35

THIS IS WHAT IT must feel like to die. You float up and out of your body, hovering above everything, but you can still see what’s going on. In the little square window of Val’s phone is my life from last night. Anders and I drift above it all, fascinated and confused, and probably a dozen other adjectives that can’t come close to describe the insanity that we’re seeing.

When Val recorded us, she didn’t hold up her phone to advertise to everyone what she was doing. The picture in the video she shot is dark and grainy, and I can tell that she was holding her hand down when she took it, so we’re all sideways.

Everything is sideways.

“Look at Master Baiter,” says one of the guys that supposedly came with us. “He’s a trip, dude. For sure.” The guy isn’t black, but he has an afro. People from Meadowfield don’t have afro’s—even the black kids. They straighten their hair or braid it, but never an afro. Our town is too country-club for that.

Myers slowly twirls as he looks up into the night sky. “They’re out there,” he keeps saying over and over again, every once in a while grabbing at empty air with his outstretched fingers. If I had to guess, I’d say there isn’t the teeniest part of him that knows he’s at The Stumps or being filmed at all.

He’s someplace else.

The video abruptly swings to the left and pans across everyone who’s partying. There’s a barrel fire going, so every time Val points her camera in its direction, the image goes bright, and we can’t see anything.

Up close I hear Val say, “Do you believe this shit is for real?” I don’t know who she’s talking to but I hear someone close to her say, “Wicked.”

The thing is, what I’m seeing on her phone isn’t ‘wicked’ at all. If anything, it’s a little sick and twisted, like porn is sick and twisted but draws you in anyway.

I reach out and steady Val’s phone in Anders’s hand as the video pans back to me. I barely recognize myself. Last year, I would have filled up the screen. This year I’m only half filling up the screen. I’m in the trees, in the background, and I’m holding a beer. I don’t know what’s more strange—seeing myself as a shadow of what I used to be, holding a beer, or not remembering a single thing about either.

Nothing on Val’s little video is familiar. Everything is happening for the first time.

I’m jolted back to the here and now by a rapid swing of the camera. Val takes a little time with this next shot. She probably thinks this is the important part of her video—the one that’s going to get her hundreds of likes on the Internet, even if they’re only from other kids at Meadowfield High School who know Marcy Cole and think it’s funny that some dude has his hands all over her.

He’s gross. His hair is greasy and he has really crappy skin. He looks like any number of burnouts who hang out down in Springfield under the highway with all the street kids. Frankly, he looks a little bit homeless himself. His clothes are dirty and his long, dark hair is matted to his head.

“What are you going to do for me, Sweetness?” he purrs to Marcy as she floats on air in his arms. He’s touching her in all sorts of ways that would make most girls go ape shit, but Marcy’s just letting him.

Everyone is half-staring at the two of them and snickering, waiting for something more interesting to happen. The suspense is probably killing them.

“Anders?” Marcy slurs and looks like she’s struggling, but so slightly and so effortlessly, that no one would even notice that she doesn’t want to be in the greasy guys arms at all. Anders isn’t on the screen yet, but real Anders with the phone in his hand is starting to breathe heavy. Out of the corner of my eye I can see that his nostrils are flaring and his eyes have narrowed. If anger were palpable it would be seeping out of him right now and ruining his dirty laundry.

“He’s busy,” purrs the greasy guy on the screen, so Marcy closes her eyes and tilts her chin up to the sky like Myers.

In the background, I hear a girl’s voice. I can’t make out her words at first, then the audio on the little video corrects. Obviously Val is trying hard to catch everything that’s going on. I guess we must be really interesting. She’s now being extra careful to film us, sideways or not.

“Come on,” a girl’s voice says in a sultry, seductive way that comes out more sluttish than anything. “I’ll be nice. Promise.”

“Oh my God,” Val says in the audio. “Stephenson’s going to get a hummer for sure.” Suddenly, I realize that the girl who is talking is the one that Barry Kupperman said was hanging all over Anders, like the greasy guy is hanging all over Marcy.

“Let’s go,” the girl’s voice whines, but I can’t really see anything. The camera is pointing in all sorts of directions, but never at her.

“I don’t wanna,” I hear Anders slur through the phone.

Then the video goes black, and I hear a voice, loud and muffled and really close. “Put that fucking phone away or I’ll mess you up,” someone barks at Val on the video. He must be standing right in front of her. All the action is blotted out. I don’t see Anders or the girl who is talking to him. I don’t see me. Thankfully, I don’t see Marcy being fondled by the greasy guy. I don’t see anything anymore.

On the little video, Val says, “What’s your problem, dude?”

“Right now, you’re my problem, you fucking dyke,” the deep, hoarse voice says. “Put it the hell away.”

“Whatever,” Val says, and then the video stops.

What?

What?

In the here and now, Anders takes the phone and hands it back to Val. Then he turns to Barry Kupperman and says, “It’s over, right?”

“Yeah,” says Barry, still squatting on the ground with blood oozing out of his face. “It’s over.”

“Good,” says Anders and stomps away from me like I’m the one who’s done something wrong and just the sight of me will make him want to punch a wall or something.

Why me?

What did I do?

Feeling so far lost that I’ll probably never be found, I turn to Val Buenavista and say, “Who was the guy who told you to stop filming?” She shakes her head and takes a swig out of the bottle she’s holding. “Please,” I say, and my voice goes up half an octave.

“You’re the one who brought him here,” she slurs, and I squint my eyes.

“Huh?”

“The asshole with the afro. He’s your friend.”

Last night, when the four of us showed up at The Stumps, we had two other guys and a girl with us. I don’t have any memory of them. Still, it’s all right there on Val’s video. It happened, and it can never un-happen.

There was a greasy guy with Marcy.

There was a skanky girl with Anders.

There was a guy with an afro who threatened Val Buenavista.

Myers was tripping out and I was hiding in the shadows like I always do.

But there’s one thing I know for sure. Barry might think it’s over, and for him, it probably is. As for the rest of us, it’s not over.

It’s not over at all.