“The Movement of Horses” by Adam Cushman
--page 3

         Usually, me getting a ride home from school is absolutely not even a problem. People have often paid me for the opportunity. Today though, my knee doesn’t hurt so badly and my PT therapist says a little exercise ought to do me some good, especially since wrestling season is right around the corner. What’s a drag are knee high moccasins. No lie. A walk home from school in these bad boys will carve any of you out of wood.
         Halfway home these girls pull up in a cherry-red Mustang convertible and the driver, this skinny blonde number in a blue bikini top with yellow daisies says, “Nice mullet, dude.” Her three nectar friends laugh real loud and not because of me having long hair in the back, uhh uhh, because the driver is speaking in code and has just invited me to have an orgy with them in her hot tub. They peel out before giving me the chance to let them down easy. “Good for them,” I think. You have to be an emotional rock to survive in this cruel world. Right then at that moment, my best friend Dane Palacios pulls up next to me in his mangled white pick-up and says, “I’m the one you are looking for.”
         Let me explain.

~

         Dane is driving like a hundred miles-per-hour through a residential neighborhood, sipping a can of Schlitz, kind of looking around like he’s being followed. Aside from being an all right guitar player, Dane has really rosy cheeks, big eyes like Buzz Light Year and can speak Spanish because he’s from Peru(8). “Is it true you are stealing a car tonight?” he asks without looking, then throws in, “It is ninety degrees and you wear long pants and a jacket.”
         Most people know not to meddle in my affairs, but Dane runs over someone’s custom-made manatee mailbox afterwards, proving he isn’t so big of a jackoff, so it’s all good.
         “If yes, then I will go with you. If not...”
         “The shit’s going down tonight, amigo. Comprende?”
         He is trying not to smile. My Spanish clearly impresses him. The false accent was a nice touch.
         “You will pick me up at eleven. I know you know where my house is. You walk down my street all the time.”
         He slams on the brakes to let me out, somehow aware that I wish to walk the rest of the way. In a sense, him dropping me off ten blocks back in the other direction is appreciated.
         “Someone tells me you have a beautiful guitar. We will take this to my cousin’s house in Arkansas and start a band. And give me some cigarettes.”
         After giving him a handful of Marlboros he peels out before I can close the door.

~

         “Are you speaking to me yet?” my psychotic foo-foo mother asks and looks back down at her book, some Danielle Steele diarrhea. The rollers have always made me uncomfortable. Your mother is supposed to be the image of purity and perfect female-hood, not some broad sitting up in her canopy bed wearing a zebra-striped bra and all that crap in her hair. The way she pulls the covers over her chest all of a sudden is also gross, not in any way that can be explained, just naturally disgusting. Her room is a mess too. She never cleans it and would probably complain it’s because she works two jobs. Like hygiene isn’t a priority. With me gone she’ll most likely move into my space and that’s fine, the old cooze has always wanted the master bedroom. It’s not like she’ll have me to puke every time I walk by anymore.
         “Do you want to say something or are you just going to stare at me all night?”
         “So,” is what I tell her, then put to use the training given to me by Affleck himself. “So I guess I love you and all that.” What a joke. She gets all slack-jawed and serious, but I’m already out the door. My eyes are watering a little too, that’s how good of an actor old Ben’s turned me into.

~

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