The Teenager

John Cox. Untitled (Young Boy). 1995. Acrylic and silkscreen on paper. 41.5 x 29.5 inches. Courtesy of The Dawn Davies Collection.

Something felt unclean to the teenage boy. It was the lack of separation between days, the same jeans that carried him onward. He took a bar of Irish Spring to his mouth, scrubbed at the red wine stain, a thread between his inner and outer lips. The Florida sun rose, canvasing the previous sleepless night. All the people in their box houses were waking up in air-conditioned rooms. He inspected his teeth at different angles in the medicine cabinet mirror, catching fragments of the girl moving in the bedroom behind him.

Everyone in the neighborhood grew up Catholic, and whether they were confirmed or went absent in the presence of God, they held that essence inside. The boy lived in the current of sin and penitence. His mother owned a construction business. He didn't know exactly what his father did, but it involved the word "sales" and no one seemed to mind that it required for him to be away for weeks at a time. His father always flew first-class and talked of stewardesses and football stadiums whenever he returned home. The teenage boy lived unchaperoned, preferring to find guidance in his one friend. The teenage girl wore too much eye-liner and made decisions for them both. They were of the same stock. They got each other, and it's this understanding that propelled such grief between them. This existence of credit card and gated community allowed him to feel violenced as they moved back into the inebriated day.

"Are you almost done? I need to do my hair," the girl said into the reflection. He combed his hair with his fingernails around the plastic frame of sunglasses.

"Yes," he said. "I didn't do my biology homework," she said. "You'll find time," the boy said.

________

The girl lived in a house covered in coquina shells—a sterile, coastline castle that her mother won in a settlement. Her father was from Cuba, owned a tile company. Her mother slept a lot. When she was awake she moved through the house as if her body were made of syrup—ignoring her daughter's empty wine bottles as she made the way to the fridge for some cold-pressed juice.

There were tiny straws scattered on the glass coffee table. The boy scooped them into his jacket pocket and thought about extinct animals, although he wasn't sure why. He was zombied and fogged by sleeplessness. The dodo was the only one he was sure of, and maybe a carrier pigeon or something that looked like a zebra. Its name was hidden in a place he could not access at the moment, despite the intrusive thoughts. He felt that if he rubbed his tongue along the roof of his mouth long enough, at least one of these elusive insights would return. The girl tried to put her hands in the boy's pocket and he swatted her away. She shuffled around in a small black make-up bag, stained with light powders and red blotches of something. She pulled out a smaller white bag. She pulled out a ring of keys saying, "I bought it, so I can do it when I want."

One of her key chains was half of a metallic heart with the word BEST on it. The boy possessed the other half, which read FRIENDS. She gave the boy this piece of tchotchke as a sign of ownership rather than sentimentality. He kept his half in a pocket in his backpack with WiteOut and a half-eaten pack of Lance sandwich crackers. There was something mathematical to the girl's actions, the way everything had a purpose, the way her hands moved in the air like an invisible audience was always watching. She dipped her car key into the white bag. The crystal flakes refracted light. "Meet my good friend Bumper McKey," she said to no one. The powder disappeared...