Sparkboys #1: I Rescue A Toilet Boy
Content warning: Swearing, implications of abuse, swirlies.
Fifteen-year-old Murphy Rapp has moved south, and he plans on not staying long. The mosquitos are terrible, the people are loud, and his adoptive mother is intimidating--and that's before she turns him and his friends into killer robots, corrupting any hope of leaving the dark heart of Dixie. Sweet home Alabama, am I right?
The social worker didn’t even turn into the driveway.
“Hm, she’s in a hurry,” Dr. Allison said calmly as the car sped off as quickly as it came. Then she turned to me. “Now, what are we going to do here?”
Allison was in her late thirties, but she acted much older. She had the posture of an iron rail and dull reddish hair. She was dressed like a businesswoman, not a mother.
So I was left on her doorstep. She looked at me critically. I imagine other people dress nice to meet their adoptive parents, but I’m not other people, and I was wearing a ratty hoodie and jeans. It’s not that I don’t have nice clothes, it’s just that those clothes belong on someone else.
“Well… I suppose you should come in,” Allison said, clasping her hands together and flashing a professional smile. “Put your bags down, you can unpack tomorrow. It’s already late.”
I put my suitcase down near the door. The room was painted dead white, and the carpet was the color of mush. I swallowed hard. “Thanks?”
“Okay, I can drop you off at a restaurant, or you can—” It suddenly turned over in her head that I had said something. “Excuse me?”
I glanced around, feeling dumb. “Thanks for letting me in your house.”
I didn’t feel like thanking her. I was uncomfortable and I wanted to run down the street behind the social worker. The whole setup looked empty, like someone just barely lived in it. The living room was one couch and a TV on the floor. The dining room was one folding table and one chair. There was a faint smell, something unpleasant under cheap air freshener, like a hospital.
Allison raised her eyebrows. “Well, aren’t you polite. I wouldn’t have thought it, looking at that scowl.”
I wasn’t scowling. “I’m not scowling!”
She scoffed and reached a hand out to touch me, but I stepped back. “Don’t touch the hair. ...Please,” I ground out, remembering that this person was now in charge of me.
It’s difficult to imagine how angry I was when I first met Allison, but I was. I was an asshole to most adults because most adults were assholes to me. She seemed nice, but in a long enough time frame, everyone’s an asshole.
Allison coughed politely. “Alright, easy. I’m going to lay down the rules of the house, and you’re going to listen.”
These are the rules you live by if you live in Dr. Allison’s house.
Allison can make up as many rules as she wants.
Don’t go in the basement. Allison works in the basement and she hates getting interrupted.
You sleep in the attic, because it’s far away from the basement. Do whatever you want in there as long as you keep it clean.
Allison is a terrible cook. Buy frozen dinners and learn how to cook for yourself. You can eat out on weekends.
Seriously, don’t go in the basement. Doesn’t matter if it sounds like she’s in trouble. She’s got it.
If you aren’t grounded, you can go out. Leave a note on the fridge, though.
I was leaning on the wall next to the door, and Allison was sitting on the couch. I didn’t want to sit on the couch. I wasn’t sure of my boundaries.
“So,” she continued. “It’s late. I can take you to a restaurant, or you can go to bed.”
I had spent all day sitting on a plane. I hadn’t had dinner.
Allison’s pickup truck was fading purple, and smells like cigarettes. She said it was secondhand. I believed her, because she didn’t seem like a smoker.
Neither of us talked in the truck. I was looking out the window the whole drive.
By fifteen, I’d assumed I knew everything there was to know about adults. Allison seemed like an upright, uptight woman—an unsentimental foster parent who only wanted that sweet, sweet government money. I felt done for already.
Going out of Mobile, I couldn’t see much, but I could hear the spray of water hitting the side of the causeway. We passed three or four elaborate-looking seafood restaurants, but they were nigh-empty. The problem, Dr. Allison said, is that it’s not close enough to the football field.
“They like football out here. Even in the summer, the high school football teams play, and because there’s not much else to do, other people will show up and watch. It’s novel, really.”
Meanwhile, I was sinking lower and lower. Allison had been introduced to me as some kind of scientist doing important robotics research. That sounded stressful—stress that could get taken out on me, if I wasn’t careful. I continued choking my words back, chewing on the little plastic bits of my hoodie strings.
She turned off the main road and into a series of cramped, winding roads through some kind of shopping outlet. We stopped in front of some restaurant with fading, flickering red block letters reading “Goose Palace.”
“Alright. Get yourself some dinner.”
It was nine at night, and I was standing in front of Goose Palace. For some reason, the place was packed with teenagers—I didn’t even think there were this many people in town. I could hear someone singing, muffled, “for he’s a jolly good fellow.” From inside, I could see sets of eyes staring at me.
“Where’d all these people come from?”
Allison raised her eyebrows, almost disapproving. “One of the football games just ended. I assumed you would like to be introduced to your peers. ...I could drive you home if you want.”
“No, no, it’s good! It’s good.”
Her expression was difficult to read, like most expressions. “Alright. I’ve got some business to attend to down at the lab, so I’ll be back in about an hour. Don’t be afraid to call.” She frowned, and I swallowed hard. “And get those strings out of your mouth.”
The purple pickup puttered out of the parking lot. I was left sputtering at my strings.
Goose Palace is an unstuffy, dark little Chinese restaurant, swarming with kids and lit with red neon signs. A bunch of whooping football players were loitering in one corner. It’s the town’s PG-13 biker bar.
A few big guys started murmuring as I came inside, saying stuff like “who’s this fucker” and “what does he want” and “when did Allison get a kid.” Was something wrong? A few continued looking out the window, their eyes following the pickup truck.
I really like that restaurant now, but I didn’t at the time, because half of the clientele was staring at me trying to figure out what kind of asshole I thought I was, and the other half was still yelling about football. So this was already a huge disaster.
But here’s the problem: I wasn’t raised in a barn. I wanted to wash my hands before I ate.
The booth I got ended up being really far away from the bathroom, so I had to muscle my way through the sweaty crowd to get to it. When I got inside the cramped bathroom, I splashed water in my face until I felt drowned enough to quit kicking myself.
My hand habitually went to my neck. I had a thing about taking my own pulse when I was anxious, and I would stand there for a minute, trying to bring myself down to a resting heart rate. In hindsight, it didn’t help much, since sometimes I got stressed trying to make myself stop stressing.
I was about to walk out the door when I realized there were splashing sounds in the room that weren’t me.
I turned around slowly. The stall behind me was locked, but I could hear laughter and bubbling noises in there. I glanced down. Four guys were in the stall, one of them on his knees in front of the toilet. Oh, fuck.
I knocked on the stall door. “You okay in there?”
They all went quiet, then I heard gasping. “Yeah, we’re fine, our friend here’s just sick, is all.”
One of them kicked toilet boy in the shin and whispered “tell him you’re fine, Jacob.” All I heard out of him was some wheezing and sputtering. I didn’t like this.
“I’m coming in there.”
“Oh no, you better be coming out! ...Wait.”
I stuck my legs under the stall door and pulled myself in.
Bad idea—I was now in a bathroom stall with three football players.
One of them screamed, and I heard the loud crack of my glasses breaking before I even knew what was happening. But that’s all I got, because somehow I had it in me to find and unlock the stall. As soon as the door opened, every attacker in the stall fucked off into the restaurant.
Still in shock, I turned and looked at toilet boy. He was still doubled over, coughing like a drowned rat. I gave him a good thump on the back. “You okay?”
He kept coughing, and I went to put a hand on his shoulder. He grabbed my wrist before I could do so. “I’m fine,” he said in the most gravelly, un-fine voice I’d ever heard. “I just need a moment.”
“...You don’t think they’re gonna come back?”
“I don’t suppose they’ll do anything to us—or you, at the very least… Anyone plumb crazy enough to crawl into a bathroom stall isn’t worth it to them.”
“Oh.” Well, if there was any chance that I could make up my bad impression, it was gone now. “Can I get you a paper towel… Jacob? It’s Jacob, right?”
Jacob coughed one last time and spit. “That’d be nice.”
I went and got him a big sheet of paper towel to dry his hair with, and offered him my hand. He took it and got up… and up… and up.
Now that I could get a good, blurry look at him and his jacket, I realized Jacob was also a football player.
I don’t know how I was looking at him, but it couldn’t have been a good look, because his ears went red. “Um… yeah,” he mumbled. He walked over to the mirror and started washing toilet water out of his hair. “I’m guessin’ you’re from Velma.”
“No, I’m from Chicago.”
“Chicago? What the hell’re you doin’ here?” Jacob sounded distinctly southern, in a way I’d later find I could never nail down for myself. I would always try to imitate him and he would just shake his head, saying I sounded like a white man with a stick up his ass.
“I’m, I’m moving in.”
“Hm. Your family’s here for Airbus?”
“Something like that.” I paused. “So…”
“It’s none of your business.”
“I wasn’t gonna ask.”
Jacob took the paper towel and started wiping his sopping wet face, dabbing at his bleeding lip. He was beat up, probably a lot worse than I was.
Just then, I got a text. Then I realized I couldn’t read it for shit.
My nose wasn’t broken when I was punched, but my glasses were a lost cause. They’d snapped at the bridge, and both lenses had been trampled by everyone who’d left the stall.
After a moment, Jacob stopped and looked at me. “I’m fine, dude. I can take it from here.”
“Uh, there’s actually something I want to ask you…”
“Well, spit it out, Chicago.”
“Can you read this?” I showed him my phone.
Jacob opened his mouth to say something, noticed the bits of my glasses strewn on the ground, then closed it. He squinted at the text. “It’s from… Dr. Allison. ‘Problem at the lab. Can you walk home? I’m going to be stuck here for a few hours.’”
“Shit, I can’t. I wouldn’t know where I’m going.”
“Is there someone else you can call?”
“No, it’s just me and Allison.” Jacob chewed his lip thoughtfully as I continued: “Do you know any local taxi companies—?”
“Do you want a ride?”
I paused for a while. I must have had a bad look again, because Jacob said: “It’s the least I can do, you know. Because you saved my ass.”
“I…” If I walked, then I would be in a strange neighborhood at night, without my glasses. Not to mention that I still had to get my dinner, and the football team would almost definitely jump me if I were alone. “Yeah, why not?”
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