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Valentine's Day My brother Charlie once said that there ought to be a sit-com called "Cheryl Fucked Up Again!" He said they wouldn't even have to write scripts for me; a crew could just follow me around all week and film whatever messed up situation in which I managed to land myself. Although I found this comment mildly insulting, I laughed with him. It would have been silly of me to disagree. I
couldn't do anything right when I was in high school. I attributed this more
to my circumstances than to my character, though that was probably incorrect
of me. The summer before high school, my mom moved my brother and me out of There are
ninety-some miles between Life in
the Southwest is a little different from life in the So, there I was—stuck in a little town with a completely apathetic attitude toward life in general. A lot of my friends had dropped out of school, so I was spending more and more time with myself. I was having severe senioritis with myself, too. And it was Valentines Day, what my friend Simone dubbed "Singles Awareness Day." Later on, I concluded that someone like Simone had to have borrowed this from some stupid women's magazine. Compared to my usual days, I had a lot to do that day, but I did not regard it as particularly important. On top of my usual school routine, I had to pick up Valentine's Day flowers for my brother and deliver them to his girlfriend. I'm sure there was more behind-the-scenes V-day work to be done around my house, but my mother had given me one job, and one job only. She had written me little reminder notes and stuck them all over the house. Her last words to me before she'd gone to bed the night before were "Don't forget Andrea's flowers." She left for work before I was awake; otherwise, she would still be reminding me of my one job. I was less than excited about my stupid job. Charlie would have gotten eight or nine jobs if he still lived at home, but he had left for Arizona State the previous fall, and Mom was stuck with only me to help her run the household. Even though Charlie had moved out more than six months ago, the void in the house was palpable. At least two times a day, Mom would say, "Char . . . Cheryl," catching herself before she called me by my brother's name. They always had talked a lot more than Mom and I did. Mom and I
were not the only people who missed Charlie.
His girlfriend Andrea was my age and still lived at home. She lived
for his weekend visits and the few times she was allowed to go to
Despite the fact that Andy and Charlie overachieved compulsively, and I did not, we were all on friendly terms. My best friend Chloe called them the "stereotypical perfect couple from Hell" in her more lucid moments, and though I snickered at this, I secretly really liked Andy and Charlie and thought they were kind of cute. So when I forgot to get the flowers, I felt like guilt had sucker-punched me in the stomach. I was
already most of the way home when I remembered my job. This meant that I had
been on the freeway for a good twenty minutes. When I went to high school,
Sahuarita High was the only one in the As soon
as I remembered about the flowers, I slammed on the brakes, although this did
little good on the interstate. I recovered and sped to the nearest exit, flew
over to the north-bound side of the freeway, and floored my mom's tiny Nissan
back to I didn't like going into that flower shop at all. A gray-haired woman stood behind the counter, smoking a cigarette and ruining the pleasant floral smell of the place. This went right along with all the commotion I could hear coming from the back room. I had to wait in line behind a fire-fighter in uniform and a woman holding a crying toddler. I became antsy and started to hope that the smoke would cause the kid to develop hypoxia and pass out. At last, I got to the counter. "I was supposed to pick up some flowers about an hour ago, but I forgot. May I please get them?" I asked. "Now?" The haggard woman stared at me in disbelief. "Um, yeah," I said. "Ha! They're probably gone by now," she answered. Shit. Charlie had told me specifically what type of arrangement he wanted. "Well, could I possibly get something else?" I wanted to know. "Not a chance. Sorry," she said with absolutely no sympathy. "It’s ok. It’s my fault," I told her. Though I would have liked to have added, "Thanks for selling my flowers out from under me, bitch!" I smiled politely and headed for the door. As I opened the door, I heard her say to a worker who had come out of the back, "That's another man off the hook tonight!" I growled under my breath and tried to slam the glass door on its hydraulic arm. I knew when I went home and explained to Mom that I had screwed up the flowers, it was going to be yet another episode of "Cheryl Fucked Up Again!" I didn't feel like listening to lectures on responsibility and maturity, seeing as I already knew full well that I lacked both. I got back on the freeway and by the time I was near home, I had worked myself into an exaggerated state of dread. So, instead of going home to deal with my mother, I decided to seek solace with Chloe. When I arrived at her house, Chloe was stoned. Not anymore stoned than she usually was; she smoked an inordinate amount of pot—enough to the point where she required a certain amount to be fully functional. She could get away with this because she had dropped out of school some months ago. "You know you wanna hit this," was the first thing she said, offering me a lit glass pipe. Chloe eschewed metal pipes on the absurd grounds that they were "bad for one's lungs." I was faintly tempted under the circumstances, but all pot ever did for me was make my contacts stick to my eyes and cause me to invent unique snacks. At least being around Chloe had given me a thorough distaste for being high. "No thanks, dude," I said as I waved away the pipe and plopped into the bean-bag chair opposite hers. "I've got other problems right now. I truly hate this holiday. More than ever." "Whassup?" Chloe wanted to know as she emptied her lungs into the cloud which already hung around us. Thinking that she was probably too far gone to care much about what was going on in my life, I gave her a brief, half-hearted rundown on the flower shop incident. When I finished, Chloe had finished her smoke and, wonder of wonders, she seemed to have followed everything I'd been telling her. "Dude, I know what needs to be done about this," she said as she cleaned her pipe. "Your mom's not gonna kill you. We'll just go get flowers across the line." I stared
at Chloe, incredulous. "Across the line" meant going to the half of
"There are so many reasons why that is a stupid idea," I said. "Duh, why is it stupid?" She honestly didn't know. "First of all, do you even know where there is a flower shop across the line? Second of all, I doubt customs is going to let us bring the flowers back with us, and third, there is no way in hell I'm taking my mom's car to Mexico." Chloe smiled a big, dopey smile. "I know where the flower shop is. We'll hide them from customs and tell them we bought blankets or ponchos or something, and I'll get Simone to drive. If we stop into a bar for a bit, she won't mind at all." She was actually making sense in a twisted sort of way. I still felt obligated to talk us out of this, however. Not because I saw any real problems with the plan as it was now, but rather because I thought there had to be something we were overlooking. "What makes you think there are going to be flowers down there?" I wanted to know. "It's going to be after five by the time we get there, and it's still Valentines Day." "Do Mexicans even celebrate Valentines Day?" Chloe asked. "I don't know, the ones I know do, but they all live here," I said. "Either
way, I'm sure they have huge amounts of flowers down there. Simone
drove an eighty-something, white Ford Lincoln she had inherited from her
father, who managed a grocery store.
Though she didn't smoke as much weed as Chloe, she liked to drink and
she smoked a lot of Camel Wides. As we headed South, I asphyxiated in the
back seat of the Seeing as our minds were filled with thoughts of crazy aunts, angry mothers, flowers, customs agents, and marijuana, we all neglected to look at an important thing when we got into the car: the gas gauge. My thoughts were interrupted by Simone sitting bolt upright. "What the hell is going on?" she said. "Whassup?" asked Chloe. "Oh
my God. The car is stopping. Oh no. No car, no car, please don't do this to
me," Simone pleaded as we rapidly decelerated. "Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!
No, Car! No!" We were crawling along the freeway now. A dark blue
mini-van with wood paneling blew by us on the left, entirely too close to the
"Dude, pull over." I instructed. Wordlessly, she did as I said. The car came to an angled halt, barely on the shoulder. Simone put it in park, right as it died. "What the hell just happened?" I wanted to know. "I think I should have gotten gas before we left Rio Rico," Simone answered. "Maybe," I muttered, sneaking a look at the gas gauge, which was well below the "E." It was then that Chloe fully realized what all was happening. "We ran out of gas!" She burst into helpless giggles. "That's beautiful! Fucking beautiful!" she continued to howl. "Fucking beautiful" was one of her favorite descriptions. It could apply to virtually any situation. Simone continued to look stricken. "What do we do now?" she questioned the windshield. "Now we walk," I said. That day
I learned that three gringas hiking along the freeway to Simone was in the lead, royally pissed off and chain-smoking. I was behind Chloe because I had to dissuade her from stopping to rest every thirty seconds. We had allowed her to smoke a bowl before we left the car. Simone had had a couple of hits, saying that she "Deserved them after all she'd been through." Although I was tempted by weed more than usual, I had declined, thinking a sober person might be valuable in this situation. The day
was windy and not quite warm. I hated getting my hair whipped around. My eyes
were tearing up, and my lips were beginning to chap. I was secretly formulating
new theories about the exact temperature of hell. We had been walking for
probably half an hour, and I estimated we'd gone a little more than a mile,
when a "Thank God!" Simone cried, flinging her cigarette into the road and hurrying over to the passenger window of the car. By the time I managed to get Chloe and myself caught up to her, Simone was engaged in conversation. "No tengo gasolina," I heard her say. Great. I glanced
at the license plate of the car and saw that it said "Front Son."
This meant that the car was registered in The man
driving the car was alone, and because he was from Half-stoned Simone had other ideas, however. After a few minutes of pseudo-communication, which involved more gesticulation than actual words contained in Simone's halting Spanish, she turned to us and said, "Get in; it's safe." Simone disappeared into the car and left Chloe and me standing on the side of the road. "We gotta go with her, dude," Chloe said as she opened the back door of the car. The thought of getting into a car and out of the wind seemed wonderful; though, I would have preferred getting into a familiar car. Reluctantly, I opted to take my chances with the stranger I could not understand, rather than play Death Lottery by myself. I sucked in my breath and followed Chloe into the backseat of the car. The ride
with the Mexican man who picked us up was probably the safest part of our
trip to This did not mean it was the least frightening part of the trip. The car did zero to seventy-two in under three seconds. I looked around for a seat belt, but there were none to be found. The shocks in the car were not good, and we shook every time we hit a pebble. There were many pebbles on the road. As we
careened into After making sure we had indeed stopped,
Simone, Chloe, and I got out of the car, repeatedly telling the man,
"Gracias, gracias, muchas gracias." The "What a nice man," Chloe said. Simone and I murmured agreement. On our
own at the gas station, we were confronted by a whole new problem: Who the
hell to call to come rescue us? My mom
was out. There was no way I was going to try and explain why Andrea had no
flowers and I was stranded at a gas station in "We could get a gas can and hike back up to where the car is." I seemed to be the only one capable of generating a plan. "Doooooode! Do you know how far away that is?" Chloe whined. "Well, what the hell else are we gonna do? Do you have any ideas?" I snapped. "Call Shane. He's not doing anything useful," Chloe said. Simone perked up. "Yeah dude," she said, "The tramp dumped him. He doesn't have any Valentine's Day plans. He'll totally come get us."
I had forgotten about Shane. I had worked really hard at it, too.
Shane drove a station wagon he had spray-painted black. The bumpers, rims, and ancient luggage rack were all the same flat color as the body of the car. Shane affectionately and unoriginally referred to his vehicle as "The Beast." Because of the vampiresque paint job he had given it, Shane assumed that everyone else on the road found The Beast intimidating, nevermind that it shook in a frightening manner at speeds over sixty-five. The last time I had ridden with him, he got into a war of sorts with a truck driver next to us. As he leaned over me to throw obscene gestures and profanity out the passenger side window, I had lost it. "What the shit is wrong with you? That guy could have a gun! Knock it off, you moron!" I yelled. "Don't worry, babe. If he wants any shit, I've got a cable." "A cable?" "Yeah, check this shit out." He reached beneath my seat and pulled out the biggest cable I had ever seen. It was roughly two inches in diameter and about two feet long. About six inches from the end, it split in half to make two tails. I could see metal fibers protruding from the end of this thing, which was otherwise encased in black rubber. Shane commenced to swing the cable around as much as he could in the car, giving me cause to duck, as he continued to reassure me. "I'll get out of the car and use this to beat the hell out of that guy." I managed to convince him I was capable of grievous bodily harm and he was in iminent danger of it before he shut up and put away the cable. Standing next to the pay phones at the gas station, I tried to talk Chloe and Simone out of calling him. "That fucking idiot will get us killed for sure" was my strongest argument. "There is no one else who can do it," said Chloe. "Shane's harmless; settle down." Simone
was already making arrangements with him, phone in one hand, cigarette in the
other. "How the hell should I
know where we are?" She said. "You know Twenty minutes later, The Beast arrived with Shane at the wheel. He was a tall, red-headed boy, who would have looked like the grown-up Opie except for the fact that he wore a torn "Sisters of Mercy" t-shirt, steel-toe boots, and a wallet chain that looped down to his ankle. "Whassup, ladies?" Since my last encounter with him, Shane had picked up an affected tone that was a half-ebonics, half-Spanish accent. This contrasted strikingly with his whiter than white looks and the fact that English was very definitely his first language. For reasons I could not begin to imagine, he wore what appeared to be a pair of panty-hose in the manner of a stocking-cap. "What the hell is on your head?" I couldn't help asking. "I gotta train my hair, dawg. You know how it is." "Call me 'dog' again, Shane, and I'll beat the shit out of you," I said. We had a stare-down until Simone intervened. "We have to get my car to a gas station and get it filled up so it works. My dad can't know anything about this," she said. "I gossum chains in the back o' the beee-ast," Shane answered. I
appraised the chain attached to his wallet. What more did the asshole want with
chains? I was on the verge of asking him, when he made his plans clear.
"You got a big-ass car, though. I dunno if the beast can handle the
job," Shane continued. It dawned on me that he meant to try and pull
Simone's Right
then, I desperately wished for my brother, who would have known exactly what
to do. But he was at ASU, probably discovering right about now that Andy had
no flowers. Thinking about this was a
momentary, stomach-turning distraction. The dread returned. I'm going to be in so much trouble, I thought.
As often as I did get in trouble, I was not completely impervious to my
mother's wrath. Unlike most divorced couples, she and Dad never competed for
Charlie's and my affection by spoiling us. My perception was that since the
divorce, if anything, they'd both become more strict than ever. In
retrospect, I suppose neither wanted to be the parent in charge when I
eventually wound up in jail. Anyway, Mom could come down on me pretty hard if
necessary, and I was only mildly relieved that Dad was back in There
were more pressing things to worry about, however. Simone, Chloe, and Shane were all climbing
in The Beast, presumably to go tow the "You guys, we can't go back up there and try to tow the car," I said. "Well, how else are we supposed to get it to a gas station? I don't know how to get a tow truck," said Simone. "Duh, we don't need to take the car anywhere. What if we just get a gas can, get some gas, take that to the car, and that should be enough to get us to a gas station?" They all looked at me. From the expressions on their faces, one would think I was suggesting this for the first time. "I think I got a gas can," Shane finally said. His accents were starting to fade away. Surprisingly, this served to make him even more ridiculous. "Well, give it to me, and I'll go get the gas right now," I told him. "Not here," he said. "What do you mean 'not here'?" "We can't buy the gas at Texaco! These places just rip you off. I know where we can get the cheapest gas in town." "Take us there, then! Just get me to where we can get some fucking gas to put in the fucking car, so I can goddamn well get home!" Simone screeched. Another
wild ride through I noticed that the sign on the pump said "Please Pre-Pay." Of course, this place was too primitive to have pay-at-the-pump, so I was going to have to go inside and pre-pay all of a dollar and fifteen cents. Fucking beautiful. I set down the gas can and headed for the door, thinking I would just take care of it myself. Asking Simone for money involved running the risk of cracking her fragile sanity. "One dollar on pump three, please," I said to the clerk. He stared. I stared back. I nudged my dollar across the counter at him. He glanced down and made no move to take my money. "You're cheap," he finally said. I decided I was through with taking shit from people behind counters. "Oh gimme a break; it's a gas can," I said. "Here," I held out the dollar. "Uh, sorry, but you can't fill that up here," he told me. "What, are you kidding me?" "Nope, store policy. If you want to buy gas, you need a car to put it in." "I have a car to put it in; its just not here. I'm not buying gas to make a bomb or something." The clerk raised an eyebrow. "Well, bring the car here, and you can have the gas." I was back to taking shit. I propped my elbow on his counter and dropped my head into my hand. I let the arm holding out the dollar fall and fully concentrated on not bursting into tears. "Ok, I'll go somewhere else," I sighed at the clerk. I returned to The Beast, picked up the gas can, and got in the back seat. "Why don't you have any gas?" Simone wanted to know. "We can't buy it here; we have to go somewhere else." "What the hell? Why do we have to do that?" Despite my efforts, Simone was starting to crack. "They don't let you buy gas here unless you're putting it in a car." "Good Grief," Simone spit out, after taking a massive drag on her cigarette. "This has been the worst day of my life. I don't believe this shit. Nobody wants anything to go right for me today. Fuck Valentines Day!" We were
back to listening about Simone's aunt driving home from the "Can we please just go to the Texaco?" I asked. "Yeah, dude, take us to a gas station where they let you buy the gas," Chloe chimed in. "Shane?" I said. He appeared not to have heard us. "Shane?" "This is bullshit!" Uh-oh. I had overlooked the fact that Simone was not the only one with the sanity of an eggshell. Shane turned to face me, reached back, and wrenched the gas can from my grasp before I could think to stop him. "I'll get you your gas—just watch me." "What are you gonna do?" He had made me nervous. "Don't worry about it, woman," he said as be dug around under the front seat. "Shane, this is not a big deal. Just take us somewhere else," I pleaded to no avail. Shane's hand emerged from under the seat. He was holding the cable. "Holy shit, you freak!" I screamed. "What the hell do you think you're doing with that?" "I'm gonna show these sonsabitches whassup." Shane leapt out of the car and slammed the door. "Oh wow. He's way crazier than we thought," said Chloe. "Over the fucking edge," Simone muttered to her cigarette. "Dude, he can't do this! What the hell is he thinking?" I opened my door and yelled out "Shane! Shane! Come back here! Dude! Don't go in there with that!" I contemplated running after him, but truth be told, I was kinda scared of him at this point. Simone and Chloe seemed content to sit in the car and await the outcome of Shane's showdown with the snotty clerk, so I stayed where I was. A few minutes of complete silence later, when the first cop car showed up, I was glad I had. "Can I bum a cigarette?" I asked. Simone wordlessly handed me the nearly-empty pack. "Mom?" "Where in God's name have you been?" "Well, lots of places, but that's not important." "What's not important? Where are you?" "Well, you're gonna be mad. Can I just preface this by saying, 'Be glad I am alive, healthy, and unharmed?'" "That's great. Now, you want to tell me where the hell you are?" "I'm . . . kind of . . . at the Nogales Police Station." "What are you doing there?" "Um, Shane got arrested." "Who's Shane?" "You remember, the boy with the cable?" My story about Shane and the truck driver was not something she was likely to forget. "Oh, the weirdo. Why did he get arrested, and what does this have to do with you?" "Well, I was with him, and the cops came because he threatened to beat the guy at the gas station with the cable." "What guy at the gas station?" "The guy working there." "And you were involved in this?" "He was doing it as a favor to me . . . sort of, but I wasn't there; I was in the car. I'm not in any kind of trouble. I just need you to, please, come and get me." "Where is my car?" "It's safe, it's at Chloe's house." "Chloe? Is she there, too?" "Um, yes." "What kind of fucked-up thing has she gotten you into now? And how did you end up in Nogales?" Uh-oh. She was angrier than I had given her credit for. "Mom, its a long, long story. Can I please just explain it to you when you come get me?" "We're going to call your father and have a big talk about all of this tonight." "I figured." "Alright. Let me find a ride, and I'll come right now. You are going to tell me everything when I get there. Understand?" "Yes." "Oh yeah, and why didn't Andy get any flowers today? Charlie just called in a rage." "You'll hear all about it when you get here, I promise." "Can I not trust you with anything?" "I guess not," I whispered. "Goddammit, Cheryl." Of course I got grounded. I suppose I could have thrown a fit about being over eighteen and being grounded, but I thought that being confined to the house was better than being kicked out of it altogether. I tried to argue that I was not at fault. It didn't help that no one believed my story about getting flowers. I told Mom that I was a victim of circumstance in the quest to accomplish a chore she had given me. She told me that she had never instructed me to try and run off to a Mexican bar in the middle of the afternoon with the dumbest people in North America. I was not being grounded because she had to pick me up at the jail, I was told. I was being grounded because I was stupid. This was all said during a heated exchange, so I tried not to take it too personally. Fortunately, being grounded in February isn't as bad as being grounded in, say, June. Since I was allowed to go nowhere but school, I saw nothing of Chloe and Simone for awhile. Predictably, they had gotten in a lot less trouble than I had. Simone's dad wasn't even all that pissed about the car, even though he ended up having to pay to have it towed. Running it out of gas had been very bad, somehow. I guess Simone's dad became mildly concerned when he found out about our wild ride with the guy who spoke no English. Simone's entire punishment for the incident was a new gas card and a cell phone. She was the first kid I knew to have a cell phone. Chloe's parents didn't care about any of it—even after Chloe told everyone we had been exclusively going to the bar because she had no idea where the flower shop was, and, "Duh, like the customs guys would let us bring back flowers!" Her parents laughed hysterically at the entire story and still retell it whenever they get the chance. The store clerk convinced the DA to drop the charges against Shane, but the police still took away his cable. During the evening we spent sitting at the station, I overheard an officer say that he had never seen such a bizarre weapon. Being stripped of one odd weapon didn't help Shane much, though. A few months later, I heard that he was arrested again—this time for threatening to stab a McDonald's clerk with a railroad spike while in the drive-thru. No one really cared that I never got the flowers. Andy thought my Valentine's Day from hell was the funniest story she had ever heard, and eventually even Charlie admitted that his girlfriend appreciated a new "Cheryl-Fucked-Up-Again!" episode a lot more than she would have appreciated roses. Since then, I've stayed in the house on Valentines Day. I've always hated the day with a passion, but since then, I've felt like I have a real reason. "If any boy ever tries to get me anything for that dumb holiday, I'll totally break up with him," I told Mom. "I'll take him and dump him in the worst part of Nogales I can find." "What if he has his sister pick up something for you?" She asked. "I'll beat him to death with a cable." Leslie Johns |
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