My Life as a Furry Red Monster - Kevin Clash [42]
We were just hanging out in the basement rec room. There was a turntable and the guys asked me to be the DJ. Music was my thing and I gladly obliged, crashing on a bean bag chair in between sets by the Jackson Five and the Silvers. After a while, when I roused myself to get up to change the album again, I realized they must have gone upstairs because I was all alone. I headed for the kitchen, leaving Tom Jones singing “It’s Not Unusual.”
They weren’t just eating; they were drinking. The guys had gotten their hands on a bottle of wine, some beer, and a bottle of vodka and some mixers. Orlando looked at me and twitched an eyebrow. He knew better than to offer me liquor. The four boys proceeded to get drunk while I watched from the sidelines, going back downstairs to change the music that no one else seemed to be listening to.
Within an hour, they were wasted, and I was still stone-cold sober. “Orlando, man,” I said, feeling like I had to step in. “You guys should stop.” I tried a few times to get through to him, but he was caught up in the moment.
At first I was thinking more about what would happen when his parents found out the liquor was missing, but they were acting crazier and crazier. They started dueling with the cue sticks, but then they decided to take the party outside by the swimming pool. I’d grown up on the Chesapeake and knew that drunk or sober, the water’s edge was no place to mess around. (My classmate Skylow would later drown in the bay along with another friend when they tried to swim in the strong tides.) “You guys ought to cool it,” I prodded, genuinely concerned about their safety, but they wouldn’t listen. Fortunately, the buzz didn’t last long before they were crashing. No one got hurt, but I was afraid. Back in the neighborhood, I’d seen what alcohol could do to people, and I knew it started early.
Orlando and I didn’t talk about what had happened that night. I spent most of my time cleaning up the mess the guys had made so that things wouldn’t look so bad when his parents came home. I knew I had to tell my mom what happened. I was worried about Orlando, and didn’t like the changes I saw.
“Kevin, you’ve got to tell Mr. and Mrs. Jackson.” As I’ve mentioned, my mom had babysat Orlando for years. If he was a friend to me, he was like a son to her.
I looked at her, my eyes bugging. She wore her “I told you once and I’m not going to tell you again” face. I knew on one level she was right—we were lucky nothing really bad happened. I wanted to be loyal to Orlando, and I didn’t want to see him get into trouble with his parents. But I thought about where this could lead, and I didn’t want to see him get into a more serious kind of trouble down the road.
The phone felt sweaty in my hand as I picked up the receiver to dial. His mother, whom we called Miss Hattie, answered and listened as I told the whole story. Orlando’s dad, Mr. Melvin, was right beside her, listening in, both of them “umh-hmming” at every key point in the story.
“Orlando,” said Mr. Melvin. “Is that what happened?”
Apparently Orlando was on the other extension.
Without a moment’s hesitation, my friend said, “No.”
At first I couldn’t believe it, but before I could think about Orlando’s response, his mom quickly thanked me and hung up.
When I went to school that Monday, I found out that Orlando had been punished. No one would speak to me. Lorraine, Richard, and other friends of Orlando’s were giving me the silent treatment since I’d broken the kid code by telling his parents. But we weren’t kids anymore. I was being Orlando’s friend, but maybe not in the way he wanted me to. Eventually it all blew over, though I doubt anyone understood how hard it had been for me to rat out a friend and make that call.
It had been easier to be friends when we were little, when we could spill out the back door and into the yard to play kickball, or chase each other endlessly with no real goal, or sit in companionable