Tim Tharp - Badd

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Text copyright 2011 by Tim Tharp

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Childrens Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Tharp, Tim.
Badd / by Tim Tharp. 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: A teenaged girls beloved brother returns home from the Iraq War completely unlike the person she remembers.
eISBN: 978-0-375-89579-1
[1. Brothers and sistersFiction. 2. Iraq War, 2003Fiction. 3. Post-traumatic stress disorder Fiction. 4. Emotional problemsFiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.T32724Bad 2011
[Fic]dc22
2010012732

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v3.1

Captain Crazy must die.

This might sound like tough talk coming from a girl, but Im a tough girl. One hundred percent. And my friends, Gillis, Tillman, and Brianna, agree with me about the captain. We trade off ways to do the deed. Well pickle him in brine, well feed him to the blender, the lawn mower, the garbage disposal, the Chihuahua. Well slice off his fingers and toes like fresh carrots, dice him and mince him and chop off his head. Pack his leftovers in ice, French fry them in a deep-fat fryer. Well draw and quarter him, go after him with chainsaws and garden shears. Well stuff him and sell him at the flea market.

No, we wont. Not really. Were not some kind of evil devil cult. But you still dont want to mess with us.

Actually, Im the only one with a reason to be mad. The others just want something to happen around here. Anything. But with me its personal because of my brother Bobby. Hes in the army, see, in Iraq. Well, he was in Iraq, but now hes in Germany. Were expecting him home in a month, and we sure dont need Captain Crazy putting a hex on him before he gets back. I mean, this time I know hes coming home. He really is. Its just hard to believe it for sure until he wraps me up in one of his big bear hugs and says, Its me, Ceejay. Dont worry, little sister, dont worry. Its me and Im home for good.

The Captain Crazy business starts when me and Brianna are cruising in her car and Gillis calls me up and goes, Listen, Ceejay, you gotta get over here to the courthouse. Captain Crazys throwing a Vietnam War protest. Its hilarious!

Vietnam! Leave it to the captain to go all radical over a war thats been over for thirty-something years.

Two minutes later Brianna and I pull up to the courthouse in her car. Thats the one and only good thing about living in a town the size of Knowles. Your friends can call and tell you to come somewhere, and youre there practically before they hang up the phone. So when I get to the foot of the courthouse steps, the captains just starting to really roll, pacing like a preacher on crystal meth, his face red, his eyes bulging. Hes not even Captain Crazy anymore. Now hes Reverend Crazy shouting down the devil. And dont you know, if theres anyone whos really seen the devil, its him.

Hes got the usual paisley guitar and the conga drum close at hand but hasnt started in playing them yet. Behind him, three posters on six-foot-tall sticks stand propped against the granite wall, each with flowers painted on thempurple, red, yellow, chartreusejust like its really the dead-and-gone sixties hippie days. On the first sign, hes scrawled GET OUT OF VIETNAM NOW! On the second, its THE PRESIDENT IS INSANE , and the third one says, KISS THE FISH MOUTH! Only Captain Crazy knows the secret meaning of that one.

A couple of women, three old men, and about seven kids from school are watching the show. Nothing much else to do on a late-May afternoon in Knowles now that schools out. A couple of older girls from my high schoolthe cupcake twins, I call them, because theyre all sugar frosting and no substancelook at ugly Gillis, huge Goth-girl Brianna, and scrappy little sixteen-year-old pit-bull me with these expressions like, Oh God, there they are.

Next to the fish-mouth sign, Mr. White stands with his arms crossed like hes the captains bodyguard, and I have to admit Im as bad as the cupcake twins because I cant help thinking, Oh God, there he is.

Mr. White. Hes even weirder than we arethe long-haired, stick-figure guy from my English class who never says a thing. The new kid in town. Well, actually hes been here a whole year, but in a town where everyones known you since you were a zygote, youre still the new kid until youve lived here for at least five years.

His real names Padgett Locke, but we call him Mr. White because he always dresses completely in white. Probably never been in a fight in his life. Today he has on a plain white T-shirt, white shorts, white socks, and white tennis shoes. His skin is almost as white as his clothes. Its like he finally broke out of his room, where hes been cooped up reading books and listening to alternative bands that no one ever heard of, and now he thinks hes at Wimbledon. The only thing not white about him is his long, stringy brown hair and his black-framed glasses. Anyway, Im not surprised he hooked up with the captain. Maybe he thinks hell be like an apprentice and take over the job of town eccentric when the captain retires.

Gillis is standing in the front row of the small crowd, grinning like an evil leprechaun. I dont call him a leprechaun because hes short. I mean, hes around my height, five-six, but hes real solid, about as wide as he is tall. No, the leprechaun thing comes from his Irish pug nose and that sparse red wreath of a high-school-boy beard. Not a pretty sight, but hes my buddy, so who cares?

He waves me and Brianna over and goes, Check this out, Ceejay. The captains finally lost it all the way down to his socks, and Im like, What socks?

Thats the captain for youankle-high corduroy pants, ancient ruins for shoes, and no socks. Hes a mess. A scraggly sixty-something-year-old reject from a mental ward with a beat-up baseball cap and a beard that doesnt look so much like he grew it as like it exploded out of his face.

To tell the truth, I always liked the captain all right until today. My dad says hes bipolar. My big sister says hes schizo. I say hes probably both, but I dont care if hes a leper. Hes a lot more interesting than the rest of the humanoids we have around this town.

I dont know how many times Ive stopped off at Corker Park and watched him play his guitar and drum and sing his bizarre songs about Martians, chicken teeth, and blue cockatoos. What else am I going to do, go see the six-month-old Disney movie at the Apollo? Maybe go to the senior center and watch the clog dancers?

For the last couple of years, Captain Crazy has been about the best entertainment we have in Knowles. The story around town is that he moved here from California, probably from some crazy street-person shelter, after his mom, the cat lady, died two years ago and left her farmhouse to him. The place is a dump, hasnt really been a farm for years, but supposedly the captains brother, Richard, is jealous because he didnt get it.