“You were a whole different person in there.”
“I said ‘no judgment,’ OK? And how many jobs have you gotten, Mr. SurlyPants?”
“A few.”
“From friends and family?”
Had to think. “Mostly.” Maybe all. FunZone two years ago was because one of Al’s friends put in a word.
“Exactly.” She climbed on the bike without demanding to drive. “Maybe you need to be a whole different person, too.”
Great idea, Meili.
SEVEN
I wanted her to remake me. I wanted to learn what she knew, think the way she thought, go to the places she had been. I would have happily jumped into her world.
And that disgusted her. She didn’t want me to be like her; she wanted me to be like me. She sensed that I would give myself away to her and was repulsed. She invited it, maybe even craved it, but despised it.
I didn’t know all this at the time. Back then, I lurched forward and back, disoriented, angry when she swerved. I learned her swerve, anticipated it. Every time I wanted to move closer, connect with her, even become her, I felt disgusted, pivoted away.
I tried to be the Meili version of me: strong, unpredictable, cynical all the way down. It was exhausting. I was helpless in front of her, and it took insane effort to hide that from both of us.
The next day, Meili was out of the Rubber Room most of the morning. When she came back, it was clear she had been crying. She dropped her pass on the front desk, slid into her seat, and began writing. No glance at me, no eye roll.
I tried to get her attention. Then stopped. Then tried. Then turned away. Then wrote her a note. Got disgusted with myself and asked for a bathroom pass I didn’t need. Returned from the bathroom and fell right back into it. Couldn’t get Meili’s attention, couldn’t let go of wanting it.
Goddamn Rubber Room. I got out my Biology notebook. On the inside cover was a red Sharpie cartoon of our Bio teacher drawn by my lab partner, Lainey. Mr. Eagan was diagrammed, and we had taken turns labeling his parts: Adorable Warts, Distinctive Third Nostril, Knuckle Fur. This was from that other UHS, the one before the fire and before Meili, the two changes that had merged into a single break. I could feel the old Unionville High in my body, see it in this picture. There were things I loved about that school and that me. It wasn’t simple, but—look—me and Lainey cracked each other up. Now, I was Against. Against my enemies, against the school, and, with Meili, against the whole stupid, redneck town.
I could walk out of the Rubber Room, down to 214, sit next to Lainey, and listen to Mr. Eagan explain RNA versus DNA.
I could go back before the fire. Before Meili.
Was she saving me from isolation or making it worse? Was she letting me say out loud things I already thought, or was she putting those things in my head, contempt for my town, my people, myself?
(Even now, I can hear her answer: “Anyone who doesn’t have contempt for themselves is an arsehole.”)
She would leave. Soon, I imagined. She could tell everyone to piss off because she was about to piss off herself, to some other town or other country. A tiny part of me hoped, assumed she would take me with her, but she wouldn’t, couldn’t. Did people do that? Take their seventeen-year-old friend to live with them in New Jersey or Texas or Hong Kong?
At dismissal, I grabbed my backpack and hustled out the door.
“Jason!” Meili yelled across the parking lot.
I let her walk all the way over. Proud, mean me. I couldn’t lose every time.
“Where you going?” she said. The parking lot was clearing out fast, which, in the spring, meant an away game for varsity baseball and softball.
“Home. Got stuff to do.” Yeah, right.
She was rolling a cigarette. “What a shite day. Had a conference with Laura Fenton’s mother, for god’s sake. Basically getting bollocksed for forty-five minutes.” Did that mean getting screwed? Beaten? It was bad, certainly. She switched to her whiny American voice. “‘My daughter has trouble sleeping. She has anxiety. We had to get her a counselor.’” She tilted her head. “Seriously. Like, Americans, every time someone pinches you, you go see a counselor?”
“Pinch counseling does help.” That was funny—Meili funny—but she ignored it.
“They lit’rally just wanted to see me cry. That was the actual reason for the conference. It was crueler than what I did, even. I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone, I was defending myself.” She was outraged, but, in fact, they had shaken her. “If your daughter has fucking mental problems, first of all, welcome to the planet, we all do, and second, I’m sorry, but I don’t think I caused it. Maybe you shouldn’t have raised her so fucking soft that she falls apart when someone stands up to her shite.” She was falling, trying everything to catch her balance.
I wanted to say something true without simply taking her side. “People want to be safe.”
She looked around for her aunt. “If you want your kids to be safe, here’s a thought: don’t have any.” Then, in the same breath: “You’re coming to the gig tonight, right? Of course you fucking are because it’s the only exciting thing happening in this shite-hole. And you’ll protect me from the rednecks, since my set will not have the required portion of Guns or Roses.”
“I’ll be there.” And maybe she could protect me from those same rednecks.
The sun came out, and Meili took off her coat.
“You get a call?” Sounded like “cool.”
“Call?”
“From Don. FunZone.”
I shook my head.
“I did, last night. I’m going in tomorrow. Hope I’m not hungover.”
“You got hired?”
“Seems like it.”
“Jeezus. What … I can’t believe that.”
“That I’d get hired?”
“No. But you were there to help me get a job, not to take the job.”
“I took your job?”
“Seems like it.” I was repeating her again. Stop it.
“No, I got hired because I didn’t say anything stupid.”
“That’s not why you got hired.”
“Really? What was it then?”
“Don likes girls, especially cute ones.”
“Oh, I see. You brought your little piece of ass and it backfired. Serves you fucking right.”
I didn’t want to argue about that because she had a point. “I need this job, OK?”
“I do, too.”
“No, actually, you don’t.”
“So glad you know my needs better than I do. What else can you tell me about myself?”
“Really? You need this job?”
“Who are you to tell me what I need?”
“You need money for food? And gas to get to school? And to pay the electric bill from six months ago? Bullshit. You’re like all the preppies. You need a job for your résumé. I need a job to stay out of jail.”
“You’re going back to jail because of me? Right, of course. Listen, you fucked up, it’s nothing to do with me.” She was looking around, floating up a wave of outrage. “But … but, how dare you … like … preppies? The fuck does that mean? I can’t believe you.”
And then, from my little brain, genius: what she said about Laura. “Maybe you shouldn’t fall apart when someone stands up to your shite,” I said.
Her eyes flashed, and she walked away. A car jerked to a stop two feet from her, and she didn’t flinch, kept walking.
Good riddance.
* * *
The Unionville VFW had ceremonies on all the war holidays, an upstairs bar that my mom managed to get herself banned from (no small achievement given what happened there every weekend), and a main hall that was rented out for weddings, team banquets, Sweet Sixteens, and all-ages rock shows.
Happily, it wasn’t connected to the school, so I would be allowed to mingle with the general population. Unhappily, the crowd would certainly include some of my enemies. My plan was to arrive close to the start, stay for most of Meili’s
set—no, Melissa’s set, Melissa, Melissa, Melissa—and leave before any self-respecting rednecks showed up to listen to Sonic Doom, who fancied themselves speed metal and whose main musical idea was volume. I parked around the corner for a quick exit if things went bad.
I never considered staying home. Even if Meili was a preppy who stole my job, she was DJing her weird music for a bunch of VFW rednecks. I had to be there, had to be on her side.
The music was already booming, a mournful Middle Eastern–sounding vocal floating over a thick backbeat. I waited in a surprisingly long line to pay my six bucks. Four ones and eight quarters, sadly. I had two twenties at home, but I had a thing about not breaking my last big bills.
The Gulf Wars had restocked the aging VFW with young, muscled dudes. I didn’t recognize the two at the door, but Roger Bartolino was inside and he shouted, “Jason!” with a chin chuck. He was the father of Merribeth Bartolino, a girl I dated freshman year, and he’d always liked me.
He bear-hugged me and, over the impressively loud music, yelled in my ear, “You doing OK, man?”
I nodded. Didn’t seem like the moment to yell out an explanation of my parentless, probationed, Rubber Room, Meili-obsessed life.
He leaned in again. “Just stay right, man. We all screw up. Just stay right.”
I nodded and smiled, letting him know he was the wiser, older man. I pulled away from his crushing hug, but he yanked me back one last time. “You need anything, you let me know, OK? Just let me know.”
The only thing worse than people hating me, avoiding me, or being embarrassed to see me was people being nice. Being helpful. God, I hated that. I wanted to say: “Great, I need three thousand dollars, a car, a truce with Ronny, and a new family. I’d also like to have sex with Meili. Plus a cell phone.”
“Thank you. I will,” I yelled/mouthed to him as Meili transitioned to a throbbing dancehall beat. Roger smacked me affectionately on the head, and I walked in.
Meili had fans. A good twenty people were dancing in the wide-open center space, with another thirty around the edges. Some kids pressed up against the small stage, where she was DJing on a crappy folding table. They nodded their heads, staring at her, taking pictures like she was Someone.
She looked real. Hair tied in a bun, bright red skirt, and a billowy white shirt with a cartoon pickup truck on the front (I got the joke). A DJ from some other place, not Unionville, not America. Some place where interesting people knew important music and made culture instead of consuming it like frozen pizza.
Turned out, Unionville needed her, somewhat anyway. An impressive number of people were lining up to watch a Chinese girl with a British accent play music they’d never heard.
I hadn’t seen this coming. Honestly? I’d imagined Stephen and six friends standing around, the VFW guys shaking their heads as Meili defiantly played her beautiful, unloved tracks. I’d be doing her a favor, cheering her up afterward and making jokes. “Next time, I’m sure there will be nine people.”
Now, I would be lucky to be noticed at all. I found a spot on the side, near-ish the stage. I don’t dance. Sorry. No defense for that. I’ve just never seen a way in.
Kids were still arriving, and it was early, more than an hour before Sonic Doom would soil the stage. My spot was gradually obstructed by people nodding, bouncing, dancing to Meili’s undeniable beats.
A sad, predictable thing inside me shifted from Pretend I Don’t Need Meili to Oh Crap, What If I Don’t Matter to Her? Were those the only two urges I was capable of?
The dancing slowed during a rough transition, then a more familiar electronic beat kicked in. Over top of it, Meili layered some crazy drumming (Indian? African?), so as people bounced to a beat they recognized, this other thing twisted them up, lifted them.
She mostly looked down, nodding her head, occasionally drinking from a metal thermos. They confiscated that kind of thing at the door, but I guess the DJ had privileges. To drink at the VFW, you had to stash tiny airplane bottles of liquor in your boots or underpants and then transfer it to the plastic water and soda bottles you could buy for two dollars. We called it “taking a flight,” and liquor that traveled in the underwear or bras of girls was considered particularly desirable.
Whenever Meili looked up, I raised my hand and pointed at her. Dorky. She would hate it. Didn’t matter, cause she never saw me.
The dancing engulfed me now. A Jay-Z sample layered in, and everybody could shout along. I did my thing of nodding my head and moving side to side, approving of the dancing without joining it.
I recognized people, but there were kids I didn’t know, too, kids with interesting hair and clothes and attitude. Nobody came to Unionville except at fair time. Kids from Unionville went to Kendall and Walton to do stuff. But tonight, Kendall and Walton came here.
Some kind of line was crossed, and I was the only person not dancing. Tina Welch, a cute jock turned electronic music–head, bounced into me. She turned around to apologize and then jumped on me, wrapping her arms around my head, screaming: “Jaaaaaaaaason!” We had hooked up a couple times sophomore year, but I’d always assumed that was because she got really into drinking and smoking weed, not because she liked me. She spun me around and climbed on my back. I boosted her up, and now she was The Girl Up on the Shoulders, which is something, right? I pushed into the crowd, and Tina’s altitude and her pulsing light necklace gave us status, so people let us through. Her powerful thighs squeezed my head, and her feet wrapped around my back. Still a jock, even with a penguin tattoo on her calf.
I didn’t know what the lifter was supposed to do, but I bounced a bit, joining her rolling and spinning while keeping myself anchored. She was into it, and it got downright sexy, her lurching and arching up on my shoulders. We were grinding vertically.
Tina put her hands on my head. Oh, crap. She wanted to stand on my shoulders. I bent my knees and spread my feet, grounding myself in the swirling, colliding mass of bodies. She put one foot on my shoulder, and I grabbed it as tightly as I could. She knew what she was doing—did she used to be a gymnast?—and I was strong, or strong enough, anyway. For a good fifteen seconds, Tina waved her arms at a height no one else in the room had attained. Everybody around us was “woo”-ing and reaching up toward her, and when she fell like a tall, red-haired tree, she was caught by dozens of hands and briefly passed toward the stage.
Amazing.
Even I had to bounce up and down and wave my arms around. Screw it. Not dancing, exactly, but not not dancing.
Another crowd surfer, this one not so successful, and then three kids climbed onstage to dance. One of them hit something or maybe distracted Meili because the music cut out at a particularly unfortunate peak. The crowd heaved a bodily sigh of disappointment. Meili’s shoulders went to her ears as she frantically tried to restore sound.
Embarrassed for Meili, and worried I might get coerced into more dancing, I took a pee break, pushing through the sweaty bodies that reeked of alcohol and weed, down the stairs to the men’s room (the women’s room was, chivalrously, on the first floor).
I waited for my turn at the communal piss pot, a long rusty tub that was tilted so the piss ran out one end. There used to be running water that flushed it clean, but not anymore, so the entire basement smelled permanently of urine.
The music restarted for a second, then shut off again, with groans and boos from upstairs. We pissed in awkward silence, a mix of metalheads, Goth-looking dudes, and Kendall preppies checking their phones while urinating. When did that start? Phone in one hand, penis in the other.
I headed back to the stairs.
“Look who it is!”
Fucking Ronny. And Mike. And a couple other enemies.
Not a good place to be caught, the basement of the VFW. I probably should have anticipated that and peed outside. I didn’t think these guys would show up for this. They’d come for Sonic Doom, sure, but if they got here early, Meili’s crazy music would keep them in the parking lot drinking and rolling their eye
s, right?
“Sup, Ronny?” I said, watching them all carefully and letting uninvolved kids push past.
“The fuck are you doing here?” Ronny said, as if he’d told me I wasn’t supposed to come to the VFW, which, for the record, he hadn’t.
“Just here for the DJ, man. That’s it.” Maybe if I made it clear that I’d be leaving soon, we could let this go. But I had to do it without backing down, cause Ronny was looking for me to back down. Avoid the fight without ducking the fight.
This is the problem with wanting something. You want to see a girl, so you go places, places where you might have to fight. But then you don’t want to fight because you’re there to see the girl, and if you fight, you’ll be kicked out and maybe arrested and definitely messed up. And if you duck the fight, the assholes think they own you, and that’s a world of hurt forever. The whole fucking mess starts with wanting something. Otherwise, I could stay home. Or I could come here and happily beat the shit out of Ronny until his boys jump in and beat the shit out of me.
“You like this faggot music?” Ronny said, mostly for his friends.
“I wish it was a little more faggot-y, but yeah, it’s alright.”
“Lucky you, Jason. Some kids can’t go out. Kids like little Kevin can’t go out.”
That was ridiculous. First of all, little Kevin was seven years old, maybe eight by now, and, obviously, wouldn’t party at the VFW. More important, from what I heard, he was fine. He had some scar tissue on his neck and hands, but he was totally back to his regular life.
Normally, I’d keep moving toward the fight by stepping to Ronny, all “What are you saying?” But there was something I wanted, so I tried to smooth it over. “Come on, man, you know how I feel about that whole thing. I think about him every day.” I looked over at Mike, Kevin’s older brother, who immediately looked away. If it was between me and Mike, we could have been cool months ago. But Ronny, some kind of cousin to Mike and Kevin, not biologically but through marriage or maybe just sympathy, would never let that happen.
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