tell us that he left a door open around back and we need to get a move on. My stomach sinks. He takes another sip of his Sunkist.
“Guy’s a jerk,” he says.
I think I do a pretty good job of hiding my relief. The others rag on him for his plan. Apparently, he’s been talking about it all summer. “It’ll totally work,” says Aaron, imitating Mars’s voice. There’s some talk of a Plan C, but it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.
“No harm, no foul,” I say after a while.
“More like no booze, no beer,” says Mars. “Maybe we should try your girlfriend at the 7-Eleven.”
That kind of pisses me off. I remember her standing there with her missing tooth and meth tics. But it’s true: 7-Eleven does sell beer. “Nah,” I say, “you’re probably on a most-wanted poster in there by now.”
It’s a reference to the seventeen cents. He may have seen me talking to the girl through the glass, but there’s no way for him to know I covered that. He still thinks he got away with it, and the thought makes him smile: Brantley’s most wanted … “Oh yeah,” he says.
I get up off the bench and Mars takes my place.
“Those are amazingly fake,” says Rudy, nodding at Mars’s bright white sneakers.
“No way, man,” he says, lifting one a few inches off the ground. “They’re real Air Jordans, totally old-school.”
“Yeah, I’m not sure that school is accredited,” says Rudy.
Aaron and I laugh, but Mars doesn’t know what that means.
“They’re totally real,” he repeats. “Old-school.” He shifts around and turns his right sneaker over to show us the silhouette of Jordan on the bottom.
“That Jordan looks white,” says Rudy, unconvinced.
“Or Chinese,” says Aaron.
It’s my turn to pile on, but I don’t. I don’t like making fun of people for what they don’t have. A few minutes later, we move on. Our heads are on a swivel, looking for something to do, some way to kill an hour or two before lunch. And that’s how the rest of the day goes, just looking for something new. Sometimes we find it, and sometimes we don’t. The hours tick by either way, and I get through it all without any real trouble. No harm, no foul.