Spontaneous. Aaron Starmer

      By the time I reached my room, I had already heard the front door close. I looked out my window to the front lawn. Dylan was jogging across the grass, skateboard in hand. As soon as he reached the road, he tossed the board to the asphalt, hopped on, and escaped, suit and all, into the evening.

      I opened the window so I could hear the squeaking wheels retreating into the distance as I collapsed on my bed. They sounded like sails being raised, a ship setting out to sea.

a trilogy

      Before we dive back into things, I should probably tell you three stories about Dylan. Rumors, really, but rumors are as important as anything. Even if they’re not true, they end up turning people into who they are.

      Story Number One: His dad died under a pile of shit.

      I should elaborate, I suppose. Dylan started attending our school halfway through sixth grade. Middle school is a tough time for any kid, but being a new kid smack dab in the middle of middle school is about as tough as it gets. If you show up on the first day of classes, it’s not so bad. New teachers, new lockers. People are distracted. A few kids might say, “Hey, I don’t remember that guy,” but pretty soon you’re integrated into the pubescent stew. Yet another dude dishing out or dodging wedgies.

      Show up after Christmas break and things are way different. Then kids are, like, “Hey, what’s this interloper’s deal. His mom move him to Jersey after his parents got a divorce? He get kicked out of his last school for sexting the nurse? This douche-nozzle ain’t one of us, that’s for sure.” Names are Googled, local news stories pop up, links are followed, until a tale emerges. The one for Dylan was that his dad died under a pile of shit.

      I never looked it up to confirm, but I think Tracy Levy told me that Dylan was from some Podunk town in Pennsylvania and he lived on a farm with his parents and one morning his dad bought a bunch of manure (which is technically shit) and when the old man was unloading it—he hit the wrong button on the dump truck or whatever—it all came tumbling down on him and he suffocated beneath the pile. Dylan supposedly found him over an hour later and tried to dig him out with his bare hands, but it was too late.

      Now, kids are cruel. We all know this. It’s no surprise that the story spread quick and thick. Thanks in no small part to people like me, who love some good gossip. But as cruel as kids are, they aren’t monsters. It wasn’t like they teased Dylan about it. It merely branded him with a reputation.

      Dylan came from a farm, which meant he was poor. His father died doing something stupid, which, if you’re taking genetics into account, meant Dylan was stupid. On top of that, the stupid thing involved a pile of manure that Dylan pawed his way through, and now you’ve also got a kid who’s dirty. And stinky.

      So almost immediately, Dylan was known as a dumb and smelly hick who was probably scarred for life by what he came upon one afternoon out there in Pennsyltucky. Everyone felt bad for him, but no one wanted to be his friend. Myself included.

      Story Number Two: He burned down the QuickChek.

      Again, this requires a bit of elaboration. At the intersection of Willoby and Monroe, there used to be a QuickChek convenience store. In the summer after seventh grade, Tess and I would ride there on our bikes and buy Mountain Dew, Twizzlers, and the latest issue of Vogue. We’d take it all down to a nearby creek, sit on the rocks, and use the Twizzlers as straws to drink the Mountain Dew while we’d tear pictures of models out of magazines and then fold them up into little paper boats that we’d race in the currents.

      “Go Adriana! Go Svetlana! Go, go, go you glorious anorexic Romanians!”

      Okay, fine. I’m fairly certainly we didn’t use the words glorious or anorexic or Romanian, but we got pretty damn excited about it. What else was there to do? We couldn’t drive. We didn’t drink, yet. Boys were an interest, of course, but they were all inside killing zombies or watching people kill zombies and Tess and I really weren’t that into zombies and …

      Sorry. Zombies aren’t the point. QuickChek is. So it turns out that thirteen-year-old girls buying the occasional fashion mag, caffeinated soda, and bag of strawberry licorice isn’t enough to keep a convenience store in the black, and by the winter of that year it closed down. It was kind of a craphole to begin with, but once people stopped using the building, raccoons and teenagers took it over, sneaking in at night to do the things that raccoons and teenagers do, which is primarily making a big fucking mess.

      Big fucking messes tend to be pretty flammable and so it was no surprise when some boys set the place on fire. Well, one boy set it on fire, if you were to believe the stories. No arrests were made, no parents found out, but the incoming freshman class entered Covington High convinced that on the last night of eighth grade, Dylan Hovemeyer had accompanied Joe Dalton and Keith Lutz to the abandoned QuickChek with the intention of smashing shit. You know, as a celebration of their manhood. Only Dylan brought an unexpected guest to the party: a Molotov cocktail made from an Arizona Iced Tea bottle filled with lighter fluid and wicked with the T-shirt we got for graduating from the middle school that said GO GET ’EM, YOUNG SCHOLARS.

      Apparently, Young Scholar Hovemeyer got ’em and got ’em good. That is, if ’em was a stack of old newspapers that he pelted with the burning Molotov cocktail before Joe and Keith had any idea what was what. The three bolted out of there with flames licking their haunches and promised never to speak of the incident, a truce that lasted a full fifteen hours.

      In the end, everything worked out for the best. The building’s owner probably got insurance money. The police never implicated the guys. And now there’s a Chick-fil-A on the lot and everybody loves Chick-fil-A. Except for the fact that they’re closed on Sundays. You can thank Jesus for that raw deal.

      Story Number Three: Dylan is the father of three kids.

      This was the least corroborated of the stories, but the other two stories certainly helped make it believable. Remember, by the time he was in high school, Dylan was known as a redneck pyromaniac with a dead father. In other words, he had nothing to lose, and so whenever something suspicious happened, he was a suspect.

      A fire alarm pulled on the first day of finals? Gotta be that Dylan kid.

      Laptops stolen from the computer lab? Paging Mr. Hovemeyer.

      Spontaneously combusting students? You bet his name was whispered more than once.

      But even before the spontaneous combustions, there was the curious case of Jane Rolling. Jane had always been a bit chubby. Not obese. Just consistently soft. Well, during junior year, she got softer and softer and softer still. Then one day, she stopped showing up to school.

      “Triplets!” Tess told me a few weeks later.

      “She was . . . with child? That whole time?” I said.

      “With children. Yes. Three. All boys.”

      “That’s boom-boom bonkers,” I said, because junior year was the year I said nonsense like “boom-boom bonkers.” Trying to land my own catchphrase, I will freely admit.

      “What’s even more boom-boom bonkers,” Tess said in a mocking tone, “is the identity of the father.”

      I shrugged because there was better gossip than Jane Rolling’s love life.

      “How about Dylan?” Tess went on. “Manure-dad Dylan. Fire-starter Dylan.”

      “Damn,” I said. “That’s right. They dated. Used to cuddle on the front steps before first bell. It was . . . nausealicious.” Yep, nausea-licious. Another junior year gem.

      “So there you have it,” Tess said. “The delinquent has reproduced in triplicate.”

      “Guy’s got powerful sperm.”

      “I thought you passed bio. It’s more about Jane’s eggs. Girl’s got a chicken coop down there.”

      “Well, I don’t envy either one of them,” I said, which wasn’t the whole truth.