Karla had her window cracked open just enough to wiggle her cigarette through. Every time she went to flick the ash, the car jerked to the left, hugging the centerline until drifting back curb-ways. Passengers learned early on to light her cigarettes for her.
I rode with my elbow braced against the passenger door and my right hand wrapped around the shoulder strap next to my head. I could’ve pulled the belt down and clicked it on like it was supposed to be worn, but if I did that, she’d give me a don’t-trust-my-driving? look. Better to just hold on and try not to flinch. There was a pothole thump, and “Wind of Change” jumped back to “Show Me the Way.”
She said, “I can’t take it anymore.”
“Then put the radio on. Or get a cassette player. Those don’t skip as much.”
“Not that, this.” She took her hands off the wheel and stretched out her arms, the car inching closer to oncoming traffic. “This town, these people, the same old shit every week. I’m done with it. All of it.”
I shrugged. “It’s not all that bad.”
“Oh, yes it is. You know it too. That’s why you’ve got your little list.”
“That’s not why I—”
“The only difference is I don’t need a list to tell me what to do.”
“But the list—”
“We’re doing something different tonight,” she said, ending the discussion. “We’re going to a party up by the campus.”
“You invited?”
“No one’s invited. You just show up. There’s a guy there I want to talk to.”
“What am I gonna do, sit in the car?”
“Don’t be stupid,” she said. “I’m not walking in alone.”
“Why didn’t you bring Geralyn and Cici with you instead?”
“Three high school girls walk into a college party? It’d look slutty.”
“Won’t the guy think you’re with me?”
She laughed. I didn’t think it was all that funny.
“We should stop and get a six-pack or something. It’s rude to show up empty-handed.”
“We’re not,” she said, tapping the coat pocket where she carried her stash. “Jay’s gonna be about a half ounce off.”
THE HOUSE WAS a multi-apartment rental in that part of the city where every house was a multi-apartment rental, and all of them big, with narrow driveways barely wide enough for a car, and wraparound porches that had been closed in long ago to create another rentable room. There were massive trees along the sidewalk, and if there were bushes in the yard, they were overgrown, blocking the first-floor windows. But most of the yards were bare, leaving more room for parking cars and dumping old sofas.
Karla squeezed her Pinto between a tireless Chevy and a new GTO. We followed the reggae beat to the propped-open side door.
“I doubt I’m gonna know anybody here.”
“I doubt it too,” Karla said, and led the way up the stairs and through another open door, into a crowded space that might have once been a living room. An empty fireplace on one end, a dark wood staircase on the other, and in the middle, two half barrels sitting in an inflatable kiddie pool filled with ice. Above it all, a low-hanging cloud of smoke that smelled of tobacco, sweat, pot, and incense.
Then there was the crowd. A couple years out of high school, tops, but a world away. It started with the clothes. I couldn’t tell the jocks from the headbangers, the disco-suckers from the stoners. There were differences, sure: guys with long hair, others with twenty-dollar salon cuts, guys wearing T-shirts, polos, sweaters, even a few sport coats, one guy in a bed-sheet toga, everybody wearing whatever they wanted. I glanced down at my white shirt and skinny black tie. The list was right again.
But more than the guys and their clothes, there were the girls. A lot of them. As many girls as guys, and definitely more than at any high school party I’d ever been to. A few had that big hair thing going, all Farrah Fawcett flips and waves, but most wore their hair parted in the middle if it was long, or brushed to the side if it was a shag. And even though it was forty degrees outside, there were enough girls in tube tops and shorts to make me think of summer.
Despite their differences—or maybe because of them—everybody was talking to everybody else, listening to the same music, hanging around the keg, no group staring down another group, nobody acting all hard, everybody laughing.
It was weird.
Now, I knew that high school had nothing to do with reality, what with all the cliques and sub-cliques and splinter groups, and all the unwritten rules about who was cool and who wasn’t worth talking to. And I knew it was all bullshit. But it was the only bullshit I knew. So this was . . . weird.
“I’m gonna look upstairs,” Karla said. “You okay hanging out here?”
“I’m a big boy. I’ll be fine.”
She turned and made her way to the stairs; I grabbed an empty cup from the stack on the fireplace mantel and got in line at the keg. A big guy with a mustache was pouring.
“What are ya drinking?”
I nodded at the keg. “Beer, I guess.”
The guy laughed. “Black Label or Odenbach?”
“I’ve been drinking BL,” I said, thinking of the two warm beers I managed to get at Jay’s.
“Always stick with who you came with. Ain’t that right, Connie?” The guy passed a beer over my shoulder to a hot blonde in tiny gym shorts, then he took my cup, started filling, and said, “So you’re a friend of Karla’s.”
He knows her name? I tried not to look surprised. “Yeah. We, uh, go to the same school.”
“She’s in high school? Damn.”
I smiled, no idea what to say to that.
“I’m Eckles,” the big guy said, handing me the beer.
“Nick,” I said, saluting with the cup. “Cool place.”
“Yeah,” Eckles said, looking around. “I wonder whose it is.”
Another big guy with a mustache staggered into me. “Ecks, you gotta see this.”
Eckles motioned to the tap and headed into the crowd, so I started pouring—for a girl who filled a pitcher, another who topped off a fancy mug, a black guy in an ankle-length raincoat covered in band patches, twins in matching hot pants, then a refill for Eckles, a refill for me, “Stop pumping the damn thing, it’s all foam as it is,” a song I had never heard before was playing, the band shouting that Sheena is a punk rocker, then Andy—An-deeee!—passing around a bottle of rum, another pitcher, a keg switch, a pack of foreign-exchange students, then one of the twins coming back, grabbing my arm like we were dancing, then what the hell, dancing to some disco song—disco, for chrissake—then a blues tune, then reggae, back to disco, the girl gone now but me still dancing, lots of people dancing, lots of people spilling their beer and not just me, then back by the keg with Andy and the other twin and the girl who was crying, and then the music got louder and there was more dancing and a crash like something broke and laughing and another keg and that Sheena song again and making out with an ashtray-mouth girl and then shots with what’s-his-name and that’s all I remembered.
Saturday, December 17
IT WAS MY BEDROOM.
That much I was sure of.
How I got there?
Not a clue.
And it was my window that was open, letting the cold air in, a shaft of midday sunlight punching me in the eye. I probably deserved it.
And it was my clothes I was still wearing, but that wasn’t my jacket on the floor and I didn’t recognize the beer mug on the chair. And what was up with all the McDonald’s bags?
And it was most definitely my head that was ready to explode. I would have been fine with that if it meant the pounding would stop and the queasy, about-to-puke feeling would go away.
Never again.
That’s what I had said the last time too, back in July.
Five months. Not bad.
I should have put that on the list.
Speaking of which . . .
STAND OUT.
STAND UP.
STAND BY.
STAND FAST.
Ta-da.
I know, you were expecting more. Something deeper, or at least something that didn’t sound like it came from a poster in a guidance office. But you try summing up the person you know you could be in eight words and see if it doesn’t end up sounding just as lame. And, yes, I realize it didn’t have to be eight words, but I started with the first one, and that sorta set a pattern. After four lines, I’d said everything I needed to say. Besides, as lame as my list was, it was better than what I had before it, which was nothing at all.
Now, why a list? Maybe it was something that had been bouncing around in my head since my freshman history class. Mr. Klock was obsessed with George Washington, and on top of a lot of other things I’ve thankfully forgotten, Klock told us all about this list that young Georgie wrote up describing the way he should live his life. That list was like a hundred items long, and it covered everything from respecting your elders to how you shouldn’t kill fleas in front of guests. My list wasn’t as detailed, but we were both doing the same thing—reinventing ourselves so we could end up better than how we started. And if it worked for George . . .
The stand out part came first, and it wasn’t as easy as it sounds. You can officially stand out in high school, but only for unimportant stuff like sports or grades. I wanted to stand out for doing something harder, like not following the herd.
I wanted to stand up for the things I believed in. I wasn’t really sure what any of those things were, but I assumed I’d figure them out as I went along.
I wanted to stand by the people who stood by me. If I ever met any.
And I was going to stand fast, stop caving in when it got hard or when it wasn’t popular. For a natural-born quitter like me—Boy Scouts, Little League, guitar lessons, karate—that was probably going to be the hardest one on the list, which probably meant it was the one that mattered most.
So that was my list, and I was sticking to it.
Now, where was I?
Ah, yes, holding on to my bed as it spun around the room.
It was Saturday, so my father would be at work and Mom would be out shopping with my older sister, Eileen, and her two kids. They were all wonderfully predictable like that. My younger sister, Gail, could be anywhere, even where she was supposed to be, at Aunt Norma and Uncle Bud’s place in Vermont, where she’d been living since last spring. She could be there, but I doubted it. Gail was my favorite person in the world with the same last name as me, the only one who really mattered, but I couldn’t have dealt with her—or any of them—that morning. Or afternoon.
I took a long shower, first hot, then icy cold until I couldn’t stand it. Tony had said it was a proven cure for a hangover, but all it proved was that Tony didn’t know what he was talking about. I got dressed and tried to eat something while I ran last night’s clothes through the washing machine, including the unfamiliar jacket. The pot smell on the clothes wasn’t bad, but there were flecks of dried puke—mine?—below the knees of the jeans. I had to hose off my work boots and set them by the furnace in the basement to dry out.
Definitely never again.
Around three, I left a note on the table: Went to work. My shift didn’t start for another two hours, but I didn’t want to be there when somebody got home. They’d ask questions and I’d have to lie, then they’d find something for me to do, and I’d do it, but they’d end up telling me I did it wrong or that I was taking too long. Better for everybody concerned if I was gone when they returned.
It was warm for December, and the fresh air felt good, even if it did make me cough. I didn’t smoke, but I had a smoker’s hack. With everybody smoking around me, it was like I had a pack-a-day habit.
I took my time walking. I was in no rush. That and every muscle in my body ached. At least the Tylenol was working on my head. Not so much for my stomach.
Seriously, never again.
GORDIE AND OP were at the arcade, fighting it out on Boot Hill, so focused on moving their boxy pixilated cowboys up and down the screen that it took two rounds for them to notice I was standing behind them.
“Where’d you disappear to last night?”
“Karla and I went for a ride,” I said, not sure how much I should share.
OP made with a stupid grin. “You were riding Karla? About freakin’ time you got a piece of that.”
“Hilarious,” I said, not smiling, not in the mood. “We just drove around, that’s all.”
Gordie dug a quarter out of his jeans and dropped it in the slot. “That’s not what Karla said.”
OP put his quarter in. “She told us all about the party up by the college. I guess free beer and weed with us isn’t good enough for some people.”
“When’d she tell you this?”
“Last night, when she came looking for you after you disappeared.”
Looking for me? Then how’d I get home? This wasn’t good. I rubbed the back of my neck and tried to remember. Nothing.
“First you don’t give us a discount on the beer,” Gordie said, talking louder to be heard over the opening chords of “Let There Be Rock” blaring from the speakers at the back of the arcade. “Then you don’t bring anything with you when you waltz in. No beer, no snacks, no pizza, no weed. Oh, I forgot, you’re a wuss.”
I ignored him and turned to OP. “What time did she come by?”
OP shrugged. “Maybe two? Two thirty? She was all crying, freaked out.”
“What’d she say?”
“She said you get stupid when you get drunk. But we already knew that.”
My head throbbed in agreement. “Anything else?”
“That you went missing. Like we were supposed to care.”
I tried to piece the night together, where I disappeared to and who I was with. Nothing new coming to mind.
OP gave my arm a punch. “I said, were there any girls at that party?”
“Just hot ones. Look, if you see Karla here, tell her to swing by the Stop-N-Go. I’m working tonight.”
Gordie hit the start button on the game, the four-note theme cycling through. “Karla at an arcade? Never happening.” He slapped the joystick and fired off a quick shot, dropping OP’s cowboy before it had moved.
“I wasn’t ready,” OP said as the ghost of Player Two floated up to Boot Hill.
“Yes, you were,” Gordie said.
“No, I wasn’t.”
“Yes, you were.”
And that’s when I walked away.
I HEADED TO the record store. I scanned the new releases section, then, more out of habit than interest, I flipped through the same stacks of albums I always checked—Queen, the Who, Foreigner, Styx, ELO, Rush. Nothing new. And even if there was, it would be the same old stuff. I was looking for something else. I skimmed the albums on the “HOT SELLERS!” wall and checked the eight-tracks, then gave up and asked the guy at the counter. He smiled a you-get-it smile and pointed me to the punk section.
I hadn’t noticed the punk bin before—why would I? I was a banger, and that meant white-suburban, radio-friendly, lighter-waving, one-ballad-per-album-to-show-their-soft-side, endless-guitar-solo, head-banging rock. That’s the way the world worked. But my brave new world called for a different soundtrack.
I found it under R.
The cover was a grainy black-and-white photo of the band, with RAMONES printed in blocky neon-pink letters across the top. The back cover was a cartoon drawing of a freaky-looking guy riding a rocket to Russia. I’d seen kids do better drawings on desks during detention. I skimmed down the track names to make sure the song was there, and when I saw it, I remembered ashtray-mouth girl, dancing with the twin, mixing Wild Turkey and beer, “Sheena Is a Punk Rocker” still echoing through my poor pounding head.
Best night ever.
Then I remembered that that was all I remembered.
I had what I was looking for and was ready to head to the checkout counter when some deep, dark part of me went back to the record bin, flipping
through the rest of the R’s until I found it.
Queens of Noise by the Runaways.
All five members of the all-girl band on the front cover, Joan Jett at the far left, staring straight into the camera, her eyes dragging me in. Just like the mystery chick at the Stop-N-Go.
I looked at the cover, then back at those eyes, and for a second I wanted to slip both albums under my coat and walk out the front door.
But I didn’t.
I paid for them—$11.96 plus tax—took the bag, and headed off to work.
“START BY TOSSING out all the trash. Don’t forget to dig the rotten stuff out of the vegetable bin. It’s stinkin’ up the place. Then climb in that dumpster and stamp it down so it’ll all fit. Don’t make a mess out of it. And while you’re outside, shovel the slush away from the entrance. Don’t go tracking it all back in here, either. When you’re done, clean the employee bathroom. Especially that toilet. It’s disgusting. Then mop all the aisles and restock the cooler. Might as well do the freezer too. All that shouldn’t take you an hour, so no dicking around. When you’re done, see me. I got a list.”
“Do it yourself, I quit.”
That’s what I wanted to say. It’s what I wanted to say every time George piled on the work just to be a hardass, but instead I said, “Okay,” went out the back door, climbed in the dumpster, and started jumping.
Oh, the exciting life of a Stop-N-Go stock boy.
It wasn’t an awful job. Mindless, yes, but not awful. A trained chimp could do most of it, but there were probably rules about having a chimp jump up and down in a dumpster, so they hired me. The mindlessness was the best part, though. It gave me a lot of time to think, and over the ten months I’d been there, I’d spent hundreds of hours thinking about four things—sex, girls, music, and moving out, in that order. The first two ate up most of the time, with endless loops of wild adventures starring girls from school, girls who came in the store, or the women in the magazines George hid behind the file cabinet. It was harder to think about music with the in-store radio glued to the Top 40 station. After an hour of Elton John, Barry Manilow, ABBA, and Captain and Tennille, I was ready to chew through a power cord to put myself out of misery.
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