Both Sides Now

by Shawn Inmon

  At first, it seemed to be an accident when he gave me a ride. I would be standing at the bus stop waiting, and he would pull out of his driveway and ask, “Wanna ride?” After a while, though, we both figured out we were doing it every day and I didn’t even bother to go out to the bus stop any more. We would just meet at the Vega at 7:45 every morning. If I was a little late, he would start the car and listen to music while he waited for me. He was pretty nice, especially for an older guy.

  One Monday morning in mid-October, though, Shawn wasn’t there when I came out of the house. I waited for him until I heard the bus coming down Damron Road, then gave up and caught it. It was the same thing the next day and the next. After a week or so, I gave up on even going to the Vega and just went straight to the bus stop, but I had no idea where Shawn was. He could have been kidnapped by aliens or moved to Seattle to go to school for all I knew.

  After a week of not knowing anything, I caught up to his friend Jerry in the hall. Jerry and Shawn had been best friends for a long time, but they were very different from each other. Shawn was tall and skinny with crazy curly hair. Jerry was shorter, but he was the cutest and most popular boy in school. Almost every girl I knew had some kind of crush on him.

  Because we were both friends with Shawn, I didn’t see Jerry that way, but I respected his opinion—probably too much. When I thought about trying out for cheerleader in junior high, Jerry told me not to because all the cheerleaders were snobby and he didn’t think I was like that. As a result, I didn’t try out. He also had a good fashion sense. Where Shawn seemed to wear whatever he had picked up off the floor of his bedroom that day, Jerry’s outfits were always coordinated. He had become my own fashion adviser, but I never would have admitted it to him.

  “Hi, Jerry. Do you have a second?”

  “Well, hello,” he said in a fake-suave voice. He was hardly ever serious.

  “Do you know what’s going on with Shawn? I haven’t seen him all week.”

  “I went by and talked to his mom yesterday and she said he just had the flu. She said he’s getting better. He should be back next week.”

  He wasn’t back the next week, though, or the week after.

  Finally, when I got home from school one day, Mom told me that she had talked to Ruth, Shawn’s mom, and that Shawn had something called encephalitis. I’d never heard of it, but Mom said it was a problem with his brain, like maybe it was swelling up or something like that. Right after that, I heard that another girl in school, Linda Spencer, had the same thing, but no one seemed to know how they had caught it, or if they would get better, or what.

  The picture we had taken at Homecoming came in, and they gave me both of our copies. I thought that was a good excuse to go next door and see for myself what was going on. I was pretty sure Mom wouldn’t want me to go, so I didn’t tell her.

  When I knocked on the sliding glass door, Shawn’s mom came around the corner from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dishtowel. She looked tired and her face was pinched in a knot of worry.

  “Hello, Dawn.”

  “Hi. Ummm… the pictures I had taken with Shawn at the Homecoming Dance came in today, so I wanted to bring his over to him.”

  “That’s very nice of you.”

  She reached out and took them from me and slid the pictures out of the little white envelope. She smiled a little. “That’s a good picture. You looked beautiful.”

  “Thanks. Well, I guess I’ll go home…”

  “Do you want to go back and see Shawn?”

  That surprised me. I hadn’t thought about actually seeing him. I didn’t really understand what he had, and I didn’t know if he was contagious or not. I was pretty sure Shawn’s mom wouldn’t have invited me to see him if I could catch something, though.

  Shawn’s room wasn’t actually part of the mobile home. It was a room that his dad had attached to the side of the trailer. We walked to the back of the house and stepped down into his room.

  It was dark inside. The only light came from his black and white television, which was tuned to the afternoon movie with the sound turned almost all the way off. It felt stuffy, like the air had been recirculated too many times. Shawn’s twin bed was in the corner and I could barely see him as he lay there.

  “Shawn,” his mom said. “Dawn’s here. She brought you something.” Her voice sounded very loud in the near-silent room. “You probably don’t want to stay long, I know. If you talk to him for a few minutes, he might wake up for you or he might not. He’s sleeping almost all day now.”

  I nodded and felt my throat get a little thick. When we were outside, or hanging out together, or studying, Shawn was always energetic. Now he just laid there.

  “Uh, hey…” My voice sounded tiny and hollow. I didn’t like the way it sounded. “So, we got our pictures back from Homecoming. I think they turned out pretty good.” I was feeling a little foolish, like I was talking to myself. “Not much going on at school. It’s school…”

  He stirred and groaned a little, then tried to push himself up on his elbows. He squinted at me like the almost-total darkness wasn’t dark enough. “Oh. Hi.” His voice was weak and he sounded completely out of it.

  “Hi. I didn’t think you were going to wake up. I brought you your copy of the Homecoming picture we had taken.” I took the little cardboard frame and set it on the table beside his bed. He acted like he hadn’t heard me.

  “Who are all those people with you?”

  That threw me for a loop. I looked over my shoulder and then back at him.

  “What do you mean? I’m alone. There’s nobody here but you and me.”

  He nodded like he understood, but immediately lay back down and closed his eyes. I waited for another minute to see if he was going to say anything else, but eventually I gave up and left. I felt worse than before I went to see him. He looked so bad I wondered if he would ever get up.

  When I got home, Mom could tell I was upset and asked me where I had been. When I told her, she yelled at me and asked me if I wanted to catch whatever Shawn had. I didn’t catch anything, though, and he eventually got better, but he didn’t come back to school until just a few weeks before Christmas break. I was so happy to see him that first day, sitting in the Vega defrosting the windows. Not just because it was nicer getting a ride to school, but because I had missed him. I was pretty sure he just thought of me like his kid sister, but sometimes when he looked at me with such a serious look in his eyes, I thought maybe there was something more there.

  Just before Christmas break, Shawn, Jerry and their friends Bill Woods and Chip Lutz did the weirdest thing. The year before, they had performed at the Mossyrock Talent Show by imitating KISS, the band with the makeup and platform shoes and loud music. They hadn’t won a prize that night, but the crowd liked them and I could tell they had fun playing dress-up. The really weird thing was, none of them could really sing or play an instrument, so they just played a KISS song on a stereo, and pretended to play and sing along.

  I told you it was weird.

  I thought after the Talent Show that would be the last of it, but as soon as they were all back in school, they started planning an entire show where they would play KISS albums and pretend to play and sing. On the one hand, I thought they were crazy. Who would show up to see them do that? On the other hand, it was Shawn and Jerry, and they seemed to accomplish most anything they set out to do.

  Their show was scheduled to be held in the multi-purpose room in the high school the night after school let out for Christmas vacation. I can’t remember how much they were charging for tickets, but it wasn’t very much. So Cheryl, Devy, Missy and I all decided to go. It might have been lame, but it was December in Mossyrock and there wasn’t anything else going on.

  On the night of the show, I was sitting on the couch in the living room when I heard something coming up the front steps. When I opened the door, all I saw was this huge black figure looming over me, wearing horrible black and white makeup. It looked like a seven-foot-tall
bat come to roost on our front porch.

  I screamed. Loud. Like a horror movie scream. Mom jumped up out of her chair and took two steps toward the front door when the creature burst through the door laughing.

  It was Shawn, dressed up in his Gene Simmons costume, makeup and platform shoes. He was laughing so hard, I was afraid he was going to hurt himself. I punched him as hard as I could, which wasn’t very hard, because I was still getting over being scared. Mom looked at him in his ridiculous get-up and then at the expression on my face before bursting out laughing too. It’s no fun being the only mad person in a room full of people who are laughing at you, so I had to give up being mad, at least on the inside.

  Of course, Shawn had just wanted to come over and show us his costume before the show. Being Shawn, he had taken advantage of a great opportunity to scare me. Seen in the light of my living room, he wasn’t all that scary, but he sure had been climbing up our front steps like a demented spider.

  My friends and I went to the show, and it was all right. Someone had forgotten to turn the heat on and there were no chairs, so we all stood around in the multi-purpose room in our coats trying to stay warm. My musical tastes ran more to Three Dog Night and The Beach Boys than KISS, so I didn’t really love the music. It was fun to see my friends up there on stage, jumping around in their costumes and tall platform shoes. We kept waiting for one of them to fall off their shoes, but they never did.

  Much later, Shawn told me that he and Jerry had started imitating KISS because they thought it would be a good way to meet and impress girls. If he had wanted to impress this girl, he would have done a lot better impersonating Leif Garrett instead of Gene Simmons, but I never told him that.

  After that, there were about ten days of Christmas vacation left. Our family didn’t have a lot of money, so Christmas was never about getting a lot of new clothes or records or electronics or anything. That Christmas, my present was a pink princess phone that I could plug into an outlet in my room; pretty much the best present ever.

  We always celebrated Christmas on Christmas Eve. We all got dressed up like we were going out somewhere special, and Mom made us a huge Christmas dinner with a turkey and mashed potatoes, homemade bread with apple butter, glorified rice and Jell-O salad made with pineapple and cottage cheese. We didn’t normally say grace, but we always did on Christmas. After dinner, we watched TV while Mom crocheted until Dad went to bed. On a normal night I would go to my room too, but on Christmas Eve Mom and I always stayed up really late and watched some old movie on Channel 13. That year we watched The Hound of the Baskervilles, which she was really excited about. I can’t say I was, but it was fun staying up with the whole house quiet and just the two of us.

  My birthday was two days after Christmas. When I was a little kid, Mom had made a big deal out of my birthday, but that had stopped as I got older. Mom made me a German chocolate cake, my favorite. They gave me a pretty necklace and some gloves, and I thought that was the end of the excitement for the day.

  Just before lunch though, Shawn called. That was a little unusual because he and his family had gone to see his sister up near Seattle for Christmas and they hadn’t gotten home yet. Long distance was expensive, so I was surprised to hear from him.

  When the phone rang, I answered it.

  “Dawn? Hey. Happy Birthday. Today is your birthday, isn’t it?”

  “Yep.”

  “Well, I’m up in Auburn at my sister’s house right now, but I’m gonna leave to come home in just a little while. Anyway, I heard that Star Wars is playing out town so I think I’m going to go tonight. Since it’s your birthday and I didn’t get you anything else, I thought maybe you’d like to go with me?” (‘Out town’ was Mossyrock slang for going to Centralia or Chehalis, which were not large towns but had much more to offer a teenager than Mossyrock.)

  My entire plans for the evening had been to have dinner with Mom and Dad and watch TV for a few hours, so going out town to see Star Wars sounded awesome. Mossyrock had a small movie theater called The G Theater, but the theaters out town were much nicer.

  “Yeah, I guess. Hang on, I’ll ask Mom if I can go.”

  I turned to Mom with a pleading look on my face. “Shawn wants to take me to a movie out town for my birthday. Can I go?”

  She didn’t even hesitate. “Sure.”

  I felt excited and happy, but I casually said “OK, I can go.”

  “Great! I’ll pick you up at 5:30.”

  Mom made me homemade enchiladas for my birthday. We had a piece of my cake for dessert after dinner, and were done by 5:00. I went to my room and changed into my best slacks and top, and put my makeup on. I wanted to be a little more prepared for this date than I was for Homecoming.

  Shawn got there a few minutes early and sat in the living room, where he talked with Mom and Dad about the weather and other boring stuff. He finally looked over at me and I gave him a look: I thought we were going to the movies. He smiled and stood up, ready to go.

  “Which theater are you taking Dawn to?” Mom asked.

  “The Fox in Centralia.”

  “And what are you going to see?”

  “Star Wars.”

  I could see that this meant nothing to Mom, but she didn’t seem to care.

  “What time does the movie play?”

  “7:05.”

  “And what time will you have her home?”

  “We’ll come straight back and we should be here right around 10:00.”

  I was starting to get a little embarrassed by the interrogation, but I knew that if I objected, Mom was likely to make it worse and start asking if the tread on the tires on the Vega was okay, so I just squirmed silently.

  “OK, you can go. We’ll be waiting up.”

  We were out the door, running across the yard together in seconds. This time, I beat him to my side of the car and opened the door for myself. As soon as we got inside, Shawn started the car, turned the heater on full blast, and turned up the radio. It was just like every morning when he picked me up for school, except we were going out town.

  I didn’t really think this was a date, even though we were in his car and going to a movie. When he asked me, he made it seem like he was going anyway and invited me along so he didn’t have to go alone. Plus, even though I was fourteen now, he was seventeen and a senior.

  Usually when we were in the car, Shawn wouldn’t shut up and I couldn’t get a word in, but tonight he was quiet for a long time. We listened to the radio and I watched the nighttime scenery whiz past. After about twenty minutes, Tonight’s the Night by Rod Stewart came on the radio.

  “You know what I heard?”

  I looked at him, but didn’t say anything. When Shawn started sentences with ‘You know what I heard?’ what came next was often silly and ridiculous.

  “I heard Rod Stewart had to go to the emergency room and get his stomach pumped because he had too much semen in it.” He nodded enthusiastically after dropping that bombshell, as if that would confirm that it was true. I looked at him, waiting to see if there was more, but that seemed to be the sum total of his wisdom concerning Rod Stewart.

  “You know what I heard? I heard you’re an idiot.”

  I liked Rod Stewart and thought he was kind of cute for an old guy. I thought that boys knew that girls thought he was cute and that was why they made up stupid stories like that about him. I didn’t really know how to put that into words though, so I just narrowed my eyes at him, shook my head, and looked forward. Shawn didn’t say anything for quite a while after that, and I didn’t have any real conversation starters either, so we rode the rest of the way to the theater without talking. When we pulled up in front of The Fox Theater, it was still completely dark inside. It did say “Star Wars 7:05” on the marquee, but it was only a little after 6:00.

  Shawn smiled and said, “I got us here early so we could drive around town and look at everyone’s Christmas lights. I just wanted to come by the theater and double-check that the show really started at 7:0
5, so we wouldn’t be late.”

  He put the Vega back into gear and drove us all around Centralia. Two days after Christmas, everyone still had their lights up and it was pretty. Eventually he pulled into a 7-11.

  “I just need to pick up something real quick, then we can go. You want to go in?”

  I opened my door and got out. We had three little grocery stores in Mossyrock, but none of them had very big candy selections. The 7-11 felt like it was all candy and snacks. I was still full of chocolate cake and enchiladas, so I didn’t want any, but it was kind of fun to just stand and look at everything.

  Eventually, I saw Shawn pick up a pack of Freshen-Up gum. I had heard some of the girls at school talking about Freshen-Up, so I said, “Do you know what we call that kind of gum?”

  He looked uncertain, but shook his head a little.

  I leaned up and whispered in his ear. “We call it cum gum.”

  Shawn’s eyebrows went up in surprise and he laughed. He also looked a little embarrassed.

  When we got back to the Fox, there were lights on and a few people moving around, but we were still able to find a parking spot right in front of the theater. Shawn bought our tickets and we went inside, but I was starting to get a little worried. I had needed to go to the bathroom for the last hour and I knew I would never make it through the whole movie, but I didn’t want to tell Shawn that I had to go.

  “Do you want anything from the snack bar?” Shawn asked. “I’m gonna get some Hot Tamales.”

  I told him I didn’t want anything but that I needed to go wash my hands before we sat down. It was months before I could actually tell him I needed to go to the bathroom. I don’t know if he ever figured out that ‘I need to wash my hands’ meant the same thing.

  When I came out of the bathroom feeling a lot better, Shawn was waiting for me with a smile. He reached out and laid his hand on my shoulder, then nodded toward the staircase that led up to the balcony. We found a seat right in the front row, so we looked right down on the screen. Eventually, the theater got pretty crowded, but it felt very comfy hanging out there like it was just the two of us.