by Amy Bryant
“He’s got mucho spending money now because his parents are getting a divorce, so his mommy is spoiling him,” Adam said. He pronounced it “dee-vorce.”
“I remember that phase,” I said. “Only I was five, so I got Barbie paraphernalia instead of drug paraphernalia.”
Mike laughed and Adam took his eyes off the television long enough to sneer at me. His right eyetooth was discolored. I sneered back at him. The pot was beginning to creep through my body like an extended yawn.
“My mother’s not exactly aware that I own this bong,” Mike said. “We don’t have that sort of rapport.”
I giggled. I was sure Jason didn’t know the word rapport. I handed the bong back and sat down on the couch on the other side of Mike.
Carrie appeared in the doorway and signaled that it was time to go. The clock on the VCR said 10:45. Carrie was the only one of my close friends who had a car, so I was forced to put up with her early curfew.
I stood up. “Well, it looks like I gotta go,” I said. “Thanks a lot for the bong hit.”
“Yeah, good to see you, Polly,” Mike said. He smiled up at me in what I hoped was a significant way. “Sorry you gotta take off so soon.”
“Me, too.”
I followed Carrie out of the house with a stoned grin stretched across my face. I could see Theresa’s and Lyle’s orange cigarette tips glowing from inside Carrie’s car.
Even though we didn’t have any classes together, before the end of the first day of school I had memorized the location of Carrie’s and Theresa’s lockers and staked out a table in the lunchroom. I didn’t have any classes with Carrie because she was a year behind me. I didn’t have classes with Theresa because I was good at math.
When I did math it was like I was in a trance. I wasn’t good at it in a creepy, child-prodigy kind of way, I was just good enough for the teachers to notice. It started with pre-algebra in the seventh grade, then algebra I in the eighth grade, advanced geometry in the ninth grade, and algebra II–trig in the tenth grade. In eleventh grade I took advanced functions first semester and analytical geometry second semester. Now that I was a senior I was taking calculus. I knew that math wasn’t supposed to be easy. Even Theresa hated math, and she got good grades.
My math classes were small, considering the size of the school. My classmates were mostly male nerds, with a few girl nerds here and there. All the girls in class except me were openly ambitious—they clearly had something to prove. Their hands shot up faster than the teachers could finish questions, and they scored the highest on tests. They ignored the boys, and talked only of test scores and getting into college. They ignored me, too.
Thanks to math I was placed in accelerated English and history, though I didn’t deserve to be in those classes. I did okay, but it wasn’t like math. Being good in school made everything easier. When my friends skipped class, the front office called their parents. When I told my teachers I had a doctor’s appointment or a head cold or bad cramps they believed me.
Adam Schreiber was the first one to find us at our lunch table. His head had been freshly shaved since Keith’s party, and there were nicks here and there. It looked like he’d shaved it himself.
“Mike will be here in a second,” he said, plopping down next to me.
“That’s nice,” I said. I wondered if there was already a rumor going around that I liked Mike. I looked over at Carrie. Her face was blank.
Just then Mike lowered himself into the chair across from me, his lunch bag in one hand and a copy of High Times magazine in the other.
“Hi, you guys,” Mike said. He threw the magazine down on the table. Theresa snatched it up and began thumbing through it, her red hair bouncing against her shoulders.
“Check it out,” Theresa said, spreading the Bud of the Month Centerfold out on the table. Everyone leaned forward. It wasn’t much to look at. Just a giant pile of pot leaves.
“I would be so stoked if I had that,” Mike said. He was wearing a baseball hat backward. It made him look about twelve.
“You’d rather check out a weed centerfold than a Playboy centerfold,” Adam said.
“Shut up.” Mike pulled the saran wrap off his sandwich and balled it up. His cheeks had gone red.
“Playboy is cheesy,” Theresa said.
Mike called me that night. When I answered the phone he just said, “Hi, Polly. It’s Mike,” and then I said, “Oh, hi,” and then he said he was just calling to say hi, and then we were silent for a minute or so. My bedroom window was open, and I could hear a dog barking somewhere in the neighborhood.
“God, my mom,” I finally said. “She, like, expects me to come home from school and do my homework and then immediately begin doing chores like I’m some extra sister on Little House on the Prairie or something. And then my stepfather, he keeps trying to limit my television time because he thinks it’s going to cut into my real existence, whatever that means. And I’m sorry, but it’s my life and I’m kind of sick of them butting in all the time, you know? Not to mention that it’s the first week of school. I mean, God. It’s not like I’ve got a test tomorrow.”
I wasn’t sure why I was telling him all this. In fact, my household duties were minimal, consisting only of keeping the upstairs bathroom clean and picking up after myself.
“Yeah, I hate that parent bullshit,” Mike said. “Hey, you want to hear something I’m learning on the guitar?”
“Sure.”
Mike put the phone receiver by his guitar. I couldn’t really make out what song he was playing. I stretched the phone cord over to the window and gazed out at the smooth, dark pavement of my street and the perfectly arranged clusters of trees. I was careful not to look over at my backpack, which I had shoved behind the laundry basket. I had physics homework to do. My teacher, Mrs. Fern, seemed intent on making her class the challenge of her students’ lives. “Physics is tough stuff,” she had announced at the start of class. I resented Mrs. Fern already. Senior year was supposed to be easier in the accelerated program, so we could focus on our SAT scores and getting into a good college. Apparently Mrs. Fern hadn’t gotten the memo.
Mike played me a few songs. Then he announced it was time for him to have dinner. After I hung up I put on Minor Threat and danced in front of the mirror for three songs straight.
“Maybe you can drive a wedge between Mike and Adam,” Theresa said when I told her about Mike calling me. “Once you get close enough.”
I looked down at my Bad Brains T-shirt. At lunch Adam had sneered, “Nice shirt,” and rolled his eyes at me. Later he made fun of Carrie for liking New Order. “New Order’s a fag band,” he said.
“If Mike likes Adam’s personality as it is now I don’t see how I’m going to change his mind,” I said.
I pictured myself as Mike’s girlfriend. I would be Polly, otherwise known as Mike Franklin’s girlfriend. I just had gotten used to not thinking of myself as Jason’s ex-girlfriend. It had been two months since I had let Jason dissolve in my mind—that’s what it had seemed like, a television dissolve edit—and up to now I had thought of him only occasionally to fill the space that having no one to like created.
The next week at the lunch table, Mike and Lyle began plotting their new band. Lyle didn’t play an instrument, but he had a microphone stand and a couple of amps his older brother had left in his basement. Lyle was going to be the singer, and Mike would play guitar. All they needed was a bass player and a drummer. Plus more equipment. Even though nobody had any money, Carrie agreed to drive them to the mall to look at band stuff after school.
Mike caught up with me as I was throwing my lunch trash away.
“Are you gonna come with us today?”
“Is this your way of telling me you need a roadie? Because I’m not very strong,” I said.
“Come on,” Mike said. “You can help me decide which amp looks the coolest. I think I can talk my mom into buying me one.”
“Okay, but I get final say,” I said. Mike grinned. I tried to keep my
return grin a normal size.
Adam was the first person at Carrie’s tan Ford Escort after school. I watched him as I crossed the parking lot. He was sitting on the hood, staring down at the yellow lighter in his hand. He flicked it over and over again. As I got nearer, I could hear the hiss it made each time he ran his thumb over the spark wheel.
“Got a cigarette?” he asked when I got up to him.
I pulled my pack out of my jacket pocket and handed it over.
“You used to go out with Jason Wilson,” Adam said, blowing smoke. He said Jason’s name in the same tone of voice he used when he talked about New Order.
“Yeah, so?” I said.
“I know Todd, Jason’s brother. He told me about you and Jason.”
I was surprised Jason’s brother knew who I was. “I’ve never even met Todd,” I said.
Adam smirked. “Well, he sure seems to know all about you.”
I took my pack of cigarettes off the roof of the car where Adam had left it and put it back in my pocket. I wanted to ask what Todd Wilson had said about me. If Adam knew about my failed attempt at sex with Jason, Mike knew. I hadn’t even told Theresa.
Over Adam’s shoulder I spotted Mike across the parking lot. He was wearing an army-green corduroy jacket that looked stiff and new. The boys’ soccer team jogged out of the school and toward us, on their way to practice. They swarmed around Mike, a mass of sweatshirts and running shorts and thick legs. Three or four of them carried soccer balls. They turned toward the stadium just as Mike reached us.
“I used to play soccer,” Mike said, gazing after them.
“It’s never too late to be an idiot jock,” Adam said.
“I used to play, too,” I said. “Until ninth grade. What position did you play?”
“Mostly defense.”
“I was a half-back. Right side. I liked throw-ins.”
“I kind of sucked,” Mike said. “I’m not really cut out for team sports.”
I swooned. “Me neither.”
“I was a goalie,” Adam said. I tried to picture his skinny frame and scraped bald head in a soccer uniform, diving for the ball, not wanting to let down the team.
In the car, Lyle sat up front with Carrie. I sat in the backseat between Mike and Adam, my feet resting on the center hump. My legs were longer than Adam’s, but it was worth the discomfort so I could sit next to Mike. The pink shirt that Carrie had changed out of that morning peeked out from under her seat, near Mike’s feet.
“Sweet Child o’ Mine” came on the radio. We groaned. I swayed back and forth in my seat and wagged my head in my best Axel imitation.
Mike flashed me a quick smile. “You’re retarded,” he said.
I smacked him in the arm. “Am not!”
We merged onto the highway, and Carrie sped up. We were out of Reston now. We passed the auto parts store and Woody’s Driving Range. William went to the driving range once in a while, even though he didn’t play golf. He said it relaxed him. When he was teaching me to drive I would take William to Woody’s and drink a Coke while he hit balls. This was before I ran into a NO PARKING sign and snapped it in two, and William announced that he didn’t want to ride in the car with me ever again.
I exaggerated my Axel impression, twisting my upper body right and then left.
“Where do we go, where do we go now,” Carrie and I sang. Mike grabbed my arms and pulled them behind my back, knocking me into Adam. I squealed and jerked an arm free.
“Fuck, man, cut it out,” said Adam.
I poked Mike under his armpit. He flailed in his seat and pushed me into Adam again.
“Fucking cut it the fuck out,” Adam said.
We continued to struggle. Soon Mike had both my arms pinned at my sides. I tried to wriggle away, and then all at once he kissed me. His lips were softer than I expected.
“Ai yai yai yai yai yai yai yai,” Axel screeched over our kiss. Mike loosened his grip on my arms, and I felt the corduroy collar of his jacket against my collarbone.
The music stopped and I heard the click of a tape going into the deck. Adam sighed and said, “Get me out of here,” and just like that we stopped kissing.
The mall loomed up in front of us. Carrie braked and threw her cigarette out the window. Mike had his arm around my shoulder. We both stared straight ahead.
The next day Mike came by my locker after third period and gave me a drawing of a skater going over a waterfall. There were curvy lines coming off the skater in every direction. At the bottom of the drawing the curvy lines turned into the words To Polly From Mike.
“I drew this last night when I was high,” he said.
Bethany, the girl who had the locker next to mine, looked over at us and then away again. She was wearing a turquoise Converse sneaker on one foot and a red Converse sneaker on the other foot, part of the standard drama geek uniform. She kept a Guys and Dolls playbill taped up inside her locker, and boys wearing fedoras and trench coats regularly stopped by to say hi.
Bethany had long, fluffy brown hair that she was constantly shaking around. I had seen her in the math wing once. When I said hi, Bethany gave me a bewildered look, like a fearful celebrity cornered in a public place. Now we ignored each other.
“I wish I were high right now,” I said, loud enough for Bethany to hear.
“Do you want to come over after school?” Mike said.
Carrie and Lyle gave us a ride. Mike lived in a subdivision of town houses that had just been built. The neighborhood looked barren, the newly planted trees small and scraggly along the street. Mike didn’t invite Carrie and Lyle in.
Mike’s sister was lying on the floor in the living room, propped up on her elbows in front of General Hospital.
“This is Caitland,” Mike mumbled. Caitland twisted around and regarded me before turning back to the television. She had the same thick dark hair and large brown eyes that Mike did.
His bedroom looked exactly as I expected. Band flyers covered the walls, and stereo components were piled next to cratefuls of records. There was a narrow bed and a tall dresser with skate stickers all over it. The only thing that distinguished Mike’s room from Jason’s was the black electric guitar lying across the foot of the bed. I sat down next to the guitar while Mike put on Dag Nasty. Then he pulled his bong out of the back of his closet.
Mike sat down on the bed beside me as smoke filled my chest. He took the bong out of my hands just as I exploded into a coughing fit. I coughed all the way through Mike’s bong hit and into the next Dag Nasty song.
“Are you okay?” he asked when I had stopped.
“Yes. Now I am.”
Mike took another hit and offered me the bong back. I shook my head no. “I’m good,” I said.
He set the bong down on the rug, which matched the forest green wall-to-wall rug in the hallway.
“So tell me about when your parents got divorced,” Mike said.
His question startled me. I tucked a foot under my thigh and said what I was used to saying. “I was pretty little. My dad drank a lot and they fought all the time, so.”
“Do you still see your dad?”
“Yeah, a couple times a year maybe. And we talk on the phone. He’s in North Carolina.”
“Mine just got divorced last spring,” Mike said. “I haven’t seen my dad since he left.”
“Really?” I felt sorry for him.
“Yup.” He picked up his guitar and strummed it.
“Do you know where he is, though?”
“Yeah, he lives in Annandale. He calls here sometimes. I don’t want to see him, though. He punched me right before they broke up.”
“God. How come?” Nobody in my family had ever hit me.
“He told me not to get this haircut I wanted. When I got it anyway he freaked out and hit me. Mom threw him out, and we sold the house and moved here.”
“What was the haircut?”
“It was like shaved on the sides.”
Mike lowered his head over his guitar. He wa
s hard to hear since he wasn’t plugged in, but I was enthralled by the way his hair flopped over his eyes and how his fingers flew up and down the fret board. I scooted back on the bed and leaned against the wall, where I could see out his window. The view was of the sidewalk out front and the adjacent row of parking spaces that were only about a quarter filled. I studied the way the still, late-afternoon sun shone on the tops of the cars as the pot tingled through me. Mike’s mom had stuck up for him. I didn’t know what my mom would do if William hit me. When I was twelve I kept forgetting to lock the front door when I went out and William got so angry he ignored me for a week. Mom acted like nothing out of the ordinary was going on, even though he was absent at dinner and came home from work without acknowledging my presence.
“I’m actually not talking to my father right now either,” I said.
Mike stopped playing guitar. “How come?” he asked.
I told him my secret. How I wasn’t really Polly Clark, but Polly Hessler. I told him that even though my dad had a college degree and a job, he still couldn’t support me. “It’s probably because he’s an alcoholic,” I said. “He spends all his money on liquor.”
Mike was quiet, and I worried I’d said too much. I held my breath as he rose from the bed and carefully set the guitar back on its stand. Then he crossed back over to the bed and swooped down on top of me. He reminded me of a seagull. He was on his hands and knees, and I had to strain my neck up to kiss him. He was a seagull, and I was a crane. We stayed like that, kissing, until without any kind of warning he pushed himself up into a kneeling position and began unbuttoning his pants.
I propped myself up on my elbows. I could see Mike’s paisley boxers peeking through his fly. I was confused. He hadn’t even been up my shirt yet, and here he was taking his pants off.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
Mike took me in with bloodshot eyes. “I don’t know.”