by Roz Nay
“No, you weren’t, David.” Mom put her knife down and wiped her hands on her hips. She turned to me. “You can go, darling.”
I turned Les Misérables back up. It had been easier than I’d thought.
So if all the other girls, including my mom, were crazy about HP, how did I feel about him? I know that’s what you’re thinking, Novak.
Was I in love with him? My mother would say I was, but she also drove us to prom with the theme tune from Titanic playing on her car stereo, so don’t believe anything she says. Why was it so crucial that I define my feelings for him? If you ask me if he dominated my teenage years, that’s an easier one to answer. The truth is I don’t know if I was ever like the other girls. I knew HP too well. He was handsome; I liked seeing him with his shirt off; but when I caught myself looking at him, it felt kind of … obscene. We were friends. We were at ease and had no need to decipher ourselves. Not, at least, until after the camping trip.
CHAPTER THREE
We drove out to Elbow Lake in Ezra’s beat-up old Chevy, Korn pumping from the stereo. Four of us had crammed into the front bench seat—Ezra driving, HP next to him, HP’s current girlfriend, Lacy, and me. Elbow Lake was a good forty minutes out of town, a fishing spot that didn’t get as much camping traffic as other, bigger lakes in the summer. Grads chose it because it was secluded, the water was warm, and the whole place was far enough away that parents wouldn’t follow in cars to check up on them.
Lacy’s thigh pressed against mine, the sweat between us off-putting. Every now and then one of us would smear it off our legs while looking the other way. I didn’t want to absorb anything she secreted. Her shoulders looked like moose antlers, but according to Ezra, she did a “mad nasty dance.” Actually I wasn’t sure what that was, but it sounded like a reason for an eighteen-year-old boy to date you.
For June, the sky blazed blue with the promise of a great summer. Looking back, I see I was swept up with everyone’s pure potential. We were done—free to go in whatever direction we chose, with a whole summer dedicated to nothing but one another. There was a camaraderie, a unity in our not-yet-knowing, and it was the first time I’d ever felt truly a part of something. Come fall, our graduating class would hit the ground like marbles and scatter in fifty different directions, but for now we were free-falling. There are so few times like that in your life—when nothing is marked or limited by loss, when the possibilities seem endless and hopeful. I wanted to shout out loud at the world’s infinity but with all the windows down in the truck, Lacy’s long dark hair kept whipping into my mouth.
“You bring your bikini, Little John?” shouted Ezra, his dark eyebrows raised above the rim of his aviator sunglasses. “I’m hoping it has polka dots. You could totally pull that off.”
HP shook his head and put his arm around Lacy, his hand grazing my shoulder, too. “She’ll have brought her oversized men’s T-shirt.” He winked at me while I glared at him.
“Hidden treasures,” said Ezra, nudging HP and passing him a beer. “I like a challenge.”
They clinked beer cans. Even Lacy laughed.
“You’re going to need a better map, boys.” I pushed past Lacy, squashing her back in her seat as I grabbed HP’s beer from his hand. A crescent of amber lilted around the rim of the can, warmed by HP’s mouth. As I sipped it, one elbow out of the window, I noted that Lacy wasn’t smiling anymore.
We stopped at the liquor store on the outskirts of town. You’d think it would be hard for four underage kids to get beer, but with HP it took about thirty seconds. When a fifty-year-old man in beige slacks walked out of the store carrying a bottle of vermouth, I swore and slouched farther down inside the truck, keeping one eye on HP.
“Shit, LJ, isn’t that your old man?” Ezra hunched over the steering wheel.
“So busted,” I breathed. Through the open window of the truck, we could hear that HP’s whistling had stopped. The three of us gaped at him from twenty feet away—even Lacy, who had no knowledge of my dad.
“How are you, Mr. Petitjean?” HP’s voice didn’t waver.
My dad jumped and turned, hugging his blue glass bottle.
“Oh, HP. How’re you doing? Are you loitering, disturbing the peace?” Dad laughed at his own question, his reedy shoulders raking up and down.
“I’m off to our graduation party, sir. We’re going camping.”
“Oh, the camping trip. Yes, I heard about this one. What a grand idea. Sleeping under Andromeda, the old twinkling face of Cassiopeia?”
HP can’t have known what my dad was talking about, but his expression remained steady.
“Actually, young man, I was going to ask you, between us boys, to watch out for Angela. She’s a bright girl with an exciting future. I’m sure you’ve noticed.”
HP nodded.
“And do you know of her plans for college?”
He didn’t because I had none.
Dad’s narrow head tilted. “Did you want to ask me?”
“Not about that, sir, no. But could you maybe help a guy out?”
No way. No way was HP going to ask my dad to buy us beer.
“It’s graduation, after all.…” I heard HP say before my dad blocked our view of him and everything became muffled.
I watched my dad scratch the top of his messy hair, take hold of HP by one shoulder, and lean in close. Then he walked back into the store. HP put both arms straight up into the air and grinned at us, lowering them quickly again as my dad reemerged and handed HP a case of Budweiser. “One each, remember, and none for my daughter.” He strolled toward his car with his vermouth.
“Legend!” shouted Ezra when HP got back in the truck. “That’s your best one yet!”
HP scrambled past my knees and wedged himself back in next to his girlfriend. He yanked at his buckle, whooping. “I don’t know why you complain about your folks so much, Little John. Your dad’s awesome.”
“What did you say to him at the end?”
“I just told him the truth. What? You never thought of that before?”
“Why is it always so easy…?” I began, but Ezra bounced us off the curb of the parking lot and onto the highway, and I never finished the thought.
“What if we get pulled over?” Lacy asked as we raced away.
“We won’t.” HP cranked the stereo and shifted to look at me. “All good, John? Are you mad I asked your dad?”
I shrugged. “My parents understand you better than they do me. Or just plain like you better.”
“What’s not to like?” he yelled as he passed me a can and slapped me on the collarbone. “And it’s not a competition. Drink this and stop thinking.”
“Big Bad Grad!” Ezra shouted, honking his horn. We roared along the highway away from town. I sipped a Budweiser and wondered how I would ever in my life be able to leave this place without HP, since the world rolled open only for him.
* * *
Elbow Lake didn’t have much for local residents: there was one little store near the actual lake that sold bait and pop and fireworks from the 1990s, and alongside the store were a few tired old houses that were crying out for fresh coats of paint. Ripped sofas sat on the porches as we drove by. Around Elbow like an amphitheater were the gentle green mountains, buffeted by time until they’d lost all of their jagged peaks. HP loved those hills, but to me they looked like mountains that had had their status revoked.
We turned off the dirt road and headed down the grassy track to the water. For a small town with a graduating class of less than fifty, the crowd at Elbow Lake was already edging a hundred, because that’s the thing about little high schools—the classes above and below all join in to party together. Kids had brought old beater cars and parked them haphazardly on the hill, some of them with doors flailed open and stereos still blaring, and with that and the noise near the beach, the scene was loud and gathering momentum. It was an afternoon-level excitement: everyone was shouting; everyone was on their first illegal beer; everyone knew the whole night was ahead of
them.
Two docks led out from the shore, rickety and rusty-nailed. To the left of the beach a forest began, and grads of years gone by had built a bunch of tree platforms in there with rope ladders up to them. Hundreds of lanterns hung from branches—unlit, spiderwebbed and rusting—and the forest bark was scarred with an alphabet of former alumni. We drove toward the scattering of tents, veering off the track and over the grass, our shoulders bumping as we hit potholes in the turf.
“What are we sleeping in?” Lacy glanced from face to face.
“We’ll sleep when we’re dead, Lace,” said Ezra, and he threw the truck into park. He shut off the engine, clambering out onto the hood. “The party’s arrived!” He reveled in the sunlight, his black hair cut short at the sides in a fauxhawk, his teeth white against his tanned face. The swim team whooped in response, swelling toward him like a tide.
“Have you brought a tent?” Lacy tucked her hair behind her ear and pressed her knees together.
“Too late now,” said HP. “We’ll be fine. I have my man blanket.”
“It’s plaid,” I told her.
I pushed open my door and got out of the truck. Ezra swooped down and grabbed my arm, hauling me up toward him. He waltzed me around on the hood of his truck in a high-kneed cowboy swirl, the curve of his bicep pressing tight against my shoulder. He smelled of laundry soap. On the second spin I saw Lacy and HP turn their faces up at us—her brow milk pale, his darkening.
I sat on the dock for a lot of the afternoon, dangling my toes in the water. Bugs skittered on the surface, spindly with heat. Classmates thundered behind me along the dock to launch into the cool of the lake, and from time to time HP came and sat next to me to skim stones.
“I’d push you in,” he said, “but I think you’d drown under the weight of your T-shirt. Why no bathing suit?”
“I’m not like Lacy.”
“Do you shower with your eyes closed?” He stood and turned, balancing on his toes on the dock edge. His stomach muscles were tight, and his arms wound windmills to balance. “You’re way prettier than you think, Little John. You have this whole funky-ass style thing going on and you don’t even know it. Why else would Ez be moving in on you?” I must have bunched up my eyebrows at him because he added, “Christ, you walk around with your eyes closed, too.” He teetered, then backflipped into the lake.
By five everyone was hungry and HP built a fire and got out wieners, the only food anyone had thought to bring besides potato chips. The sun had freckled HP’s shoulders, and the edges of his hairline looked dusted with sand. Lacy draped around him as he tried to blow life into the fire; her makeup was impeccable and she’d piled her hair high on top of her head to avoid getting it wet in the lake. My mother would have applauded her.
A girl to my left nudged me and passed me a joint, the end of which had been sucked closed into a mulch of ten people’s saliva. I shook my head and she shrugged—a suit yourself shrug—like I thought I was better than her or something. HP caught it.
“Hey, Julia, why don’t we dip this hot dog bun in the lake and pass it around?” he said.
A bunch of people laughed and I caught HP’s eye across the fire. He was protecting me. I’d only smoked pot once and that was with him, in his room with the window open, and I didn’t leave his house for four hours in case his parents asked me a question on the walk through the living room. Julia threw the droopy joint into the fire. Some guy named Billy had brought a guitar with him, and as the sun began to slide behind the trees he strummed Pink Floyd tunes and all the girls swayed back and forth together like wheat.
“Jesus fuck.” Ezra strode out from the woods. “What is this, Brownie camp?”
He turned the key in his truck’s ignition and Korn fired up again. Billy put his guitar away as Ezra started a game of Truth or Dare, and soon everyone was shouting against the music, girls coyly avoiding questions and slinking into boys’ laps to lock lips with them.
I walked away then. I hadn’t kissed a boy yet. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t scared and I’d definitely thought about it: I wondered what it would be like to breathe in someone else’s breath and have someone’s eyes really look into mine. As a child, my mother read me nothing but Prince Charming stories at bedtime, and as much as I scorn that now, I have to agree you shouldn’t waste kisses on the wrong boys. I wasn’t like most teenagers: I gave value to true intimacy. I wanted a kiss to mean something.
Ezra must have gotten the party zone ready because every tree twinkled with lantern lights and all the rope ladders hung low. I tiptoed along the path, pausing to feel the bark of the oldest trees. I’ve always loved forests—the way the light filters down, the stillness, what the trees witness and never tell. I heard a heavy footfall behind me and turned to see Ezra striding along the pine trail, his sleeveless plaid shirt flapping over a bare chest.
“There you are,” he said.
The dimple in the tanned cheek was working overtime. He hooked both hands onto a high rung of a rope ladder. I stood uncomfortably against a tree.
“Want to climb up there with me?” He nodded at the platform above our heads.
“Not really.” What was he up to?
“Want to dance?” He let the rope ladder swing him toward me.
“There’s no music.” I couldn’t decide if my heart was beating so fast because he scared or interested me. His chest was lined with muscle.
“Lighten up, LJ.” He unhooked his hands from the ladder and placed them on each side of my head. “Who needs music?”
The sweetness on his breath was more pungent than beer. He stared directly at my mouth, hesitated, and shuffled his feet in closer. His arms bent so his whole upper torso pressed against me. He leaned into my lips.
“Wait.”
“Wait?”
The thing I have to admit is Ezra was hot: He was all Italian-heritage genes and chocolate eyes and his mouth looked like he’d just been eating strawberries. Girls went nuts over Ezra—he was the other one they cried about in the bathrooms.
“Let’s do this”—he kissed the side of my jaw—“and see what happens.” As he brought his mouth toward mine I must have cringed, because he stopped. “Or not.” He pushed off the tree and stretched his arms out above his head, yawning his rejection away. “Wow. Shut down. I didn’t see that coming.”
“I’m just not—”
“It’s all good, Little John. Whatever. I just wanted to try something out.”
I took the bait. “Try what out?”
“I just think it’s time you put your cards on the table.”
“What table?”
“Come on, LJ. You’re smokin’ hot but nobody can lay a finger on you and, us guys, we’re all wondering why that is. You’re like a virgin island and I got to tell you—we’re ready to travel.”
I grimaced. “Who’s ‘us guys’?”
“You know … the guys. Kaden, Jared, Calen, Caleb, Jayden…” He listed weirdly identical names from the water polo team, counting them off on his fingers.
“Maybe I have taste. Or standards. Or … or taste.”
Ezra crouched until he was sitting on the pine-needled path.
“And more than two brain cells to rub together.” I kicked my heel back against the tree trunk.
“Easy, easy. Don’t blow up that big college brain of yours. Come, check this view out.”
He patted the ground beside him. Another pat and I relented and sat down. Ezra was likable, even when he was being a jerk. We lay side by side on the ground like kids in the snow, looking up at the patchwork sky.
“So you’re saying,” he persisted, “you’re picky because you have standards. But I wonder. Is. That. Really. It.” He stroked his chin, faux-meditatively. “Or is it more that you’re waiting for someone to look at you a certain way?”
“Who?” It was almost a shout. I could feel my face reddening.
“Who?” he repeated.
“You two sound like owls, who-who-ing,” said a deep voice. Ezra and
I strained our necks to see HP standing by our feet.
“Where’d you come from?” My voice sounded squeaky.
“The fire.”
“We’re making pine angels,” I mumbled.
“I see that.”
“I tried to make out with your buddy here, but she shut me down. Rude.” Ezra scrambled to his feet, dusting needles from the back of his pants. “I was just getting to the bottom of why she’d do that, since if I wasn’t me, I’d hit on me. Right?”
“You’re asking would I hit on you?” HP picked up a pinecone, considered it for a moment, then whipped it into the trees.
Ezra paused. When he spoke again he sounded cautious. “Where’s your girlfriend?”
“Skinny-dipping, I think. A dare.”
“Dude! Here, take this.” Ezra tossed a rolled-up plastic bag from his pocket at HP. “I’ll see you guys back at the fire. Or tomorrow, on the other side. Whichever comes first.” He hurried off down the path toward the fire pit and the lake, leaving HP and me alone.
“Skinny-dipping, huh?”
“Yep.”
We sat knee against knee, the tree behind our backs. HP was wearing his signature pale blue hoodie, the crest of his blond hair fluffy from an afternoon swimming in the lake water. The light in the woods was dusky, not dark, and shadows skittered on the forest floor.
“Didn’t want to join her, huh?”
“Didn’t want to make out with him, huh?” HP banged his knees together, bumping mine.
“I’m picky.”
“I told you he was into you.”
“He’s not into me. He’s drunk and eighteen.”
“Shit, Little John. Take a compliment for once.” He unrolled the plastic bag Ezra had given him and sniffed inside it. “Oh, no. That’s not good.”
I took the bag and held it up in the shadows. “What is that? It smells like … mold.”
“Magic mushrooms. Want to try some?”
HP wasn’t a drug kind of guy—that one time we got high was an anomaly. HP was too athletic, too competitive, too 10k-run-before-school. He took out a dried, papery mushroom and bit the end of it, chewing like a camel.