Slick
By Logan Rips
Stephen Clark Sandlin. This name is printed on a small rectangular birth certificate, hidden away in a faded manila folder in the back of the third drawer from the bottom of a filing cabinet in the corner of Storage Room B on the second floor of the County Auxiliary Records Facility on J Street between Stoneman Daycare and Pleasant Hills Funeral Home. If, by some chance, a filing clerk were to stumble across this birth certificate (in this scenario, the clerk would have Level 3 Security Clearance as designated by the city manager and have completed three months of mandatory discretionary training), and if by some chance they decided they needed to find this Stephen Clark Sandlin, they would be puzzled to discover that no such person exists.
But how can this be? His birth certificate says that he was born in 2001. That means he would currently be a senior at Rancho Country Day High School. There is a senior at Rancho Country Day whose father’s name is Stephen Sandlin. And Stephen Sandlin’s father is named Clark. But this boy is not Stephen Clark Sandlin. His name is Slick. Nothing more, nothing less. If you walked up to him and called him Stephen, he would either look at you funny or shoot you an icy glare, depending on how many people were around. He has mealy, greasy black hair. He uses the wrong kind of hair gel on purpose, partly because he can and partly to see if anyone will point it out. So far, nobody has. Every day he wears the same thing: a loose, dirty sweatshirt bearing the logo of a rock band formed in 1981 and disbanded in 1981, and a dusty pair of coal-black jeans. Nobody knows if he owns ten pairs of the same pants or if he just wears the same one over and over again, and nobody wants to be the one to ask.
Teachers and custodians, parents and lunch ladies, classmates and crossing guards—everyone refers to him as Slick, whether or not he is around. There was only one time when the mask slipped, a mere fluke in the otherwise perfectly constructed veil that surrounds him. It was either a muggy, boiling Monday or a frigid, bone-chilling Friday, depending on who you ask. It was third period, time for History, and there was a substitute. Mrs. Cotton—about fifty years old, short, with frizzy gray hair and big framed glasses—has one of those faces that always looks like someone just mentioned something she’s never heard of. She was awkwardly making her way down the printed-out roll sheet when, sandwiched in between “Rutger, Amber Lee” and “Selman, Jeffrey Kevin,” she found an anomaly. An obsolete misnomer, a variable pointing to an object that did not exist, in its place an empty slot in memory.
“Stephen? Is Stephen here?”
Suddenly, there was dead silence in the air, and a student sitting in the back corner, completely obscured by the rows of students in front of him, utterly unnoticed and forgotten, climbed to his feet. It was Slick, clad in a hoodie with “Satan Shouters” written across the front. He said, in a slow and deliberate tone: “I’m sorry, but there isn’t anybody by that name in this class,” and sat down. A chill ran down Mrs. Cotton’s spine. She felt as though there was an invisible hand over hers, guiding it as it crossed out the offending misnomer on the roll sheet. The next day, Slick walked right into the principal’s office and asked him, if it wasn’t too much trouble, could he please put the name he preferred to go by on the roll sheets. He was happily obliged. Within a couple of years, Slick managed to eliminate the impostor name “Stephen” entirely. Steven Becker in tenth grade agreed to go by “Steve” even though he would have rather gone by his full name, as he had done his entire life. Stephen Carlisle, an alumnus from three years ago, was not around to choose a replacement name, so discussion of him ceased entirely.
Sometimes a look is ten times more effective than a fist. Everyone at the Ranch harbors at least some fear of Slick, but he has never laid his hands on anyone. Part of the reason is his smile. Slick has one of those smiles that’s incredibly unnerving, but not in a way that you can put into words. It’s almost hypnotizing in a way. One time, Mrs. Garrison assigned Carrie to her English students. Soon the entire class was walking around talking about Stephen King this and Stephen King that. It was as if they were eight-year-olds given a free pass to say a naughty word. When Slick caught wind of this, he dropped by Mrs. Garrison’s room and smiled his smile and asked if it wasn’t too much trouble could she please remove that book from her curriculum. Mrs. Garrison had a husband, two children, three cats, and no death wish. She stopped assigning the book.
Mary Kelly Geller is the type of girl who only exists in movies. Her long, flowing blonde hair reaches halfway down her waist. She enjoys the finer things in life, namely partying, alcohol, and ditching class. She has dresses in four colors (neon red, baby blue, coal black, and heavenly white) and sports cars to match each one. If you walked out of school and saw her standing next to her car, you would swear that it was a mirage. She looks like she was plucked right off a 1980s pinup poster. It’s dangerous to look at her for more than a few seconds, not just because she’s so radiant but also because, well, she’s Slick’s girl. Nobody can ever figure out how a girl like Mary Kelly ended up with a guy like Slick. Some people earnestly think that he might have just walked up to her one day and asked her if it was not too much trouble could she please be his girlfriend, and smiled his insidious little smile. She could have any guy in school, from the star quarterback on the football team to the world champion mathlete, but she chose Slick. She calls him her little devil; he calls her something that cannot be repeated in polite company. They seem to be the oddest pairing in the world. Yet somehow, when you see them sitting together in her car, they just make sense together. It’s like he has a spell on her. And yes, some kids do really believe that he has a spell on her.
Mary Kelly’s mother, Kelly Geller, is a born-again Christian. Kelly is five foot three and skinny as a rail. Her skin is splotchy and orange, her hair is greasy and rattailed, and her face has more plastic in it than a landfill. When Kelly converted, she devised a plan for her family. She would have four daughters and would give each of them two names: first, the name of the Virgin Mary, and second, the name of one of her sisters: Jenny, Julie, Kelly, and Lizzie. Mary Jenny and Mary Julie came first; today, they are at a cushy private college upstate, studying for a master’s degree in trust funds. Then came another miracle, and Kelly was able to pass along her own name, bringing Mary Kelly into the world. When she heard of her daughter’s relationship, she was of course horrified; she made a show of clasping her palm to her forehead and sobbing like a seal. From then on, she took every opportunity to lecture her daughter about how she needs to find a man who is good enough for the family and ask her why she cannot be more like Mary Jenny, who is engaged to such a wonderful manager of a hedge fund or something. But whenever she encounters Slick, her tune changes completely. She laughs and laughs and laughs, even at his off-color jokes. Talking to him gives her a feeling that she has not had since before she converted. She forgets that Mary Kelly is in the room, imagines herself and Slick driving down a desert road at ninety miles per hour, her hair whipping in the wind and her laughs carried off by the breeze, flying free over the land and falling to the earth somewhere in Tucson.
When Kelly became pregnant for the fourth time and learned that her child was to be another girl, she was overjoyed. God had heard her pleas and given her the family she had dreamed of since converting. Soon, the fourth daughter arrived, and Kelly took her to be baptized. But when she handed the newborn to the priest, he recoiled and screamed in horror. Shivering with each breath, he informed the horrified Kelly that he felt the presence of Satan in her daughter. Though Kelly was assured that there was nothing to worry about and that embracing God would drive the devil out of the girl, it was not enough to pacify her. She decided that there was no sense in giving the Virgin Mary’s name to a demonic child, so Mary Lizzie became just Lizzie. When Lizzie was fifteen, it was discovered that the priest, a Christian scientist, had been suffering from undiagnosed schizophrenia for two decades. But by then, it was too late. Kelly could not look at Lizzie the same way she looked at her non-satanic children. All the attention was focused on the three eldest daughters, leaving the youngest in solitude. Lizzie began dyeing her naturally blonde hair black, wearing tight-fitting clothing, listening to rock music, and skipping out on Sunday school. Kelly assumed that Lizzie no longer believed in God, which was not entirely correct. It was more so that Lizzie had no faith in a God who would let her be neglected by her mother. She harbored a vague but throbbing disdain toward the idea of God, similar to her feelings toward her mother. Of course, the two never discussed this topic. Kelly was partially in denial and feared that acknowledging her daughter’s lack of faith out loud would make it permanent, and Lizzie knew that such a discussion would result in her being thrown out of the house.
Today, Lizzie is a sophomore at the Ranch. Once a week, Slick meets her in the alley behind Marcia’s Ice Cream Parlor. Every time, the routine is the same. First, he hands her a spool of cash wrapped in twine. Next, she hands him an unmarked cardboard box sealed with packing tape. Then he makes an obscene joke, she walks away without responding, and he takes out his phone to check Snapchat. Slick distributes the contents to kids around school. His “side hustle,” as he calls it, is an open secret. If you want to make a purchase, you simply get the number for his “work phone” and call to set up an appointment. Slick does not deal in names. If you walk up to him and ask for Xanax or Adderall or Percocet, he will just give you a funny look. But if you tell him that you have a big test tomorrow and you are having trouble focusing on studying, then he’ll smirk, pop open the box, and take out three bags of brightly colored pills.
“Okay, so we got three kinds here: the purple, the blue, and the pink. This one I like to call the purple maiden. It’s nice and reliable, it’ll give you a little boost. It makes you dehydrated, but hey, you should be drinking eight large glasses of the good stuff per day anyway. Only problem is it lasts about an hour. This is good if you’re going for a last-minute cram or for actually taking the test, but anything more than that and it’s as useless as a condom with a hole in it. Now the pinks are a son of a bitch. They last longer than me in bed and they pack a real nice punch, but they’ll give you headaches like nobody’s business. You’ll be nonfunctional the day after the test, but hey, they get the job done. I suppose if you’re a bit of a pussy you can go for the blues. They last just as long as the pinks but they’re weak as all hell. I mean seriously, I think they give these things to babies. You’d get a better high by huffing mustard. All right, so what’ll it be? Two pinks and a purple? You got it, that’ll be fifty smackaroos. Pleasure doing business with you. Hey, good luck on that math test.”
Slick has been in the business longer than anyone can remember. Nobody knows how exactly he became involved with the Geller family, whether his romantic relationship with Mary Kelly or his business relationship with Lizzie came first. The most outlandish claim is that he actually hooked up with Mary Julie at a college party first and she tipped off her younger sister about his “proficiency.” Some say Mary Kelly has no idea about his side hustle, others say she is his best customer. Nobody knows and everyone is too afraid to ask. So the stories get invented, and then they circle around and around forever, and they never go away because nobody is brave enough to find out what the truth is. That’s the problem when you’re in an environment like a high school, where people repeat stories until they become the truth.
Slick has a pretty good hold over everything. In four years of hiding in plain sight, not one person has tried tattling on him to anyone. Of course, some things have managed to slip through. Every now and again, someone will be talking about Slick’s business or that time he and Mary Kelly were in the janitor’s closet for a long time, not realizing that somebody who shouldn’t have heard is within hearing range. That is just the way it goes sometimes. Even the most powerful dams in the world have cracks here and there. But whenever this happens, it never goes very far. On the off chance that it reaches the principal’s ear, it’s immediately dismissed. Slick up to no good? The boy who is always polite? The boy who has straight As and just got promoted to assistant manager at Marcia’s Ice Cream Parlor? That boy? Not a chance.
And nobody would dare try to go over the principal’s head because if they did and Slick found out then he would . . . see, that’s the thing. What would he do? If you take a moment to think about it, you will realize that you have no idea. It is hard to imagine him hitting someone, or hell, even raising his voice. When he found out that Billy Pritchard was flirting with Mary Kelly, everyone thought that would be the moment he finally snapped. But instead he just walked up to Billy, smiled, and asked him if it wasn’t too much trouble could he please knock it the hell off. Within two weeks, Billy Pritchard was gone. Through her coffee shop gossip circles, Poppy Johnson’s mom heard that Billy started eating less and always seemed to be afraid of something, and his parents decided it was best to send him to boarding school in another state. Take this with a grain of salt, though, as bored middle-aged parents are possibly the only group more unreliable than high school students. It is at least more believable than the prevailing theory at the Ranch, which is that Billy Pritchard is buried in Slick’s backyard.
Slick has built up a pretty good thing for himself at Rancho Country Day. But it cannot last forever. There are only a few months left until graduation. Pretty soon, Mary Kelly will be whisked away upstate to her sisters, and he will have to figure out what the hell to do with himself. He’ll have to wash his hair and get new clothes. He’ll have to attend a school where the principal isn’t named Clark Sandlin. But most importantly, he can’t be Slick. Try as he might, when he ventures outside the safe space he has created at the Ranch, Stephen Clark Sandlin is sure to follow. Some school dean or boss will need to know his legal name, and that will be it. Maybe he’ll be too scared to face the music, and he’ll run. He’ll leave town, leave the state, maybe even the country. He’ll run until he finds a place that will open the door and let Slick in but slam it shut before Stephen Clark Sandlin can follow him. But sooner or later, Stephen Clark will find an unlocked window and slip in. And somewhere, buried deep beneath all those layers of confidence and bravado, he knows that. He knows that he can’t run forever. But for now, he’s safe. For now, the only place Stephen Clark Sandlin can be found is on J Street between Stoneman Daycare and Pleasant Hills Funeral Home, in the County Auxiliary Records Facility, on the second floor, in the corner of Storage Room B, in a faded manila folder in the back of the third drawer from the bottom of a filing cabinet, on a small rectangular birth certificate.
Logan Rips
2/23/22
Logan is a sophomore at UC Davis. He prefers writing stories over essays because stories let him get creative.
