Young Writers Society

[pre]The Movie of Darby Jane’s Life

Chapter One

The sprinklers are on, whirring with life, and Darby thinks about sprinting through, but he’s cutting across the park to save him the effort of walking all the way around. He expends no extra energy, lazily slapping his shoes on the saturated grass, barely flinching when cold bursts of water slash at his body.

Everything out here looks different, brighter somehow, and Darby isn’t sure if it’s always been this way or if he’s just spending too much time staring at the walls of his room.

Beads of water glitter on the grass, and two blond girls swing in unison, tiny legs pumping beneath their matching sundresses. Like they can’t take anymore in, Darby’s eyes flit down to the ground, watching it rush away beneath him in quick steps. He pictures the establishing shot, the camera lingering on those bright girls, clearly sisters. So sunny and perfect, he thinks, the opening credits would be appearing, twinkling along with a whimsical song, something sung by a soft woman. The camera would pan the park, finding him, music fading out; the happy sounds around him a subtle way to illustrate the hero’s seclusion.

Crossing over the wooden border, he leaves the solid earth, trudging through soft sand, pits of it caving in, swallowing his feet. Sometimes, when he passes strangers on the sidewalk, they make eye contact, smile, but Darby decides against that. A teenaged boy, dressed in black, smiling at a mother and her two daughters on the playground? He knows how that would look. His own mother watches plenty of Dateline, and this woman—blonde and severe—looks the Dateline type, skin pulled too tight with constant worry.

There’s a lawn maintenance van in the parking lot, and it jolts Darby’s heart. He can’t hear the motors of mowers or leaf blowers, and he imagines a huddle of cops at the back of the cab, guns poised, counting down, waiting for the signal. He knows, too, how these things go.

“Fuck,” he mutters to himself. In the back of his head, he’s felt a prickle for days, ever since the birth of the plan. He knew—at least, some small part of him did—that this would go horribly wrong.

“Fuck me. Fuck me. Fuck me,” he whispers hurriedly, head jerking around to survey his surroundings. The camera, now, would jump about frantically, splicing close-ups of Darby’s panicked eyes with wide shots, swirling around him disjointedly.

The song he hears has no words. It’s just a constant thud, the beat of his heart pounding in time.

Languidly, the drama breaks, collapsing in on itself like a deflating bounce house, the silence returning when Darby’s phone buzzes happily in his pocket. He extracts it, flips it open, reads only, “gold car.” Taking another few steps forward, he sees, behind the covert police van, a gold Buick. The car looks older than Darby, adorned with a Nixon bumper sticker; the kind of car you get stuck behind and can’t help but scream at grandpa to move it along.

Still unsteady, he approaches, his peripherals stuck on Seeds & Stems Lawn Care. At the wheel, a mustached man dozes, his skin an extraordinary tan from years in the sun. Almost immediately, Darby’s shoulders pull down from being hunched at his chin; the sound of his own blood pumping is vanquished from his ears.

He’s unclear on the etiquette, if there is any. To Darby, it’s like entering a secret society, an underground world he knows nothing about. His spine shivers with the unfamiliar, a delicious thrill, but he wonders if he’s breaking any unknown rules. After sliding a slip of paper with Ace’s phone number over the lab table, Gwen had whispered helpful tips, but she’d mentioned nothing about the approach. Pressure comes on slowly as Darby tries to decide between the driver’s window and the passenger door.

He feels one sure thing; hidden would be best.

It’s the door of a tank, a hefty opponent. Darby tugs hard, stumbles back, but catches himself and squelches his way into the stifling vehicle. There’s no smoke to be seen, but his eyes close involuntarily, struck acutely and watering. The interior smells oddly sweet, coconut mixed with an unidentifiable. Ace turns to him, his lightly toasted face haloed by unruly, deep brown curls.

There’s amusement in his voice when he asks, “What happened to you?”

Darby hadn’t thought about his drowned-rat appearance. It occurred to him only now that he was soaking into the seat, the sand encrusted hems of his jeans shedding grains on the floor.

“Sprinklers,” he tells his lap, swabbing ash blonde threads of soggy hair from his forehead. Almost, Darby adds “sorry,” but keeps it in. Burn holes decorate every surface; energy drink cans, Marlboro packs, and greasy brown paper bags swarm his feet.

Ace’s hand disappears in the abyss of his cargo shorts’ pocket. There’s the crinkle of plastic before he extends the package; moss encased in the cellophane that wraps cigarette boxes, burned at the top to seal it shut.

“An eighth, right,” he states more than asks.

Darby turns the small parcel around and around in his hands, stretching to remember everything Gwen had told him.

“If there are seeds and stems, it’s usually poor quality. Don’t pay for that shit.”

He crosses that off the checklist.

“Red, sorta brownish hairs are good. Little white crystally-things, too. Look for those.”

Darby takes stock and thinks Gwen would approve.

“Have you ever smelled a skunk?”

“Um…No?”

“Oh, never mind, then.”

He just wonders where that was leading.

“It’s fifty,” Ace says hesitantly, and Darby catches the question in his eyes; Darby hadn’t thought he’d wandered that far from the Buick.

“Right, right.” This time, he says, “Sorry,” and pulls a damp fifty-dollar bill from his jacket.

“If you like it, hit me up again. I’m never dry.”

It’s like he’s speaking a different language, but Darby enjoys decoding the secret message.

“It’s not for me.”

Air huffs briskly from his nostrils, not really a laugh. “Yeah, that’s what they all say.”

Darby lets it drop, knowing there’s no point. He doesn’t want to explain, and Ace doesn’t want to hear it.

“Well, thanks,” he mumbles, fumbling for the handle. Wrenching on the lever, the beast doesn’t budge.

“The lock gets kind of fucked sometimes,” Ace apologizes and slants over Darby to flip the lock up, holding it in place. “Just push hard.”

No one but his mother has ever been this close. The fly-away strands at the top of his head skim Darby’s chin. He inhales deeply, and Ace smells of the sea, salt-rubbed and fresh. Ace turns his face up to look at Darby, but he shows no sign that he noticed the sniff. His full lips seem permanently frosted in a half-smile, and Darby is hit with the desire to crawl inside and see what’s behind it.

He blinks, shaking the Etch-A-Sketch, ridding himself of the black thoughts and leaving only a blank.

“Just—“

“Push, right. I got it,” and Darby does. It requires most of his weight, but he jams his shoulder hard up to the door, and it flings open, throwing him out to the sun.

“Let me know how it goes, Digby,” Ace calls as the door is closing. Darby has no time to correct and stands idly, watching the car back out and disappear.

Never before has he been so grateful to be outside. Until he had real air, he hadn’t noticed how thick it was in the car. He swallows as much as he can, trying to rid himself of the feeling; the feeling like cotton has been packed tightly into his lungs, so much of it, it’s rising up his throat.

Darby’s head feels clear and his stomach, empty. He doesn’t know where it comes from, but he starts running home, enjoying the sweat on his face and the burn in his legs. He makes the wind, warm air whipping around him, pulling off pieces he never knew he had until their weight became unbearable. Rounding the corner of Fayette, the Magnolia/River Run intersection looms ahead. Darby doesn’t hear a car, and so decides not to look, hastening to the other side even while the stop-now-hand glows red.

He weaves between houses, hands swatting at tree branches that obscure his path. Finally, his own house appears, but, half-way between it and the lawn he just breached, his feet find each other and tangle up, pitching him forward. On his knees, hands catching gravel, he looks up to see the sun dip behind the crest of the roof. Darby’s backside is framed in the shot, his crumpled body dwarfed by the white dwelling.

In the failing light, his picks himself up, walks up the driveway, and disappears behind a prominent red door.

The blast of air in the foyer turns the sweat to beaded icicles. His hunger, satiated by the run, returns with a vengeance, a frightening gurgle that sounds as if his stomach is dissolving. Plastic-wrapped meats, exotic cheeses, and fresh herbs abound the refrigerator, but his hands twitch with nervous excitement, and he doesn’t want a knife near. Two nights ago, dead-tired and famished, he’d ordered a pizza in a rare moment of culinary weakness. He finishes the final slice, still cold, the cheese hardened in a thick layer, but still the best thing he could imagine in this moment.

There’s a hole in his gut. Something opened up, and it’s letting all of his insides out. Suddenly, a void. A vast wasteland that can’t seem to be filled up. Not by the pizza or the Coke he slugs or the bread he balls up and swallows, barely chewing, just wanting to glut that alarming emptiness.

He doesn’t feel whole, as he’d hoped. Only sick, dry heaving over the sink

Slowly, he takes the stairs, white-knuckling the banister and following the sounds coming from his mother’s room at the end of the hall. In the doorway, he pauses, not wanting to disturb her should she be asleep, but Darby finds her propped up by several pillows, eyes fixated on the television. He crosses to her bed, fitting himself to her left side.

On the screen, hundreds of naked Japanese men jostle each other like kids at a concert.

“Woah, mom,” he says, eyes squeezing shut, feigning embarrassment. “You’re supposed to warn me when you’re watching porn.”

She laughs, and it’s still the same sound from when Darby was a child. They weren’t able to take that from her, and the echo rumbles in his chest, a furnace placed there, warming even his bones.

Virginia rests a light hand on his wrist, the other pointing towards the set. “That one in the middle—there—he’s some sort of holy man. They’re all trying to touch him to be blessed.”

“That’s it. Someone’s getting knitting needles on their next birthday.”

The laugh is softer now, and she’s half-way gone when Darby looks at her again. Slipping is always the hardest part to watch, so he takes the weed from his pocket, balances it in his palm, and slides it gracefully to her hand, curling her fingers around the plastic. He’s surprised at how smooth the exchange is, so much like the black-and-white tuxedoed men he’s spent hours watching.

Taking his leave, Darby presses his lips to Virginia’s smooth temple and murmurs, “Good night,” against her face.

Sanctuary is his room. He likes the clutter of it, the lack of white space. The walls are covered, corner to corner, with pictures of people he either wants to be or meet. From the center of the west wall, River Phoenix governs the chaotic city, his haunting eyes staring out at Bob Dylan in his early days, wearing those big black shades and wandering a deserted stretch of road; and at Charles Bukowski, so close to his death, bald and white-bearded, withered and wise. Discarded jeans spill out from the closet, creeping up on his bookcase, packed three thick. A tower of red milk crates, each packed full with records, is stacked next to the door. Another, next to his bed.

What he wants most is to lose this day, to drown it out and beat it down. His body searches for the right number.

Most nights, he’s Iggy Pop, shirtless and raw, uninhibited; glass-cut and bleeding while the words rip out his bowels. When he’s Iggy, he wields the guitar, weighing heavily on his spindly neck, like a weapon; violent and vicious, thrashing about wildly. He’s prone to leaping off his computer chair in half-splits, screaming his throat to ruin, no fear of waking his mother.

Tonight, Darby is too drained, missing that bizarre adrenaline rush he’d felt in the Buick.

At the back of his closet is the acoustic, and that’s the sound he wants for this scene, that soft twang. Perched on the foot of his bed, the guitar cradled over his thighs, Darby is faced with a poster of the Beach Boys. From his mental catalogue he chooses “I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times”.

If Darby thinks about the lyrics too much, they start to become cheesy, so he sings without question, focusing on the fluid motion of his wrist and the bite of the rough strings beneath his fingertips. Only half-way through the song, his throat burning dry, a slight crack cuts through his voice, and he feels too abashed to continue.

He returns the instrument to its tomb and strips to his boxers. Almost more than ever, his favorite part of the day is crawling into bed. Flat on his back, hands clasped behind his head, Darby hears a slow and haunting melody, a deep-shaded voice relaying a childhood nightmare.

Wherever he might be, Darby pictures Ace laying in just the same way. The shot would fade to him, a rare moment of spotless symmetry.[/pre]