Tanner's Story: The Bro Code Crew

Tanner James, one of the dual protagonists in The Stories Stars Tell, is on a journey in the story he feels ill-equipped to take (and I can’t say much more without giving away spoilers). I asked him to spend the next two weeks with us as a guest. I’d hoped for a podcast style interview, but he indicated he wasn’t really in a mental space to talk. However, he agreed to share some of his *Star Stories. I’m delighted to share one of those here today.

*background: Tanner and his older brother Rory used to tell one another “Star Stories” when they were little. This is a very important part of Tanner’s life. There’s more information on my Instagram Page (@cl.walters) today and an excerpt from The Stories Stars Tell that explains it.

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Star Story No. 15: The Bro Code Crew

By Tanner James

The stretch of space didn’t intimidate Teejay, but he was an idiot and didn’t know any better. The reality was that he’d been on an abandoned spaceship and couldn’t see the stretch with honest eyes. Instead, he was full of himself and the tip of his nose provided a comprehensive view. He was born on the ship, had lived there his entire life, and the rest of the crew had either died off, or departed at random spaceports and never returned forgetting that Teejay was even on board. So, Teejay was alone trying to run the ship himself with the computer named Mirus. The disembodied computer suggested a crew as a means to keep the ship performing at optimal condition. While Teejay was pretty self-important due to having existed for 15 cycles, and because he didn’t know any better, he figured it might be time to help him with the unwieldy spacecraft (not because he was lonely).

Teejay piloted the ship with the help of Mirus into the AlphaBen system and ported at Garax. It was there he found a crew: Gipper, Joriah, and Defcon. The first one he discovered was Gipper, who’d been drinking the kool-aid at a bar on the port where lowlifes, like Teejay suspected he was, went. They hit it off after hitting one another to determine who was the most manly though both were only 15 cycles. It was a tie. 

Next came Joriah who smiled a lot, but he was a pretty good wingman, and good with a gun, which he proved when the barkeep chased Gipper and Teejay through the port yelling that he hadn’t gotten paid. Joriah defended them with his gun, but Teejay figured they better drop in the credits so they weren’t wanted by the Garax Station police. He wasn’t willing to get sent off to  the ZIP (Zenadoo Interplanetary Penitentiary). He paid the man.

As it turned out, Joriah had been outside a Copulation Station when he and Gipper had run past too intimidated to go inside to see what all the chatter was about. Alien creatures and such selling skin. Teejay—as a way of paying Joriah’s good deed forward—offered to be the first, to test out and risk his (young) manly goods to make sure everything was safe. Relatively speaking, it was safe, and actually kind of mind altering, but he didn’t allow himself to think beyond the surface of the experience since that wasn’t what dudes like Teejay did, or so he figured. He didn’t have Mirus to ask since the computer was stuck in the ship. Teejay returned to the walkway physically unscathed and smiling. 

This was how Defcon—which wasn’t his real name and was really a play on the fact that Defcon was the furthest from anything annihilating— found the three of them. He’d wandered past the Copulation Station without any intent to enter just meandering about existing, and found the three of them standing outside discussing the merits of things like swapping skin a little too loudly like fools. Teejay had just returned from his libation in the world of skin trading and was getting ready to send the others inside. Defcon accidentally bumped into Gipper, who was always ready to trade fists, but Defcon just smiled and held up his hands in peace. Turned out he was something of a diplomat which Teejay figured would be a good addition to his spaceship crew. With nothing better to do, Defcon agreed to join the crew with little more than an explanation of what they were doing. Defcon smiled, clapped Gipper on the back and that was that.

Teejay sent them into the Copulation Station before leaving Garax.

With a crew assembled and satiated after their time spent in the CS, they boarded Teejay’s spaceship.

“What’s the mission?” Joriah asked as they walked onto the empty bridge.

Gipper smirked and flopped into the Captain’s chair which Teejay didn’t mind since he’d been captaining the ship alone for too long and willingly stepped away from the responsibility. He twirled about in the chair, spinning in place. “To visit every Copulation Station in the twenty-six systems and drink the kool-aid.”

Defcon smiled (mostly because that’s what he did) and offered the following comment: “That might get you diseased.”

“Medicine.” Gipper stopped and shook his head as if to reconnect to his head still spinning. He always had an answer for everything.

Defcon just continued smiling because that’s what he did.

Teejay, happy to not be alone any longer, nodded. “We’ll start with the AlphaBen system then. Mirus, set a course for the Andrus Spacestation.”

And that was how the Bro Code Crew aboard the CS Spacecraft 15 came to be.

The Thanksgiving Scene: Griffin and Maxwell

In honor of the season of Giving Thanks, I thought I’d share one of the two Thanksgiving scenes I’ve ever written. One of those two scenes is in The Letters She Left Behind, but I’m sharing the one from In the Echo of this Ghost Town. To give you a bit of a recap, Griffin and Max are friends (they met during the summer) and have continued their friendship through the fall, but Griffin is beginning to realize he might have more feelings for her than he’s acknowledged:

November

I’m fucking coming out of my skin waiting for Max—and Cal—to arrive for Thanksgiving. Thinking about our tiny-ass ranch style house with a tiny-ass living room and dining room, all of us packed in like sardines in a can, makes me hot and sweaty. The discomfort isn’t the space, it’s the idea of being so close to Max. Since my misguided attempt to share what happened with Coffee Lauren, my texts with Max have been different—not as easy as they once were. I’m afraid I’ve ruined us somehow, and I just want to fix what happened, to go back to the way things were.

I check my reflection in the bathroom one more time, to make sure I look okay. I’ve changed—sort of—since graduation. I’m not as skinny. I’ve got more defined muscles now from the physical work of construction stuff, and the running. My neck is wider, my face a little wider but sharper. I went and got a haircut because my hair was looking shaggy. I’d been inspired by Phoenix whose hair looks like shit—all long and ratty. I run my hands through my own hair one more time, then smooth my dark blue shirt, as if it will ease the ants crawling around inside my chest. I take a deep breath to douse their fire, but they crawl down my arms and out into my fingertips. I crack my knuckles.

“Griffin!” my mom yells from the kitchen. “Would you grab the door?”

I walk into the dining room and take an olive from a dish on the table set for six. Mom, Phoenix, and me. Bill. Cal and Max. Whatever Mom’s doing has my mouth watering. Who knew she could do the whole feast? She refused my help because Phoenix was in the kitchen helping her. She said, “It’s a two-butt kitchen, Griffin. You’re on house-straightening duty.” That took less than an hour. The rest of the unstructured time has added to the way my brain and nerves are spinning. Even the run hasn’t helped today.

“Stop eating the olives and get the door.”

Bill is on the other side. It’s clear he’s put some effort into his appearance for my mom, and I recall just looking at myself in the mirror, wondering why I went to the effort. His grayish hair is neat and trimmed. His red shirt buttoned up under his black leather bomber jacket. He’s tucked the shirt into gray slacks so his belly presses against the buttons a smidge. The cologne he’s wearing is strong and hovers around him like a cloud, but he offers a warm smile. He’s got a bottle of wine, flowers, and something store bought in a paper bag. “Hi, Griffin.”

I step back to let him in. “Hey.”

“Happy Thanksgiving,” he says.

I offer him a peacekeeping smile. “Yeah. You too.”

He passes me, drops everything but the flowers on the counter, then disappears from my view, but I can hear my mom’s pleasure and exclamation over the flowers.

Phoenix appears at the end of the hallway. He’s dressed, though not with as much attention to detail. Jeans and a blue t-shirt with a Star Wars Boba Fett encircled on it. His hair is pulled back into his version of a man bun, most of the hair hovering over his shoulders. He glances at whatever is happening in the kitchen and looks away, his eyes catching mine. For a moment, our brotherly language returns crossing space and time. That’s fucking annoying, he says without making a sound.

I roll my eyes in acknowledgement.

We smile together as he sits on the couch. I join him. He turns up the volume on the football game, so we don’t have to listen to the disgusting flirting occurring in the kitchen. Side by side, we watch the game. I like that our brother language has begun functioning again.

“You hear from Dad?” Phoenix asks between an offensive and defensive series on the TV screen. The game goes to commercial.

Mom laughs in the kitchen at something Bill’s low voice has said, though I can’t hear what it was.

I glance at my brother, who is avoiding my gaze. His is fixed on the commercial. “No. You?” I already know the answer to this question.

Phoenix clears his throat and runs his open hands across his denim-clad thighs. “Yeah. We’ve been talking.”

I look at the TV and watch some guy standing at the edge of a mountain cliff with his new SUV parked behind him. My heartbeat tightens in my chest, keeping things small and compact. I want to say something about it, but the feelings are first, surprise, given how much Phoenix hated our dad when we were younger, and second, insecurity, so I don’t know what to say.

“He wanted me to tell you Happy Thanksgiving.”

I press my teeth together and cross my arms over my chest. The words ‘go to hell’ surface on my tongue, but I don’t voice them. I just nod to let Phoenix know I’ve heard him, then watch as the uniformed men pummel each other on the TV screen.

When there’s a knock on our front door, my heart stalls because I know it’s Cal and Max. My hands start to sweat, which is weird.

“You just going to sit there?” Phoenix asks and pushes me. “You’re closer to the door.”

I find a way to get my muscles moving, swipe my hands over the back pockets of my jeans, and open the door.

Cal’s in front, taking up most of the real estate on the porch. He smiles, and I offer a distracted smile, more interested in seeing Max. I haven’t seen her in person since my visit to her dorm a month earlier, and I recall the way I hadn’t wanted to leave her. My heart speeds up, and my stomach dips and rolls tying itself up into knots. I’m not sure this is how other friends feel…

Cal steps into the living room, and Max is behind him. “Hey, SK.” Her honey hair is down, draped over her shoulders like a pretty waterfall. She looks up at me, and her eyes crash into mine like a wave. Feeling floods me.

…because I like Max. Oh my fucking god. I like Max, and it’s definitely more than friendship. The realization makes my breath logjam in my chest, and my head spin in the thought. I have feelings—real feelings—for Maxwell Wallace.

I recall the feel of her body pressed against mine that morning, and the way I wanted to crawl back into bed with her. The wish that I hadn’t had to go.

The way I feel bright and warm when she texts.

I remember laughing with her at Triple B.

I picture her working on the cabinet and the way her focus makes her lips look soft and kissable.

I feel her sly smile across the table at the pizza parlor, filling the empty deep spaces inside of me with joy.

My stomach does a dizzy dance, and I fist my hands at my sides to keep from reaching for her.

I’ve been so stupid.

Max is the way forward.

I don’t want her to date the Bens or Dereks or Hanks. I want it to be me she chooses—and then realize she tried. I ruined it, like I always do.

I clear my throat so that I can get words that disguise what I’m feeling out. “Happy Thanksgiving.”

She smiles, and her cheeks bloom roses. She swipes a lock of hair, tucks it behind her ear and looks down at her feet to navigate crossing the threshold. When she leans forward, she gives me an awkward hug with her hands on my shoulders. Unsure where to put my hands, I lean closer, breathing in cinnamon and spice, a hand on her back.

I swallow, my throat suddenly dry.

“Close the door. It’s cold,” Phoenix says.

I glance at him, see he’s shaking Cal’s hand, and close the door. “I can take that,” I tell Max.

She hands me the package she’s holding and removes her coat. She’s wearing a blue dress and an open sweater over the top of it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her in a dress. She looks so pretty that it hurts, a lump in my chest that my heart can’t seem to get around to function properly.

I lead her and Cal into the kitchen, where I introduce them to my mom and Bill.

“Thank you so much for your invitation,” Cal says. “Our kitchen doesn’t look much like a kitchen right now.”

“Yes. Griffin told me,” Mom says. “Would you like a glass of wine?”

They talk like grown-ups, and I tune them out in favor of focusing on Max.

Her eyes slide to mine. She smiles, and it hits my heart like a sharp dart in a bullseye of the board. I can’t keep looking at her because of the weird way it hurts, and I need to reset myself. I’m acting like an idiot. I go to the table and take some olives.

I track Cal as he returns to the living room to sit with Phoenix to watch the game. They talk though I can’t hear them.

Max, who’s standing next to me, has put olives on the tips of her fingers. She wiggles them at me. “I love olives.”

I smile. “I don’t think I’ve done that since I was a kid.”

“Then you’re missing out,” she says and bites one of her fingertips.

I follow her movement with my eyes, her fingertip to her lips. They close over the flesh of the olive, and it disappears. My belly constricts. When I reconnect with her eyes, she’s watching me. She smiles.

I clear my throat, look away because my skin is overheating, and coax myself not to be an idiot. Find something to say, I tell myself. “How are things with your dad?”

“Fine.” She eats another olive.

I beckon her to follow me and lead her down the hallway to my room. When I stop in the doorway, I realize I haven’t thought this through. The room might be sort of neat, but there aren’t a lot of places to sit.

Max doesn’t seem to mind and moves past me to sit on the end of my bed. She looks around.

I follow her in and stand awkwardly in the middle of the room. “You sure you’re okay?”

“It’s good. Dad and I talked.”

“You upset at him?”

“No. I was never really upset with him. Just the circumstances, you know. Indigo disappeared like I figured she would, and I realized that’s what he’d been trying to protect me from.”

I sit next to her.

She turns to face me.

I look down at my hands. It’s easier than getting stuck on the pretty way she looks. “He missed you. And when he got back, whatever happened shook him up.”

“Yeah. It shook me too. He’s all I’ve got.”

I can’t help but look at her then. I search her face. This close in this light I can see she’s got a beauty mark just under her left eye. Her eyes have these deep blue striations and a splash of green in the left one. I’m drawn to the pretty pink sheen of her lips. They’re not smiling at me but downturned just a touch. Kissable. I can feel her eyes measuring me, too, and it feels a little reminiscent of that day in August, when she kissed me. Hope offers a tentative pulse inside of me. Could she still want to kiss me?

“You have me,” I tell her.

She looks away, turns so she’s sitting on the edge of the bed, and examines her fingers. Her nails are painted blue to match her dress. “I’m glad.”

I realize even if she is still interested in me, she’d never be the one to cross the line of friendship. Not after what happened in August. I rejected her. Fear coils up like a snake inside of me, tight around the terror of ruining our friendship. Knowing me, that is exactly what I would do. I’ve left a trail of ruined friendships.

She stands, moves away. “So, this is SK’s room.” She glances over her shoulder at me with a fun smile. Dimple.

My belly responds, flopping about. I want to touch her, draw her back to the bed, kiss that dimple.

She moves about the small room with her hands clasped behind her back. “This doesn’t look like a serial killer’s room.” Her voice is low when she says it, like she’s imparting a secret.

“That’s because it isn’t.” I lean back on my hands to watch her move. “What does a serial killer’s bedroom look like?”

Her upper lip quirks with one of those sassy smiles. “Oh. Full of all the news clippings of all their nefarious activities.” Her eyes sparkle as she says it.

“Nefarious? Speak English.” I purposefully goad her.

“I am. Sinister. Come on, SK.” She resumes looking around. “But there isn’t much here. I mean, it doesn’t really reflect you. Where are your posters? Trophies? Pictures of friends?”

I sit back up and glance around. She’s right. There isn’t much of me in this room. “I took down the one poster I had.”

“Oh.” Her eyes light up. “I bet I can guess what it was.”

I raise my eyebrows to invite her to guess.

She returns to the bed and sits next to me. “A picture of a hot girl in a bikini.”

I smile. “Close.”

“And a car.”

This makes me laugh. “Closer.” I wish we were sitting closer.

She smiles. “Why did you take it down?”

I look around at the room, which suddenly feels like a stranger’s space; I don’t know who this person is, and there’s nothing here to tell me. It’s empty. “It just didn’t feel right anymore.”

She hums a response. I don’t know what it means. It doesn’t sound judgmental.

“Would you like me to take your sweater?” I ask her.

“Sure.” She gets up.

I stand, stepping up behind her—closer—to help her.

She turns her head slightly, and I notice the way her lashes fan over her cheeks.

My fingertips graze the bare skin of her shoulder.

She stalls, and her eyes flash to mine.

I freeze.

Someone laughs in the other room.

She shivers, looks away, says something about keeping the sweater, and shrugs it back on.

I don’t catch all of what she’s said more cognizant of the fire burning from my fingertips straight to my center. “Max.” I don’t know why I say her name. I just need to. I can’t find my balance without saying it. I don’t reach out and touch her. I don’t move. I’m in suspended animation.

She draws her hair from under the collar and turns to face me. “Yeah?” Then her eyes flick up to mine, and I know she can see all the feelings my features are telling her. While I may have been able to hide them from everyone else, I’ve never been very good at hiding them when it comes to her. She saw them the very first time she met me when she sat down at the table. She hadn’t even known my name.

She steps closer.

When she takes a breath, I can feel the shift in my shirt, whispering a caress across my skin.

She tilts her head slightly to meet my gaze. “Griffin?”

Griffin.

Not SK.

Griffin.

My heart is in my throat, filling it with its mass rather than words because I don’t know what the words are. I just know there are flashes of lightning electrifying me. I notice her breathing—it’s erratic, faster than a moment ago. These tiny observations make me think that maybe she wants me to kiss her. That whatever happened last August is still between us, that all the tension I felt at her dorm wasn’t just me.

I’m afraid.

“Me too,” she says.

“I said that out loud?”

She offers a tentative smile, nods, then leans toward me as if to tell me she’s willing to meet me halfway.

I reach out and pinch a strand of her hair between my fingers, afraid to touch her, but she tilts her head so that her cheek presses against my hand holding the strand of silky hair. I release it and lay my open palm against her cheek.

“I want to kiss you,” I say, but the words barely make a sound.

“Hey!”

I straighten, and Max whirls around at the sound of Phoenix’s voice.

Standing in the doorway, his eyes darting between us, Phoenix smiles a toothy grin, which makes me want to punch his face. “Dinner,” he says.

“Okay.” I offer him a frustrated look.

He winks at me before he disappears, and I grind my teeth together.

Max, who is suddenly intent on looking at the stuff on top of my dresser, has her back to me.

“Ready?” I ask.

She turns, her cheeks pink with a blush, and nods. “Starving.”

I wonder if she’s talking about the meal. The thought excites me that she isn’t.

In the Echo of this Ghost Town: Facing Fear

SOME SH… STUFF I LEARNED ABOUT FACING FEAR

BY GRIFFIN NICHOLS

1. It’s fu…flipping terrifying, but…

2. Everyone is afraid of something, and if they say they aren’t, they’re lying.

3. I used to think that not caring would cure me of being afraid, but it was a lie I told myself because really all I felt all the time was fear.

4. When I looked at my friends, I hid my fear in bravado so they wouldn’t see how bad I felt about myself. I was terrified they’d learn the truth that I was weak. Turns out, you can’t hide stuff like that because the truth always comes out mostly in ugly ways.

5. Max taught me that admitting you're afraid doesn’t make you weak. It’s exactly the opposite. Admitting you are afraid is bravery.

In the Echo of this Ghost Town: Choices and Consequences

BY GRIFFIN NICHOLS

I’m writing this at 11:46pm the night before it’s due. A choice, and probably not a good one. I know it isn’t the best policy to meet a deadline with any kind of efficiency, and the consequence is you’ll probably get a sh… crappy blog post. Look, writing and sharing sh...stuff isn’t really my thing. Regardless, CL insisted because she has this weird idea that more people should have access to my story, so they should get to know me better. Ummm, okay. Whatever. That’s sort of weird. But I’ll play along. For her. I’d rather just sort of stay in my lane, you know?

She told me the theme this week is choice and consequence. Dude… I know about this sh… stuff. That’s probably why she asked me. My life is riddled with this idea and not only for me, but for my family in general. I mean, look at my dad: gets into selling weapons and drugs and off to prison he goes, leaving us behind. That’s a sh...crap consequence. Has an affair with someone, which results in another kid. All these choices he made that didn’t only affect him, but each of us, you know?

I guess I’ve fallen into the same pattern of being careless with my choices, even if I don't want to think about it. Truth be told though, a few months ago I wouldn’t have even had that thought. I was content to just party with my boys, make fu… stupid choices, and mess sh… stuff up. I didn’t really care about anything except my friends and how we were together. It’s only been since the fight I had with Tanner, my best friend, that I’ve even considered what it all means for myself. It’s weird to think that sometimes bad sh… things have to happen in order for us to open our eyes and see the truth about stuff.

And that sucks. 

Choices and consequences come back to patterns, don't they? I was in a party pattern with my friends. It worked until it didn’t, and now I’m having to figure out a new pattern that works better. New choices. Varied outcomes that hopefully put me on a better path. I guess when I got to that place I needed to look at that pattern, and could finally see it, I had to ask myself: what now?

That’s it. That’s all I got. Not super profound or anything. I just figure it is what it is, you know? See it. Fix it. Move on. But look, it’s taken me a while to get to this point, and I have a lot of people in my life now to thank for getting there. 

A Letter from Maxwell (When the Echo Answers)

Dear Reader,

Dad’s moved us again. The summer before I leave for college. Yeah. He picked this dump of a house about three hours from where I’ll be going to school, and when I look at him, I think maybe he’s as scared about me leaving as I am (even if I am ready).

It’s always just been us, you see. Me and my dad against the world.

And now it’s still going to be us. Separately. 

With all the moving, I’ve developed this knack: I’ve learned how to be a chameleon. I don’t mean this like I change who I am to fit in or anything, but kind of more like I can disguise myself to avoid being prey, you know? Blend into the world around me. Look, I’m not proud to admit this. My dad has told me to be myself, and I am, mostly. But sometimes, when I look in the mirror, even when I like myself, there’s stuff about myself I don’t really like. I don’t like that I’m not the kind of person people (besides my dad) choose.

Maybe college will change that?

Sorry to be a downer. I’m not usually. Here. Let’s start over:

My name is Maxwell Wallace and I like running, strawberry Slushies (don’t tell Dad), and long walks on the beach. I also really like 80’s and 90’s hard rock music, and I like to laugh. Would you date me? I think I’m a catch!

College, get ready for this girl!

Love,

Max