by Trisha Telep
So I went with him. We went back past the bouncer, who glared at us but didn’t say anything. Johnny kept my hand all the way to the dance floor, and we melded with the crowd. But we were in a private little space all our own.
When I opened my eyes Saturday morning, early sun striping my bed and my alarm clock wheezing instead of ringing, the first thing I realized was that my feet hurt like hell. The second thing I realized was that the trailer was empty.
Either that, or Dad was asleep.
I lay there for a few moments, feeling the sun. The trailer crackled the way it always did in the morning—like pork rinds in a mechanic’s mouth. The backs of my ankles hurt, but I had clean socks. I’d done laundry the day before yesterday.
I got up. The hole in the bathroom floor watched me while I got ready. The water wasn’t hot, but it wasn’t cold either today. Which was all right. The spotted mirror over the sink was depressing, so I barely glanced at it enough to braid my hair.
When I got out into the kitchen, I found out why Dad was gone.
Job in Bakers today. Got report card. Strate a’s. Good kid. Pay lectric bill! The letters scrawled across the back of a manila envelope from St. Crispin’s, its official-looking coat of arms and Gothic typeface blotched from the coffee he’d spilled.
He had a job. Thank God. At least for a while. I opened up the card, saw the As in a neat row, breathed a sigh of relief. I’d really squeaked through in trig last semester, but Fate and Brother Bob had been kind.
So the scholarship money was safe. I was sure to get approved with grades like these. Who gave a shit what those rich bitches thought or how nasty they were? Who cared?
But Gwyneth. Sitting beside me on the dock at her family’s summer cabin, swinging her legs and eating an ice cream cone. Watching out the window for her dad to get home while Marisa and I played checkers. Standing next to me in the choir, both of us bumping each other when one of the songs full of our little in-jokes came up.
There was cash in an envelope. I was supposed to go out and pay the electric bill. The cheap net curtains moved a little. He’d left the kitchen window open, probably to get the fug of cigarette smoke out. Three beer cans and a pan with scrambled eggs and a few traces of refried beans stuck to the bottom. I turned on the splattering faucet and put some dish soap in the sink.
My cheeks were wet. The wind moaned. From now on it would be a constant sound, the dry dust-laden whisper that wove around sharp edges every fall. If we hadn’t gone to the party I’d be waking up in Gwyn’s bedroom right now, smelling coffee and frying bacon, and hearing Marisa’s faraway hum in the kitchen. Since it was a Saturday her parents might be there and she’d be itching to be gone before her pale, angular mother started up on the “are-you-going-to-church-tomorrow?” We would go to the mall and mock people, laughing behind our cupped hands while Gwyn shopped.
The phone rang. I looked at it and wished we had Caller ID. I’d like to know if it was Gwyneth I was ignoring as I scrubbed the dishes in the sink, rinsed them, dried them, put them away, and then cleaned out my bookbag. And really, who else would be calling over and over again? A bill collector, maybe.
When I left, closing the door behind me and locking it, the phone was still ringing. And I could still see the prints of Johnny’s black Jetta in the dirt of the driveway, almost obliterated by the tracks of my dad’s truck and the blowing wind.
Monday I didn’t have class with Mitzi and her crew until fourth, which I was always grateful for. But Gwyn wasn’t in second. I sat through a whole lecture on American history while her empty chair throbbed like a bad tooth next to me. The bell for third-period/first-lunch rang, and it was like every other school day when Gwyn was sick or hungover and got Marisa to get her out of class. Nobody paid any attention to me, and I liked it that way.
Lunch I spent in the long, narrow library, staring at printed pages through the blurring in my eyes. My nose was stuffed up. I kept my head down when I heard voices at the door. Fourth period was what I was really gearing up for, and I wasn’t disappointed. Brother Bob gave another quiz, the seat next to mine was empty, and Mitzi and her friends giggled all during class, glancing at me and whispering. I got out of there fast when the bell rang, but not fast enough.
“Where’s Gwyneth?” Mitzi asked in a singsong as I passed her desk. I shrugged, hugging my books, and avoided her foot stuck out in the aisle. I got out the door before she could get in enough breath for her next sentence, and fifth period I only had Trisha Brent and Zoe McPherson to deal with. They were toothless without Mitzi there to goad them, and the final bell of the day was a relief.
The wind was up, full of dust and the smell of smoke, and the front steps of St. Crispin’s thronged with girls. The buses crouched yellow off to one side, cars glittering as luckier kids piled in them and whizzed away. I was just about to break for the buses when a shiny black Jetta pulled up right in the fire lane and the horn honked once.
I would’ve ignored that, but Mitzi and her gang had beaten me out in front. I saw her heading for me, blonde ponytails bouncing, and let out an involuntary sigh.
The driver’s door opened, and Johnny rose up out of the car. I stopped dead, hugging my trig and history books, my bag digging into my shoulder.
Holy shit.
In sunlight, his hair was full of red tints. He wore shades, and he turned around, rested his arms on the top of his car, and just looked at me. Like he’d expected me to be there.
Several girls stopped dead, staring. Mitzi was still heading for me, and I could tell she had mischief on her mind.
So I headed for the Jetta. No dust clung to its respectable paint job.
“Hey,” he said, when I got close enough. “Want a ride?”
“Sure.” I made it to the passenger door and saw Sister Agnetha, black habit flapping, heading down the steps in full sail. A boy. On school grounds.
Oh, Jesus.
“Anywhere in particular?” He grinned like he had a plan.
“Just get me out of here.” I found out the door was unlocked. As soon as I dropped in and pulled it shut, the smell of a clean car closed around me. The heat and the wind was closed away, air-conditioning working overtime. He paused for the briefest of seconds, then settled in the driver’s seat and glanced at me.
“You sure?”
“Hell yes.” I didn’t dare glance out the tinted window.
His door slammed, we both buckled up, and he cut across the three lanes in front of the roundabout. Someone honked, there was a screech of brakes and tires, and as we zoomed away I started to laugh.
It was just like driving with Gwyneth.
“So she just … huh.” He sucked on the straw a little. His shades glittered. We sat on the hood of the Jetta, looking down at the valley. You could see the dust in the air, whirling in golden eddies like pollen. The trees whispered all around us. He was right—it was a nice place. He’d bought milkshakes and curly fries, and I was trying not to eat too quickly. I sat on my blazer, he perched there in his jeans, oblivious to the hot metal of the hood. It was nice in the shade, and you could see a big slice of smog-tinted downtown. The hills winked with sharp light through the veils of dust, glass-coated mansions sitting up above the scrabble. “You’re sure?”
“She brought me to the party. I didn’t want to go. And … well, you’d have to know her.” I sighed. Took a middling gulp of strawberry shake. “And why would someone like him talk to me? He’s one of them.”
“And you’re not?” But his tone said something else, like, and I’m not?
“I live in a trailer park,” I reminded him. “And you seem like a nice guy.”
“Huh.” Johnny nodded slightly. His dark curls lifted on the hot breeze. “Let me ask you something. Can I?”
“You just did.” I took another gulp of milkshake. “Shoot.”
He acknowledged the joke with a flick of a smile. “Do you see a future for yourself?”
It was a cheesy question, but the way he said it made it sound c
ompletely normal. Reasonable, even. Like he was curious, and willing to listen. I studied him for a long few moments, sweeping my hair back and thinking about it.
“You mean like college?”
“I mean … beyond that. Beyond everything.”
I set the milkshake down. “You really want to know what I think?”
“I do.” He sounded like he did, too.
“I think the entire game’s stacked. No matter how good you are, some people are chosen and some aren’t. The golden people get everything, and the rest of us can work like hell to get just a little. So there’s no future unless you’re one of the golden people. But you can buy a little breathing room.”
“And you’re not one of the golden?” He was utterly still, except for the wind slipping loving fingers through his hair.
I laughed. It was kind of funny. “Oh, hell no.”
“Do you want to be?”
“You can’t just decide to be one. It’s Fate.” I dug in my bookbag for a piece of gum. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Shoot.” He seemed to find that funny, or at least he laughed.
“Why did you pick me?” I tried not to feel like I was holding my breath, waiting for the answer. But dammit, I wanted to know. And his answer might tell me what kind of guy he was. Brain, jock, flash, plastic, gliefer, panda, goth—he didn’t seem classifiable.
“What, you can’t tell? Come on. Let’s go somewhere.”
“Where?”
“Wherever. Maybe just drive.” He glanced at me sideways, and I wished I could see his eyes behind the shades. “I’ve got time.”
“I should go home. I have homework.”
“A good little Catholic girl. Okay. When can I see you again?”
I shouldn’t have said anything. I should have just played it off with a joke or something. I’ve seen Gwyn shut guys down a million times. But I didn’t want to shut him down. “Pick me up from school tomorrow.” It was out of my mouth before I thought about it.
“Done. We’ll go somewhere.”
“Where?”
“Does it matter?”
The way he said it, it didn’t.
I got him to let me out at the entrance to the trailer park. Dropping me off in the middle of the night was one thing, dropping me off where Dad could see? Something else entirely. The truck was in the driveway, and I was glad I’d been cautious.
Dad was home, and sober. He didn’t give me the business at all. Instead, he just let out a sigh. “I’ve got a double-shift tonight, honey. They’re payin’ me on Friday.”
“That’s good.” The wind moaned.
He didn’t even notice my sweating palms or guilty face. “Your friend called. Gwyneth. It’s that rich girl, right?”
I nodded woodenly. That rich girl. “Yeah.”
“All right.” He stood up. “She said to call her. I’m’a gonna go to work. You be careful now, huh?”
“I will.” I swallowed hard. His eyes were bloodshot, but he didn’t look angry. “Do you want dinner before you go?”
“No ma’am. Don’t have time.” He dug in his pocket and brought out his wallet. Two twenties, crisp and new, laid on the table. “See if’n you can get some groceries, honey. They pay me Friday, but we can have something before then. All right?”
Milk, at least. And potatoes and ground beef. Beans—we could eat chili for a couple nights. My stomach cramped at the thought, around its load of curly fries and milkshake. “All right.”
He nodded. Big, heavy slump-shouldered man. “I got work shirts. You wash ’em.”
“Yes, Daddy.”
I waited until he was gone, his truck making the weird whining squeak of a belt too loose or too tight or something, before letting out the long breath I was holding.
“Jesus,” I said to the empty kitchen, and picked up the two twenties. I might even be able to have lunch once or twice this week, if I skimped on the meat and got extra bread.
The phone rang again. I swallowed, hard, my throat clicking. It rang three times before I could get around the table and to the wall where it hung. I picked it up, but all I got was a dial tone and the sound of the wind.
I was already waiting to see Johnny again.
“It wasn’t my idea,” Gwyn whispered. I sank down further in my chair. Sister Laurel underlined the date of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act on the chalkboard. I made a note of it. “Really, it wasn’t.”
I didn’t respond. She’d been at it since she walked into class late and settled down in her seat. A fading hickey on the side of her neck told me how the Friday party had turned out for her. Probably with Scott Holder. She was lucky like that.
Gwyneth hissed my name, but I stared straight ahead.
Sister Laurel half-turned. Her profile was like a hawk’s, with a hawk’s beady stare. “Does someone have something to say?” she asked nobody in particular.
You could have heard a pin drop. The wind scraped at the windows. Sister Laurel went on about trade protectionism and the gold standard, and the causes of the Great Depression.
“Don’t be like this,” Gwyneth whispered.
I hunched my shoulders and didn’t reply. We both eventually knew I’d forgive her, right? I always had before whenever she did something stupid or hurtful. That was my place in the cosmos—to be utterly forgiving. And in return, I got to lie awake in her bedroom and imagine I had her parents and her lucky golden life.
Do you see a future for yourself?
I kind of did. Getting through school on scholarship, making it through college, maybe getting an okay job. Working to afford a place of my own.
And then what?
Gwyneth would never have to search like that. Mommy and Daddy would send her to college and she’d catch a fellow rich boy, no problem. She’d make nice little golden babies and drink martinis in the afternoon. She’d never have to carry cash down to the utilities office and plead to be reconnected, or plead not to be disconnected. Dad sent me because I could talk my way around the employees. It was a fine art.
My cheeks were scarlet.
Gwyneth whispered my name again. Girls were shifting in their chairs, wondering what was going on between us.
Sister Laurel turned to face the class. Her gimlet gaze wandered over all of us, and I tried to look innocent and bored at once. I glanced down at my notes.
Did I see a future? Ink scratches on paper.
The Sister finally tapped her meterstick on her desk, a slight padded sound against piled papers. She called on Erica Angier, and I let out a silent sigh. Saved again by luck.
I made it out the door before Gwyneth could catch me. Let her go hang out with her popular friends. It wasn’t like it mattered.
Not when I was going to see him again.
Gwyn skipped Brother Bob’s daily perdition. And the whole sucktastic day got better once I escaped sixth period and made it to the front of the school. Johnny was leaning against his Jetta, utterly disregarding the signs screaming NO PARKING! in the fire lane. He bought me a cheeseburger this time, more curly fries, and a Coke. He sucked on a strawberry milkshake, and said he wasn’t hungry.
We sat on the hood of his car again, in the same spot overlooking the valley, and talked about nothing all afternoon. It was nice to talk to someone who actually listened.
The sun tended westward, and the wind’s rasping moan settling drifts of hot dust over the valley wasn’t nearly as creepy when there was someone’s voice to shut it out. We lay back on the hood and looked up at the liquid movement of light through the branches, and when he kissed me he didn’t take his shades off. But I didn’t mind. I didn’t even mind that I probably reeked of cheeseburger.
He even listened while he kissed. I can’t describe it better than that. He braced himself on his elbow and his other hand didn’t roam, just resting fingertips lightly along my jawline and occasionally dipping down to the curve of my throat where my pulse spiked frantically toward him. I bonked my cheekbone on his shades and laughed with a mouth full of h
im, and he laughed too. He tasted like strawberry milkshake, and he smelled like peppermints and desire and hot sun and clean clothes. He bit my bottom lip very gently, then kissed me harder.
It was so different from making out with the ugly friend of Gwyn’s current conquest in the front seat while the golden people heavy-petted in the roomy back seat.
We separated, and I still couldn’t see his eyes. “You wear those all the time?” I reached up, as if I was going to take his shades off, but he moved subtly back and I got the hint.
“Not all the time. Listen, I have some work that needs to be done. How about I take you out tonight? I’ll wait at the end of your road.”
My heart was pounding. I probably should have asked some questions, but I was tired of asking questions. I was tired of waiting. The air was bright and golden with pollen and dust, and I wanted to kiss the corner of his mouth again. His skin was smooth, a different texture. Like heavy silk, or something else matte and perfect.
He wasn’t too perfect, though. He wasn’t one of them.
“Okay.” Getting out of the house wasn’t going to be a problem, not with Dad working. I could be gone after dinner, and he’d never know. He’d probably think I was out with Gwyneth, unless she was calling again. “Where are we going?”
“Does it matter?” He laughed, and touched my cheek. The gentle flutter of fingertips spilled all the way through me, a tide of heat.
I should have cared. But I didn’t. I let Johnny take me home, and I even kissed him goodbye. We didn’t say we were together or anything. I didn’t think we needed to.
If I’d known, I probably would have made something nicer for dinner. But I was in a hurry, so it was Hamburger Helper. Dad chowed down silently. I’d even ironed his workshirts, and he had one on. “Late tonight,” he grunted as he stamped out the door.
“Yes, Daddy.” I’m going to be late tonight too. We were probably just going to the Bleu, though.
The thought of being seen with Johnny, maybe by Gwyn and Mitzi if they didn’t have another party to go to, made me laugh out loud while I cleaned up the kitchen. I even put on Gwyn’s black silk shirt again. He probably wouldn’t care what I wore. And dammit, she probably owed me the shirt. She could always buy another twenty of them.