Slowed Down

Everyone laughed at him when he said he listened to Alvin and the Chipmunks. The entire class laughed so loud and hard that they didn’t hear him tag the sentence with the words “slowed down.” He enjoyed listening to Alvin and the Chipmunks slowed down.

He supposed if roles were reversed, he might have laughed too, not to be hurtful but because he really did see the humor in it. Though they have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, though they have five Grammy awards and two platinum selling albums, the Chipmunks were an abomination of a cartoon, their voices irritating to the nth degree. But not this, not his mix.

It was a collection of six songs, six covers including “Walk like an Egyptian,” “Call Me,” and “Heaven is a Place on Earth.” But right now, as he was driving aimlessly through the suburbs of eastern Long Island on a late Saturday night in October, he was listening to the Chipmunks’ version of the Pet Shop Boys’ “Always on my Mind,” and it was fantastic. Slowed down to 16 RPM, the song stretched to nearly seven illuminating minutes. The Chipmunks’ hyper voices, which were actually creator Ross Bagdasarian’s own voice sped up, were now beautifully stretched. Not like the demonic drones of voices in slow motion video but, rather, a haunting and profound rasp. Whereas their previous state of the recordings was unnatural and cloying, the Chipmunks now sounded authentic and filled with real emotion. The instruments, too, were clearer and more expansive. The sound was modern, August thought, maybe even post-modern. His peers had no idea what they were missing out on. He found so much pathos in the songs now, this one especially. It was able to contain all his thoughts, to hold them exactly where he wanted them to be. A kind of cradling. For him, it was about a girl. Hannah Hurts.

The two of them didn’t talk much in school, but she did sit behind him in English class, and sometimes she’d play with his long hair, remarking how pin straight it was with absolutely no split ends. Sometimes she’d braid it, sometimes she’d throw it in a pony tail, and every time she did so, August melted. The feel of her hands in his hair was a kind of warm magic. A spell he never wanted to end. Other than that, he was lucky if she said hello in the hallway, even though he corrected her homework at the beginning of class and adjusted his posture during tests so that she could easily cheat off him by glancing over his shoulder. He knew the game, though. She was popular, he wasn’t. She was a cheerleader, he was a nerd. The stuff of songs.

But life didn’t have to be like that, did it? The two of them didn’t have to settle into these stereotypes. Maybe she could see him as a good catch. He truly believed he was, not because his mother told him so, because she didn’t. His mother didn’t give a shit about him, though he knew she had a lot on her plate and was struggling just to get by, so he gave her a free pass. He’d learned a thing or two while basically fending for himself, and one of them was that he’d make a great boyfriend. He’d treat Hannah right and respect her and ask all the right questions. He’d buy her things and never forget important dates and never, ever cheat. He wouldn’t pressure her into things she didn’t want to do, and he wouldn’t burden her with his insecurities. He had all of it covered. The two of them, they just belonged together. He couldn’t explain it, but he felt it, as strong as anything. Did he believe in soul mates? Did she?

Listening to the slowed down world of Alvin and the Chipmunks, he wondered what the world would be like if it, too, were slowed down. What if it slowed down so much that it practically stopped? And what if, unlike those around him, he could move through life unobstructed? And what if the only other person in the world who could do this was his soul mate? And the point of all this was for them to spend their days searching for the one other person who was moving. And when they finally found each other, then the world would suddenly catch up, and life would carry them along together at its hectic and unfair pace. These are the worlds the slowed down Chipmunks created for him.

Tonight he was a kind of Uber driver, an unpaid one. His high school had set up a program where kids with licenses drive home inebriated classmates from wherever they are, no questions asked. This was implemented after a group of eight seniors got drunk and piled into a mini van, where one of them kept playing with the sliding door, opening and closing it as they sped down the road until, on a sharp turn, one of the kids fell out and was killed. August was overwhelmed with grief when he had heard, though he didn’t really know the boy. With a graduating class of 700 kids, there were many he had never met. It was a shame, he thought; he wished he could get to know everyone. But high schoolers were a difficult bunch. Still, when this program was announced, he signed up. He wanted to do his share. Besides, it wasn’t like he had much going on Friday and Saturday nights, anyway.

He hadn’t received a call yet—most nights he didn’t—but he liked driving around, alone with his thoughts, listening to his music. Anticipating. He liked feeling useful, like with his other freelance gig as a wailer. His job, along with a few others who were collected on Reddit, was to go to sparsely attended funerals and openly weep for the deceased. He could have gotten paid for the work, but August believed everyone deserved to have somebody weep over their passing. He never had to fake the tears, either; they came naturally enough as he wondered what some poor soul went through, why he didn’t have any friends, and what his life must have been like.

At 11:37 he received a text from the school hotline saying three kids needed to be picked up outside the Target on Bolton Avenue. August replied he’d be there in five minutes, and quickly turned the car around, a perfect three point turn in the middle of a deserted street, a lesson he learned not from his driver’s ed teacher but from a YouTube video. He knew the group had most likely been at Joe Diggs’ house party just two blocks west of the Target. It was supposed to be kind of a big deal. So big that he made sure not to drive past it the entire night.

The Target parking lot was empty, save for three figures gathered beneath one of the flickering lamps, dancing and jumping about. As he got closer, he noticed it was three girls, and when he pulled alongside them, his stomach plummeted when he realized one of them was Hannah.

Hands shaking, he rolled down his window, leaned toward the passenger side, and tried to speak but couldn’t get a word in as the trio barraged him with nearly incoherent comments and unbridled laughter.

“Are you him?”

“Are you he?”

“Our ride has arrived! Wut! Wut!”

“Woo!”

“You had us waiting for, like, hours.”

“This ride’s a POS. We should walk.”

“No, my legs hurt from dancing.”

They were giggling and swaying. Two of them, one being Hannah, still had drinks in their hands. It was a colder night than average, but that didn’t stop them from wearing half shirts with no coats, August noticed. He could tell their hair and outfits must have been pristine at the beginning of the evening but were now in disarray. Not that it affected Hannah’s beauty. In fact, he enjoyed seeing her in this light. It was a peek at the realer side of her, one she didn’t show often. Her reddish hair had that just-got-out-of-bed look, that comely naturalness that said she had enjoyed her sleep and was comfortable waking beside you, bad breath and all. Or so August imagined. Her leggings accentuated her strong thighs, but they were also covered in blond dog hair, and he pictured her on the floor wrestling with a golden retriever. Goosebumps dotted her pale skin, a kind of braille he wished to decipher. Her makeup was smeared. And the way she was acting, the silliness, he found her so childlike, so innocent that he wished he had known her longer.

Staring, August didn’t know how to begin. “Um, you guys put in a call?” He knew his face was turning red but was happy they couldn’t see, the lighting being what it was.

“No telling our parents! That’s the rule!”

“No narcing, Narc!”

“Hey, I know him,” Hannah said, leaning through the passenger side window, her beer bottle clanking against the car door. “I know him, you guys. He has nice hair.”

“Ew,” one said.

“Can we get in or what?” Hannah asked.

August squirmed. “Um, I can’t have open containers in my car.”

“Pfft!” The taller of the other two girls imitated his voice, poorly. “‘I can’t have open containers in my car.’”

“It’s—it’s a law, guys,” he insisted.

Hannah pouted and put on a baby voice. “Pwease, Auggie. We’ll behave. Pwomise.”

“I… Yeah, I know you will, Hannah. Get in.” August unlocked the doors, and the girls squeezed into the back, shouting and cursing.

“You just elbowed me in the tit, Lacy!”

“What tit?”

“Bitch!”

August peered through his rearview mirror at them but only intermittently, hoping he didn’t come off too creepy. “One of you can sit up front if you’d like.”

“Ew, no.”

The girls were laughing nonstop. Having never tasted alcohol, he wondered if everyone was affected in this way. Wasn’t it a depressant?

“Were you at the party?” one asked as he started to pull out of the parking lot.

“Why weren’t you at the party?”

“Really. Why are you doing this on a Saturday night?”

“Why are you doing this ever?”

“I—”

“What are we even listening to?”

August only now realized he still had his music playing. “It’s Alvin and the Chipmunks—”

Hysterical laughing.

“Slowed down.”

“Isn’t that, like, a cartoon?” Lacy asked, speaking over him.

“Yeah, but this is—”

“Oh! Oh! Do—do you know Garfield? The cartoon, Garfield?”

August sighed and nodded. “Sure.”

“Did you know, it’s about drugs.”

“Drugs?” August had little interest in talking about drugs.

“Like, why do you think Garfield’s hungry all the time? Eating lasagna, plants, and everything. I’ll tell you why. That cat’s high out of his fucking mind. Got the munchies. The leaf is making him all lazy. Depressed, cynical, whatever. Loves coffee, hates work, right? Then you have Odie. O.D. Dog is absolutely fried. See his bugged out eyes, tongue sticking out like he’s dying of thirst? All hyper and shit? Dumb as bricks. Garfield beats on him, but Odie doesn’t feel a thing. Drugs. It’s all there in the comics. I’m telling you. A total metaphor.”

“Then what about Jon?” August asked, attempting to dispel this theory. “What’s his role in this?”

Lacy sat back. “Jon? He’s the dealer, yo.”

The girls fell into hysterics again, and August jumped on the highway for an exit, admiring the girl’s ingenuity. He loved how surprising people could be.

“Do you think a hearse can use the HOV lane?” the other girl asked. He thought her name was Adele, but he couldn’t remember for sure and felt as if he were letting her down in some way.

“Oh, I don’t like talking about dead people,” August said.

“I’m not talking about dead people!” the girl shouted. “It’s… it’s a hyphen… hyphen-ethical. Hyper ethical.”

“Hypothetical?”

“Whatever, nerd boy!”

“No, really, what are we listening to?” Hannah asked. “I kind of like it.”

“Ew.”

“It kind of sounds like early Mercury in the Skin, doesn’t it?” she asked her friends.

“I guess.”

“You like Mercury in the Skin, August?” Sitting directly behind him, she leaned forward, practically whispering in his ear. It was his turn to have goosebumps.

“I don’t really know them.”

“They’re playing next week. You should come.”

“I should?”

She sat back. “If you want. They kick ass.”

“You’re going to be there?”

“Hell yeah.”

“Okay. Okay, I’ll see if I can get tickets.” He knew there was no way he’d not get them. He’d pay ten times the price if he had to.

Five minutes later he dropped all three of them off at Lacy’s where they were crashing for the night. Nobody thanked him for the ride. He pulled away from the curb and accelerated, waiting for the world to catch up.