Waylaid - Ed Lin

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she walked by to go back to her seat, I held up the t-shirt and said, “Lee, I’ll trade ya!”

      “No way!” she called back, smiling.

      As I turned back to the front I saw that Miss Creach was frowning at me.

      Now that summer vacation had arrived, the walkers lingered around the parking lot before going home. That let them hang out a little longer with the kids who had to wait for buses. Because of family vacations, a lot of friends wouldn’t see each other the entire summer.

      Walkers were kids who lived so close to school, they didn’t have to ride buses. My stop was one of the farthest from the school, so I was never a walker. I never had family vacations, either.

      Boys from the intermediate school across the street had come by to check up on the tit growth of my classmates. The burnouts smoked cigarettes and wore cut-off denim jackets with “Black Sabbath” or “Led Zeppelin” painted on the back. They were also on the hunt for fags. They’d taunted and punched the smaller boys all year, and today was their last chance until next year.

      Crispy huddled by me. He’d given me three hard-core magazines to not kick his ass anymore.

      “Regina Garrison is giving blow jobs under the bleachers by the soccer field,” he said.

      “Fucking bullshit,” I said.

      “She doesn’t care if people watch,” Crispy said.

      Suddenly there were five intermediate-school kids surrounding us.

      “There’s a fucking faggot right here!” yelled a tall, skinny burnout, pointing to Crispy. There were so many of them, I didn’t know what to do, so I stuck my hands in my pockets. Crispy dropped his bag and froze, then went limp in an act of self defense.

      “Your dad got my dad fired!” yelled one of the burnouts. “You’re so dead, little faggot!”

      They grabbed Crispy’s arms. In my head, I was yelling for him to kick them, but Crispy just tried to ball himself up.

      Now I understood how someone could just stand aside and watch their friend get beaten up. It wasn’t that we were outnumbered, but when you see someone give up and not even try to fight, you wonder why you should. Why stick up for someone who won’t even fight for himself?

      “You’re not even going to punch me, you little girl?” taunted the burnout. “I think it’s time to recycle you.” He got two other intermediate kids, and they picked Crispy up by the legs. Crispy wriggled and screamed. They opened the lid to the garbage can and pumped him down headfirst into the trash. I heard Crispy’s head banging on the sides of the can.

      Then they pulled him out and dumped him in a bush. I could hear Crispy crying. His face was cut and bleeding, though it didn’t look much worse than with the pimples alone.

      “Hey, over here!” yelled a burnout about my size. He was pointing at me. “C’mon, you slanted cunt!” he shouted.

      I pulled out a screwdriver from my back pocket.

      “Shit, are you fucking crazy?” he asked, backing up. I didn’t say anything. “Fucking psycho Bruce Lee. Go back to that fucking chinky hotel. You’re crazy!”

      After they left, I picked up Crispy’s bag and helped him up. Crispy was still crying. We walked to the buses, stepping over crushed cigarette butts littering the lawn. It reminded me of all the trash I swept up when the Bennys were back at the hotel in full force. I could tell that for all their posturing, the burnouts were still novices at smoking. The butts weren’t sucked down to the filter the way people at the hotel would do it.

      “What the hell are you kids doing!” yelled Mrs.

      Krackowski. Her bus was idling at the curb and she was standing at the top of the boarding steps with the door open. She was only about five feet tall, but she was as tough as cold biscuits. A huge pair of shades obscured most of her face.

      “They just beat him up!” I yelled back. Crispy kept crying and wiping his bloody face.

      “Just get him in here, and let’s go! You’re holding everybody up!” Mrs. Krackowski spat out. “This is one hell of a way to end your last day of school!”

chapter4

      Renting out rooms to johns was just one part of the business. It was reliable income throughout the year, especially in the winter when there weren’t many real customers. It paid for the groceries. I knew because it was me who went to the supermarket.

      Business peaked from Memorial Day through Labor Day, when the Bennys would come down and party. The johns hated it when the Bennys came in because the room prices went up to $50 a night, with no special fuckonly rates.

      The Bennys liked our hotel because it was near the beach. Rooms at that time of year were in pretty high demand, even with the increased rate. The Bennys made sure they got their money’s worth. They’d pack in all their friends and have maybe eight people staying in a room: two on each bed; one on the floor between the beds; two in the closet; and one in the bathroom.

      High-school girls really went for Benny men. The girls would be out of school for the summer and looking for something more exciting than fast food and surfing. Cheese fries and Space Invaders had nothing on drinking and screwing under the boardwalk after hours.

      Benny women were on the prowl for potential long-term boyfriend/husband material, but they were lucky if they had the same guy two nights in a row. I had to call taxis to take girls to the train stop after they got ditched at our hotel.

      Business was fast and furious in the summer, and when it got to be two or three in the morning and there were no rooms left, people would get really desperate. The last thing they wanted was a drive back to the city without even getting a chance to score. They would beg for a room, a dirty room, or even a room with other people in it. People wanted to sleep in the office. Others were willing to pay twice the room rate and sometimes offered more than just cash.

      Because of the Bennys, summers were no vacation for me. I had more work to do than when I was in school. More rooms to clean. More cigarettes, crushed cans, and broken glass to pick up around the hotel while avoiding the bees that had been attracted by the smell of alcohol. More drunk assholes to step around. I’d find used condoms and hotel blankets under the picnic tables all the time. Sometimes people would still be asleep, wrapped in the blankets.

      They’d also mess up the pool, which was surrounded by an unraveling stretch of green plastic-coated chain link fence that had buckled and warped from Bennys pushing each other against it or running their car fenders into it. If a supporting rod popped out of its joint, the fence would pucker and come apart. Sharp, rusted tips of cross-hatched wire stuck out from the plastic coating, looking like tire-shredders embedded in asphalt behind a “DO NOT ENTER” sign. One of my duties was to go around with a pair of pliers and thick wire and try to mend the fence, pulling it taut and tying it up.

      Cracked concrete framed the swimming pool, which was close to the highway, between the tips of the U. You had to put your towel over the weather-beaten wooden pool furniture before you sat down, otherwise you’d get splinters. Most people used the bath towels from the hotel, and in the mornings, I would take the pole hook and pull out towels that had sunk to the bottom of the deep end and clogged up the drain. Sometimes I pulled out shorts and bikinis, too.

      Bennys would often hop the fence and fuck in the shallow end at night. It was like joining the mile-high club or something. The Jacques Cousteau club, I guess. The water would still be warm because it retains heat in the evening better than the land. I learned that from my soft-cover science workbook. Water also made sex more buoyant and fluid. I learned that from letters to Club International.

      In the hot sun, I got hard watching women lying on their chests, bikini tops untied and straps hanging off the sides like bright, multicolored shoelaces. Would their tits be pressed flat permanently if they stayed like that too long? Would there be lines

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