Badd
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2011 by Tim Tharp
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Tharp, Tim.
Badd / by Tim Tharp. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: A teenaged girl’s beloved brother returns home from the Iraq War completely unlike the person she remembers.
eISBN: 978-0-375-89579-1
[1. Brothers and sisters—Fiction. 2. Iraq War, 2003—Fiction. 3. Post-traumatic stress disorder— Fiction. 4. Emotional problems—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.T32724Bad 2011
[Fic]—dc22
2010012732
Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
v3.1
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
About the Author
1
Captain Crazy must die.
This might sound like tough talk coming from a girl, but I’m a tough girl. One hundred percent. And my friends, Gillis, Tillman, and Brianna, agree with me about the captain. We trade off ways to do the deed. We’ll pickle him in brine, we’ll feed him to the blender, the lawn mower, the garbage disposal, the Chihuahua. We’ll slice off his fingers and toes like fresh carrots, dice him and mince him and chop off his head. Pack his leftovers in ice, French fry them in a deep-fat fryer. We’ll draw and quarter him, go after him with chainsaws and garden shears. We’ll stuff him and sell him at the flea market.
No, we won’t. Not really. We’re not some kind of evil devil cult. But you still don’t want to mess with us.
Actually, I’m the only one with a reason to be mad. The others just want something to happen around here. Anything. But with me it’s personal because of my brother Bobby. He’s in the army, see, in Iraq. Well, he was in Iraq, but now he’s in Germany. We’re expecting him home in a month, and we sure don’t need Captain Crazy putting a hex on him before he gets back. I mean, this time I know he’s coming home. He really is. It’s just hard to believe it for sure until he wraps me up in one of his big bear hugs and says, “It’s me, Ceejay. Don’t worry, little sister, don’t worry. It’s me and I’m home for good.”
The Captain Crazy business starts when me and Brianna are cruising in her car and Gillis calls me up and goes, “Listen, Ceejay, you gotta get over here to the courthouse. Captain Crazy’s throwing a Vietnam War protest. It’s hilarious!”
Vietnam! Leave it to the captain to go all radical over a war that’s been over for thirty-something years.
Two minutes later Brianna and I pull up to the courthouse in her car. That’s the one and only good thing about living in a town the size of Knowles. Your friends can call and tell you to come somewhere, and you’re there practically before they hang up the phone. So when I get to the foot of the courthouse steps, the captain’s just starting to really roll, pacing like a preacher on crystal meth, his face red, his eyes bulging. He’s not even Captain Crazy anymore. Now he’s Reverend Crazy shouting down the devil. And don’t you know, if there’s anyone who’s really seen the devil, it’s him.
He’s got the usual paisley guitar and the conga drum close at hand but hasn’t started in playing them yet. Behind him, three posters on six-foot-tall sticks stand propped against the granite wall, each with flowers painted on them—purple, red, yellow, chartreuse—just like it’s really the dead-and-gone sixties hippie days. On the first sign, he’s scrawled GET OUT OF VIETNAM NOW! On the second, it’s THE PRESIDENT IS INSANE, and the third one says, KISS THE FISH MOUTH! Only Captain Crazy knows the secret meaning of that one.
A couple of women, three old men, and about seven kids from school are watching the show. Nothing much else to do on a late-May afternoon in Knowles now that school’s out. A couple of older girls from my high school—the cupcake twins, I call them, because they’re all sugar frosting and no substance—look at ugly Gillis, huge Goth-girl Brianna, and scrappy little sixteen-year-old pit-bull me with these expressions like, “Oh God, there they are.”
Next to the fish-mouth sign, Mr. White stands with his arms crossed like he’s the captain’s bodyguard, and I have to admit I’m as bad as the cupcake twins because I can’t help thinking, Oh God, there he is.
Mr. White. He’s even weirder than we are—the long-haired, stick-figure guy from my English class who never says a thing. The new kid in town. Well, actually he’s been here a whole year, but in a town where everyone’s known you since you were a zygote, you’re still the new kid until you’ve lived here for at least five years.
His real name’s Padgett Locke, but we call him Mr. White because he always dresses completely in white. Probably never been in a fight in his life. Today he has on a plain white T-shirt, white shorts, white socks, and white tennis shoes. His skin is almost as white as his clothes. It’s like he finally broke out of his room, where he’s been cooped up reading books and listening to alternative bands that no one ever heard of, and now he thinks he’s at Wimbledon. The only thing not white about him is his long, stringy brown hair and his black-framed glasses. Anyway, I’m not surprised he hooked up with the captain. Maybe he thinks he’ll be like an apprentice and take over the job of town eccentric when the captain retires.
Gillis is standing in the front row of the small crowd, grinning like an evil leprechaun. I don’t call him a leprechaun because he’s short. I mean, he’s around my height, five-six, but he’s real solid, about as wide as he is tall. No, the leprechaun thing comes from his Irish pug nose and that sparse red wreath of a high-school-boy beard. Not a pretty sight, but he’s my buddy, so who cares?
He waves me and Brianna over and goes, “Check this out, Ceejay. The captain’s finally lost it all the way down to his socks,” and I’m like, “What socks?”
That’s the captain for you—ankle-high corduroy pants, ancient ruins for
shoes, and no socks. He’s a mess. A scraggly sixty-something-year-old reject from a mental ward with a beat-up baseball cap and a beard that doesn’t look so much like he grew it as like it exploded out of his face.
To tell the truth, I always liked the captain all right until today. My dad says he’s bipolar. My big sister says he’s schizo. I say he’s probably both, but I don’t care if he’s a leper. He’s a lot more interesting than the rest of the humanoids we have around this town.
I don’t know how many times I’ve stopped off at Corker Park and watched him play his guitar and drum and sing his bizarre songs about Martians, chicken teeth, and blue cockatoos. What else am I going to do, go see the six-month-old Disney movie at the Apollo? Maybe go to the senior center and watch the clog dancers?
For the last couple of years, Captain Crazy has been about the best entertainment we have in Knowles. The story around town is that he moved here from California, probably from some crazy street-person shelter, after his mom, the cat lady, died two years ago and left her farmhouse to him. The place is a dump, hasn’t really been a farm for years, but supposedly the captain’s brother, Richard, is jealous because he didn’t get it.
None of that is the reason why people are fascinated with the captain, though. Supposedly, he used to be semi-famous, had a handful of underground cult records out in the psychedelic sixties and seventies. “Sliced Penguins,” I think, was the name of his big song. It’s from his album Captain Crazy’s Crash Landing on Pluto. Hey, we didn’t make the name up. That’s what he calls himself. Sometimes he wears a T-shirt with his own picture on the front and the words CAPTAIN CRAZY spelled out in snakes.
Some people think he’s not fit to walk our streets, like our streets are paved with platinum Communion wafers or something. Captain Crazy’s a menace, they say. Not me. I like people who are different most of the time. That’s why I’m so pissed today. I was a supporter, a cheerleader for the cause of crazy. But then he goes and double-crosses me and my family and, most of all, Bobby.
At first, the protest is entertaining—the captain does have a sense of humor about how crazy he is—but things go bad when he picks up the guitar and starts singing about the war. I mean, you can’t even call it a song so much as it’s just howling to two chords with an occasional whack on the drum for an exclamation point. He’s all about tanks and bombs and children running down the street naked, on fire. Gruesome stuff. And then it’s white coffins rolling off of airplanes like widgets down a conveyor belt, and soldiers getting their faces blown off or trying to run for cover on bloody stumps. Screaming for medics, and the medics are already dead. And after all that, he howls what I guess is supposed to be the chorus:
Look out for the Nogo Gatu.
They’re coming for me, they’re coming for you.
Never give in to the Nogo Gatu!
This is too much. I see what he’s doing now, and it’s not funny. He’s not really protesting Vietnam. That’s just a cover-up. He’s talking about the war in Iraq. If you knew me, you’d know I’m not about to put up with this crap about soldiers getting their faces blown off. I mean, what if Bobby was coming home today instead of next month? What kind of welcome home would that be?
No one could get the better of Bobby here in Knowles, and no one in some small-time foreign country will ever get the better of him either, but crazy or not, the captain’s not going to get away with yelling garbage like that at me. That is totally unacceptable. I don’t need images like that in my head, with Bobby still out there trying to make it home. It’s not like I believe in hexes or anything, but there’s no reason to take chances.
And that’s not even the worst of it. Next, he starts spewing this trash about how war is the coward’s way. The president’s a coward, the vice president, the secretary of state, the secretary of war. And okay, I don’t really care about that, but then he goes and starts yelping about how anybody who is afraid to turn off their TVs, get off their big, fat couches, and stand up to the warmongers is a coward.
“You are a coward if you don’t stand up here with me,” he howls, and I swear he’s looking straight at me. “You are a coward just like the cowards who didn’t say no to Genghis Khan or Attila the Hun or Alexander the Runt or that nasty little tramp Adolf Hitler-Schmitler. Cowards, cowards, one and all!”
A coward! Nobody calls me a coward and gets away with it. I have never been afraid of anything! Bobby taught me how to kick butt, and he was the best this town’s ever seen. And maybe the captain is including Bobby in with the cowards too. Like he should have just run away instead of going to war. It’s ridiculous.
I yell at the captain to shut up and that if he doesn’t lay that guitar down now, I’m going to wade straight into his business. “Don’t be fooled because I’m a girl,” I holler. “I’ve beat on guys bigger than me all my life.”
No chance to prove it, though. The cops show up just as I’m getting started. Officer Larry and Officer Dave. After what they did to Bobby back in the day, I hate the sight of these two bastards, but for right now I’m on their side. I’m thinking, Here it comes. Let Captain Crazy get smart-ass with these two mutants, and they won’t think twice about pulling their batons.
The captain howls his chorus again, his face red, spit glinting in his beard. “That’ll be enough, Carl,” says Officer Dave in his matter-of-fact cop voice. The captain’s real name is Carl Monroe, and the police have gotten to know him very well since he took over the farmhouse.
“You know the drill,” says Officer Larry. “Disturbing the peace.”
But the captain keeps singing, so the cops, trading tired expressions, go right to work, Officer Larry taking the captain’s right arm and Officer Dave clamping down on the neck of the guitar.
“Show’s over,” says Officer Dave.
“This is a peaceful protest, man,” sputters the captain. “You can’t halt a peaceful protest. This is the United States of America.”
“You have to have a permit,” Officer Larry tells him. “You know that.”
“A permit to speak the truth?” The captain’s eyes bulge. Actually, they always bulge some, but now they look like they could pop out and go rolling down the courthouse steps. “What are you, storm troopers of the Nogo Gotu?”
“Come on, Carl,” says Officer Dave. “No one in this town wants to hear this crap. Either you pack up and go home or we’re hauling you in.”
The captain just throws back his head and starts in singing again.
Jesus. I could spit on him. But with the captain still wailing, the cops drag him to the squad car and shove him inside. Officer Dave goes back to pick up the drum while stupid Larry gathers the protest signs.
“What are you gonna do to that douche this time?” Gillis shouts to Officer Dave.
“Same as usual, I guess.”
“You heard what he was yelling, didn’t you?” I say, still really heated.
“I heard.”
“Well, you didn’t hear the part about soldiers getting their faces blown off. That’s bullshit. What if my mom or my little sister had been here?”
He gives me his squinty cop stare. “Go home, Ceejay.” Then he looks around at the rest of the crowd. “Everybody go about your business.”
“You need to get him out of town,” I say. “He shouldn’t even be around normal people.”
Officer Dave stops right in front of me, the conga drum tucked under his arm. “I’m not gonna tell you again, Ceejay. You don’t listen and you’re gonna be sitting in that car next to the captain.”
I stare back at him, my skin on fire. My brother’s been out there putting his life on the line. The way I figure it, I wouldn’t be worth much if I wasn’t one hundred percent ready to stand up for him here.
Officer Dave seems to read my mind. Maybe he feels guilty for what he helped do to Bobby after all. His eyes turn sympathetic, and he puts his free hand on my shoulder. “Look, Ceejay, I understand why you’re mad. But don’t worry, we’re gonna take him down to the station. H
e won’t be doing any more protesting. Okay?”
I keep my stare going full blast. “Okay. But I don’t even want to see that asshole in town anymore.”
The officers return to the squad car, and as they get in, I hear the captain yelling, “Kiss the fish mouth! Kiss the fish mouth!”
The car pulls away, heading for the jailhouse, but I know what will happen, the same sick thing that always happens. The captain’s brother will show up at the station and bail him out before dinner.
But this time I’m not going to let him off so easy. I have a plan. Revenge is for the mighty. Time to dust off my armor.
2
If the captain wasn’t crazy, I’d just gather my crew, kick his butt, and be done with it. But you know how it is—you can’t really go around kicking crazy guys’ butts. It isn’t sporting. People come to expect certain things of you when you’re the little sister of a legend like my brother Bobby. Back in his high school days, he was wild and he was B-A-D-D, BADD. People all over the county told stories about him. But he was never a bully. He had ethics. He took up for the weak, and he told me to do the same. It didn’t matter that I was a girl, he said. I was the same as him. My big sister isn’t, my little sister isn’t, and my little brother—he’s too young to tell yet how he’ll be.
I was never too young, though. I got into my first fight with a boy the summer before third grade. It was on the playground of our elementary school, not long after the Fourth of July. I was still little enough then and had such pretty blond hair—before it turned dingy brown—that you might have thought I still had a chance to turn into a girly-girl one day like my sisters. But I knew different.
Jared Jones and a couple of littler kids were squatting in the dirt behind the backstop. They were mean kids with mean parents. Jared had a string of Black Cat firecrackers—that’s the kind of parents he had, letting him run around the neighborhood with his own firecrackers—and he and the others were using them to blow up an anthill.
Did you ever watch ants when you were little? I’m sure you did. I’m sure you sympathized with them like I did. They’re so small that a hard wind can pick them up and blow them a million ant-miles away from home, but still they just buckle down to business and make the trek back through mighty forests of grass blades with all sorts of trouble lurking to take them down. And you’ll see them with these huge, boulder-like crumbs on their backs, hauling them back to the hill, where all of them are working together, making this pyramid, this colossal wonder of the world, to keep them safe from sand lions and grasshoppers and toads. They’re amazing.