DEATH BY POP ROCKS AND PEPSI: STORIES ADAM M. ROUNICK Bachelor of Arts in English Cleveland State University May 2014 submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree MASTER OF FINE ARTS IN CREATIVE WRITING at the NORTHEAST OHIO MFA and CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY May 2018 We hereby approve this thesis For ADAM M. ROUNICK Candidate for the MASTER OF FINE ARTS IN CREATIVE WRITING degree For the department of English, the Northeast Ohio MFA Program and CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY’S College of Graduate Studies by ________________________________________________________________ Thesis Chairperson, Imad Rahman ____________________________________________________ Department & Date _________________________________________________________________ Michael Geither _____________________________________________________ Department & Date ________________________________________________________________ Robert Miltner ____________________________________________________ Department & Date Student’s date of defense April 11, 2018 DEATH BY POP ROCKS AND PEPSI: STORIES ADAM M. ROUNICK ABSTRACT Death by Pop Rocks and Pepsi: Stories is a collection of fiction tackling everything from the darkness hiding behind the sunny facade of the suburbs, to the desperation of criminals, and the long-term effects of a steady pop culture diet on the psyche. All of the narrators and characters are struggling with their unhealthy coping methods for loss, denial, or failure. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………………. iii CHAPTER I. EMBERS OF ALVIN WOODS………………………………….. 1 II. JUST LIKE OLD TIMES………………………………………… 20 III. CONFESSION ROULETTE……………………………………... 42 IV. FIRST RESPONSE……………………………………………….. 52 V. NOT GONE………………………………………………………. 64 VI. THE UNIVERSE ACCORDING TO THE MAGIC 8 BALL…… 66 VII. MICE IN THE ATTIC……………………………………………. 71 VIII. UGLY HOMES…………………………………………………… 86 IX. THE LACY LAVENDER THONG………………………………. 88 X. RELATIONSHIP BAR TRIVIA………………………………….. 104 XI. THE COUCH AND PAULY SHORE…………………………….. 109 XII. JOJO THE SIGN-LANGUAGE GORILLA ABDUCTED BY DELUSIONAL TRAINER………………………………………... 120 XIII. THE INTRUDER / THE TARGET……………………………….. 123 XIV. WHEN YOU WISH UPON A STAR……………………………... 131 XV. POP THOUGHTS…………………………………………………. 133 XVI. HIS STORY IN THE DUMPSTER DESK………………………...143 XVII. AFTER KURT…………………………………………………… 151 iv CHAPTER I EMBERS OF ALVIN WOODS Newman stuffed a handful of lighters and candy bars from an empty checkout aisle into his pocket and sprinted for the automatic doors. I guess I had to follow. We hopped onto our bikes, which we left unchained in the rack out front, and took off pedaling as fast as we could. Threats and cursing from the employees chasing on foot faded outside the parking lot. Cutting through backyards, riding over the well- manicured lawns and flowerbeds of Meadow Ridge, our quiet suburban hometown, we avoided main roads undetected. When we slowed, we were back in our neighborhood and pouring with sweat from the smoldering summer heat wave that had cracked down over the last two months. It had been even longer since there was any rain. I didn’t shoplift anything myself, but I wished I had bought a bottle of water. Newman was used to feeling the sticky graphic of a tattered black Metallica concert t- shirt clinging to his body on days like this. I was still learning. “Let’s go to the Alvin Woods.” He darted in front of me and slammed on the brakes of his bike, purposefully trying to make me fling headfirst over my handlebars. I swerved and planted a foot on the ground to keep balance. 1 “Come on, man,” I said without an ounce of authority. “Keep up, fatso.” He tried to lure me with a Twix in front of my face like he was fishing. In the transition to middle school the year before, all of my friends got on the soccer team while I didn’t make it past tryouts. This meant they might as well have been in different schools in different districts in different cities in different counties in different states in different countries on different continents on different worlds of other galaxies. The first day back in classes, when it came time to pick partners for biology, I didn’t have anyone else, so somehow I ended up with Newman. And then since I didn’t have anyone else anywhere else, somehow I ended up with Newman everywhere. My parents didn’t see how someone like me, who had never gotten a detention or anything less than a B minus, had anything in common with the kid who got kicked off the wrestling team for getting busted with pot and knew all of the local police officers on a first name basis. The Alvin Woods was an unofficial title – it was just the who-knows-how-many acres behind Alvin Elementary School on Park Lane. It’s where kids would sometimes ride dirt bikes on shoddily made ramps; where they’d spend hours playing paintball, or shooting off BB guns weaving between the oaks. Some of the big kids would go there at night to get to third base with girls and drink booze they took from their busy, working parents’ liquor cabinets. My older sister once told me about a gang that lived in a shack inside the Alvin Woods. They slaughtered a rabbit as a sacrifice to Satan and hanged the bunny’s corpse, sans fur, from the jungle gym on the playground – she said that’s why they got brand new 2 equipment when she was in the third grade. But by the time I reached fifth grade, there was a different legend surrounding the woods: an escapee from an asylum was hiding in a secret cave near the outskirts watching the kids play during recess just waiting, picking and choosing who he’d drag in to cannibalize. I always figured these were just stories, but I never took any chances. “Can we just hold on for a second?” We’d reached the grass field in front of the school’s entrance and I was out of breath. I was used to a sedentary life of sleepovers where I’d try to marathon all of the Star Wars saga with Andrew Davis, Zeke Cohn, and Jasminder Patil. We always ended up getting halfway through one before turning it off and trying to find those five seconds of clarity on the scrambled porn channels the cable didn’t carry. But Andrew, Zeke, and Jasminder now had the soccer team to do all of that with, and I was stuck with Newman. “Come on, fatso. Keep up.” Newman hopped off his bike and started to walk it over the dusty softball diamond behind the brown brick gymnasium. He unwrapped one of the candy bars he stole and shoved the melting chocolate into his mouth, smearing a stringy layer of sweets across his lips and fingers. “Did you see the thing last night about Bradley Donner?” “Did they find him?” I was relieved that Newman had stopped antagonizing me long enough to treat me human. “Nah,” he said with a mouthful of caramel. “His mom was on the news again though. Crying and shit.” Newman began to mock her, letting out long, exaggerated, howling boo-hoos. “She said there’s a big reward now for anyone that knows anything. Pretty sick, right?” 3 Bradley Donner had been missing for three weeks. Newman, who took the same bus as him, said the kid was a weirdo. “One of those piss-pants bug collection freaks,” he’d once described him as. When he said this, I was glad I had gotten rid of my own bug collection the year before and that Newman didn’t know me in first grade when I missed my bus and wet myself. I’d only ever seen Bradley Donner’s face on fliers stapled to telephone poles across town and on milk cartons, but I had seen the news the night before. Both Mr. and Mrs. Donner made desperate pleas with wet mushy faces for their son to be returned home. My parents watched it while we ate dinner, every commercial break trying in vain to figure out what it was that I did all day after sleeping in past noon and staying up until dawn. My answers were always the same: I did nothing or I don’t know. I didn’t want to hear them tell me again about how I should call up Andrew and see what he’s doing, or dance around the idea of going to see that new action movie with Zeke, and I didn’t care that they ran into Jasminder’s mom at the supermarket. “What do you think happened to Bradley?” I asked. “Who knows?” Newman reached into his pocket and grabbed another candy bar. He tossed one to me, and even though I wasn’t hungry, I stopped walking to concentrate on getting it open, careful not to make as much of a mess as he had. I always hated being sticky, getting my hands dirty. “Maybe he uh, what do you call it when somebody just like, explodes?” Newman asked. “Spontaneous combustion.” I bit into chocolate peanut butter and could already feel what little moisture was left in my mouth evaporate. 4 “Spontaneous combustion, yeah. Is that real?” “I think so,” I said. We stashed our bikes in the tall grass, avoiding the sporadic spread of poison oak and ivy at the opening of Alvin Woods. It was a challenge getting inside, but once we broke past the initial maze of narrowly spaced thorn branches, it wasn’t so bad. Newman left a trail of plastic wrappers in his wake. When he found a thick stick lying on the ground, he picked it up to crack against the biggest trunks he could find for no other reason than to be heard. The aggressive echo hurled itself out into the open air and tried to escape. The woods were different than I’d imagined. They looked like every other patch of wildlife I’d ever seen, but larger.