Chuck Englund is a chronically depressed writer doing abominable things to your favourite fairy-tales: charming princes are killing damsels mindlessly, Alice is snorting her way down rabbit-holes, and witches are dating each other, and voting. He's convinced the most tripping novel ever will be on shelves in time for Christmas; in the meantime, Tim, 30s, Invincible is a charming collection of short stories. Here's one.It’s becoming a bad cliché how the clincher for a little high school romance always seems to be hovering around in gym class. Ahmed, who feels he changes high schools the way other kids change underwear, felt like such an indie flick when he realized his butterflies had made him a part of the machine. And by indie flick I mean the kind you could probably produce with ten bucks, a tube of glue and some lint.
Pete Hooper, who became Ahmed’s best friend at Winn in Sacramento, said his incontinence had made it possible for him to say he’d seen the inside of every men’s room in the city. It wasn’t so bad if he didn’t think about it. But if the greatness of sports stars was in their stats, it should’ve meant something that there wasn’t a urinal he hadn’t peed in.
It was Ahmed’s first day in school and Pete’s gazillionth time on the flag-pole. Ahmed had made his way towards the car-park at recess because there was no mandate for small-talk there. He had a Hershey’s bar and was looking forward to the sounds of his own ingestion, when he noticed the stars and the stripes had themselves arms and legs.
Little Pete Hooper, as he would duly introduce himself, was taking a piss on Winn’s front lawn, and pretty darn tidily from that high up. Ahmed asked the kid in glasses, it was amazing they were still up there with him, Ahmed asked him if he was okay. Pete said it was actually kinda calming after a couple of hours, after a good gazillion hoistings. When Ahmed offered to bring him down, Pete advised against it unless he wanted to get his ass beat by the eleventh-graders, which was partly why the teaching staff hadn’t done anything about it. Also if it didn’t hurt much or make you bleed, then it was like a tradition at Winn.
The world according to Pete Hooper, and really there was no second-guessing the view. He said it was a shortcoming of society, God Almighty, that there wasn’t a Hall of Fame for a gig like this. Ahmed thought that was funny, and said he’d stick around a while if Pete promised not to piss on him.
The faculty was soon alerted by anonymous tip-off, to the medical condition of a certain incontinent eighth-grader. Pete’s oppressors figured his new best friend offered an automatic replacement, and meant it when they assured Ahmed it wasn’t because he was Arab. Pete and Ahmed, thus, spent Friday mornings plotting the extinction of flag-poles – ‘til one day one of them changed schools again.
Ahmed spent his ninth grade in three different high schools in or around San Francisco because his father’s work moved the family around like that. He felt obliged to accept people looked at him differently not because he was a calculated geek, but because of things they saw on the news, and the fact that nobody called Mohammed starred in any of the biodegradable sitcoms his dad had taken to watching on weekends. So he walked around each new hall asking kids roughly his size or less if they knew of anyone that needed a
square to ridicule or generally humiliate. At the time it had seemed like a nifty way to go about making friends.
Sandy Markum was Ahmed’s right-hand man at the Rift Pacific in Berkeley, but he was no Pete Hooper. His bladder didn’t need any plumbing and his taste for underdogs was average. Sandy was too much of a realist, always urging caution and reminding Ahmed of their place when there was fire in the wind. Little Pete Hooper’s mom liked to say if her boy grew into a quarterback he’d be throwing Hail Mary’s all over the place – ‘cause Pete, humble-boned as he was, was a go-getter. Sandy Markum was such a Darwinist for his age, that the whole concept of an asteroid like Nancy Kellerman crash-landing in anybody’s world, even Ahmed’s, passed him by.
Mr. Cranston always gave her hell in Spanish class… Yeah, I know. It’s funny how the whitest guys in the room find themselves teaching Spanish class – and it’s hilarious that every time somebody hits Ahmed’s Facebook page, they’re OMGing how cool it must be to go to school in Hawaii.
Ahmed liked that Nancy’s Spanish test-scores were regularly dismal, because that meant she was either from out of town or sheltered. (There wasn’t the slightest chance, of course, that this angel was an air-head.) He actually hoped her folks were unreasonably protective of her, or raised their eyebrows at the thought of her dating ethnic boys. Ahmed wanted to do the moon-walk on the edge for once.
Rounded up, she was the classic C+ student, certainly pretty enough to get through life without ever having to ride the bus or design a resume. He liked her nose, how small and rabbit-like it was, and her hair being as clueless as anybody on the subject of whether she was a redhead or a brunette. History bored her really quickly, and Ahmed had to multi-task just to watch her slender arms stretch down her desk. The nails on those gorgeous spiders she called hands were painted different colors, as if auditioning for a part in a Coke ad’, and they dwindled all throughout Miss Stringer’s imprisonment of her senses, twitching as if all the life in her was ebbing out of them last.
Her gym-tee was sleeveless so it brought her wings out best, that slow journey you took from her shoulders and down her arms to her fingertips in a beat-up rental car.
She was still the new girl when one blissful morning in the cafeteria he spilt her milk all over her tray. Just minutes after accepting his apology, she was on top of a table doing a competent air-guitar impression of Wally Irish from Drinks On Johnny for her best friend Christy, who was an Emo. Nancy’d been trying to express her opinion that Drinks On Johnny were a bunch of douche-bags; coincidentally, Ahmed thought so too.
Sandy Markum also saw the whole thing, and took his mouth off the straw in a juicebox to tell Ahmed he’d be better off asking out a girl like Susie Winkleman. Like most good people, Sandy argued, she was covered in freckles, but hey. Ahmed was barely listening.
By the end of the day, a dozen guys, lacrosse ass-holes and such, claimed to have her phone-number, and Ahmed just couldn’t make a move. Somebody was always giving her a ride home or someplace so she didn’t need a car. Ahmed always wondered where she went, when she and Chad, Chad was alright, leapt like rock-stars into Mike the Ass-Kicker’s old
convertible, or when she rode shotgun in Christy’s mom’s Panda. (Ahmed knew all of the other cars, but not all of the other people.) Blow-jobs and the mall, guessed Sandy Markum, but Nancy looked like shopping bored her quickly, and her mouth just wasn’t made for those kinds of popsicles.
Ahmed goes home in the family panel-van. It’s like the Mystery Machine with more windows but no psychedelic colors or Scooby Doo. The Goth-kids get to witness his glorious exit ‘cause they’re always around after hours making pot-plans, but he thanks God Allah Nancy’s never heard the exhaust pop, or seen his folks receive him like thank God Allah he’s survived another day.
Ahmed’s dad asks him the same pedantic questions about his day and Ahmed gives him the same pedantic answers. One day he’ll look back and wish he’d involved himself more in those punctual evening conversations over the dashboard, sourcing supplies for the restaurant his mom ran, and it won’t matter what was happening to some investment bank in New York. Just like it didn’t then.
A cop slows down Mr. Azziz near the intersection and gets him to pull over. He can’t have been speeding ‘cause as a motorist he has no grasp of suicide. It’s possible his number-plate fell off ‘cause it’s been hanging in there like a milk-tooth lately, or maybe the fender’s made a bid for freedom and it’s been dragging along the tar for some attention. Or maybe Mr. Azziz simply happens to be Arab.
Ahmed doesn’t notice the police-officer patting his dad down for Lord knows what, not really, ‘cause in his mind Nancy’s bigger than King Kong and she’s tearing up every skyscraper in the city.
And then Lehman Brothers failed.
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