Free Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith Page B

between slotted cars in parking lots.
    I wore a Modest Mouse T-shirt, the shoes we salvaged from the roof of the mall the night before, clean boxers—Iowa plaid—and loose 501s with a belt. I smelled good. My hair was still wet from the bath I took. I did not like my jeans to droop like Robby did. Boys at Curtis Crane Lutheran Academy were required to wear belts and matching socks. We would be called in to Pastor Roland Duff’s office if our underwear showed.
    Lutherans in Iowa are very modest.
    â€œWhat is a Modest Mouse ?” my mother asked.
    She had a stretchy thing on her hair. It was green and looked like the waistband from a pair of fat guy’s underwear. I didn’t know what those things were called. You know, women from Iowa wear them. In their hair. Her nails needed a new coat of paint. They were chipped or grown out around the edges. Apparently, my mother’s nails grew much faster than mine did. Real dynamos. She wore a green velour tracksuit with a zip-up top. I guessed it would be called a tracksuit. I’d never seen my mother run one time in my life. Who wants to run when you can kayak everywhere?
    â€œNothing,” I said. “I don’t know.”
    She parked the Suburban facing out toward the street, directly across from Satan’s Pizza .
    My mother was very calm that morning.
    Maybe all I needed was a tiny blue kayak, to get things to fall into place for me.
    I decided I would ask Robby if he’d ever gone kayaking on one of his mother’s Xanax before. Probably not. Like me, Robby never even got drunk before.
    But we could smoke cigarettes like real dynamos.
    â€œDo you need one of us to come pick you up, Sweetie?” she asked.
    My mother called me Sweetie when she was calm.
    When she said one of us , it meant that she anticipated being drugged out by five, and my dad could come get me.
    History does show that more of what we actually say is not contained in words, anyway. It’s why those cave guys simply stuck to the pictures of big hairy things and shit like that.
    â€œRobby and I are going skating,” I said. “I’ll call if I’m going to be late for dinner.”
    My mother leaned over and kissed me.
JOHNNY AND OLLIE
    IT’S ABOUT TIME you met these two:
    Ollie Jungfrau lifted half a maple bar to me when I walked through the door to From Attic to Seller Consignment Store . It was the kind of gesture drunken soldiers at a bar would make when weary battlefield comrades came in from the war looking for a drink.
    But it was with half a donut.
    â€œHey, Dynamo,” Ollie said, winking at me.
    Ollie Jungfrau called me Dynamo . The first time he said it, I had to look it up. Who says Dynamo ? People in Ealing, Iowa, do, that’s who.
    That’s another word I’m going to try to erase from history, never say it again. But it is a challenging redirection. I’m from Ealing, Iowa, after all.
    I rather wished Robby was there, so we could go have a cigarette.
    â€œHey, Ollie,” I said.
    Ollie panted contemplatively between bites of his donut. He had red stuff on his chin. The front lines of jelly donuts had already been decimated by the panzer division of Ollie’s appetite.
    â€œCoffee.” Ollie waved his hand gracefully between a tall paper cup and me, as though he were introducing blind dates at a barn dance.
    â€œThanks,” I said, appreciative of my date’s quiet demeanor.
    Coffee is a girl who never tells boys no. The idea of such a compliant partner normally would have made me horny, but I was too hungry, still sleepy, and I was also watching Ollie Jungfrau eat a donut at the exact moment sexual thoughts involving a quiet girl at an Iowa barn dance occurred to me.
    I liked coffee. And cigarettes. Neither of these truths were welcome at my home. I did not like jelly donuts, however. All the more for Ollie and the customers. Jelly only belongs in one place. Two, if you have decent toast, I