Cures for Hunger by Deni Béchard (story books for 5 year olds txt) 📕

right away, we can be at my house by three thirty. That gives us one hour to strip the motorcycle.” I didn’t mention the stepson who occasionally returned.

Brad gave his cigarette a flick, trying to look tough.

“We can do that,” he said in a nasal voice.

“Fuck yeah,” Travis agreed. “That’s easy.” He was smaller but gruffer than Brad, with long mousy hair from which his pointy nose and chin emerged.

After school, carrying empty gym bags and backpacks, we half-jogged to my house.

No one was at my place or the neighbor’s. With socket-wrench kits and a bucket of Dickie’s tools, we ran to the carport, threw back the rubber raft, and got on our knees. We removed the carriage bolts, and then quickly detached the engine, the gas tank, the seat, the chain, the brakes, even the gauges and wires, leaving only the naked frame.

I hung the raft back over the bike as Brad and Travis shuttled the pieces to the concrete room built off the outdoor stairs to my basement. That was where I kept the old motorcycle I’d found in the barn. With so many parts scattered about, no one would pay attention to new ones.

Crouched in the small concrete room, Brad and Travis fit the engine, the gas tank, and the seat into gym bags. Then they walked back to school to call Brad’s mother for a ride.

✴

THE NIGHT OF the dance, a hurricane dispersed into a tropical storm, wind and rain pressing up the coast. Gusts shook power lines along the road to school.

“But you didn’t get the frame,” Elizabeth said. I knew her from pre-algebra, and in the loud cafeteria, she stood close to hear my story, tilting her head back to see from beneath bangs as stiff as a blond garden rake.

“It’s cool,” I said. “I’ll get it. I have a plan.”

I could hardly believe it—how quickly crime won respect.

Brad and Travis joined us and told Elizabeth and me to follow them. Two sisters were with them, one bleached blond, the other quite dark, and both referred to as the Watermelon Sisters for their precocious breasts.

We crossed the field behind the junior high and made our way, with a six-pack of Busch, to a new subdivision. We went into an unfinished home with plywood floors and empty doorways hung with plastic. The wind was so strong that the walls shook.

“I don’t know if this is safe,” Elizabeth said, gripping my wrist.

We each clutched a lukewarm beer. Travis grabbed the arm of the dark Watermelon Sister and led her to another room, beyond several plastic sheets. We could hear him tearing insulation from the wall and spreading it on the floor, and then the two of them lying down and struggling with their clothes.

Brad was telling his Watermelon Sister about living in Germany, about what really happened to Hitler’s body and how a friend’s dad had his jawbone.

“You see, they know it was his because there are so many gold fillings in the teeth. My friend’s dad keeps it locked in his filing cabinet. It’s worth millions.”

As he spoke, he leaned close to his Watermelon Sister, but she put her palm against his chest and pushed him back. He stopped talking, and she changed the subject to a girl who’d talked shit about her and how that wasn’t cool and there was going to be a reckoning.

The wind kept slamming the walls and thrashing at the plastic, blowing up dust that stung our eyes. Elizabeth stood close. She sipped her beer and told me how, each morning when she did her hair, she gave a shot of hair spray to any spiders on her walls and then watched as they walked more and more slowly, and finally froze. She said she wanted four more piercings in each ear and an eagle tattoo on her back with wings that went down her arms.

I told her how my father was an ex-con and that someday I’d rob a bank, and about my list—steal a car, break into a house, get shot.

“If you get shot, you’re close to death. Imagine how badly you want to live.”

She stepped close and pushed her lips to mine. I kissed back, careful not to spread saliva, following the rules I’d heard from Brad: not to slobber, to stay close to the lips, to let her put her tongue in my mouth first, and, above all—the cardinal rule—never to exhale into her mouth while kissing, or else the air would make a sound like a duck.

As I imagined divers did, I controlled my breathing. We kissed, and she rubbed my jeans. My existence sparkled and anguished, and then she pulled away.

Travis and the Watermelon Sister had come back and were saying that we had to go. They were scratching their arms and legs as if fleas were devouring them.

As we returned to the dance, he kept clawing at his limbs, rubbing and patting and groaning, practically having sex with himself now.

“Goddamn,” he hollered, holding his balls. “I can’t stop itching.”

“Maybe you got crabs,” Brad told him.

“Ew,” Elizabeth and the other Watermelon Sister said.

“No, you dipshit,” Travis told him. “It’s the insulation. Fiberglass itches like hell.”

The girl who’d been with Travis stayed quiet, her shoulders pulled in as she walked ahead, one hand reaching up under her skirt to rub at her ass and thighs.

Brad was staring for each glimpse of pale skin.

“Was it worth it?” he asked Travis.

“Hell yeah. It’s always worth it.”

The Watermelon Sister walked faster, leaving us behind, her hair whipping about in the hurricane’s final push.

The next day we arrived at school to see that, on the hill with the new subdivision, the house where we’d been had collapsed, pummeled by the wind. Though I wanted to claim this disaster, to say I’d started a fire or kicked the walls like a martial artist, I didn’t think I could get away with the lie. Besides, it was enough to say I’d been inside, drinking just before it fell.

Brad and Travis