Smooth

On Christmas morning, my parents gave us all a new computer for the family room and told me I could keep our old one in my room. I’d kind of forced them into letting me keep it because I’d been holding it hostage since Thanksgiving and I was the only one who knew how to take it apart and put it back together. Kate had screamed about me taking it at the time, but Mom let her use her laptop and she got over it, and now the desktop was officially mine. Perfect. I could continue to do my internet browsing alone without hearing some awful sitcom laugh track behind me.

As soon as I set up the new computer, Dad looked up a traffic report and then frantically collected all the wrapping paper scraps and hauled the bag out to the garage trash can to erase any evidence of Christmas. Then he rushed into his car and told us to put our shoes on faster if we wanted any chance of beating the traffic on the way to Grandma’s house.

Few things make a fifteen-year-old feel more insignificant than Christmas with extended family. Here are the gifts I received: The Beginner’s Guide to Card Tricks, a child’s acoustic guitar, an expensive Harley-Davidson motorcycle figurine, a framed photograph of a lion, a set of poker chips, and a jar full of baking supplies that could someday become brownies. There was no pattern, through line, or consistency to that spread; it was a collection of random items that had probably never been put together before and never would be put together again. It was like a dozen delivery trucks had crashed together on the highway and my uncles and aunts had pulled over and said, “Oh, shit, did anyone get anything for Kevin?” and then pointed to a smoking pile and decided, “That’ll do.”

On the drive over, Dad had reviewed the plan for the afternoon: a half hour of mingling with relatives followed by an hour of basketball on TV, an hour for eating, and then a half hour to open gifts and “wrap things up” and be the first people to leave. It aligned almost perfectly with my own schedule, except during his mingling and basketball windows I’d penciled in “hiding in low-traffic areas.” The idea crossed my mind of blocking out a section to masturbate — not out of any real sexual desire, more as a way to kill time — but I ultimately decided against it. It felt like a mature and wise decision. Instead of giving frankincense or myrrh, I’d eliminate the possibility of my family members walking in on me beating off in an upstairs bathroom. It was the greatest gift they’d never know they’d received.

Dad dove right into the fray, shaking hands with all of his brothers and sisters-in-law, asking them these insanely specific questions about their jobs. I have no idea how he keeps track of all those personal details about people. Either he has some serial-killer-style archive of notebooks in his office or he was born with a dental hygienist’s infinite memory for small talk.

I tried to avoid everyone, but my uncles and aunts piled on the standard questions that I never had any good answers for:

I went upstairs to the playroom with toys and stuff for the grandkids. There was a computer in there, too, and I turned it on and sat in the tiny kid’s chair in front of it. I tried to go online, but my grandma had installed such insanely strict antiporn, antiviolence, antianything content blockers that a siren would go off if you searched for Moby-Dick. Her internet was unfit for anything but images of baby ducklings and Crock-Pot recipes.

Microsoft Word was on there, though, so I opened it and typed SHORT STORY at the top. I had a bunch of bad ideas from the movie outline that could have become the story for Alex — things about musicians, people falling in love, modern twists on old stories — but I didn’t write any of those.

What I typed, almost without thinking, was “I went to a driver’s ed class that didn’t even let you drive a car. They probably knew I’d try to steer it off a bridge.”

I thought it was kind of a funny way to start. From there, I described the first day of driver’s ed exactly how it had happened. I mentioned that guy Carson I had tried to be friends with, and all the other teenagers in the class. I spent a few paragraphs explaining how Paula Freeman looked and sounded and I attempted to get inside how her brain worked as she wrote her horrible comedy act. I lost track of time up there. I was putting in more and more detailed descriptions and even some jokes. I felt charged up, being able to just focus on telling the story and not having to worry about how we’d film it or what Luke or Will would want to change. It was entirely my story and I could put whatever I wanted into it.

It was basically nonfiction, until I got to the part when Paula Freeman had called me out in front of the whole class for getting a question wrong and pointed out how red my face was. What had really happened was I sat there, folded my arms, and stewed in silent frustration. But instead I wrote:

I stand up and slam my textbook shut. They watch me, unsure what I’m about to do. I walk to the front of the class and snatch a set of keys from Paula Freeman’s desk, then stomp out the door and into the parking lot. I unlock the driver’s ed car with two steering wheels, and as I close the door behind me, I see Paula Freeman in the rearview mirror sprinting through the parking lot, screaming and shouting and flailing her arms. “You ain’t licensed to drive that car!”

Fat chance a maniac like me respects the authority of a piece of plastic issued by the DMV. I start the car and rev its decrepit engine. It coughs like I’m trying to keep a dead man alive against his will, but once it’s going, it’s pure lightning and I peel out of the parking lot and whip onto the highway faster than a once-caged eagle clawing his way to freedom.

Paula Freeman huffs her way back into the classroom. “He’s gone,” she says. “I lost another one. He ain’t never coming back.”

“I bet he’s robbing a bank,” one girl says. “He had that look about him. The look of a bandit.”

A guy says, “No, he’s on his way to Mexico, where he will change his identity and become an entrepreneur. It’s always risky to start your own business, but something about that guy makes me confident he’ll succeed.”

Paula Freeman says, “No. I’ve seen this before. That boy is gonna drive for a hundred years without ever slowing down. Long after we’re dead and buried, he’ll be watching the world burn through the gaps between bug corpses on his windshield.”

“But, Paula,” a girl says, “won’t he run out of gas sometime between now and one hundred years from now?”

Paula laughs. “Y’all have a lot to learn about driving if you think that stone-cold lunatic could possibly run out of gas. Open your books to page — ”

The class shrieks as I kick in the door and walk back to my seat, holding a bag from the grocery store. I pull out a bottle of redness-reducing moisturizer, unscrew the cap, and smear it over my face.

I keep rubbing until my face is caked in white slime. I withdraw a long stick lighter from my pocket and click a flame out of it, lighting my face on fire. I roast stoically, with my eyes closed. The smell of burnt hamburgers circulates.

“No!” Paula Freeman shouts. “No!”

The class members scream and hurl chairs through windows; they beg forgiveness from false gods; they hide under the tables, and I crouch down to their level. They each open their eyes, and once they are all staring at my flaming face, I say, “Boo.”

Every student’s head explodes.

As I cross through the fiery gates into hell, Paula Freeman weeps into her hands, wailing, “Not again, dear Lord, not again.”

The end.

I didn’t know what any of that story was supposed to mean. I wasn’t sure if it was symbolism. It was just a weird and sort of gross image that I thought was kind of funny and naturally came out when I was writing. I didn’t question it.

I’d been up there for over an hour without realizing any time had passed at all. I emailed the story to myself and went downstairs. I had to sit at the adult table and endure small talk about work and diseases afflicting great-aunts I’d never heard of, which ordinarily would have made me want to take the ham’s place inside the oven. But I felt good. I’d been creative and productive. I’d made something that hadn’t existed an hour before. I wanted to write more stories. Every time an uncle said something offensive or an aunt asked me if I was still interested in that thing I was into when I was seven, I didn’t get mad. I just thought about the story it would inspire and all the things I’d be able to do once I put myself inside it.

The night before our next blood test, I edited my story over and over while imagining what Alex was doing at the same time. She could have been sitting in her room alone just like me, or she could have been out at an elf-themed party with fifty of her hottest friends. Daydreaming about Alex had become a test of my emotions. If I felt any hope, I’d see her with her headphones on in bed, reading Sylvia Plath poems and novels that won awards I’d never heard of. But if I started slipping into pessimism, that vision morphed into the opening credits of a reality show, where Alex was one of ten hyperconfident, popular babes introducing themselves with one-liners about wanting to hook up with everyone.

Those mood swings were probably just from the Accutane, right? I knew Alex. She’d introduced me to singers and bands I’d never heard before, thoughtful songs about real emotions. I was no longer an oafish boy wearing AC/DC and Led Zeppelin T-shirts his mom bought him at Kohl’s, forcing himself to listen to lame-ass cock rock because that’s what guys are supposed to like. I was past all that. Luke and Will hadn’t left me behind; I’d left them, and she had led the way.