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    Gettin' Weird
    Gettin' Weird
    Gettin' Weird
    Ebook127 pages1 hour

    Gettin' Weird

    By Terry Trueman

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    About this ebook

    GETTIN’ WEIRD is a sequel to award-winning author Terry Trueman’s critically acclaimed second novel INSIDE OUT (HarperCollins 2003). Alan Mender has served his time for his participation in the robbery of Sunshine Espresso a year earlier, but Alan has a host of old and new issues with which he has to deal: His father, who everyone assumed was dead has sent Alan an obviously unexpected and mostly unwanted letter; Alan is a high school drop-out and has developed an alcohol problem; his younger brother Joey seems to be thriving, but is that a true picture? Add to all of this, Alan’s best friend Wally Britton (a re-appearing character from Trueman’s fourth novel NO RIGHT TURN), after sharing a few ‘rum and cokes’ with Alan has been busted for drinking and talks Alan into joining him at AA. What else could go wrong in this coming of age story? You might be surprised.

    As with all of Terry Trueman’s novels, there are no vampires or werewolves or running around in a dystopian world here, after all, real life is tough enough. How does a good kid who’s made some bad mistakes get a second chance? What’s really most important in life? How come things are never quite how they appear to be? Trueman takes on these difficult questions in a story that entertains, enthralls and touches readers’ hearts, while changing and expanding our understanding of our own choices and lives.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTerry Trueman
    Release dateOct 25, 2013
    ISBN9781310488177
    Gettin' Weird
    Author

    Terry Trueman

    Terry Trueman grew up in the northern suburbs of Seattle, Washington. He attended the University of Washington, where he received his BA in creative writing. He also has an MS in applied psychology and an MFA in creative writing, both from Eastern Washington University. Terry is also the author of Stuck in Neutral and its companion novel, Cruise Control; Hurricane; 7 Days at the Hot Corner; No Right Turn; and Inside Out.

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      Book preview

      Gettin' Weird - Terry Trueman

      Before . . .

      Mender Brothers Sentenced as Juveniles:

      Coffee Siege Ends with Deadly Twist

      By Kelly Hillstead, Correspondent, Spokane Intelligencer

      Spokane—After months of mental evaluations and a firestorm of public controversy, Alan and Joseph Mender, 17 and 14, were sentenced today to nine months in juvenile detention and two years’ probation after their attempted holdup of Sunshine Espresso on North Francis last October.

      Defense attorneys insisted the brothers were driven to desperation by the burden of their mother’s cancer diagnosis and costly treatments. Opponents lambasted the light sentence, insisting it sent a message to other teens.

      In a tragic twist, Zachery Wahhsted, a teen hostage and apparent hero of the coffee-shop saga, committed suicide at his mother’s home just a week ago . . .

      According to Dr. Calvin Curtis, who also testified on the Mender brother’s behalf, 16-year-old Wahhsted had struggled for several years with schizophrenia . . ."

      1.

      I’m drinkin.’

      Yep, you heard me right. I’m drunk.

      Why?

      How about ‘cause I want to? How about ‘cause I like to? How about ‘cause I . . .

      ‘Just

      Say

      YES!!’

      I can hear every adult in the world bellowing, Oh no!!! Yer gonna become some street bum, some lunatic loser! And who knows, maybe someday I’ll have to go on TV when I’m a fat old geek and tell some talk show host, "Yeah, when I was young I used to drink and get weird, but I’ve been clean and sober for twelve years, three months, two weeks, six days, three hours. . . and right here, I’ll glance at my big Rolex then slowly add, . . . and sixteen minutes." The audience will cheer, bursting into applause, and I’ll smile and then we’ll do all these big phony hugs.

      Or, more likely, I’ll end up on one of those moron realty-shows with a bunch of other losers like myself who’ve just lost their ratty jobs too, and I’ll end up telling all these strangers about how booze and weirdness messed-up my life.

      But it seems to me that there’s always a good reason to drink. There’s always something coming that’s bad, so you’re gonna want to drown your sorrows. Or something coming that’s great so you want an excuse to jump around and act even crazier and happier than you would if you were just your sober self. There’s always a good reason and usually a great reason to get drunk! But my reason today is an ass-kicker.

      When I got back home this afternoon, after scoring this bottle of Bacardi rum, I stopped to grab the mail like I do every day. Mom was still at work, my brother still at school. I leafed through the crap from the mail box: some hospital and medical bills like the ones that come every month, asking for money we don’t have to pay for mom’s cancer treatment she had last year. There was also a flier from a local supermarket, rock bottom prices on cantaloupes and chicken legs. And then, on the bottom of this small stack of envelopes was a letter addressed to me, which almost never happens. This letter had a single, handwritten name in the return address spot in the upper left corner Dan Mender. Dan Mender is my Dad. He walked out on us without a word five years ago. I thought he was dead. We all did. Getting this letter just froze me, my brain sort of turning to nothing, my hands all shaky.

      I walked into the house, dropped the other mail on the entryway table where I always put it and took the letter, and my bottle of Bacardi and went up to my room. I almost opened it, the letter. I DID open the Bacardi and took a huge swig. Did I really want to hear from my dad? Just because he sent a letter did that mean I had to read it? Once I did read it, I couldn’t un-read it. What if it told me a bunch of stuff that I didn’t want to know? I almost tore the letter right in half, held it like I was going to, then I thought, no, I’ll just throw it away. I stood right over the top of my little wastebasket in my room and tried to drop it in, I mean right above it, but somehow the letter bounced off the rim and landed on the floor. I just stared at it for a long time, maybe a minute. It had landed right side up so that dad’s handwritten name; Dan Mender stared back at me. I took another giant slug of rum and picked it up again. I decided, screw him and threw the letter into my middle desk drawer, shoving it way back like it didn’t exist. That’ll teach him . . .

      That was then . . .

      .

      This is now . . . twenty minutes later, and my phone is ringing.

      I pick it up, Yo

      Alan?

      It’s my buddy Wally Britton, Wal-Mart, what-up?

      Nothin’ much man, what’re you doin’?

      You know, gettin’ weird, havin’ a few drinks.

      Cool! Can I come over?

      Sure.

      Watcha drinking?

      Right now, Bacardi and Diet Pepsi.

      Diet? Come on, man.

      I laugh, Well, that’s what was here in the house and it’s mostly rum anyway.

      I’ll bring some real Coke

      The real thing, huh?

      I mean Coca-Cola . . . not . . .

      Shut-up Wally, Jeez you’re lame, like I thought you’d have real, old school nose candy.

      Wally laughs, All right, I’m there man.

      Cool, I’m here too.

      .

      Like I said before, I’m drunk—I told Wally ‘a few drinks’ but the truth is I’m pretty wasted. I do this a lot, most days to be honest, but the letter from my Dad has made it even more necessary than usual—I can’t get my brain wrapped around the whole situation.

      What does drinking every day say about me?

      I don’t know what the hell is up with my life but I do know that everybody I know likes to get drunk once in a while as much as I do. And it turns out that my dad, who I thought was dead, isn’t—unless he’s writing me from the grave.

      I love the sound of Bacardi rum splashing into a glass full of ice cubes.

      I can’t wait ‘til my little red-headed drinkin’ buddy gets here with ‘the real thing.’

      You know what you call the word for something that tries to make the real word for that thing sound nicer? It’s called a euphemism . . . ‘nose-candy’ for ‘cocaine’. . . ‘abandonment’ for ‘I-don’t-give-a-damn-about-my kids’ When I was younger, I was a big reader—okay, I admit it, mostly comics and sports, music and car magazines and things that I liked, but I’ve always loved big-hoity thesaurus words that nobody ever really uses . . . euphemism . . .

      It seems in my life there’s always a good reason to get drunk. But I’d say a letter from my old man who I thought was dead is as great an excuse I’m ever gonna get.

      I look at the ugly scar on my left hand, both on the palm and the top where a bullet ripped through. My dad, even though I haven’t seen him in years, even though I didn’t even know he was still alive, is partly to blame for this scar.

      2.

      Wally’s been here for about half an hour. I don’t tell him about the letter. I don’t know how to talk about it. Hell, I don’t know how to think or feel about it, so why wreck our party?

      Wally gets semi-slightly-drunk real fast and starts slurring his ‘S’ words.

      Dish ish sho fun!

      Shut-up Wal, you sound like a cartoon of a drunk guy.

      Wally laughs, "I am a cartoon of a drunk guy!"

      I take a sip of my Bacardi and real Coca-Cola. My speech never gets affected by alcohol, I’m lucky that way—nobody can ever tell when I’ve been drinking, including my own Mom.

      Did you know that in the old days, the real old days like a hundred years ago, Coca-Cola had cocaine in it? It’s true—that’s where the ‘Coca’ part of the name comes from. Now were those the days or what? Imagine a totally legal beverage that could compete with booze for a consumer’s recreational weirdness dollars. Imagine, drinking a few beers and getting a

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