The memories of early kept on replaying over as if it was a broken VCR player. The jump off the bridge and everything after. I hope the guys don't notice that somethings wrong. Especially Chris. Or do I want him to notice? Trying to find comfort in my own thoughts didn't help.
"Nothing like a smoke after a meal," Vern stated. After our dinner, we lit cigarettes and had started to smoke them.
"I cherish these moments." Teddy always sounded foolish, all of the little things he said.
"What? What did I say?" He said after we had all started to giggle and snicker. After that had died down, Chris looked to LaChance.
"Gordie, why don't you tell us a story?" He sighed and looked at the dirt his feet laid in.
"I don't know."
"Come on."
"Yeah, come on, Gordie," everyone had started to pipe in.
"None of your horror stories, okay?
I don't want to hear no horror stories. I'm not up for that," Vern said nervously while shaking his head.
"Tell us one about Sergeant Steel and his battling leathernecks." As Teddy said the name of this story, his eyes practically lit up.
"The one I've been thinking about|is kind of different," Gordie said as he started to get settled.
"It's about this pie-eating contest.
The main guy of the story is this fat kid that nobody likes, named Davie Hogan." I sat and stared as he started up his story. I was always amazed of how he could come up with these ideas.
"Like Charlie Hogan's brother, if he had one," Vern said.
"Good. Vern."
"Go on," we said as we turned our full attention back to Gordie.
"Well, this kid, he's our age, but he's fat. Real fat..."
His story was really weird but mesmerizing at the same time. It's not that I didn't like it, it was just different. Gordie had always been this way though. So it was no surprise to me for him to make something up totally quirky and funny. He was an amazing writer.
His story was about a kid who was very fat, and everyone always made fun of him for it. He entered a pie eating contest to start his revenge. As he started to eat the pies, he ate them quicker and quicker each time. By the fourth or fifth pie, he started to imagine he was eating something insanely gross. And now at this point in the story, Gordie had told us that before the contest, he had drank a bottle of castor oil and eaten a whole raw egg. This in the end caused him to vomit everywhere and cause everyone else in the audience and in the contest to barf as well. I thought it was brilliant. Gordie always came up with the most interesting ideas, and sometimes makes me question why he hangs around dog-shit kids like us. That's also the reason why we love him.
"Whoooooooo!" Everyone chanted while pumping their fists in the air.
"Oh man, that was the best, just the best!" Chris smiled at Gordie, and then looked back to us for our encouragement. He locked eyes with me, too long but also not long enough.
"Yeah," Vern said shaking his head back and fourth and smiled. After a couple of seconds of snickering we turned back and gave our full attention to Gordie as we had done earlier.
"Then what happened?" Teddy finally asked.
"What do you mean?" Gordie sounded confused.
"I mean, what happened?" Gordies face flashed with annoyance, but he only showed it for a split second.
"What do you mean, what happened? That's the end." He stated flatly.
"How can that be the end? What kind of ending is that? What happened to Lardass?" He asked while using hand gestures to exaggerate his statement.
Gordie shrugged his shoulders.
"I don't know. Maybe he went home and celebrated with a couple of cheeseburgers."
"Geez, that ending sucks!" Teddy said. I rolled my eyes, noticing a hurt look on Gordies face, and remembered the conversation him and Chris had earlier. "Why don't you make it so that ... so that Lardass goes home and he shoots his father, then he runs away an', and he joins the Texas Rangers. How about that?" Teddy questioned. He always had to involve something intense.
"Ah, I don't know."
"...something good like that." I hesitated when he emphasized the good, knowing he was just making Gordie feel like shit.
"I like the ending," Vern piped in, "The barfing was really good. But there's one thing I didn't understand."
We all waited for Vern to finish his sentient so we could explain what he didn't get.
"Did Lardass have to pay to get in the contest?" I put my face down to hide the smile I had on my face. If anyone would ask something like that of course it would be Vern.
"No, Vern. They just let him in." Gordie said it so sarcastically, but poor Vern didn't understand that either.
"Oh, oh, great! Great story!" He started laughing like he all of a sudden got everything.
"Yeah, it's a great story, Gordie. I just didn't like the ending." Teddy said in a low voice as he started to shift his body and get up, as so did everyone else.
"Hey Verno, where's the radio?" Chris asked. "Let's see if we can get some sounds."
"Here."
We talked into the night. The kind of talk that seemed important, until you discover girls.
"Alright, alright. Mickey's a mouse. Donald's a duck. Pluto's a dog. What's Goofy?"
"If I could only have one food for the rest of my life? That's easy. Pez. Cherry flavored Pez. No question about it."
"Goofy's a dog. He's definitely a dog."
"I knew 'The $64,000 Question' was fixed. There's no way anybody could know that much about opera."
"He can't be a dog. He wears a hat and drives a car."
"Wagon Train's a really cool show, but did you ever notice that they never get anywhere? They just keep on Wagon Train-ing."
"God. That's weird. What the hell is Goofy?"
Not one of us mentioned Ray Brower, but we were all thinking about him.
I fell asleep that night feeling the best feeling in the world, the feeling of being surrounded by amazing people, the fact in general that it was summer, or maybe it was just the feeling of the warm flames of the fire on my face and the smell of cigarette smoke floating around our campsite. Or maybe because I knew I was loved.
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I'm sooooooo sorry I just am updating. I've been busy with testing, but school for me is almost over (June 16th) and I'm planning on updating a lot. I hope you like this!
- Zenaida
