We also hung out with Howard Vern. He was anorexic, the only anorexic boy I have heard of. He had an awful body shaped like a pear, with skinny arms and skinny legs, and cellulite on his stomach. We said he was skinny-fat.
One time, Ed and Ivan and Howard, and I went over to Eds after school. Howard brought a water balloon launcher. Eds parents werent at home so we drank some Jim Beam, and then we picked a bunch of fat oranges from the tree in Eds backyard, and went up on the roof with the water balloon launcher.
When kids rode by on their bikes, we shot oranges at them. Girls and boys.
The launcher launched the oranges hard. It must have hurt when they hit. Tom Prince rode by and we hit him right on his big ass. It sounded like a slap on a face, and even from the roof, I could see his ass ripple through his pants. He got off his bike and started throwing oranges back at us on the roof.
Tom Prince had horrible face acne, which sprouted in small groupings, like piles of bat shit. The piles were always runny because he would pick at them. He was an angry, fat young man.
He threw a bunch of oranges, but he couldnt hit us. We laughed and laughed at the fat-ass on the ground.
Howard was laughing too.
Then Tom stopped throwing and yelled, What the fuck are you laughing at, you anorexic fuck? Why dont you go and slit your wrists again, you fat, pear-shaped piece of shit.
Howard stopped laughing. He yelled at Tom so loudly he almost fell off the roof. It was funny that Tom called Howard a pear, because Tom was shaped like a pear too. An even fatter pear than Howard. Tom got on his bike and rode off and Howard was still yelling.
We shot at more kids with the launcher. Then we hit a small Asian girl in the head and it made her fall off her bike. We hid on the back side of the roof and peeked over. She was crying when she picked up her bike. But she didnt do anything; she just got back on and rode off.
When I left Eds that evening to go home, the street was strewn with smashed oranges.
When I got home, my cat, Toby, was waiting for me.
On weekends we had nothing to do. The girls didnt like us like they liked Jerry and Dan. When they didnt have plans with the girls, Jerry and Dan would hang out with us. We would go out egging.
We would go out on a weekend night at about nine and ride our bikes to the Luckys supermarket on Alma. Late at night there was hardly anyone in the store, and the checkout clerk didnt care that we were buying five dozen eggs. Making some omelets, we would say. Sometimes we would go next door to Bobs Donuts
and buy some bear claws and milk.
Then we would ride around and look for late-night joggers and walkers. If we saw a couple taking a stroll, we would pelt the shit out of them. Usually the man would have to get macho and chase us, but they never caught us. Except Howard. Howard was always the slowest, and he would get caught and have to cry his way out of a fight.
One time Ivan and I stole a motorized scooter. It was sitting in an open garage and we walked in and took it. We could fit two on it: one to drive and one to throw eggs. It was tiny, but it went pretty fast.
Ivan and I were out on the scooter one night. We didnt have money to buy eggs, so we took some hard-boiled eggs from my fridge. We saw a white guy in a leather jacket walking with an Asian woman. Ivan slowed down, and I hit the man with two hard-boiled eggs, right on his jacket. I hit the girl once in the head and she bent over. Three hits was pretty good shooting.
The man chased us, but we were long gone.
We went to 7-Eleven to play Street Fighter II. Ivan was better at it. He could play with Ryu, Zangief, Dhalsim, or Blanka. Zangief was Russian like Ivan, but Ivan reminded me more of Blanka. Blanka was a Brazilian beast of some sort. Ivan was kind of a beast. Like he was mean on the outside and sensitive on the inside. And Blanka means white in Spanish, and Ivan was very pale, so it all just made me think of him.
I could only play with Guile, a U.S. military guy who could do back flips. But he had a special invisible throw if you knew the code.
In the middle of one of our games, a car pulled up in the parking lot.
I just knew.
Run, I said to Ivan. I ran out the door just as the man in the leather jacket got out of the car.
Across the parking lot, I looked back and saw Ivan messing with the scooter. The man in the leather jacket grabbed him and put him on the ground, and then started kicking him. I stopped running, but I didnt go back. I just watched.
The Asian woman was in the front seat of the car. She looked over at me. She didnt look sad for Ivan at all. When she started calling to the man in the leather jacket, I ran.
I saw Ivan at school on Monday. He had a black eye and his bottom lip was purple at the side. We never talked about the man with the leather jacket to each other, but Ivan told people about it. Ivan told the story like I had left 7-Eleven before the guy even came.
Brian was a kid from Los Angeles. He had a tattoo of an eight ball on his leg, but it was smeared. He wasnt supposed to get it wet the day after he got it, but he took a shower. It looked like a drawing that had been wiped with a sponge.