by bc woodsPart I: Getting Ready For Prom

"Rachel... I...." I had to stop myself. If I spoke too soon I was going to choke on my own words. It was the most difficult thing I'd ever had to say.

With the care of a man approaching the gallows, I continued. "Rachel... if you do this for me... I will..." I swallowed. "I will forgive you for everything you've ever done to me." There it was. My offer was on the table. I felt like I was naked and surrounded by a hundred rabid wolves.

My sister took a drink from her beer, scratched her crotch, and coughed. She was watching a celebrity gossip program. She distractedly looked over at me and said: "How 'bout fifty bucks instead?"

The money was in her hand before the word "instead" faded from the air.

At the time, before she had decided that she didn't want to have a job for a few years, my sister was licensed to take care of people in rest homes. This is a nice of way of saying that she's certified to wipe people's shit. Surprisingly enough, I had found myself in need of this ability.

My best friend in high school, Breanne, was in a car accident early in our junior year. She had spent the rest of the year in the hospital, learning how to chew solid foods before she came back for my senior year. Around the time prom came, I knew no one else was going to take her if I didn't. She was my best friend and I just couldn't let that happen.

The only problem was that someone would have to be there to take care of her in case anything "too natural" needed to happen. That was where my sister came in.

"Okay, Rachel... I really don't know how to tell you this, but... I'm going to trust you on this one. Okay?" She opened another beer.

I had more than enough money to show Breanne the time of her life, so at least that wasn't a concern. The weekend before the event, my father had stumbled into my room at 2 am, a fistful of twenty dollars bills wadded in the fingers of one of his hands. Apparently, someone at the tavern had told him about my prom date. Subsequently, my father had decided to stumble into my room and start crying. "BC... I just... I just want you to know that I've always respected you... and..." sniffling for a moment to collect himself he continued, "you remind me of my father." He placed the money in my hand, hugged me, and disappeared.

I love my father. He's like a son to me.

When the day finally came, Rachel was nowhere in sight. Breanne and I had been waiting for her for an hour, until we decided to just go on without her. Her parents had driven to my house, from their own home a half-hour away and I didn't want to call them back so soon.

As I lifted Breanne into the truck, my sister pulled up in her car with her boyfriend. She had great timing that way... like Indiana Jones reaching under a falling stone door to get his hat. Always just in the nick of time. She was blaring Tom Jones at maximum volume. I have no idea why, but Rachel thinks Tom Jones is the greatest man who ever lived, and that when he sings "It's Not Unusual" he's speaking directly to her.

"Hey Brandon! Is that the cripple chick?" Rachel called from out of her window.

"Fuck you, Rachel," I muttered, softly enough that no one could hear. I wasn't worried that she had offended Breanne. Her boyfriend had just stepped out of the car, and that was trouble I really hadn't wanted to deal with.

For the past three years my sister has only dated men named John or with names that rhyme with John. John II was the most pathetic of the Johns. When he stepped out of the car he was in full force white trash regalia: sweatpants that were two sizes too small, a tank top, and a ball cap. "Yo! Wassup, Brandon!"

"Go inside, John." I put Breanne in the passenger seat and buckled her in. She was giggling at me. At least it was amusing to someone.

"Man, why you gotta be hatin' all the time, dawg?" Before I could respond my sister came close to Breanne, and began to examine her like a horse at auction. Rachel was wearing a tight skirt that made her fat cow legs seem even more grotesque. I was about to tell her not to be rude when she spoke. "John's coming with us."

"Rachel, we don't have reservations for four people at the restaurant."

"Then he'll wait in the car, Brandon. Let's go. I'm driving." My sister took a dip of tobacco and put it in her lower lip as she dug her fingers into her crotch, then got in position behind the steering wheel.

I tried to fight it, but some things are inevitable. I ended up in the back of the truck with John the gangly gangster, and tried to talk to Breanne in a calm voice as my sister drove twenty miles an hour over the speed limit and swerved all over the freeway. Every now and again, Rachel would spit into a half crumpled can of 7-Up, and ask Breanne a sexual question. These usually caused me to blush and Breanne to chuckle.

"So, can you still cum and shit like that?" Rachel asked, in between spits.

"Rachel! Knock it off!"

"Calm down Brandon, I'm just asking. I got a right to ask, you know."

"No you don't. That's inappropriate."

"It's... okay... BC... I... don't mind... at all."

Breanne's motor control centers were badly damaged in her accident. Subsequently, her speech had become incredibly slurred. Rachel could not understand a word of what she was saying.

"Brandon, what did she say?"

"No Rachel, I am not translating for you."

"I still don't get it. Can she cum or not?"

"Rachel!"

After arguing with me for a quarter of an hour Rachel spit her dip into her cup, and concluded that I was "no fun, at all."

When we were finally at the restaurant, I hastily jumped out of the truck and took Breanne's wheelchair out of the back. "John, hold onto this while I get Breanne out of the truck please." As John had absolutely no other purpose for being with us, and we were on an incline at a marina, I just assumed that when I put the wheelchair in front of him that he would hold it for me.

I was wrong.

Just as I was turning around to put Breanne into her wheel chair, and take her to the restaurant, I saw her wheel chair rolling twenty feet ahead of me toward the marina. It was gaining speed.

There I was, a large ogre-shaped youth, holding his quadriplegic friend in his arms, watching her wheelchair roll down a hill to impending destruction, and almost too shocked to act. "Wheelchair! Wheelchair!" I shouted, hoping that someone would grab it for me. My sister was nowhere to be seen. As quickly as I could, I put Breanne back into her seat and took off.

The hill was steep. The wheel chair was accelerating almost as fast as I. Filling my head was a simultaneous horror of what might happen if her wheelchair actually flew off the end of the marina, and incredulity that such a thing was actually happening. "Fucking John... I'm going to kick your goddamn ass," I panted, as my tuxedo-clad body pumped every limb full speed ahead. Families enjoying a walk along the water stopped to watch me chase the chair on its mad dash down the hill.

I dodged an old woman who crossed my path by quickly turning sideways and jumping. She had been watching the chair rocket down the hill with the same interest as tumbleweed blown by the wind. Luckily, this gave me the kind of forward gain I needed to reach out with the tips of my fingers, and lay my hands on the push bars. For a moment, I ran as fast as I could, with my body doubled over at a right angle, gradually bringing the chair and myself to a full stop.

When I had finally stopped it, I stood over it for a moment, trying to catch my breath and waving happily to all of the people who were looking at me wondering what the fuck I had been doing chasing a wheelchair down a hill. The old woman I had nearly run into just shook her head and walked by, muttering something about "goddamn kids."

When I got back to Breanne, she was laughing at me. "You know... there's a brake... on that... right?" Her words were labored and breathy.

"Thanks, pal," I said leaning over her chair. I was still out of breath. No one was going to ask me to run a marathon any time soon. "You might have told me that before I chased the thing halfway down the damn hill."

She smiled again. "You didn't... ask."

"Where are Rachel and John? That shit-head was supposed to be holding this."

Breanne pointed to something over my shoulder. It was a bar. "She said....she'll be back... later."

My eyes were wild with shock. "What?" When I'm flustered I have the bad habit of starting half a dozen sentences and not being able to finish any of them. "But she... the whole reason... I just... I should have known... did she goddamn teleport while my back was turned? I'm sorry."

Breanne smiled coyly at me, "Maybe you... should have... asked a... good person... to come... with us?" She then laughed at her own wisdom.

I engaged the brake on her wheelchair. I lifted her out of the truck and gently placed her in it. I thought about my sister in the bar across the street. I sighed.

When you ask the Devil for favors, don't be surprised when you don't get what you want.

To Be Continued...

Posted by BC Woods at 12:00 AM

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