The Bad Decisions Playlist (5 page)

“I signed a contract!” I say. “You don't understand! I have to do this! You can't leave me like this!”

She leaves me like that.

I listen to the squeaking of her shoes receding down the hallway. Then I clap my hands together and announce to the empty room, “Fantastic! Okay! Let's go repay Rick!”

Except I'm not going to repay Rick. Instead what I'm going to do is screw up again and die.

I'm gonna be smiling when they find me /

because I've left it all behind me

I'm going to​—​am
about
to​—​die, a gruesome, spectacular splatterfest of a death. A death caused by a commercial-grade lawnmower and my own stupidity.

And Josephine. She deserves at least some of the blame.

Sccrrrttcch
goes the gravelly soil under my sneakers as I skid another few inches toward perdition.

“Help,” I squeak, but I'm straining and out of breath and can't get any volume behind it. Not that it matters​—​I doubt anyone else on the lawn crew could hear me over the roar of the machine, even if they weren't wearing the big rifle-range ear protectors we've all got.

I am on a very steep slope.

Directly downhill from me is the narrow top of a retaining wall.

Directly downhill from the retaining wall is lots of air to fall through.

Directly
up
hill from me, and pushing me inexorably downhill toward the retaining wall and the air and death, is a four-hundred-pound walk-behind mower, its knobbly wheels churning uselessly as it slides slowly in the wrong direction.

Sccrrrtch.
Now the balls of my feet are on the retaining wall and skidding backwards. When I run out of wall, the machine and I are going over the precipice. And if the fall doesn't kill me, the weight and vicious twin blades of the mower will.

I think it qualifies as ironic that the job Rick got me so that I can pay Rick back is going to instead cost Rick more money, because cleaning up my remains is going to require hiring a white-suited HAZMAT team equipped with wet-vacs. Sorry, Rick.

“Okay​—​important item: Don't use a big mower on the steep sloping areas. Use the smaller push mower. You copy?”

Those were Kent's instructions, which I should have listened to. Kent being the REALLY HEALTHY-LOOKING pre-law college student who manages the crew and has FANTASTIC TEETH and INCREDIBLE HAIR and a REALLY POSITIVE DEMEANOR and CHARISMA and is basically the purified essence of every church youth group leader ever, the sort who is going to just friendly-enthusiasm you into a life of RIGHTEOUSNESS and JESUS. Exactly the guy Rick would hire. When I arrived, he approached me with a big smile, used his God-salesman grip to crush the bones in my right hand while squeezing my shoulder muscle with his other hand​—​the alpha-bro handshake, you know it?​—​and said, “
Hola, amigo!
Boss-man Rick tells me I need to keep a special eye on you. So first thing, a little tough love: You're late.”

“What? I thought​—”

“It's eleven twenty-six now,” he said, showing me his watch. “You're supposed to be here at eleven.”

“Sorry, got a little lost, and​—”

“No explanations necessary. Tomorrow you're here at eight thirty for the team meeting, right?”

“Team meeting.”

“You bet. Every morning. Go over the goals for the day, get the team spirit up. But, Austin? If you're late again tomorrow, don't come back.” Pat-pat on my cheek. “All right,
vamos
—​the others have already started.”

He gestured out toward the vast hinterlands. I spotted a few distant figures mowing, the grounds of the retirement community so extensive that I was pretty certain you could see the curvature of the earth.

He introduced me to the walk-behind mower that will soon be killing me, showed me how to fuel it, start it, and operate it.

“Austin, you know how to walk in a straight line, go back and forth?”

“Yes I do, Kent.”

“Outstanding, Austin. Go do that over there,” he said. “But what are we not going to do?”

“We're not going to use a big mower on the slopes.”

“Exactly. What are we going to use?”

“We're going to use the small push mower.”

“Outstanding. Get going.”

I started off on the field he had indicated and went back and forth, back and forth, each trip taking several centuries. It was intensely boring. I don't know why the residents need acreage like this​—​I guess to gaze at and recall their youth during the Civil War while they ponder the peaceful hectares of lawn and trees and landscaping, all of which needs mowing and tending and will presently become the scene of a grisly accident.

While I worked, I argued with Josephine.

Out loud, my own words inaudible to me. Crazy guy, walking back and forth, quarreling with thin air.

It started with me replaying the things she had said to me, and I'd think of new ways to respond.
Oh, yeah?

Pretty soon, though, fantasy Josephine had taken control, saying entirely
new
things that real Josephine hadn't. Criticizing me, my life, my Big Secret Plan, my everything, telling me I'm lost and rudderless.
And even if you
did
have a rudder, it wouldn't help, because, let's be honest, you don't have a map, or even an engine.

Okay, Josey​—​

Josephine.

Fine. I didn't ask you.

Why did she get to me so much? Who was
she,
anyway?

You,
Josey,
are just some girl who is never late and has never blown off a class and would give someone that disapproving grownup frown if they crossed against a red light. I don't give a crap what you think of me,
Josey.

I really don't. I don't care what she thinks.

Is what I kept saying. But the squabble kept going, me doing my best to parry and counterattack, and even though I was conducting both sides of the argument, she was winning, slicing me to ribbons.

It was that way she looked at me. Like I couldn't fool her at all.

Your usual nonsense will not work on me, Austin Methune.

Around the time the argument was really heating up, I was mowing along the wooded edge of the slope on which I was supposed to use the small push mower.

Somehow that rule turned into all the other obstacles in my life​—​the mandolin, Rick, the contract, Kent, everything, and I was thinking,
Screw it, I'll show you all,
and just then Josephine's lecturey voice popped into my head:
Don't be stupid!

“Would you just SHUT UP!” I bellowed, and did a hard left-hand turn down the slope.

The mower immediately started sliding.

Panic.

Turn nose uphill. Sliding continues. Sudden terrible clarity regarding Kent's instructions.

I told you so.

“Shut up, Josey!”

Josephine.

“Argh!”

Now my body is one straight line, my arms extended over my head, hands in a death grip on the mower. I'm leaning so far forward that my nose is only about two feet from the twenty-degree slope, my quivering body at an acute angle to the ground. Or is it an obtuse angle? Which is pointier and narrower?

This is why you're in summer school!

“Yes, got it, thank you!”

Stuck on a ledge, wheels spinning helplessly.

Which, you realize, is a pretty accurate metaphor for your life.

“Zip it!”

My feet are slick with grass juice. I'm sliding backwards, six inches from the edge of the retaining wall. Five. Four.

Then I spot him. Right at the top of the ridge that I shouldn't have descended. Another member of the lawn crew, silhouetted against the blue summer sky, armed with a gas-powered weed whip, concentrating on trimming the fringe around a nearby tree. Salvation!

“Help!” I shout. “HELP!”

I don't know if it's because he heard me or sheer chance, but he turns his head and looks down the slope and spots me. I don't get a good look at him because the sky behind him is so bright. He takes a few steps down the slope toward me, which brings him into the dappled shade of the trees. He pulls off his yellow eye-protection goggles and stares at me and my predicament, and in that moment Todd Malloy and I recognize each other.

“Help,” I say. “Help!”

A big smile spreads across Todd's face.

Then my foot slips and I go over the edge.

∗  ∗  ∗

Things you think about as you're tumbling violently downhill with a twin-blade lawn mower hurtling just inches behind you:
GAHOHMYGODI'MGONNADIE!!!

Which I
am
thinking, plus
GAHOHMYGODTODDMALLOYISONMYLAWNCREW!!!

So, no, I'm not dead, but it's still early.

A few milliseconds ago: My foot slipped.

I bailed, jumping backwards off the retaining wall, which turned out to be somewhat less than a hundred feet tall and maybe more like five.

The ground where my feet hit was mossy and even more steeply sloped than that above the retaining wall, meaning it threw me directly into a brutal backward somersault and kept me rolling downhill​—​which is what saved my life for the time being, because the mower came crashing down an instant later right on the spot I had just vacated.

Now it's all straight-up action movie, an action movie featuring a murderous lawn mower and a stoner idiot.

Tumbling, head-over-assing, mower right behind and now somehow upright on its wheels. Get my feet under me, stumble desperately forward and down, death machine on my heels, the two of us doing a fifty-yard dash down a leaf-covered, wooded, double-black-diamond slope.
Root! Hole! Low branch! Rock! TODD MALLOY IS ON MY LAWN CREW!

Shallow creek just ahead at the bottom. Hurl myself into it​—​Aaaaah!​—​
splash
, turn just in time to see the mower barreling toward me and then
FWOOOM
hit a hidden bump that alters its course and then
CRASH
it front-ends into a tree trunk and
clunk
the engine cuts out.

Everything is suddenly very quiet. I can hear birds chirping and the breeze in the branches above me and the soothing gurgle of the stream. And from far above me, the sound of Todd Malloy's hysterical laughter.

Better, perhaps, that I had died.

Then things get worse.

I'm not waving / and I'm not drowning /

and I'm not feeling no fear / 'cause I'm not even here . . .

“Austin, we're glad you're home. We'd like to speak with you.”

!!!

Oh, God. They know. They know about Josephine and the lawn mower and Kent, and they know that I've already violated the contract and that Further Steps will have to be taken, Further Steps that might mean me wearing a uniform.

It's even worse because they're not angry. They're smiling​—​no,
beaming
—​at me, arms around each other. They were both standing there, my mother and Rick, just inside the front door when I opened it​—​I went, “Eep!”​—​and it's almost like the situation is reversed, like I'm the one who had opened the door from the inside and found two eerily jovial people on the front porch, there to share some life-changing literature with me. Or to announce,
Hello, we'll now be cheerfully escorting you to the van that will take you to rehab and please don't resist we have stun guns.

“Glabble blabble gotta take a shower florble!” I say, or something like that, and they both chuckle and say, “Of course!” And then part like swinging doors to let me pass, Rick giving me a thump on the shoulder as I go by.

I stumble up the stairs as fast as I can, even the air resistance a source of pain to my battered carcass. I get to the bathroom, close the door, and lean against it, panting.
Think. Think!
When you get in trouble and they're smiling, you know you're
really
in trouble. Because whatever they have planned as punishment is so insidious and awful that it's actually giving them pleasure.