by E. Van Lowe
Chapter Three
Conner didn’t show up at Alan’s the next morning.
We figured he decided to catch up on his beauty sleep, while at the same time taking the morning to lick his wounds. Alan and I silently understood that whether Lara had saved Conner’s life or not, it was embarrassing being pulled from the pool by a girl. He needed to put some distance between himself and the incident.
When Conner didn’t show up at Yogurt Hill later in the afternoon, we started getting worried. Yogurt Hill was one of the most popular yogurt emporiums in all of weight conscious Beverly Hills. On any given day, you could see as many movie and pop stars going in and out of Yogurt Hill as you could at an awards show.
Conner loved going to Yogurt Hill, especially between three and five on weekday afternoons when Yogurt Hill was crawling with cute, high school girls. In fact, we’d long stopped calling our favorite yogurt shop Yogurt Hill.
To us, it was privately known as Yo, Mama Hill. Whenever we were sitting there scarfing yogurt, and a sexy twelfth grader would walk past in a short skirt or a top that revealed some serious boobage, one of us would whisper, Yo, Mama with as much sexual innuendo as was humanly possible.
The girl, of course, had no idea we were doing this. We three Lotharios kept our lechery private. Let’s face it, if one of those cool girls ever spoke to us, it was a safe bet we’d each start babbling like certifiable idiots.
Alan and I waited outside Yo, Mama Hill for twenty minutes. When Conner didn’t show, we hustled over to his house.
Conner lived with his Dad and Stepmom. He never talked about his real mother, and we didn’t ask. He had two older stepsisters. They were both lookers, but they treated him like crap, and me and Alan as if we were the crap the crap crapped out.
The sisters were very close. The oldest, Sara, got a car when she turned eighteen, a used Mustang convertible. The two of them, Sara and Annalise, would roll around Beverly Hills in that Mustang as if they were movie stars. They’d see us walking home, but do you think they ever offered us a ride? Guess they didn’t want any crap on the upholstery.
We took to calling them bitches on wheels. It was a joke that never got old, and it eased the pain of how badly they treated us. It made the bad treatment laughable. There goes the bitches on wheels. Yuk, yuk.
When we got to Conner’s, we found him hidden away in his bedroom, plopped in front of his computer, playing video games.
“What are ya doin’ here?” he asked. He seemed annoyed.
“The mamas at Yo, Mama Hill are demanding your presence,” I said with a knowing grin.
Conner smiled, not looking up from the computer screen. It was a wistful smile. “I had a dream last night, and I couldn’t shake it,” he said.
“Was it a wet dream?” Alan chimed with a chuckle.
Not being one to let a good insult opportunity pass, I said: “Is the it you couldn’t shake still sticky in your pants?”
Both Alan and I got a real kick out of that one. We fell on the bed laughing, our eyes bubbling with tears until we realized Conner was finally looking at us, and he wasn’t laughing. He wasn’t even smirking. He didn’t holler shut up, Buttface! He was staring at us with a far off look in his eye.
“I was under the water in your pool, Dude, holding my breath. I really was trying to get the girls next door to come over into your yard.”
“I know,” replied Alan, not sure where this was headed.
“In the dream, I was under for maybe ten seconds when I saw a dark shadow emerge from the pool drain above me and to the right. Actually, it wasn’t a shadow. That’s what I thought it was at first. It was a claw, reaching for me out of the drain,” he said in an ominous tone. “There were eyes in that spillover drain, guys. Emerald green, and angry.”
“So, you had a dream. Did you have a hot dog before you went to bed? Remember the dreams you had last time you went to Carney’s before bedtime?” Alan asked.
Conner shook his head. “That’s the thing. I know it was a dream, but it was also a memory. I was remembering what really happened in the pool yesterday.”
Just then, I thought of Lara, about how she appeared in the pool without me seeing how she got there. I wasn’t ready to believe something out of a fantasy novel had occurred in Alan’s swimming pool, so I said nothing.
“I saw something,” Conner said. “I saw something when I was down there.”
“Yeah, you saw something, all right. You saw a girl in the water saving your sorry ass,” Alan said, trying to lighten things up.
Conner was shaking his head. “I saw a claw,” he said, his tone insistent. He ran his hand gingerly across the bandage on his right calf.
“Come on, Dude. You need to go for a swim, that’s all. Who knows, maybe Alexia Dupree will stop by to see how you’re doing,” I said, trying a new tact.
Conner shook his head. “No pools for me for a while,” he said. Then he went back to his game.
Conner could not be coaxed out of his house all afternoon. We tried telling him that sometimes dreams feel real, but they’re still dreams. We tried reasoning with him that if there was a creature hiding in Alan’s pool drain we would’ve seen it by now. I mean, how could it have gotten there? Why would it be there? Nothing worked.
On that day, there was no reasoning with Conner. Not that he could be reasoned with on any other day, but on that day, Conner dug in like a hermit crab, burying himself beneath the sand on Venice beach, and there was no way we were getting him to come out.
“What do ya think?”
We were once again in Alan’s backyard, loafing on the lounge chairs alongside the pool, staring into the clear blue rippling water when Alan asked the question.
I’d been mulling over the incident ever since Conner revealed his dream. “About what?” I asked, hanging back.
“Conner’s dream. You think he made up the story because he doesn’t want to admit that a girl saved him?”
It was late afternoon, and the sun glinted off the pool creating eerie shafts of bright light beneath the surface.
“Normally, I’d say yes, but not this time. He seemed…” I searched for the right word. “Scared.”
“He is an actor,” Alan countered. “Conner will go to great lengths not to look like a dipstick.”
“He always looks like a dipstick,” I said. “Can’t help himself.”
We both chuckled at that one, although the pleasure we usually got from razzing one another wasn’t there this time. While neither of us wanted to admit it, we were both concerned about him. We’d never seen Conner acting so strange before.
Alan got up, and started toward the pool.
“Where ya goin’?” I asked, although I already knew. My heartbeat quickened.
“He says he saw it in the pool drain at the deep end of the pool.”
Alan reached the edge of the pool deck, and peered into the water. He stooped.
“Don’t!” I said. I was on my feet, but not moving toward the pool. “It was just a dream,” I called.
“I know.”
He leaned over toward the pool drain.
“What are you guys doin’?” Alexia Dupree called from the other side of the hedge.
Her head appeared just above the tall shrubbery. She was smiling a smile that could melt any guy’s heart, but that day, it didn’t melt mine. All it did was make me wonder if Lara was somewhere on the other side with her.
“Just hangin,’” Alan said, stepping away from the pool’s edge. He was trying to sound cool and suave while not venturing past the safety of the three word limit.
“Are you looking for something in the pool?” Alexia asked.
Alan continued away from the pool and toward the hedge. “Just checking the water temperature. It’s perfect. Wanna go for a swim?” he asked, making his first journey past three words. I suspected the babbling was about to begin. Good thing Alexia changed the subject.
“Not today. Say, you guys want to go to a party?” she asked.
“Yes!” he answered without hesitation.
“Will Lara be there?” I asked.
Alexia’s smile disintegrated. “Probably. Why? You got some new insults for her?”
Ouch!
“She told me what happened yesterday, Josh.”
“Just asking,” I said, too embarrassed to say anything more.
“Stay away from my cousin,” she said pointedly. “She’s not interested.”
I nodded, my head bobbing up and down like a bobblehead.
“The party’s up in Benedict Canyon. You boys can pick me up around ten,” she said, then she dropped back down, and out of sight. “I’ll be out front,” she called from behind the hedge.
Alan Shot me a look, and I knew what he was thinking: No way are we taking Alexia Dupree to a party in one of the most upscale neighborhoods of Beverly Hills on our bicycles.
“I can’t steal my mother’s car, Alan.”
“You won’t be stealing it. You’ll be borrowing the family car—which is actually one quarter yours—to go to a party. You’re two weeks away from getting your license anyway, Dude. Grow a pair, already.”
“What if I get in an accident?”
“You know, and I know, you’re not getting in any accident. This is our shot, Butters. This is our chance to have Alexia Dupree all to ourselves. No Conner getting in the way with his lame-o jokes and fake southern accent. It’ll be just you, and me—best man wins.”
He was grinning at me as if he’d suddenly become a great orator, like Clarence Darrow, and had just made the winning argument in the Scopes Monkey trial (for information on The Scopes Monkey Trial see footnote 1—psyche!).
Three days ago, what Alan said would have made a good argument. Three days ago, I would have jumped at the chance to hold a conversation that lasted longer than three words with Alexia Dupree. That was before I found myself infatuated with a girl who I knew wanted nothing to do with me.
“Both of your parents are in bed by ten,” Alan went on. “We push the car out of the driveway and onto the street so they don’t hear it starting up. By the time we get home, your parents’ll be sound asleep, and none-the-wiser.
“I’m two weeks away from bein’ legal. You realize if they find out, I will probably lose my driving privileges for another year,” I said, trying to reason with him. “We need to think about the future.”
“We need to think about tonight!” Alan barked, his eyes going wide and wild. “Why are you being so negative about this? Don’t you want a shot at Alexia Dupree?”
The answer was no, I didn’t want a shot at Alexia Dupree. But I did want another glimpse of her cousin, Lara, even if I didn’t have a chance with her, even if she didn’t say a word to me.
I sighed deeply, and Alan knew he’d worn me down.
“Par-tay,” he said, grinning back.
Borrowing my mother’s Camry was the easy part.
The hard part for me was the deception. I didn’t like lying to my parents. It was the words of a liar that had changed everything for us.
When we were younger, Stan Butters was the perfect Dad, playing catch with his sons on the lawn, going to our Little League games. He even coached Troy’s soccer team one year. That was before the town hall meeting.
My Dad had been a sales rep for a large Beverly Hills security company that secured the homes of the stars. When he came in from the meeting that night he realized he’d been in the same position for ten years—ten, long years, and he was no closer to being a star than he was when he got there.
I guess he reasoned he should have been running things by then. If he were running things, we’d be living on the ritzy side of Wilshire Boulevard, but because we were still living in the house where I grew up, he began to see himself as a failure. Our lives went downhill from there.
It was a lying old biddy that had reduced my father to the beaten man he was today. Lying was not easy for me.
Yet on that night, there was something bubbling inside me that made the lying not only easy, it made it worthwhile. A crazy, unreasonable emotion was gripping my heart, and the tighter it held, the easier it was for me to lie, the more the lying made sense.
Alexia was waiting out front when we pulled up at ten-oh-five in my mother’s Camry. As soon as we turned the corner, I heard Alan’s breath catch.
She was a sight to behold, wearing a red dress that clung to her as if she’d been dipped in bright red honey. It wasn’t the kind of thing you’d think of for a pool party, and yet it was perfect. The top half of the dress was sheer enough that you could see Alexia’s black bra through the filmy fabric while imagining you could see whole lot more. Her long dark hair now had blond highlights running through it. The bottom half of the dress was short enough to show off her legs, while at the same time titillating a young man’s imagination about the wonders that lay just above the hemline. It was a goddess dress, and Alexia Dupree was a goddess.
Alan had composed himself by the time we pulled up to the curb. “H… here we are,” he said in a wavering, breathy tone. Okay, maybe he hadn’t totally composed himself just yet. He got out and held open the passenger door for Alexia to climb in.
“I don’t mind sitting in back,” Alexia said.
“No. You should…” He never finished the sentence. Alan had reached the three word limit, and with Alexia looking so gorgeous, he was reluctant to venture past. He gestured for her to get in.
Once Alexia was in the passenger seat, Alan got in back. I knew he was grateful it was me who was sitting next to her, with him in the back where she couldn’t see him hyperventilating.
We pulled away from the curb. Alexia turned on the radio. The sounds of soft jazz filled the car.
“Hmm. You have interesting taste in music,” she said, before tuning in a top forties station. She cranked the music up loud and began singing along to the song.
While Alan was grateful for the music, I wasn’t. I turned the radio down as soon as the song came to an end.
“Where’s Lara?” I asked, pointedly.
“She’ll be there. But I’m warning you, do not talk to her.”
Before I could respond, she turned the music back up, singing along loudly to Sam Smith’s latest soul crushing ballad, and that was that.