Three Girls in Nothing but Swimsuits

“Why are you here?” Mr. Wright said. “Shouldn’t you be in the woods?”

I’m the only male student in my eighth-grade science class today. It’s the opening day of rifle season so there are a lot of missing children. The class is pretty empty. Why am I in school? It’s either school or hunting with my dad. So, he’s alone in the woods and I’m alone in school.  

Eighth grade is the last year I can remember before things fell apart, before my luck began to run out. My biggest concern in those days was my left bicep. My left bicep seemed slightly smaller than my right, no one said anything, but I was sure it was obvious. I started smoking left-handed to compensate.  

Mr. Wright has a piece of the Berlin Wall which has just begun to be torn down, it’s still standing but it’s being chipped at, and pieces are being sold. Mr. Wright’s piece of the Berlin Wall is being passed around the class. It’s a lump of graffitied concrete that we’re supposed to treat like a gold statue.  

Mr. Wright is inspired—he is very much overcome that the Berlin Wall is coming down. He can’t believe it. He has lived with that wall for thirty years. He’s telling us how the U.S. leads the world using soft power. 

“American culture brought down that wall,” he said. 

There are compound microscopes arranged along the sides of the classroom, but otherwise you wouldn’t know this is a science class. I think we used those microscopes exactly once all semester. One time we studied a bee’s wings like it was the female brain. We never looked at things too closely. 

Another thing that inspires Mr. Wright is Shannon Siders. They found Shannon Siders a month ago in the Manistee National Forest. They don’t know who did it. She went missing last summer. Shannon was eighteen when she left a party in the woods with two men. She disappeared. Some hunters found her body last month on my birthday. She had been raped. Her skull was bashed in. It was her abduction that inspired Mr. Wright to become part of a vigilante committee. 

I can’t understand any of my eighth-grade teachers. Why did God do this to them? Make them teachers? It’s like the five people in The Bridge of San Luis Rey. For a long time, I had to understand why this tragedy was allowed to happen to them. Perhaps an accident? 

In English class I read the short story, A&P by John Updike, with the greatest first line of all time “In walks these three girls in nothing but swimsuits…” In Math class I read A&P. During lunch I read A&P. In Social Studies I read A&P. In Gym class I play dodgeball and pretend the ball is a jar of Kingfish Fancy Herring Snacks in Pure Sour Cream…

My girlfriend Sarah is in Chicago with her dad. Sarah is one of my girlfriends. I have two girlfriends, almost three. I’m not bragging. I’m stating a fact. Sarah and I just started dating. Nora is my other girlfriend. She’s in ninth grade. Nora is chunky. She’s on the heavy side. She’s not fat. I meant to break up with her once I kissed Sarah. 

Sarah’s mother is picking me up after school today. We’re going horseback riding in Rothbury. 

Sarah is smart. She takes accelerated classes. What is she doing with me? Our friends hate us together. Her friends are smart, mine are idiots. 

I was at her mom’s daycare, when someone brought their newborn baby in, and they asked if I would like to hold the baby. Then they tried to show me how to hold the baby. “I know how to hold babies,” I said. I held that baby like I was born to hold babies. I’m a natural. Every woman there was watching me hold that baby. 

“Look at him hold that baby,” Sarah said. 

My dad thinks Sarah’s mom wants to sleep with me. Her name’s Ruth.  

When Ruth picks me up, she has to run some errands. She’s a businesswoman. Ruth is rich. The daycare she owns is her Tigris-Euphrates—that’s where all the money comes from. But she owns other businesses. She owns a convenience store that we stop at. She has to pick up the deposit every day. 

“You’re my bodyguard today,” she said. She has a silky voice. 

We walk into the back room where the clerk is pouring expired milk down the drain. This milk has a picture of a smiling cow on the front and pictures of missing children on the side of it. The drain is gurgling and burping as it drinks these missing children. 

The clerk is beside himself. His refrigerated face is blue. 

“It’s just me. Paul left—he quit,” he said. “His girlfriend came in and he took off his apron and quit. He left with her. I’m here by myself.”  

“We’ll do this. We’ll get the milk,” Ruth said.

She told me we have to dump out the milk cartons to get credit when the dairy delivery comes. We start pouring out the milk together. Milk splashes on my shoes. 

“This milk really is expired,” I said, holding up a milk carton with Shannon Siders’ picture on it. 

The last thing we do before heading north to Rothbury is stop at a one-hour photo. Ruth says she wants to drop off a disposable camera.

“There’s three pictures left to be taken,” she said. “Let me take your picture.” 

She wastes the three last remaining pictures on me.  

Though my girlfriend is in Chicago all this week, we talk on the phone every night. I told her I love her. She thought that was so cute. I can’t wait until she gets back. I can’t wait until the next time I see my girlfriend. I know exactly what I’m going to do with her. I want to put my hand down her pants again. I wanted to take her pants off her. I wanted to lift her shirt over her head. I want all her clothes off her. It almost happened last time. It’s going to happen next time. We were allowed to be alone in her basement bedroom. 

Ruth told me she has one rule. She doesn’t like to talk while on horseback. 

We ride fences. We rode for a few hours. It’s cold enough you can see your breath.

Ruth feeds me cigarettes. I pretend they’re Marlboro’s. 

We see a family of deer—a doe with her fawns.  

Ruth is quite a good rider. She jumps a fence. She races her horse. That got me thinking about those photos they took, back when the camera was invented, to prove how a horse galloped. They used to think a horse just jumped, but this series of photographs proved that was wrong. 

The clouds overhead soon became dirty pigeons, and we got five minutes of snow. I had butterflies in my stomach from being on a horse during snowfall. Then a blazing sun came out right after the snow. The scene turned into summer almost—I had to remove my coat. I never felt nature like that before. 

“I’m going to feel this for the rest of my life,” I said.  

Then Ruth kissed me on the cheek. I’m not sure it meant anything—she kept one eye open. She doesn’t like to close her eyes. 

Three girls are waiting for me outside of machine shop class. At first, I thought there were four of them, but it’s just three. I still have my safety glasses on. It’s my girlfriend Nora and her two friends. They are one. All three are showing me their bravery. 

“We’ve come here to break up with you,” Elyssa said. She speaks for all three of them. Elyssa is big, she’s burly. I must admit she’s an attractive Amazon. She protects the other two. 

Olivia is so beautiful. I realize I’m staring at her. Her Guns N’ Roses t-shirt is loose and only covers one shoulder so I can see her bra strap. It’s Olivia I want—everyone does. She only has eyes for Axl Rose. She’s small and has enormous boobs. She’s stacked, as they say. 

“Is it true?” I said to Nora.

“It’s over,” Nora said. It’s a big voice I haven’t heard from her before. “I don’t respect you.”

“His face is purple,” Olivia said. Her mouth is all braces and rubber bands. “We gave him a purple face.” It was fun for them. They wanted to embarrass me. They used to worship me. Who has rescued them from my power? 

I’m getting suspended. It’s my mom and dad, and Mr. Dewey in his office. 

My dad wants to know why. He keeps asking why. Why, why, why. 

“Why did you do it? Answer me!”

My dad is going apeshit. 

“Do you have an answer?” my mother said.

“I thought it was a rhetorical question,” I said.

“That right there,” Dewey said pointing a finger at me. He’s wearing a shirt with a rocket on it. “Most kids in eighth grade wouldn’t even know what the word rhetorical means.” He’s saying I’m smart. I’m too smart to get into trouble all the time. 

Why did I set fire to the boy’s room? I don’t know. I don’t have an answer. It started with burning a math textbook. What I want to do is recite that poem where the dad is hydrogen and the mom is oxygen, and the son is a devastating fire. They wouldn’t know what that means. How can I ever say what I mean? How can I talk?

Then I thought what I did wasn’t much different than that guy who entered a urinal into an art exhibit. He was trying to make people uncomfortable. He was trying to disrupt the status quo. He was giving the world a new type of statue and demanding they fall to their knees. Which everyone did. Everyone fell to their knees before his Fountain. 

“You’re burning down the house to light a cigarette,” Dewey said. I thought that was clever. It wasn’t until much later that I realized he stole that line from Gorbachev. But Dewey doesn’t understand me. He earns his salary by sauntering down hallways and crushing autonomy. He thinks he’s going to be principal someday. He has collected the foreskins of more than two hundred rebellious boys and counted them out to the principal. 

I almost told them about The Foghorn. I was the sea monster in that short story The Foghorn, that beast that emerges out of the seas and humps the shit out of the lighthouse. I was that beast humping a lighthouse. I was following my instincts. And my parents are terrified lighthouse keepers trying to figure out what I’ll do next. 

In a way that I’m sorry for, the whole school rests on my shoulders.

Sarah is dumping me right at the start of a Monday morning. This is my first day back from suspension. We’re right outside of my science class. 

“We have to break up,” she said.

I know she’s mad that I let Tracy wear my crucifix necklace.

She has a pimple on her face, on the left side of her face. She’s a beautiful girl but she is always breaking out. It’s right where Picasso liked to put out his cigarettes. 

She handed me the series of three photos that her mother had taken of me. Each photo looks the same. 

Sarah goes to her class before I can say anything. I have nothing to say. I’m blushing. I know I’m red. 

I can hear girls beginning to hiss at me. 

What happened next, you can blame on three guys that stood in the fire, or better yet three girls in nothing but swimsuits. 

I went into my science class. Someone had turned up the heat. That room was seven times hotter than usual. 

I sit in my seat in the back row. It’s the second from the left. I’m the last one to find my seat. The girl at the desk to my left is resting her head on a pile of books. 

Mr. Wright is talking about a new clock that’s been created, a national debt clock. The Chinese will be running things very soon. Mr. Wright is well informed concerning current events. 

“The national debt is three trillion!” he said. 

The idea of lighting a cigarette in class developed slowly. It’s like there’s a darkroom in my brain, a photo lab, and I can see what I’m going to do.  

I held my chin up and I lit a cigarette. I felt like I had set myself on fire. 

Miss Teen Michigan, two seats ahead of me, is the first to turn around. Her lips are smeared in Vaseline. Then everyone turns around to see what I’m doing. I can feel everybody getting nervous.  

A piece of the Berlin wall whizzes right past the right side of my face. It’s a good hard throw. Mr. Wright clutches the sides of his head. You can tell he’s sorry he’d thrown it. He’s thankful to miss. 

The cigarette fell right out of my mouth at that point. The kid beside me stomps on it with his combat boot. He’s the hero. Everyone said later he was the hero. 

That’s when my future floats into the room like a confused moth—it never makes it out.  

Jason Escareno is a writer from Seattle. His other works can be found in Bristol Noir, The Rumen, The Opiate and Variant Lit.