True Story

by Kate Reed Petty

  She was really out of it, Haley said, shaking her head.

  That’s for sure, Max said.

  You show her your pointer? I asked.

  Nick, you’re obsessed with my pointer, Max said.

  We all laughed. Watch where you stick your pointer, we all said in unison. I laughed and glanced at Haley. She wasn’t really paying attention. She was curling the wrapper of her straw around and around itself into a tight little tube.

  Dudes, you will not believe. Richard was pulling up a chair, Max was politely asking the waiter if he could take a chair from another table. Her mom freaked out and yelled at us.

  No!

  Yeah. And she chased us down the street. Max was sitting in his chair backward. Behind his back, the waiter was watching him and frowning. Max didn’t notice. The girl had been too drunk to walk, he said. He and Richard had carried her to the front door, one under each arm. They had argued about whether to leave her on the stoop or ring the bell. Max had been on the side of leaving her.

  Haley looked up at that. Assholes, she said.

  It was a comfortable stoop, Max said. There was a bench.

  And I gave her my jacket, Richard said.

  Max and Richard told the story together. They passed it back and forth. The girl’s mom opened the door. The look on her face. I thought she was going to pull out a shotgun. The mom screamed her daughter’s name. She grabbed at her. But she wasn’t strong enough to hold her up, and the girl slumped on the floor. They didn’t know what to do. What were they supposed to do? They said they were sorry, ma’am. They said they were lacrosse players.

  “What did you do?” she kept screaming. “What did you do?” She was crazy!

  What could they do? They backed away slowly. Then they turned and ran.

  The waiter interrupted. All anybody wanted was a coffee refill. The waiter was pissed, but what could he do? Coffee refills were unlimited. He refilled our coffees and left.

  So there we were: running across the lawn. And the woman screams, “I know your last name!”

  How did she know your last name?

  Richard left his team jacket on the stoop!

  It’s cold out. I put my jacket over her, to cover her up. The woman was crazy anyway.

  I know. She ran after us, screaming, “I know your name!”

  She couldn’t keep up, obviously.

  Obviously.

  We raced to the car, we got away.

  But she was still behind us the whole time.

  In the street!

  In her robe! Carrying Richard’s fucking jacket!

  It was hilarious. We laughed hysterically. And as we were laughing, we realized together: Had the Party WAGLER been legendary?

  Haley sighed and leaned back in her chair. She let go of the straw wrapper and it unspooled into a loose coil on the wet table. You’re such assholes, she said.

  But we were all looking at each other. We were realizing that we hadn’t yet told each other everything that had happened that night. It was the same as the legendary party. No single one of us had experienced the entire thing. It was too legendary for one guy alone to see. We had to tell each other about it. Maybe the Party WAGLER was about to become legend. We just had to tell the whole story.

  I don’t blame the mom, Haley said. We all looked at her. She shrugged. I’d be pissed if I caught my daughter with you.

  I’m a good guy. You can trust me with your daughter.

  Maybe you, Richard. But Max, if I see you around my daughter, I’m definitely getting my shotgun.

  We laughed.

  Not so fast, Haley. Before you take shotgun, you should try the back seat with me.

  You’re a creep.

  Max lifted his hands, innocent. The last girl didn’t complain.

  He was being an asshole. But Haley was asking for it. She had already called him an asshole like three times. You couldn’t do that with Max. He was like a pit bull: once he latched on, he would never let go. After I told him pussy dick wasn’t a word, he’d started saying it all the time, he said it so much that we all said it now.

  I wanted to get Max off Haley. I wanted to get her away, outside, take her home. But she was a pit bull, just like him. She wasn’t letting go, either.

  The one who was totally out of it? she asked.

  She was totally out of it, Richard agreed. Max shrugged again.

  Then Haley’s voice changed. “You didn’t.” She narrowed her eyes at Max.

  Didn’t what? Max said. And he kind of licked his lips.

  “That’s disgusting.”

  Relax, Haley, I didn’t bone her, Max said.

  She stood up. “Can someone who’s not Max give me a ride home?”

  I will, I said, and stood up quickly. Maybe too quickly. Everyone looked at me. Max smirked.

  Haley looked away. “I gotta go to the bathroom first.”

  I sat back down and said okay. Haley was already walking away. Everyone waited until she was out of earshot to laugh.

  Max got her all worked up.

  You’re welcome, Nick.

  What?

  She’s all worked up, she’s ready.

  Shut up, pussy dick.

  Maybe you’ll get luckier than Max did.

  We all laughed.

  Who says I didn’t get lucky? Max said.

  You did.

  I said I didn’t bone her.

  Oh, fuck off.

  Swear to God. Max reached over and took a creamer packet out of the little dish in the center. I sat in the back seat with her. She needed someone to keep her sitting up straight. He looked sideways at Richard. And to help her get her panties off. We heard the sound of the wrapper peeling off the top of the creamer, because none of us were breathing. Max tilted his head back and drank the cream like a shot of Jäger.

  No shit, we said.

  Max wiped cream off his mouth and smiled. Swear to God, soft as melted butter. Poor Richard sitting up there had to just smell it.

  Not true, Richard said.

  I knew it, everyone said. Max, you’re full of shit.

  Richard was looking out the window.

  Richard, come on, Max said. We’re among friends. We can tell them what happened.

  Yeah, Richard. You can tell us.

  What happened, Richard said, is I stopped the car and beat Max’s ass.

  Richard don’t take no shit, Ham said, and we all laughed. Max held his hand up to stop us.

  It’s true, he said. Richard was angry. And rightly so! I was being an asshole. We all watched Max. Even Richard was watching him. So I said, “Come get a piece of her, too.” Max smiled at us, looking around. He spread his arms and lifted his hands, like a king. I always save some love for the team.

  No. We waited for the punch line. But Max just looked at Richard.

  We waited.

  Max said, You guys think Richard is a complete gaywad, but I know the truth. We went behind the 7-Eleven, parked in a dark corner. Right, Richard?

  Richard looked out the window. Yeah, he said

  Then Haley was back at the table. “Parked in a dark corner for what?”

  Everyone shut up.

  “Seriously?”

  We looked at each other. We burst out laughing. How could we help it? Even I laughed. It was too much. To smoke some extremely stanky weed, Max said, and this made us laugh harder.

  Haley turned and walked out of the restaurant. I got up and followed her. Everyone gave me a thumbs-up behind her back.

  They told me the rest later. How the waiter interrupted, said our unlimited coffee refills had run out, he was going to call the cops if we didn’t get out. How Dave said, Unlimited coffee can’t run out, that’s a paradox. They all laughed but it was no use. The waiter was not gonna budge. They were just about to ge
t up and leave when Richard suddenly ordered pancakes for the table, a large stack for everyone.

  How the waiter hesitated. “You have to pay first,” he said, his voice rising. “You have to pay before I bring them.”

  How Richard whipped out a credit card, defeating the waiter, which maybe, more than anything, made us think the whole story with Max and Richard and the private school girl might actually be true.

  So they told the whole story over pancakes. Richard had climbed into the back seat, and they had both fingered her. The guys still didn’t believe it, but then Richard said that he was going to eat her out, but he found a piece of toilet paper stuck in her pubes. That’s when everyone knew the story was true. We were all bullshitters, but who would make that up?

  I was nervous walking to the car, there were still some chunks on the front wheel from when I’d gotten sick earlier. But luckily Haley just walked right to the passenger side. I realized too late that I should have opened her door for her. Instead I just hit the automatic locks and she got in.

  On the ride home we didn’t talk much. At one point she said, Max is a douchebag, huh? I laughed and agreed. It felt good. Then we were quiet until I pulled onto her street.

  Her house was dark, just a single lamp on in the front window. She said, Uh-oh.

  Are you in trouble?

  Don’t worry about it, she said. She paused, her hand on the door, her purse in her lap. She bit her lip. I felt like I should kiss her, but I wasn’t sure, so I made a joke. I could carry you to the front door? I said. Leave you on the stoop? I just wanted to keep talking, but I knew right away I’d said the wrong thing. She looked at me like she’d been catching whiffs of a bad smell for an hour and had only just realized what it was. I thought about the vomit on the wheel of my car. I didn’t know what to say.

  Then she was out of the car. She floated up to her house, taking slow, long strides. Her legs were so long. She took fewer steps than seemed possible, her feet barely seemed to touch the ground. I watched her go. It felt like panic but there was nothing I could do. She closed the front door behind her. Then I saw the single lamp go dark.

  * * *

  • • •

  WE TALKED ABOUT IT for weeks. It was so good. We got every detail out of Richard and Max, her face as it leaned back on the seat, how the smell of tuna fish was so strong Richard worried it would be in his car forever. How they both jizzed on her, like champions.

  We asked if they had talked to the girl since. We kept asking, and finally Max said he had. She was grounded for being drunk but other than that she was fine. He said she would do it again. Maybe with more of us.

  No way, we said. You’re lying.

  I’ll show you. When’s the next party? But none of our parents were leaving town anytime soon.

  When we got back from winter break, we found that other kids were talking about it, too. It was suddenly a thing people knew. When they asked, we said nothing. We were gentlemen. But somehow all of the details became known anyway, and it was a joke everywhere. How do you find a private school girl in the dark? Just follow your nose.

  It kept us going through the worst time of our senior year. It was a welcome distraction. Something to talk about besides when the next party would be. Something to think about other than our college essays. We were already supposed to have turned the final drafts in to our English teacher, Mr. Kaminsky. We hadn’t even written them. We had nothing to say for ourselves. The example college essay was a kid who had lost a leg to cancer and had learned to play soccer with a prosthetic. He had made the all-state team. His essay was about overcoming adversity.

  That wasn’t really fair.

  All we had to overcome was pressure, school, our state championship, and the sinking feeling that we weren’t good enough. But writing about playing lacrosse, even when you worried that you weren’t good enough, wasn’t good enough.

  And then, at the end of that very long first week of January, we learned that Richard and Max were in big trouble.

  * * *

  • • •

  THE HALLWAY OUTSIDE of Coach’s office was painted bright blue, with a yellow stripe at shoulder height. The stripe traced the inside of the office, like a pothole painted along with the road. It crossed the locker room door, dipped into Coach’s office from the left, and then exited on the right side. From there it traced behind a long glass case holding all our school’s trophies. State championships stretching back five yards and five decades down the hall.

  Have a seat, Nick, Coach said. Have a candy. I don’t know what the flavors are. Take a yellow one. School spirit. It’s probably butterscotch.

  The office was tiny. Coach had told us once that the architect had forgotten to account for an office for the gym teacher and so they’d had to convert a closet. We assumed he was joking but his office really was tiny. When you sat down, your knees nudged up against his desk, and your back was nearly touching a bookshelf piled with binders that was about one sneeze away from tipping over. It was not usually good news when you went to talk to Coach in his office, and the smallness of the space just added to the pressure.

  Even Coach seemed nervous as he asked, How’s your family, Nick? How’re your folks? Everything good?

  I took a yellow candy. It turned out to be lemon. All good, I said. I tried to think of any recent fact about my family worth sharing and couldn’t.

  Coach was leaning back, his hands folded across his stomach. He kind of squinted, like he had a headache. There were a couple of things I was afraid he was about to bring up. The first was a scholarship I was hoping to hear about from the University of Maryland. Then there was my game, which was not so good. There was also my face-off percentage, hovering now definitely under fifty. I was working on that, though; that very morning I had decided to stop drinking, to get back in shape. There was also half a joint in a plastic bag in the Altoids tin in the cup holder of my car, which was now sitting in the school parking lot. I’d put it there the night before, on a trip to the grocery store. I was hoping to run into Haley, and I wanted to have something to offer her. I did not see Haley, and I forgot to take it back out, so now there was a joint in my car and maybe drug-sniffing dogs had found it and Coach was about to tell me that I was caught. Coach looked down at his folded hands, and I knew it was bad.

  You’re a good kid, Nick. I know you and Richard are good friends, and I know that you care about this team.

  I nodded, trying to keep the right expression on my face. I wanted to look serious, but not guilty. Coach was talking about our weekends, and about how what we did once games ended on Friday nights was our business. Boys are boys, he said. Then he laughed to himself, looked up at the ceiling. Believe me, I know what it’s like to be a boy. He shook his head and didn’t say anything for a second.

  Yeah, I said, to remind him I was there.

  He squinted again, and exhaled. Okay, Nick, here’s the thing: an old buddy called me this morning.

  Coach was a retired police officer. At the end of sophomore year, when I got my learner’s permit, he’d asked me to come with him to pick up the new uniforms for the spring and had let me drive his car, and all over town he had pointed out the places where the cops like to sit to give tickets to high school kids. I never got a ticket, thanks to him. All of Coach’s old buddies were cops.

  Seems two of my guys allegedly drove a young lady home after a party last month.

  I said, Oh.

  We both know who. Hold on, don’t say anything yet. You don’t have to get anyone in trouble.

  The story that Coach told me, that his cop buddy had told him, was the same story that I had heard from Ham and Alan and Dave and everyone else at school, although Coach slid quickly over the specifics. When you’re a cop, you see parents sleeping on the job, he was saying. All the time. Parents want cops to do their jobs for them. This mother—I want to ask her why she’d let her daughter g
et like that? What kind of parent is she that her daughter is out drinking at all hours?

  Yeah, I agreed. Most things can be traced back to the mother’s fault. This was something my mom liked to say, but the way Coach laughed when I said it, I saw that it meant something different to him. I didn’t really have time to think about it, though. Because then he told me something new: the girl had attempted suicide.

  It took me a second to understand what Coach meant by Tylenol and vodka. He said, She seems to need some kind of psychiatric-type help.

  When I understood, I had to say it out loud to be sure. She killed herself?

  No! No. Just an attempt, he said. Still, it’s a hell of a thing. He leaned forward and folded his hands on the desk in front of him. The kind of thing that can derail a young man’s life. He looked me right in the eye. Nick, he said. I sat up straight. Richard left his team jacket on the stoop.

  I was slow to understand, I’ll admit that. But once he said that I got fucking pissed. I couldn’t believe it. It was like they’d been set up.

  But—that doesn’t mean anything, I said. They just drove her home. It’s not a crime to leave a jacket.

  Coach nodded. I know, he said. That’s exactly right.

  We talked about it for a while. We talked about Max, a little, but Coach knew that Richard was my oldest friend, so mostly we talked about Richard. Richard’s got a bright future serving our country, he said. I talked to Representative Patterson’s office about him just this week. Richard had to get a letter of recommendation from a local congressman for his application to the Naval Academy, and he’d been stressing about it all fall. I couldn’t believe that he might lose that just because he’d hooked up with a crazy drunk girl. But Coach was serious as a heart attack. It’s politics, he said. But that’s how it works. They’re gonna come out of the woods. And not just for Richard and Max. For all of you boys on the team.

  They were coming after us because she’d hooked up with a couple of guys? They wanted to punish us for her drinking too much, for her being easy? When there were assloads of kids doing stuff like that every night of the week. Just because Richard left his jacket behind, because she was too drunk to get inside and he didn’t want her to be cold. It was worse than the laser pointer, which was just an arbitrary rule. And maybe Max deserved it, karma-wise. But Richard didn’t. Richard was my oldest friend, and he was a little soft, and whatever he did it was only because the girl wanted to hook up with Max—she had let him rub her shoulders, she had gotten into the car. And anyway, if she’d tried to commit suicide, didn’t it only prove that she was unstable, the kind of person who drank too much and regretted it after?