Sippy Bascombe’s Suicide Mission

I met Jim “Sippy” Bascomb on the first day of school, when it still seemed that life might change for the better. The beginning of the fall semester always felt that way to me. Everything seemed new in the clean September air – new teachers, new classmates, and this case a whole new school in a whole new place. I was anonymous on Nantucket, I could rebuild myself from the foundation up. My  mistake. They say the Devil you know is better than the one you don’t. 

The same goes for Hell.

Anyway, I was eating alone in the dining hall when the incident happened.

The girl from the boat swept into the big room in a crowd of other girls, eight of them altogether, somehow prettier in a group than any of them would have been separately -- that mysterious bubble of arrogance and estrogen. I was smart enough to keep my distance. My half-brother Lonnie had offered me at seat at the loser’s table – him and a fatso – Sippy, it turned out – along with a weird looking kid with zits named Haden Krakauer that everyone called Fizzy because he spit so much when he talked. I preferred to sit alone. Loners could be cool. That group was anything but. Why brand yourself as a pariah and a joke on the first day of school? Welcome to NHS, buddy. Here’s your I’m With the Dipshits t-shirt. It says Kick Me on the back, so get ready.

No thanks Instead I watched while they argued and pointed. Zits pushed Sippy off his chair.  Peer group pressure. Whatever it was they wanted him to do, there was no getting out of it. Sippy stood, his unwashed hair draping the collar of his untucked shirt. He slicked it back behind one ear with stubby fingers, and started across the room

I sat forward. Sippy was heading for the girls. I remember thinking -- Jesus Christ on a crispy Ritz cracker, what a kamikaze pilot! The kid had guts anyway, you had to give him that. Sippy walked up the group, and pushed through them like an EMT at an accident. Was he headed for the voluptuous brunette or the Girl from the boat? It was the Girl. He tapped her on the shoulder and brought the whole parade to a halt. The other girls all stared at him. Everyone in the dining hall was staring at him. I thought, this won’t end well, and even as  thought it, the Girl started laughing – genuine laughter, contagious laughter. The other girls started laughing, too. Maybe it wasn’t as bad as it looked – maybe Sippyy had scored with some perfect joke. But no, they weren’t laughing with him, they were laughing at him. The real joke was Sippy himself, daring to approach that girl in the first place, and if I had any doubts on that score, Sippy cleared them up by bolting for the big glass doors.

Some jock stuck a leg out and tripped him. That was Ed Delavane. Remember the name. Never forget that sadistic monkey smile. Sippy managed to keep his feet under him, and stutter step out into the main hall. I stood up and followed him, leaving my lunch untouched.

When I pushed through the doors I saw the kid disappearing into the boys’ bathroom beyond the wall of lockers. I jogged over and listened for a few seconds. Above the buzz and rattle of the cafeteria behind me I heard a rhythmic banging from inside the bathroom. It sounded like someone driving a post into the ground with a sledge hammer, one measured blow after another. I slipped inside. The kid was alone, bashing his forehead into one of the toilet stalls.

“Hey! What – why are you doing that?”

 

He pushed off the metal barrier and turned to face me with a lop-sided grin. “Because it feels so good when I stop. That’s a joke, chumly.”

We stared at each other. Neither of us laughed.

“I hate those girls,” I said finally.

“No you don’t. You wish you did.”

“I hate what they did back there.”

He shrugged. “It’s what they do. Girls! Can’t live with ‘em – can’t sell em for parts! That’s another joke, chumly.” He stuck out his hand. “Jimmy Bascomb. Everybody calls me Sippy.”

I shook his damp hand. "Todd Fraker. Nobody calls me anything. I don’t know anybody.”

“Well now you know me, Glad to meet ya.”

“My mom says upper class people say ‘good to see you’ not ‘glad to meet you’.”

“And my mom says upper class people get their heads chopped off when lower class people finally get sick of their bullshit.”

“Your mom sounds cool.”

Sippy nodded. “Lonnie said you’d be coming.”

“You know Lonnie?”

“Are you kidding?” Jimmy crossed his fingers. “We’re like this! Hey, I got a car. Let’s sneak out of this mausoleum, I’ll buy you lunch at the Downyflake.”

And so the stage was set.

All of the players were present at that first lunchtime confrontation, though some were merely spectators. The play we were all enacting that year went from comedy to drama to horror.

And it’s not over yet.