If Only It Were a Little Funnier: A Novel

Until recently, sixteen-year-old Harry ("Hair-Trigger") Marvin has had a rough life. He’s been passed around the foster system - neglected, abused, disowned. He’s never known who his real parents are; he’s only heard the recurring myth that he was found in a dumpster. But now, Harry’s been taken in by a well-to-do family that encourages him to investigate his roots and find his birth parents. However, the search itself becomes clouded by another, more pressing dilemma.
Excerpt - Chapter 1
Those Kids

Must’ve been born under a bad sign. That’s what Larry tells me. But he doesn’t actually say it. He sings it in a deep, raspy voice that isn’t really deep and raspy, but more like an imitation of what a deep and raspy voice might sound like when his balls drop: “If it wasn’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have no luck at all.”

Larry likes to talk in blues lyrics whenever he can. Most of the time it’s nonsense, but I think he was on to something there. Both of us’ve had shit luck. The type of luck where if you were to create a lottery and make the odds of getting struck by lightning – twice – better than the odds of winning the lottery, and then instead of getting fat stacks somebody shit in the bed that is your life, that would be us. More so with Larry than with me. With me, I’m just bad luck for everybody around me, including Larry. To prove my point: Larry’s celled up in Juvi now. We’ve always been called, or at least treated, like bad kids. Now people can have their suspicions confirmed.

Larry, Floyd, and I would even joke around that we were Those Kids. The “bad kids.” The type of kids parents wouldn’t allow their kids to play with. The kids that were never invited to sleepovers. The kids that had to wear their parents' oversized clothes to school, if they had parents of their own. The kids that didn’t have money for lunch, but instead had to punch in a code for lunch, and even bought their breakfast from school with the same code. The kids that were stupid and bullies. The kids that lived month-to-month in apartments and didn’t come home till dark, because they spent the rest of daylight in detention. The kids that didn’t want to go home, so they acted out to get detention. The kids with uneven haircuts. The kids that smelled bad. The kids that sometimes came to school with bruises and cigarette burns. The kids that smoke or vape even knowing all about lung cancer and shit like emphysema. With ripped jeans that aren’t fashionable.

If you’re reading this and you’ve ever been to high school, you know what I’m talking about. We’re, apparently, those kids. So what do you do when every teacher (except The Wolf) and every parent of a kid you get along with treats you this way? What do you do when even your own foster parents treat you this way? You own that shit. So we started calling each other Those Kids. When I’d see Floyd or Larry in the halls or at one of their plexes, I’d say, “Sup Those Kids” (even if it wasn’t grammatical and would have pissed off The Wolf). You said it so you felt like you belonged, like you had a crew.

But Larry ain’t bad. And Floyd sure as hell ain’t bad. Maybe we will be. Maybe Larry just took that first step we’ll all take. What happened to Larry is what happens when Those Kids try to change their luck. According to Floyd, Larry’s outburst is one of Newton’s Laws of Physics: to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Larry’s getting all locked up in Juvi is a result of that equal and opposite part. It was the equal and opposite reaction of being dealt a junk hand, of winning the Crappy Life Lottery.