Page 48 of Antihero

B-Roll said, “I’m sick of these high-school girls. Let’s get some real talent.” He preferred adult services on Craigslist and places like that.

“Nn-nn,” Taz said. “You can tell professionals. Need freshies.”

Professionals scared Taz. They scared all of them except for B-Roll since B-Roll was B-Roll. Women who actually chose to do this shit could be intimidating. They didn’t give a fuck. He’d tried a few times with them, couldn’t get it up.

He grabbed the next yearbook. There was a pretty Latina girl at Forest Hills but who the fuck wanted to go to Queens. Still, she might be worth it. She’d played Belle in Beauty and the Beast, her costume dress showing a decent amount of tit.

What was weird though was his stare kept going to her face. Reminded him of a girl he went to elementary school with. Early playdates. He’d line up his toy soldiers across shoeboxes and building blocks and they’d lie on their stomachs like snipers and shoot them down with rubber bands. Blanca. That was her name. Blanca. She’d kissed him on the cheek once and he’d run into the bathroom and hid until her mom picked her up. And this girl? Belle from Beauty and the Beast? Her name was Blanca, too!

A pulse of confusion seized his chest. He didn’t like the sensation. What the posse did was what everyone had always done. He’d read the stuff plenty, ancient Romans and Ottoman concubines and Persian harems. Nordic mofos used to rape and pillage. Explorers went to foreign lands, shot the men, humped native women. Morality was just a trend. Like years from now if the burning-planet-methane-reductionist-animal-rights whackadoodles had their way maybe no one would eat meat. And everyone would have to care about microaggressions against chickens.

He laughed out loud. He was a modern philosopher, Taz was. No one had ever thought about the world the way he had.

With a Magic Marker he circled Blanca’s picture but then he had, like, a horror-movie brain glitch, a strobe memory of Other Blanca and him side by side on his carpet, pinging the toy soldiers, high-fiving when a rubber band clipped one of the little plastic men. Her eyes used to smile, too, when she did, tiny crinkles at the edges. She wore pink hair ties, had a spout ponytail high on her head like Ariana Grande. They’d been for-real friends, even after she kissed him on the cheek that one time.

Now he felt sick. Had he eaten? That burrito. He’d eaten a burrito. Maybe his meds were making him nauseated. Light-headed, too. He’d forgotten the afternoon dose. Withdrawal? He was sick of sitting here on the futon with potato-chip crumbs and these yearbooks scattered everywhere.

That’s what he’d do then. He’d palm one of Mikey’s mom’s clonidines from her medicine cabinet.

He was standing over the toilet now, taking a leak.

His face in the mirror looked dead blank, like the Michael Myers mask from Halloween. He barely recognized himself anymore when he wasn’t in a selfie pose. He stuck out his tongue, tried to make his eyes look less shallow. His eyebrows, the color of wet sand, were as thick as Band-Aids. They sagged around the outer edges of his eyes, making him look soft, forever apologetic. He pulled up his shirt, snuck a peek at the cartoon Tasmanian Devil tat Mikey had started on his chest with his cousin Dirty Pete’s iron. Mikey’s goat skull was great, detail work like a Tony Hawk, so he’d claimed he knew what he was doing, learned from Dirty Pete who’d learned in the pen, but they’d been rolling on molly that night so the Tasmanian Devil outline looked more like an elephant footprint. He said his cousin would fix it for three hundred but who the fuck had three hundo for Dirty Pete to turn an elephant footprint into a Tasmanian Devil?

By the time he came out, Mikey had downloaded the new Karnage game, the boys splayed across the futon and floor, shooting motherfuckers up like the guy from the tank who’d flipped off the drone.

A dozen or so yearbook pages had been torn out, the ones with the circled school pictures stacked on the coffee table. Some promising options. They’d start outreach in the morning. Blanca from Forest Hills was right on top.

Another wave of light-headedness swept through Taz. Had he taken the clonidine or not? Did it matter if he took another or would that cross bad with the Seroquel and Adderall?

That picture of Blanca stared up at him. He didn’t like how it made him feel. Not at all.

The vape pen in his pocket loaded with indica might make things right for him. He took a hit. He might as well rest up and chill.

They had to go hunting in the morning.

22Lucky

In the Uber, Anca stared out the window, one hand curled around her seat belt. Sitting beside her, Evan could make out part of her face in the window’s reflection. Stone expression, lips a grim line, hair a tangled mess.

The driver wore a backward snap cap with PLAYAH embroidered on the front panel, shocks of Irish red hair curling out over his ears like wings. His head bopped to softly played rap.

Anca squirmed, pressing her legs together, and hunched forward. She glanced over at him, winced, said quietly, “Itches.”

Evan said, “Almost there.”

Her face spasmed in grief but she fought it down. “I’m not married.” Her voice was hoarse, so quiet he could barely hear her. “I have not been with a man.”

Her hands gripped her thighs, squeezing, her knuckles bloodless.

He understood. There weren’t words for something like this. There just weren’t.

He said, “I’m very sorry.”

“I want to shower. I can’t stand this another second.”

“Would you like to turn back?”

She stared out the window. “Will they poke and prod me?”