“Taylor,” he said, “good luck in California.”
“Thanks.”
How would I convince Johnny Moon to love me? I wondered if he liked dogs. I wondered if he liked goldfish. I wondered if he liked pirates.
Stinky Lewis looked at me, confused, then looked at Brad’s car. He barked as the car pulled away.
I think Stinky Lewis was nervous, because he started rolling over for me, right there on the dirt. It was like he had to prove that he was worth keeping.
“It’s okay,” I said to him, curling my fingers into his wiry fur. “Stop rolling over. You don’t have to roll over. I want you.”
The Hopuonk Beachcombers
A few days later, after my cold had passed, I found myself walking out of school, not to the parking lot, but to the field, where one of the last cheerleading practices of the season was being held.
There was Heather, the team’s best flyer, her horsey knee bent ninety degrees on top of a pyramid. When she cheered, her face took on a brightness that I never saw at any other time.
I watched for a while. The Hopuonk Beachcombers actually had a fantastic cheerleading squad. They went to nationals, which were held at Disney World every year, and though a couple of teams from Kentucky always beat them, they usually placed pretty high.
I watched Heather as the two bases basket-tossed her high into the air, and I wondered if cheerleading, for her, was like her father’s flying lessons were to him. Then I watched her on the ground, effortlessly performing a full twist after two perfect back handsprings.
No one ever watched cheerleading practice, and I knew that Heather’s dream of winning at nationals and bringing home a ring would never be realized. But I also knew that this wasn’t her only shot at being really good at something.
I wanted to tell Heather everything I felt. I wanted to tell her that Johnny Moon did not seem like he’d be the father I was hoping for, that all of it felt weird. I also wanted to tell her that she’d been in my dreams, that I probably liked her—that I liked her but didn’t know if she liked me back.
She noticed me and jogged over.
“What are you doing here?” she asked breathlessly. Her bun was loose—slipping to the left side of her head. Blond tendrils, curled from sun and sweat, hung around her face.
“Can’t we just be friends again?” I said. “I don’t like anyone else.”
“What do you mean?” she said coolly. “We are friends.”
But we both knew that something had changed on prom night. The power had shifted, and neither of us knew in which direction.
She looked me up and down. I was wearing overalls—men’s overalls, left over from one of Sandra’s boyfriends. The overalls matched Stinky Lewis. When we walked together, I looked like a hobo and he looked like a hobo’s best friend.
“That’s not true, that you don’t like anyone else,” said Heather. “It seems like you’re pretty into Corvis McClellan these days.”
Had she seen us together?
“I heard you took a trip with her over spring break,” Heather said, shifting her weight from one leg to the other. “When did you start hanging out again? Do you like her or something?”
I sensed jealousy, maybe even a little hurt, in her combative tone. It fueled me a little.
“Yeah,” I said, shrugging. “Maybe I do. So what?” Part of me wanted her to think I like liked Corvis, to make her jealous, and part of me wanted to punch myself in the face for being such a pussy, for not just kissing Heather right there on the practice field.
“I thought you didn’t like anyone else,” she said, shifting her weight.
I stared back.
We stood for a moment, daring each other to say something else, but neither of us could bear to be the weak one.
“I have to get back,” said Heather. She turned and walked toward the squad, silently practicing cheers as she went, clapping, punching a fist toward the sky, practicing, practicing, practicing, though the competition was already over.
The Floral Dress
The next morning at Emmylou’s, I told Heather about Stinky Lewis and she told me about Brad. She couldn’t avoid me at work all the time, and I got the feeling that she wanted to tell me about it anyway. To put me in my place. To show me she wasn’t in love with me.
“Brad gave me his dog,” I said when she walked in the door. “Out of nowhere. Have you seen him lately?”
Heather raised her eyebrows and handed me a cup of coffee.
We stared at each other for a moment. I took a sip of coffee, then another.
“I gave him a blow job,” she finally said, pouring a giant paper bag of coffee beans into one of the plastic containers behind the counter, labeled REESE’S PIECES. She filled each plastic container by flavor, which we did so our supply looked full to the customers.
I acted like I didn’t already know. I didn’t want her to think Brad was going around bragging about it, because he wasn’t—he told me because he felt guilty. Plus, I was mad at her for doing it, and I wanted to hear her side of the story.
“What happened?” I asked.
She handed me the next giant paper bag, labeled GIRL SCOUT COOKIE, like she couldn’t tell a story and work at the same time. She shrugged.
“He showed up at my house like a sad little puppy,” she said. “He was wearing a flannel that was too big for him, and he looked like he’d been crying.”
She hoisted herself onto the counter, dangling her long legs. She wore inappropriate shoes for working—three-inch black pumps.
I filled the coffee containers while she talked.
“He said he didn’t want to go home, that something bad had happened,” she continued.
“Susan told me about that,” I said, just so she would know that I knew my gossip. “I don’t think that’s going to work out so well.”
Heather rolled her eyes.
“Yeah, well, he was pretty upset,” she said. “And I guess I wasn’t feeling awesome either.”
“Why?” I asked, setting down a bag of coffee beans.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I mean, when I woke up in the back seat of your car the morning after prom, I felt kind of shitty. That night, I went to Scottie’s house and made out with him behind the boathouse in his backyard. And then behind the willow tree. And then behind his car. I thought about that time I gave that kid a blow job at the mall, and how we’d been in the bathroom, behind an unlocked door. I just felt like . . . so much of my life is spent behind things. I think it must be some kind of metaphor.”
She barely ever said this much to me, so I stayed silent and tried to make myself smaller.
“So when Brad showed up at my house, I asked him if he wanted to talk about it, which made me sound like a guidance counselor. And I know I’m not the kind of person people look for when they need actual help. It’s like, I only have this one thing to give them.”
Heather and I both felt bad for guidance counselors. They were doomed to fail, because they were adults, and the only people teenagers wanted to talk to about their lives were other teenagers. The guidance counselor at Hopuonk High, Mr. Doyle, was fairly innocuous, and he truly seemed to care about the students, but we could feel his desire to sleep with us, and even though he’d never done anything about it, it canceled out any of his already tenuous credibility.
“My parents were fighting upstairs,” she continued. “And I didn’t want to think about it, so I told Brad to come inside for a beer, even though he was already drunk.”
I was afraid to interrupt her. She took a deep breath and scanned the parking lot for cars. There were none.
“Does Brad come to you a lot when he’s upset?” I asked. I had a suspicion that maybe he did—that maybe she’d given him blow jobs while he was my boyfriend. If I asked her about it outright, in this moment, she would probably admit it. But I didn’t want to know.
&n
bsp; “Not really,” Heather said, shrugging. “He lost his virginity to me, so he has an attachment, I guess. But it’s not conscious.”
“So, what happened next?” I asked, leaning against the wall, giving her as much space as I could.
“When I came back from the kitchen with the beer, Brad was pacing up and down the hallway. That’s when he said it, when he told me Susan was pregnant. I guess she’d just told him about it that day. Meanwhile my mom was yelling at my dad to leave her alone, and when I asked Brad if I could do anything for him, he basically said it would be awesome if I could blow him. He said it just like that. Like, ‘If you could give me a blow job, that would be really cool.’”
Heather stared at her new shoes and smacked the heels together. She wouldn’t make eye contact with me, and she looked like she might cry.
It was hard for me to picture Brad actually saying that out loud, but I knew people treated Heather differently than they treated me.
“It was gross,” she admitted. “I mean, I didn’t know where to go, so I shoved him into a coat closet and he sat down on this random stool. My knees hurt on the hardwood floor, and my mother’s furs were in the way. After a minute, he came all over the front of my Laura Ashley dress. I loved that dress.”
She twisted her index finger around in the fabric of her hot-pink Emmylou’s T-shirt.
I knew which dress she meant. It looked great on her. Usually, Heather wore bland clothing from Abercrombie or American Eagle—clothing that was tight. The point was to show off how sexy she looked in the same outfit everyone else wore. The Laura Ashley dress was old and faded, just a bit tight at the waist but loose and flowing everywhere else, falling just below the knee. It had belonged to one of her older sisters.
“Why did you do it?” I asked her.
Heather laughed, but it was a sad laugh. She looked at the ground. We hadn’t swept yet, and tumbleweeds of pine needles and dust were gathered on the tile.
“Because I could,” she finally said.
That was exactly what I’d said to Susan about the time I kissed Scottie at The Mooring, and it was a lie.
“Really?” I pressed. “Because that doesn’t seem true.”
“Fine,” she said. “I just wanted to make him feel better. I didn’t know how else to do it.”
When she finished telling the story, we both realized we were still mad at each other. She stood and walked across the room, reaching for the heavy wooden broom we kept in the closet. We worked in silence for a while, the broken radio cracking with every base beat. The song “As I Lay Me Down” by Sophie B. Hawkins came on—the most annoying song in the world.
“I hate this song,” said Heather, reading my mind. “It’s literally always on.”
“In the background, it sounds like she’s saying ‘I love tacos,’” I said.
“It totally does,” she said.
Heather was sweeping, and her hips were slowly moving along with the music as she swung the broom back and forth.
I grabbed the remote control to the boom box, using it as a microphone. Heather and I started singing, and we turned to face each other just in time for the part that’s like, “On a summer evening, I’ll run to meet you, barefoot, barely breathing,” and just like that we were dancing together, and everything else floated away. When it got to the taco part, we both shouted it at the top of our lungs.
By the time the radio voice interrupted, we were both out of breath, laughing. We collapsed on the floor.
But then Heather said, “My parents are getting divorced. They told me last night.”
“Heather . . .”
Her shoulders heaved, and she let out a big ugly sob. I loved that sob. I wanted to kiss that sob.
“Okay,” I said carefully. “It’s okay.”
Then she let me hold her. She gathered my hair in her fists and leaned her weight into my chest. Her body shook so hard that I thought she might break open. I wondered what happens to your organs when you don’t let anyone hug you for years. I held on tight.
“I’m sorry,” she said, clutching my arm. “I’m sorry I did that to Brad, and to Susan, and to you.”
I didn’t feel angry anymore. The sleeve of my Emmylou’s shirt got drenched in tears and snot.
The Dollhouse
When I went to Susan’s house for what would be the last time, she was sitting in front of her dollhouse. I brought a present for her baby, a blanket Sandra bought at the Ocean State Job Lot. The tiny chandelier in the dollhouse dining room lit up Susan’s face, and because she was looking down, her eyelashes made little shadows on her cheeks.
Next to her on the floor, I saw a tuna fish sandwich, half-eaten.
“Susan.”
My voice startled her. She dropped a tiny roasted chicken made of polymer clay.
“Sorry,” I said. “Hi.”
She looked at me, picked up a porcelain man, and opened her hand, her palm like a starfish, letting him drop to the floor. Something in him cracked on impact.
“He’s going away,” she said ominously.
“Which one is he?” I asked.
“He’s the grandfather,” she said, her tone serious and calm. Her hair was shiny, her skin smooth, but she looked exhausted. “Now I call him death by suicide.”
Slowly, I moved toward Susan and sat next to her, setting the blanket on the bed. I thought of Susan’s dad hitting her with his belt.
Susan flipped off the lights in the dollhouse, and it went dark.
“That story is over,” she said. “There’s a new one now.”
I picked up the man doll from the floor and cracked his head off.
Susan sighed and took a bite of the tuna fish sandwich.
“We’re getting married,” she said, chewing. “Brad asked me to marry him.”
“Congratulations,” I said, and it came out kind of like a question.
“My baby is the size of a blueberry,” she said, “and this baby’s dad isn’t going to be like mine. Things are going to be better for it.”
“Yeah,” I said, not knowing what else to say. “She’ll be okay.”
I thought I remembered hearing that you’re not supposed to eat tuna fish while you’re pregnant, but I let it go.
The New Name
It was past midnight, and I was in bed with Stinky Lewis, sweating. He wanted to cuddle, but it was hot. He seemed nervous since Brad left him with me, and I wanted him to feel better, so I cuddled with him anyway.
Suddenly, I had an overwhelming urge to find my Schwinn. I sat up in bed and switched on the light, which was jarring. My bedroom was messy, and the bottles of Clinique perfume and makeup on my vanity were embarrassing. The posters and collages on my wall were embarrassing too. I felt both too old for everything I owned, and like a child.
I wore an oversized T-shirt that belonged to one of Sandra’s boyfriends, with the KISS 108 FM logo across the front in puff letters. I grabbed a pair of dirty corduroys from a pile on the floor and yanked them on, then pulled the long half of my hair back into a messy bun.
The bike had to be somewhere in the garage, which is where we kept everything we didn’t use but couldn’t get rid of—like an ugly set of crystal that had belonged to Sandra’s parents before they died, and the boxes of Christmas decorations. We were not people who used crystal. We were people who drank out of Solo cups.
When I finally found the Schwinn under a pile of wooden lobster traps, something in me loosened. There it was, faded by sun from hot pink to a pale-salmon color, the basket splintered, the banana seat covered in a thin layer of mold.
I grabbed the handlebars, ran my fingers through the fraying plastic ribbons, and pulled the bike out into the driveway.
* * *
—
I looked ridiculous riding my Schwinn, even though it was too tall for me when I was seven and I’m still short.
>
No one was watching, though. Almost all the lights were out in the houses, and we didn’t have streetlights on this side of town.
The bike was so rusty that it wailed as I pedaled. I’d had this feeling that it was lonely in the garage, that it missed me, but I was the one who already missed everything. I don’t mean Hopuonk itself, exactly, but more like the time when I was little, when Susan wanted to be around me and let me touch her hair, when I still wanted that too.
I switched on the transistor radio, which picked up a fuzzy signal of “Hunger Strike” by Temple of the Dog, which PJ sang an acoustic version of sometimes.
When I got to Corvis’s house, I saw the lava lamp glowing in her bedroom window. I tossed the bike on her lawn. This act was one I’d done hundreds of times as a kid, and it felt both strange and completely normal to do it now.
I pressed my face to the glass of her window and saw her curled in her desk chair, hugging her knees to her chest. I couldn’t see her face, but she was bent over, writing something.
I rapped on the window.
Corvis turned to face me. Her face was splotchy and red, her eyes bloodshot. I’d gone there for some kind of comfort, and it had never occurred to me that Corvis might need that too.
I’d never seen Corvis cry before. Not when her grandmother died in fourth grade and they called her out of class. Not when she fell off her bike in fifth grade and plummeted into a ditch, breaking her arm. Not when everyone egged her house.
I waved, and she put her forefinger to her lips, quieting me. She stood and came to the window, yanking it open.
“What’s up?” she said. She tried to pretend she hadn’t been crying.
“Can I come in?” I asked.
“It’s really late,” she shout-whispered.
“Duh,” I said.
Corvis sighed, then pulled the window open wider and helped me inside, holding me by the armpits. We both toppled onto the floor. This sneaking in through the window thing was much easier when we were eleven.
We Were Promised Spotlights Page 18