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ds_flashfictionI used to lose points in my required college speech class because my speeches always went on too long. This story came out at 1340 words, but I have been informed that if I cut one single word, I will be hunted down and destroyed. So, it's 1340 words, and I just wanted you to know that this was a longstanding problem of mine.
Classic
by Hth
Irene is an expensive date, but not because she has expensive tastes. Mainly because they have to get all the way across town and back, because their own neighborhood isn't safe. Not for them. That was exciting once, this time last year, but now it's just expensive and depressing.
For him, at least. Getting out still makes Irene happy. Movies make her happy, and sitting next to him on the city bus sharing their algebra book makes her happy, and the Sno Cones he always buys her when the weather is warm make her happy -- but mostly, getting out makes her happy.
She hugs him when he tells her where they're going today, to see the new movie that has the boy she likes from *Welcome Back Kotter* in it. Right there on the street corner, even though it's a corner of a street whose name Ray has to glance up to the sign to find out. He puts his arms around her waist and hugs her back, and she smells like hairspray and strawberries, and he's not happy because he's thinking about the end of the year again, about graduation. Mom and Pop want him to stay in the house and go to college; their hearts are set on it, and he wants to, too, kind of. Or he could ask Irene to marry him, and then the little bit of savings he has would be their running-away money.
He thinks about that a lot.
That's how he knows the movie is a good one, because it holds his attention all the way through, and even though he's holding Irene's hand, her little silver and onyx unicorn ring digging into his finger, he doesn't think about her once. Just the movie.
"That was," he starts when they come blinking out into the sunlight, and then he realizes he doesn't have any words for it. That was like seeing backwards into his own head, a real movie for once about real people, about wanting things and being stuck with things and the big river between who you are and where you think you possibly belong. "That's gonna be a classic," he predicts firmly.
Then he looks over at Irene, and her face is marked up with the remains of sticky tears and runny eye-makeup. He doesn't blame her, but he doesn't understand why her eyes look so angry. "I hope," she says, in a soft, shuddery voice that's eerily unyielding under the shake of it, "that she has somebody who will kill those boys. A brother or something."
For the first time, Ray realizes that when a Zuko says kill, they really mean it. Any Zuko.
He can't figure out who she means at first -- which boys, and why? Then he remembers, and he's pretty sure she doesn't have a brother or anything, because nobody in the word would let their sister ride around with a bunch of men she knew from nightclubs like that. He knows Maria would never have been in that car, never in a million years. So it couldn't have been any kind of girl with any kind of real family at all.
Of course, God knows where Irene's brother thinks she is right now. But that's different. Irene is in a whole different movie, a love story.
He dries her eyes and buys her a Sno Cone and cigarettes. It's harder to take the bus home, because you can't predict who will be there when you get off, so he puts her in a cab instead. He kisses her, and then kisses her hand, the one that's not wrapped up in an Ace bandage for the sprained wrist. He likes to be old-fashioned with her sometimes, because it seems like people used to be better than they are now, and that's how Ray wants to be, too. Better.
He takes the bus home, and all hell has broken loose on his block. There's smoke in the air, and police, and people shouting. It looks like the office of the moving company across the street has burned. He wouldn't normally get in the way while people are trying to do their jobs, but it is his business, because his sisters are out there on the sidewalk, right in the middle of things.
Ray stalks across the street and grabs Franny's arm from behind. The bubble she was blowing with her gum pops like a gunshot, and everybody jumps, even the cops. "Hey," she protests. "Watch what you're doing!"
"Get inside," Ray says. "This isn't the circus. Get inside and mind your own business."
"Where were you?" she asks. He keeps thinking that she's going to be less nosy when she's older and has her own problems, but she's twelve now, and she still can't think of anything better to do than bug him.
Ray doesn't listen to her. He's looking at Tony Pintero who works for the movers, with one side of his face all swollen up and turning dark. There's a cut over his eye, and Maria is trying to stop it from oozing blood. She's still in her white blouse and her black skirt from her job at the phone company, but she doesn't seem to mind that there's blood and soot on it now. She's looking at Tony like her heart might break over this, and Ray turns away without yelling at her to quit interfering, too.
"How long?" Ray asks, jerking his thumb back toward them as he propels Franny with the other hand back across the street where she belongs.
Besides being nosy, she can't keep a secret. "Not too long," she says. "Few weeks."
Ray glances back over his shoulder. Tony Pintero. He's not much to look at, not much in general, but he doesn't drink and Ray never heard of him getting anyone into trouble. A little part of him is in furious rebellion, because Maria is the smart one, she's probably the best of them all, and there were things Ray wanted for her. Last summer she was dating this college boy named Ted Gold whose father owned a chain of Arby's in Mt. Vernon, a good, hardworking kid who was crazy about her, and Ray covered for her while she covered for him and Irene. But when it came right down to it, when Mom and Pop found out, that was the end of that. And Maria cried for a week, but still, Ray didn't say anything to help. Not that anything he said would have helped.
None of the cops, Ray notices, are from this precinct. He doesn't recognize a single one of them. They're all walking around the smashed-up, scorched-out ruin of the moving company, making notes and talking to each other. One of them, a white-haired Italian who looks like he should have retired years ago, leans heavily on the lamp-post and looks kind of like Maria, kind of like his heart is breaking. Only he looks ashamed, too. He's wearing a big ring, and an expensive watch.
"Get inside," he says to Franny again, quieter, and gives her a little shove toward the steps of their building. "Nothing's going to happen out here."
"You think it was the Zukos?" she asks.
"How should I know?" he says. He doesn't know any more about Zuko business than anyone else in the neighborhood; it's not something he and Irene talk about. How should he know more about it than the police? he thinks to himself, cold and bitter. They don't know anything, either. Around here, nobody knows anything about anything, and that's how it works.
He takes his little sister inside and makes her Kool-Aid to shut her up, and he listens to his mother complain about the streaks of smoke staining her windows on the outside, and he's not better than anyone and he knows it.
There's not even a river to cross, in Chicago, and he has only the vaguest idea what's on the other side of the lakes.
Classic
by Hth
Irene is an expensive date, but not because she has expensive tastes. Mainly because they have to get all the way across town and back, because their own neighborhood isn't safe. Not for them. That was exciting once, this time last year, but now it's just expensive and depressing.
For him, at least. Getting out still makes Irene happy. Movies make her happy, and sitting next to him on the city bus sharing their algebra book makes her happy, and the Sno Cones he always buys her when the weather is warm make her happy -- but mostly, getting out makes her happy.
She hugs him when he tells her where they're going today, to see the new movie that has the boy she likes from *Welcome Back Kotter* in it. Right there on the street corner, even though it's a corner of a street whose name Ray has to glance up to the sign to find out. He puts his arms around her waist and hugs her back, and she smells like hairspray and strawberries, and he's not happy because he's thinking about the end of the year again, about graduation. Mom and Pop want him to stay in the house and go to college; their hearts are set on it, and he wants to, too, kind of. Or he could ask Irene to marry him, and then the little bit of savings he has would be their running-away money.
He thinks about that a lot.
That's how he knows the movie is a good one, because it holds his attention all the way through, and even though he's holding Irene's hand, her little silver and onyx unicorn ring digging into his finger, he doesn't think about her once. Just the movie.
"That was," he starts when they come blinking out into the sunlight, and then he realizes he doesn't have any words for it. That was like seeing backwards into his own head, a real movie for once about real people, about wanting things and being stuck with things and the big river between who you are and where you think you possibly belong. "That's gonna be a classic," he predicts firmly.
Then he looks over at Irene, and her face is marked up with the remains of sticky tears and runny eye-makeup. He doesn't blame her, but he doesn't understand why her eyes look so angry. "I hope," she says, in a soft, shuddery voice that's eerily unyielding under the shake of it, "that she has somebody who will kill those boys. A brother or something."
For the first time, Ray realizes that when a Zuko says kill, they really mean it. Any Zuko.
He can't figure out who she means at first -- which boys, and why? Then he remembers, and he's pretty sure she doesn't have a brother or anything, because nobody in the word would let their sister ride around with a bunch of men she knew from nightclubs like that. He knows Maria would never have been in that car, never in a million years. So it couldn't have been any kind of girl with any kind of real family at all.
Of course, God knows where Irene's brother thinks she is right now. But that's different. Irene is in a whole different movie, a love story.
He dries her eyes and buys her a Sno Cone and cigarettes. It's harder to take the bus home, because you can't predict who will be there when you get off, so he puts her in a cab instead. He kisses her, and then kisses her hand, the one that's not wrapped up in an Ace bandage for the sprained wrist. He likes to be old-fashioned with her sometimes, because it seems like people used to be better than they are now, and that's how Ray wants to be, too. Better.
He takes the bus home, and all hell has broken loose on his block. There's smoke in the air, and police, and people shouting. It looks like the office of the moving company across the street has burned. He wouldn't normally get in the way while people are trying to do their jobs, but it is his business, because his sisters are out there on the sidewalk, right in the middle of things.
Ray stalks across the street and grabs Franny's arm from behind. The bubble she was blowing with her gum pops like a gunshot, and everybody jumps, even the cops. "Hey," she protests. "Watch what you're doing!"
"Get inside," Ray says. "This isn't the circus. Get inside and mind your own business."
"Where were you?" she asks. He keeps thinking that she's going to be less nosy when she's older and has her own problems, but she's twelve now, and she still can't think of anything better to do than bug him.
Ray doesn't listen to her. He's looking at Tony Pintero who works for the movers, with one side of his face all swollen up and turning dark. There's a cut over his eye, and Maria is trying to stop it from oozing blood. She's still in her white blouse and her black skirt from her job at the phone company, but she doesn't seem to mind that there's blood and soot on it now. She's looking at Tony like her heart might break over this, and Ray turns away without yelling at her to quit interfering, too.
"How long?" Ray asks, jerking his thumb back toward them as he propels Franny with the other hand back across the street where she belongs.
Besides being nosy, she can't keep a secret. "Not too long," she says. "Few weeks."
Ray glances back over his shoulder. Tony Pintero. He's not much to look at, not much in general, but he doesn't drink and Ray never heard of him getting anyone into trouble. A little part of him is in furious rebellion, because Maria is the smart one, she's probably the best of them all, and there were things Ray wanted for her. Last summer she was dating this college boy named Ted Gold whose father owned a chain of Arby's in Mt. Vernon, a good, hardworking kid who was crazy about her, and Ray covered for her while she covered for him and Irene. But when it came right down to it, when Mom and Pop found out, that was the end of that. And Maria cried for a week, but still, Ray didn't say anything to help. Not that anything he said would have helped.
None of the cops, Ray notices, are from this precinct. He doesn't recognize a single one of them. They're all walking around the smashed-up, scorched-out ruin of the moving company, making notes and talking to each other. One of them, a white-haired Italian who looks like he should have retired years ago, leans heavily on the lamp-post and looks kind of like Maria, kind of like his heart is breaking. Only he looks ashamed, too. He's wearing a big ring, and an expensive watch.
"Get inside," he says to Franny again, quieter, and gives her a little shove toward the steps of their building. "Nothing's going to happen out here."
"You think it was the Zukos?" she asks.
"How should I know?" he says. He doesn't know any more about Zuko business than anyone else in the neighborhood; it's not something he and Irene talk about. How should he know more about it than the police? he thinks to himself, cold and bitter. They don't know anything, either. Around here, nobody knows anything about anything, and that's how it works.
He takes his little sister inside and makes her Kool-Aid to shut her up, and he listens to his mother complain about the streaks of smoke staining her windows on the outside, and he's not better than anyone and he knows it.
There's not even a river to cross, in Chicago, and he has only the vaguest idea what's on the other side of the lakes.
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