Photo by Devin Avery on Unsplash
Johnny and Nolan sat with Johnny’s favorite toy, a full box of kitchen matches, atop a two-foot-high pile of girls’ clothes, inside the pitch-black cubbyhole in the back of Johnny’s sisters’ closet. Three of Johnny’s older sisters shared the enormous room, and the enormous closet, and this strange little cubby the boys had now claimed as their own, which was simply stuffed full of dirty, hidden, or unwanted clothes. The girls’ clothes hanging in the closet blocked out any light in the cubby, so Nolan sat in the dark across from his best friend, his third-grade classmate at Our Lady of Perpetual Hope, hugging the box of One Strike matches to his chest. No one else was home yet.
“All right,” Johnny told him. “Take out about ten and squeeze them together until they’re in a circle, all bunched up. We should have brought tape. You can tape them together at the bottom, but it doesn’t really matter. Make sure they’re all lined up so they’re the same height. You want all the red tips touching each other.”
“Okay. I don’t think I want to be the one holding them. This was your idea.”
“Fine,” Johnny said. “Chicken.”
“Bock-bock,” Nolan admitted.
“Gimme ‘em. But keep one. If I’m holding them, you got to be the one to light them.”
Nolan did as he was told, holding out the bunched-up matches in the dark. Johnny’s hand eventually found his and Nolan handed them off.
“I don’t get why we’re doing this,” Nolan said.
“’Cuz it’s fun. You’ll see. And it hides the smell. Kyle said so.”
“Oh my God, I think I’m sitting on a bra,” Nolan said. “Whoa...This had your sister’s norts in it,” he whispered.
“Gross.”
“Whose is it?”
“How should I know?” Johnny asked.
“Guess.”
“Knock it off. Light the match. You’re the one setting ‘em off now.”
Nolan was scared. And thrilled. “This is stupid,” he said.
“You’re stupid,” Johnny replied.
“Good comeback. You ready?”
“I have been.”
Nolan felt for the strike strip on the cardboard box, pressed the wooden match against it, and flicked. The sparks trailed behind his hand, but the match sizzled into a bright flame, and he held up the lit match with a trembling hand.
Johnny laughed. “Look at you. Your eyes are huge.”
“No, they’re not. So, I just drop this on top of yours?”
“No, don’t let it go! Just touch it to top of them. You’ll see.”
“Oh.”
“Move your fingers down. Remember the Roman Candle?” Johnny asked.
“That wasn’t my fault. Candle’s a stupid name. It wasn’t a candle.”
“I know, I know…Everybody knows it’s not a candle, though. It was just you. Would you light this already?”
Nolan held his lit match up to the wad of matches in Johnny’s hands, thinking about the Roman Candle fiasco and shivering as a nervous chill darted down his spine. The match tops exploded into flame with a louder and louder “ShhhhHHHHHHH!” Nolan jerked his hand back as the column of fire sprang almost up to the ceiling, illuminating the boys in their school uniforms - yellow shirts and green pants - as well as the sheer size of the pile of polyester-blend clothes they sat atop, and the metal beaded pull cord for the bare bulb over their heads.
“Whoa!” they both cried.
“Hey, there’s a light up there,” Nolan added and blew out his match.
“This is more than I’ve ever done,” Johnny chuckled as the column of flame slowly receded. “I think we just set a Guinness Book of World Records.”
“Is it Sarah’s bra?” Nolan rubbed the lace between his fingers. Sarah’s bra. He imagined her taking it off and popped a boner, but he didn’t say anything. He pulled the bra free from underneath him and sniffed it. All he could smell was smoke.
“Gross!”
Nolan grinned. “You want to smell it?”
“No!”
“You know you want to.”
“I know I don’t.”
“Good comeback…Wait, why am I the one in the back of the closet?”
“My house, my rules,” Johnny said, in command.
“Your mom…I want out.”
“Relax, Bock-bock.”
They watched the wad of matches burn until Johnny finally said, “My hand’s getting hot,” and he blew it out. The curled matches glowed red and orange for a while before everything went black again.
“You got to admit, that was vicious,” Johnny said.
“Yeah, it was. Now what?”
Johnny tried to do the deep voice of the movie theatre guy. “Now, our feature presentation.”
Johnny was talking about the joint in his yellow shirt pocket. His mom was a nurse, and in the mid ‘70s, with the run of the house and six older brothers and sisters, finding marijuana in someone’s room turned out to be a cinch.
“You know what it smells like in here?”
“Yeah. My sisters.”
“Nope. My birthday.”
“Oh, yeah. So, you liked my present, huh?”
“Vicious. Stretch Armstrong. Your mom bought it?”
“Of course, she bought it. At least I knew what it was, though. I picked it out.”
“Lemme see,” they both said, imitating their friend J.B.’s reaction when Nolan had unwrapped J.B.’s birthday present last week at his ninth birthday party.
“Jinx. I can’t believe the dork didn’t even know what he got you. What a dummy. We should hurry up. Bridget might come home.”
“What if we get busted?” Nolan fretted.
“That’s what’s so great about it. What’s she supposed to do? Tell Mom and Dad we stole her weed?”
“We? I didn’t touch it.”
“You were there, Bock-bock…I’m kidding. Come on. Give me the matches.”
“What about Michael?”
“He’s at baseball. Matches.”
Nolan shook the box of kitchen matches in the dark until Johnny found it. He pulled one out and struck it. Nolan liked the way a single match lit up the closet more than a whole handful. The one match was just spooky enough. It was perfect.
Johnny held the joint to his mouth with two fingers and a thumb and lit it. The match was still ablaze when he burst into a coughing fit. The more he coughed, the more he waved the lit match back and forth, up and down.
“Watch it!”
“Damn, that’s harsh.”
“Johnny, the match,” Nolan pleaded.
“What?” He blew it out and cleared his throat in the darkness. “You worry too much. Jeez. I should have brought some soda up here. Where’d the matches go?
“You had ‘em.”
Johnny shook the box. “There you are.” He shook it again. “You hear that? That’s hours of fun right there.”
They both laughed.
Johnny struck another match and tried the joint again. It sparked right up. He shook the match out and all that was left was a small fiery orange eye hovering in the pitch black.
“How is it?” Nolan asked.
Silence.
“Is it any good? It’s not beat, is it?” Johnny’s friend Kyle had told them that old weed was beat.
Johnny didn’t say anything. Nolan didn’t like it.
“John! Knock it off!”
Johnny exhaled with a snort. “Cut it out, man. Don’t make me laugh. You’re supposed to hold your breath or else it doesn’t work.”
“I know,” Nolan lied.
“I know,” Johnny aped.
“Shut up.”
“You shut up.” Johnny took another toke.
“You shut up.” Nolan threw the bra at him.
Johnny was holding his breath again.
“It worked. You shut up.” Nolan stuck his finger up his nose in the dark, cleared out a large booger, thought about what to do for a second, shrugged and wiped it on the wall. Then he frowned.
“Wait. I know that smell.”
Johnny exhaled. “The smell is how come the matches. They’re like incense. They make it so you can’t smell anything.”
“Jerry’s room. Jerry’s room smells like this sometimes.”
“Serious? Jerry?…Veddy intedestink.” He sounded just like the little German guy on TV.
“I want to try now,” Nolan said.
“Here. It’s too dark to pass back and forth and back and forth. You smoke it for a while. Just don’t Bogart it.”
“I won’t.” Nolan had no idea what he’d just agreed to.
He held it up to his lips. He was scared, but he wanted to do this. He was a third grader after all, not some little kid. He’d never smoked a cigarette – they smelled nasty - but this was different. You smoked reefer to get “high,” not to look cool. And he had to know what “high” was.
He sucked at the joint like he was attacking a thick milkshake with a straw. The smoke came rushing into his lungs, filling them with burning. He hacked and coughed for what seemed like forever.
Johnny finally spoke. “You suck at holding your breath.”
“Kack.”
“You alright?”
“Kack.” Nolan waited a few moments and tried again. He managed to hold it for several seconds before succumbing to another coughing fit.
As soon as he recovered, he said, “Let me know if I’m about to ‘bow guard’ it.”
“You got this.”
Nolan took three more hits, getting a little better at it each time, and passed it back to Johnny, who burnt his fingers on the handoff, but all he did was say “ow” quietly. He was tough.
As Johnny smoked it, the orange eye in the dark was hypnotizing. It was like a tiny traffic cone, but it was a dragon’s nostril. It was alive and dangerous and flew wherever it wanted to.
“You’re supposed to use a roach to smoke the end of it, but I couldn’t find one.”
“Good.” Nolan tried to picture putting a cockroach on the end of the joint and smoking that, too, and felt fortunate Johnny had come up empty. Nolan swore he’d never, ever do that.
“Do you feel it?” Nolan asked. “Did it work?”
“Not really. Let’s go down, make a cake.”
“Make a cake? You can‘t do that.”
“It’s easy,” Johnny said. “You just do what the box tells you to. I can’t make icing, though. There’s no box for that.”
Johnny was amazing.
It was a flat chocolate cake, made in a brownie pan. While it baked, they ran from the kitchen to the living room to watch TV and back to the kitchen like pinballs. Johnny tested the cake with a knife to see if it was done, then later with a fork as he ate a gooey mouthful, then he remembered the toothpick test. Finally, he told Nolan it was done, and left it on top of the oven to cool while they went back to catch the tail end of “Ultra Man.”
The two decided they should have a cake-eating contest with one rule and one rule only – hands had to stay behind their backs. Minutes later, faces smeared with cake, nostrils plugged with cake, table and floor covered in cake, they each declared themselves the winner and ran back to the living room. “Green Acres” was on, which sucked, so Johnny changed the channel. Nolan took his sock off and put it on his hand.
On the TV, Bert and Ernie were having an argument. Bert sounded particularly irate about something Ernie had done. Johnny sat back down, covered in face cake.
Nolan smirked. “Oh, come on…Sesame Street?”
“Who cares? There’s nuttin’ on for another half hour.”
“My brother says Ernie and Bert are gay.”
“My brother says you’re gay.”
Nolan laughed. “Jerry says you and your brother are gay for each other.” He raised his eyebrows and looked at his sock puppet. “That rhymed,” he told it.
Johnny bopped Nolan in the back of the head with a sofa cushion. Enraged, Nolan cushion-whacked him back three times in a row as hard as he could. Cake flew everywhere.
“Ow,” Johnny laughed. “Cut it out! How is that fair? How is that even remotely fair?”
“Remotely,” Nolan parroted, and hit him again.
“One time! I hit you one time, not even hard. You always…”
“One! Two! Thudee!” the vampire said. “Thudee chocolate cakes. Bwah, hah, hahhhh.”
Their couch cushions fell to the floor as their heads snapped back to the TV.
Johnny’s jaw hung open. “Oh, my God.”
Nolan, saucer-eyed, turned his sock puppet towards the screen so it could see, too.
“How did the Count find out about the cake?” he whispered.
Johnny burst out laughing.
Nolan grinned. “I’m serious.”
Then he cracked up, too. The two of them laughed until they couldn’t breathe. They laughed until it burned. The Count knew what they were doing. This was magic, plain as day. And the source of that magic was the joint. It was so obvious. Nolan swore on a stack of bibles the next chance he got he was going to turn his big brother Jerry’s room upside down. He’d smelled that smell in Jerry’s room before, but he didn’t know what it was. Now he did. And he wanted to feel like this all the time. He’d always wanted to feel like this.
Then Big Bird came on, and Johnny wandered into the kitchen. He came right back out. “Man, there’s cake all over in there. Lookit, we even got some in here. We got to book it. If somebody comes home, we’re dead. Okay if I sleep over your house?”
“I was just thinking that!” Nolan exclaimed. “How’d you know I was just thinking that?”
“If I stay over tomorrow night too, they might forget about it by Sunday.”
They turned off the TV and ran out the door, slamming it shut. Then right back in, giggling and putting their shoes on. Then back out in their matching yellow shirts and green pants, and they ran. They ran as if they were being chased. They ran as if they were chasing something. Through grassy backyards and gaps in hedges, under clotheslines and over fences, down the beach sand trail through the pine woods where the teenagers drank beer and left rubbers, along the creek that the septic plant dumped into, to the smelly lake where they fished for sunnies and bass, and even though their legs were burning and their lungs were on fire, they just kept running.
Sean McFadden received his Bachelor’s in English from the University of Michigan, then he went on quite the tear. He’s been a banquet cook, snowplow operator, personal grocery shopper, furniture mover, junk mail tracker, pet-sitter, limo driver and a film extra for a scene that was eventually cut. It was a Jennifer Aniston film, which shouldn’t even matter because seriously, they didn’t use that scene, but still. His work can also be found at The Write Launch.
