Wild Roses by Deb Caletti Page A

twists of fate in a supposedly random universe. I've noticed that this
kind of scheduling cruelty never happens
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    with anyone you actually would want to spend
all day, every day, with. No, I got Zach. Zach was weird. Entertaining, okay,
but weird. He made me believe in alien life forms who come to live among us to
steal our souls and our Hostess Cupcake recipes.
    "A dinosaur isn't a reptile, it's an
amphibian," Courtney said.
    Zach ignored her, which was a good thing, since
she was wrong, anyway. Courtney and I walked to school together often, but she
usually pretended she didn't know me when she got there. She was one of the
Popular Group, which meant two things: one, she could outfit a small town in
Lithuania with the amount of clothes she had (picture innocent Lithuanian
children in glittery hot babe T-shirts) and two, she was destined to marry some
jock, have a zillion kids, and thereby assure herself a spot in front of a
television forever. Queen of the American Dream. She didn't often walk home with
me, as she was usually doing some after-school activity--the Sexy Dancing in
Front of Male Sports Team club or the I Could Play a Sport Myself but Then I'd
Have to Get Sweaty club. Her mother should have named her MasterCard, Zebe said
once. Courtney and her two brothers bugged the hell out of Dino. "They have the
glazed eyes of too much technology," he said once. "You look in their eyes and
see Gillian Island re-runs playing." Gilligan, he meant. Even though our houses
were pretty far apart, you could often hear their TV blasting or the repetitive
pounding of video game music. I still walked with her because, okay, I admit it,
she
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    was nice away from her friends, and because I
was weak when it came to compromising my principles.
    "I didn't even get to the best part yet," he
said. "So the lamp I had shining on him? I stuck it down with duct tape. When
this mother got out he climbed up the lamp, and when I found him, there was the
snake, stuck on the duct tape, back of his head pinned like this." Zach threw
back his head, did a really good stunned cobra impersonation.
    "Hey, that was great," I said. "You could take
that on the road."
    "Eyuw," Courtney said. She shivered. I'm not
kidding. Those kind of girls always shiver.
    "I didn't even try to take it off. I was afraid
I might skin him."
    "Hey--perfect ad for the strength of duct
tape," I said. "Oh, my God," Courtney said.
    "Had to take him to the vet. Luckily he was
still alive," Zach said.
    I pictured Zach putting his ear to the little
chest to check for a heartbeat, a grateful tear coming to his eye. "How does a
vet de-duct tape a snake?" I asked.
    "Very carefully," he said. "Anyway, there's six
encyclopedias on there now, to see if he can beat his record. He's my
Bench-Press Baby."
    "Well, here's our street."
    I was right earlier, because Zach stopped and
looked around. "Where the fuck am I?" he said. Then he shrugged his shoulders.
"Cool."
    Zach wandered off the direction we came, and I
left
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    Courtney to an evening of video fulfillment. At
home I let Dog William in, went back out front to get the mail. Up the road came
Dino's car. He parked in the driveway and got out. He had his suit on but wasn't
wearing any shoes. No socks, shoes, nothing. It was October. Way too cold for
simple, barefooted pleasure.
    "Dino?" I said. "Hey, did you forget something?
Or is this a new bohemian phase?"
    Now, Dino was usually a pretty distracted guy.
But this struck me as a bit beyond his usual absentmindedness. We're talking
shoes. Not exactly something that tends to slip your mind.
    This, my friends, is how quickly life can
change.
    A little kernel of unease planted itself inside
my gut. "It doesn't matter," Dino said.
    He slammed the car door and went inside.
Something more was going on here; something was not right. I could feel this
wrongness coming off him, just like you feel someone's anger or joy. I followed
him, saw him