“Lana,” says Mom, “you’ve known about this game for too long to back out now. This is a family fun night, and it is not optional.” How fun. It’s fascistic recreation.
Henny sits on the little cushioned stool near the door. I think it’s actually a footstool, but she keeps sitting on it, so I guess it’s a normal stool, too.
I shift my weight from one foot to the other and cross my arms. Too belligerent, so I uncross them and let them hang at my sides. That feels weird, so I put my hands on my hips, and then I just feel like Wonder Woman or something, so I cross them again. “I don’t want to see Fry.”
“Well, his parents are some of our best friends,” says Dad.
“Oh, please,” I put in, because they never even see them except at Thunder games.
“And,” Dad says over me, “that means you’re going to have to be adult about this and learn to get along with their son, even if you’re not in love with him like he’s in love with you.”
“Have to?” I say. “Did it occur to you that I don’t want to go sit on the bleachers in the crazy section as the sun goes down and it starts to get freezing and all I can do is watch the cheese in Henny’s nacho tray congeal?”
Mom mirrors my pose. I don’t know if she means to or what, but it’s striking. Behind her, hanging over Henny’s little stool, is a family portrait. It was taken at the Wisconsin Dells—the water park capital of the world. Their words, not mine. Anyway, it was fun then—probably less than three years ago—being an Allegheny. So when did it stop being fun? When did I pull away?
Mom huffs. “Did it occur to you that you might try enjoying yourself?”
“Have we met?” I say. “Hi, I’m Svetlana. I don’t like soccer.” But I’m still staring at my smiling face, my drenched hair, hugging a towel around myself, with littler Henny hardly up to my waist and in the same state. Dad’s got his arm around both of us, and Mom is leaning down so her cheek is against mine.
“Lana,” says my dad. It’s some kind of correction. I guess I got the teensiest bit too snarky.
“It doesn’t matter anyway,” I say, “because I have other plans.” I make a mental note to text Lesh to let him know we have plans I just invented. “With Lesh.”
“That disgusting boy who was here last night?” Mom says. “You must be kidding.”
“Honey,” says Dad quietly to Mom. His idea of defending Lesh and me, maybe? What exactly did they talk about while I was exchanging shrieks with Mom upstairs?
“What?” Mom snaps back. “He looked like a druggie!”
I roll my eyes and stomp back upstairs. I have to grab my phone and my keys.
“Lana!” Dad calls after me. “Get back down here n—”
By the time he’s done barking orders, though, I’m already on my way. But I don’t even look at them. I just grab my coat from the rack near the back door, and without another word I’m gone. I can hear Mom screaming from inside, and then I hear the back door open and my father’s protestations. But I slam the garage door behind me and climb into my big brown beast. I’m Midway bound.
I don’t usually text while I drive. It’s a very dangerous habit. But I risk it and fire off <
I cross Grand Avenue and Summit Avenue. The car bounces along the divided section of Lexington, where it becomes Lexington Parkway, just for a flash, before it reaches the high school. When I show up there tomorrow morning, either on foot or on my bike, I’ll be Svetlana Allegheny who kissed Lesh Tungsten. Maybe I’ll be Lana who takes Lesh by the hand during lunch and hides with him at the end of the hall past the music room to kiss some more. It makes me a little dizzy, and then I reach University.
While Grand and Summit were hushed and classy, University is dizzy with noise and confusion. While Grand and Summit were tree-lined and serene, University is dirty and crowded.
A team of men from some utility or other have closed off the right lane at the intersection, and traffic is backed up nearly to the interstate. When I reach the light, it’s red. The car stops with a lurch. To my right is a check-cashing place and a Chinese restaurant. Past that, a line’s formed outside the plasma center across from the KFC. I hope the sellers of blood haven’t just eaten there. It doesn’t seem right to include extra cholesterol. Someone’s going to need that blood.
It’s quieter once you cross, and I nearly forget where I’m going. I’m halfway or more to Roan’s house, and if not for that text, it might be the easier destination. Maybe I could convince her and Reggie to hold an emergency gaming session. But the campaign is on what feels like permanent hiatus—unless we commit to adding Lesh, and I’m not even sure what those two think about him. I imagine nothing good.
So I turn left off Lex and into Lesh’s neighborhood, and I find his house and park. I grab my phone, expecting to see a flashing little green LED, but there’s none. Lesh hasn’t written back. He might not even be home. His dad’s truck is parked in front, the words TUNGSTEN GARAGES emblazoned rather messily on the driver’s-side door. I check my phone again. Still no reply. But I can see through the front window, even from my car, that someone’s in there and watching TV. It might just be his dad—Lesh could be out listening to metal or something—but he met my dad, so I should be allowed to meet his.
It’s awkward right away. The little bungalow has a three-season porch with its own glass door, and there’s no bell, so I’m stuck wondering: Do I knock on this door, or do I step onto the porch and knock on the heavy wood door beyond? Standing here, they might never know I exist. But going onto the porch might be imposing. I decide to try the porch door first, and I lightly knock on the glass, and then on the door’s aluminum frame. I try again, and this time I see someone get up in front of the TV. He peeks through the windows and waves me inside. As I step in, the wood door opens.
“Hiya,” he says. “Something I can do for ya?”
He’s taller than Lesh, but not by much, and he’s young—younger than my parents for sure. He’s tan, too, almost leather in the face.
“Hi,” I say. “Is Lesh home? I’m a friend of his from school.”
“Oh yeah?” he says, and he steps back a little. “He’s upstairs. He might have fallen asleep. He does that on Sunday afternoons pretty regularly. Come on in and have a seat. I’ll see if I can rouse him.”
“Thanks,” I say, and I step inside. There’s no entryway, nothing but the door and then the living room. Lesh’s dad waves toward a chair for me, so I sit.
He heads toward the back of the house. “Is he expecting you?” he asks over his shoulder as he starts up the stairs.
“I’m not sure,” I say, and start to add, “I texted him but he never got back,” but by the time I’m halfway through the inane explanation, he’s long gone and probably can’t hear me. So I lean back and watch a grown man in a purple jersey slam his plastic-covered head into the chest of another grown man, this one in a rich and vibrant red, the color of strawberry chewing gum.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
…………………………………………………………
CHAPTER 47
LESH TUNGSTEN
It’s Sunday afternoon, and I’ve been on air since last night’s kiss. I’m lying faceup on my bed with my hands behind my head, listening to an online grindcore radio station. I tried listening to something else—a classical station, a Björk station, anything that seemed vaguely Svetlanish—but it’s going to have to grow on me. I don’t mind. Dad’s
got the day off, as he occasionally does on Sunday, and Mom’s less than a mile away at Target. I hope she’s on the floor today; she prefers it to cashiering.
It’s a few minutes after five when there’s a knock on my bedroom door and Dad pokes his head in. He draws his finger across his throat—his macabre signal for Turn off the music a second. I lean over and slap the mute button on my keyboard.
“Yeah?”
He’s smiling, which isn’t as rare as I’ve made it sound, I guess, but has sure seemed so the first few weeks of school. He sits on the edge of my bed, so I have to scoot up a little and lean against the back wall. I prop up a pillow. He’s still smiling, looking at me.
“What?” I say.
“You have a visitor,” he says. “She’s downstairs.”
My eyes must go wide. I must tense up. Something. Because Dad laughs.
“Um.” I start to get up, but he stops me with a hand, eyes closed, smile narrow and gentle.
“Just a second, just a second,” he says. “Why don’t you tell me who this girl is?”
“I don’t know who she is,” I say. “What does she look like?”
He laughs at that, too. “Okay, I’ll play along,” he says, and he leans back and looks at my ceiling, still coated with the glow-in-the-dark stars and planets I stuck up there when I was eight. “She’s a hippie, for one thing.”
“What?” I say, grinning.
“And she’s a blonde,” Dad goes on. “Intensely a blonde.”
“Okay.”
“Tall as me, I think.”
“Dad, I get it,” I say, and I stand up, but he blocks me with his leg and ignores my cues to shut up.
“She’s good-looking, too,” he says.
“Shut up,” I say.
“And definitely not a sophomore.”
I groan. “She’s a senior. Can I go now before she thinks we both died up here and just leaves?”
“In a second,” he insists. “Is there anything going on here I should know about?”
“You should know about?” I say, scratching my chin. “Not that you should know about, no.”
“All right, just don’t be stupid,” he says. “You know what I’m saying?”
He’s saying don’t get Svetlana pregnant. For some reason this makes me want to punch him. “Yes.”
“Okay,” he says. Then he nods once, his jaw set like stone, as though we’ve had a major talk. He leans back, smiles again, as relaxed as when he came in. “You’re not the first metalhead to fall for a hippie.”
“You and Mom,” I say, because I’ve heard this before. “I know.”
“Let me just say one thing about it, and then you can go down and show—what’s her name?”
I can’t tell him. It’s not that it’s a secret. It’s more that it’s mine—that word: the sibilance, the top teeth on the bottom lip, the tip of my tongue on the roof of my mouth twice, once a peck, once a glide. So instead I say, “Lana.”
“Show Lana the time of her life,” he finishes. “And here’s the one thing: don’t worry about the idiot dirtbags you normally hang out with. I hung out with the same dirtbags, and believe me, they had plenty to say about your mom.”
“Like what?”
“Like she’s a hippie and flake and stuff I won’t repeat to you,” he says, “but you’re going to hear the same stuff if you keep hanging out with Lana, so you’ll be familiar with it all soon enough.”
I nod, because I’ve already heard a little from Greg and Jelly.
Dad slaps my back. “All right, go ahead,” he says. “She has a car. It’s an old American POS and I approve, if you’re wondering.”
“I’m not,” I say. I didn’t even know she had a car, but I head down the stairs, leaving my dad behind me on my bed, and Svetlana comes out of the TV room slowly at the sound of my feet on the steps. She peeks her head around, smiles up at me, and grabs my hand.
“Can you go out for a bit?”
“Sure,” I say. “Where we going?”
“I want to show you something,” she says.
There’s hardly a word between us as we head west on the interstate, through Minneapolis and north into the suburbs. When she finally exits, the sun is low to our left and we’re past Brooklyn Center. Sometimes she puts her hand on top of mine between the seats.
I have no idea where we’re going, except that it seems like the middle of nowhere, and it seems like we’re heading for the sunset, on our own, in a car with very large seats.
“You’re going to love this,” she says, and we’re rumbling up an empty road, with fields and farms on either side, and a forest ahead. She stops in a little gravel lot and turns off the car.
I am not ashamed to reveal that I’m at this point a virgin. I mean, first of all, I’m sixteen, and I’m pretty sure the latest statistical information shows the average person loses their virginity when he’s sixteen. That gives me till my birthday in July. And second of all, Jelly—the hottest girl I have ever known and am ever likely to know—recently demonstrated with great clarity that she would like to jump my bones. That is, if I would keep my mouth shut.
All that said and out there, this is Svetlana.
“Listen,” I say. I’m fidgety as hell, too, picking at the seam of the leg of my jeans, examining my thumbnail—it’s dirty. My palms are sweaty, my mouth is dry—probably too dry to even kiss properly. I haven’t showered.
But she’s already opening the door. She looks over her shoulder at me. “Come on,” she says, grinning. “You have to see this. And stay quiet.”
“Okay …” Then we’re not parking. I climb out and close the door. It’s a heavy door. This act is inherently loud, but she shushes me anyway. “Sorry.”
“Follow,” she whispers, so I do, to the edge of the gravel lot and the entrance to the woods. They’re thick, and it’s cold and dark in there. It seems like Svetlana has been here before, though, and she walks crouched and quiet across the dead leaves and brown needles, her feet stirring low plants and whispering themselves. The smell here is decay and earth, and mixed with Svetlana’s scent of berries and vanilla, it’s intoxicating. “Wait.”
I stand there at the edge of the woods, just watching her. She’s really Svvetlana—two v’s—just for that moment, as she creeps deeper into the woods and crouches behind a big old silver maple. Thing must be a hundred years old. But she creeps behind it with her hands on the rough bark, and I realize she’s in jeans again, and the thrill of being behind her returns. Somehow she’s as magical as ever, though, and in combination with the woods in front of her, and how she’s crouched at that tree, it’s as if she really is an elf priestess of the forest. In the dim orange light of the sunset, her hair shimmers like gold.
I feel almost faint from the image, and then she quickly turns her head and sees me standing there, like an unshowered, ill-rested doof.
“Come on,” she whispers loudly at me. And she beckons me with a curved finger and a smirk. Then she looks back into the woods. “They’re starting. You have to see this.”
As coolly as I can manage, and still stinging a little at having been caught staring, I crouch through the weeds and low-hanging branches and stoop beside her. “What am I seeing?”
“Shh,” she says. “Look,” and she points—her arm touches my elbow and sends a tingle across my skin—at a thick area in the underbrush, maybe fifty yards into the woods. As she does, the brush shakes violently. I barely have time to focus on the area before—and I kid you not—a human mage leaps from the undergrowth, brandishing his staff (ahem), and he holds the knotty and bejeweled length of worn wood over his head, spreads his sandaled feet, and throws out his free arm.
“Magic missile!” he shrieks. “Magic missile!”
You can’t make this stuff up.
“My god,” I whisper. “What is he doing?”
“He’s LARPing,” she hisses back. “Live-action role-playing. Amazing, isn’t it?”
I nod dumbly and watch as the mage’s target—pr
obably a fighter class of some kind; the guy wields an immense wooden sword with both hands and wears a heavy-looking helmet, complete with full visor in front and feathered pouf on top—charges the poor caster.
“Why doesn’t he bubble or something?” I say to Svetlana, maybe a little too loud, because she shushes me again.
“Watch.”
From the bushes, behind the mage, dive two more LARPers, one with a shield and giant hammer, the other with two small swords, one in each hand. They both charge the solo warrior, and then the melee begins in earnest. The mage was just pulling, I guess, and now these two take the brunt of the foe’s attack.
It looks like slow motion, with parried thrusts, dodged swings, and ridiculous pratfalls, and the mage—still hovering by the edge of the clearing, and still shouting “Magic missile!” Finally the warrior doesn’t get up. He rolls onto his belly, his arms and legs stretched out, and the mage approaches, plants his foot on his back, and holds his staff up to the setting sun.
“Our enemy is defeated!” he shouts.
“Was that a boss fight?” I whisper.
“I guess,” Svetlana says. “Pretty lame boss. I’ve seen three guys dressed like a dragon as a boss before.” She sighs and stands up straight. “Still, wasn’t that amazing?”
“You’ve come out here before?” I ask. “Just to watch?”
She’s grinning like crazy, watching the guys in the woods, and she nods. “They’re a group from the U,” she says. “I don’t really want to join, but it’s pretty cool to watch.”
“Do they know we’re here?”
“No way,” she says. “It would entirely ruin the drama, if they knew they had an audience.”
“Seems kind of creepy,” I say.
“Hey, it’s a free park,” she says in what I hope is fake defensiveness. “If they want to LARP, I’m going to watch from the bushes like a weirdo.”
Guy in Real Life Page 24