A Love Song For Lake Monsters (an excerpt)
Fiction by Brian Henderson
I wanted to run. My legs were screaming to run. But Samantha was dictating the pace, so I kept my head down and slowly followed her Keds through the crowd, trying not to give her a flat tire. I had never stolen anything before, and it was as if I’d just fingered a wall socket. I kept glancing over my shoulder, convinced a security guard was going to grab us at any second. I wondered if they had a shoplifter’s jail at this outdoor mall, like a tucked away little cell with a bench and a tin mug for xylophoning the bars. And how my parents would look when they came to pick me up, standing there with their souvenir t-shirts and bags of fudge, my dad growling something about letting me sit there to think about what I’d done.
Two days into summer and I was a criminal. An outlaw. A stain on the family. I would ruin our vacation by getting thrown in the slammer, only to break out and elope with the mysterious townie I’d just met an hour ago. I was imagining our matching honeymoon tattoos when I noticed the shoes in front of me weren’t Keds anymore, they were tan sandals with bulbs of foot-meat sprouting from the holes. I looked up and found Samantha had been body-snatched by a woman in large capri pants who looked like a Barb or a Linda or something.
I skidded to a stop, peered in all directions; nothing but a sea of Barb’s and Linda’s. My buttcheeks toinked up into tight fists. Had she gotten caught? Was she in jail? Or did she ditch me? Had she just been messing with me this whole time, picking on the stupid tourist boy for fun?
I started to slump off toward the food court when a hand grabbed my arm and yanked me backwards, dragging me around a corner, into a dark cave. My back hit a cold concrete wall; a slip of piss hit my chonies. Holy shit, I thought, it’s not a jail, it’s a fucking dungeon! I raised my palms high in the air, pleading innocence, and as my eyes adjusted to the dark, I saw Samantha’s snaggle-toothed smile.
“Sorry!” she whispered, “I thought you were behind me!”
“I was!”
“Oh shit, Sorry! But look—” She backed up and lifted her arms to reveal the room she’d pulled me into. “We made it!”
We were in a hidden vending-machine spot, like a secret alcove, unseen by the passing bodies outside. The only light came from a sad Coke machine that bathed Samantha’s face in a beautiful crimson glow. The walls and ceiling were made of dirty concrete that reeked of damp soil and cigarette butts, and the temp was a solid fifteen degrees colder than the bleached-out boardwalk we’d just escaped. Every surface was covered in thick Sharpie tags of names like: KONG and SQUIDY and PIMPBOY. A big brazen scribble on the largest wall declared ‘ARROWHEAD LOCALS ONLY’, followed by ‘FLATLANDERS CAN FUCK’. I didn’t know what a flatlander was, or whether the ‘Fuck’ was a declaration or a command, but I knew we were safe in there - no way was anyone in authority going to frequent that place, they probably didn’t even know it existed. It was like the Batcave for local teenaged fuckups.
“We made it,” I whispered, absentmindedly repeating her.
She bounced around the cave, singing “Shoplifters of the World” in a faux British accent, dancing and swaying with the stolen Sony Discman clenched to her chest like it was her prom date. I’d never wanted to be an electric appliance so badly in my life. When she got to the chorus, she paused and looked at me with wide expectant eyes. I huffed a fake laugh.
“Wait, really?” She stopped dancing. “You don’t know The Smiths?”
“Oh. Yeah, no. Yeah.” I shook my head and hissed like I had forgotten.
“Wow, we gotta work on your music.” She stepped forward, pressed the Discman into my chest and let go. I got my arms up and caught it before it fell. The Sony was a lot heavier than my old generic piece of slizz, probably due to all that hella shock-proof technology.
“Speaking of,” she continued,” I still owe you a Weezer CD.”
“Oh, no, it’s— you don’t—"
“No, come over tonight and I’ll get you a new one.”
Wait. Did she just invite me over? Like, to her house? Oh my God, was she going to write her address on my hand? Pull me close and press a pen into my palm? The mere thought made the space between my genitals squinch up like a caterpillar.
“Um, y— I mean, you don’t have to but yeah, ok.” I said, then remembered the Sony. “Wait, you’re not gonna steal the CD too, are you?”
“Ha. No, my stepdad has a burner thing on his computer, I’ll just burn you a copy of mine.” Her mouth twisted into a smirk. “But yeah, I did steal mine.”
“Oh my God,” I laughed. “You’re like a full-on professional, they’re gonna put you on America’s most wanted.”
“Hey, you’ll be there too, you’re my accomplice.”
“What!”
Through our slush of giggles, I was struck by how easy it all seemed. She was so different from the kids at my school, who were all stuck in a shitty game of “Who can be most aloof?” With Samantha, it was like, “Here I am, this is me. Take it or leave it.” And I didn’t want to leave it. Ever. I wanted to stay in that cave until the sun burned out and our bodies became a blended pile of dust. Turned out I only got about two more seconds.
“There you are.” A deep voice shook the air. Apparently the authorities did know about the Batcave.
I shoved the Sony behind my back, tried to look as innocent as possible Samantha spun around next to me as the dark figure entered the mouth of the cave. He was backlit from behind, making it difficult to see his face, but his silhouette was tall and broad.
“I knew I’d find you in here.” His voice echoed off the walls as he marched up to us.
I considered dropping the Discman, kicking it back between the vending machines, just to get rid of the evidence, but he was advancing too quickly. And he was heading directly for me. I raised the Sony and cowered as he bore down. There was a whoosh of air and suddenly Sam was in front of me, stopping the man in his tracks. She stood tall, toe-to-toe with him on the balls of her feet. The man shifted his weight ominously like he was about to grab her, but she didn’t budge, in fact, she put her hands on her hips and defiantly raised her chin. Then the most horrifying thing happened: She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him.
And that’s how I met the guy who would ruin my entire summer. Samantha’s boyfriend. Jason Fucking Carter.
Jason Fucking Carter looked like a big toe. But, like, hot. He was all meat-head-muscley, with a thick pink neck and ears like cooked shrimp. His hair was tapered up to a perfectly tousled bedhead and had sleepy eyes and puffy lips, like he’d constantly just woken up. His dark baggy clothes hung and slung from his muscular frame, offering little peeks of the thin gold chain on his clavicle or the thick black band of his Calvin’s. He was basically the Marky Mark of Lake Arrowhead. And his Funky Bunch was the entire female population. Most of the males too. So confident in his skin was Jason Fucking Carter, that teens and adults alike would pause mid-sentence just to catch a glimpse of him strutting by.
My first glimpse crushed me like a soda can.
After a long, wet kiss that involved his hands all over her ass, Samantha introduced me and all I got from him was a distracted ‘hey’. Then I got a whopping I-don’t-give-a-shit shoulder shrug when she informed him that I was going to be joining them that night at her house. JFC never even looked at me, just waited for Samantha to quickly rattle off her address, crushing all hopes of intimate hand-on-handwriting, then took her by the hip and led her out of the Batcave, leaving me alone in the dark. I stood there for a long time, sucking the string of my hoodie, repeating her address over and over in my head.
