by Don Zolidis
My mom was weeping at this point, yelling “Stop it!” through her hands.
Kaitlyn stormed off to her room, slamming her door like a shotgun blast.
I looked over at my dad. He had his eyes on the ground too. I didn’t say anything else and retreated to my room.
When a family represses its feelings like good Midwestern folk, and the shit hits the fan, the shit really hits the fan.
Four hours later, the cataclysm seemed to have subsided. We decided on exactly nothing other than it might be a good idea for all of us to eat ice cream and bury our feelings again. It was like we had all taken a family field trip to the Void, snapped a few pictures, and then decided to go home.
Believe it or not, Kaitlyn recovered first.
“Hey, I’m going to Debbie’s tonight,” she announced around eight.
Dad just looked at her in exhausted, dumbstruck horror.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” asked Mom.
“Yes.”
“Are you sure, though?”
“Yes.”
Mom was at a loss. I could see the gears turning in her head—she was trying to come up with just the right amount of guilt and sadness to keep Kaitlyn home for the night. It wasn’t going to work.
“I’m gonna need a ride,” said Kaitlyn.
It’s important to mention here that Kaitlyn had lost her license because she was the worst driver in the history of humanity. Literally, she had been pulled over three times in two weeks because every time a happy song came on the radio, she floored it. I think the police had a bet about how many times they could pull her over.
“I’m not taking you,” said my dad, shaking his head. “Not doing it.”
“This is totally unfair!”
“Sorry. Not doing it.”
I tried to make myself as inconspicuous as possible, which was hard because I was stuffing my face with Cheetos. (It was Saturday night, after all, which meant that my friends were coming over for Dungeons & Dragons, and if I didn’t eat all the Cheetos now my friends would steal them all before I could have any. Yes, I had priorities. And sure, the world had kinda ended, but that was not going to stop me from playing D&D.)
“Craig,” she whined, turning to me.
“What?”
“Give me a ride over to Debbie’s. She’s having a party.”
The word party caused my mom’s danger sense to activate. “Are Debbie’s parents going to be there?”
“Yes,” lied Kaitlyn.
“If I call over there, are her parents going to answer the phone?”
“Yes,” lied Kaitlyn again.
I had to hand it to my sister. It was total bullshit; my parents knew it was total bullshit, and yet here she was, lying straight to their faces, daring them to call her bluff.
“Okay, I’m going to do that, then,” said Mom.
“Great. Her parents will love to hear from you. Their names are Chip and Jen.” It was astonishing how quickly the lies piled on top of each other.
I narrowed my eyes. There’s no Chip and Jen. Chip and Jen are lies.
There was a time when I had been amazed by Kaitlyn’s ability to get away with this kind of thing, but she had explained it to me like this: “If Mom calls over there and Debbie’s parents aren’t there, that’s going to cause a lot of effort on her part. Mom and Dad’re going to need to get mad and come over to pick me up, and then they’re going to have to go through the whole ordeal of grounding me and making speeches or whatever. They don’t want to do that.”
She had a point.
“Craig, give me a ride to Debbie’s.”
I laughed. “No. You were fucking horrible to me today.”
“What?! You were fucking horrible to me today! You owe me a ride for that.”
Mom had had enough. “If the f-bomb gets dropped one more time tonight, I’m canceling everyone’s birthday.”
“All right, fine,” I said. “Kaitlyn. No. I will not give you a ride to Debbie’s. You were horrible to me tonight.”
“Because you were a selfish asshole.”
“Whoa,” said my dad.
Mom began the process of making unhelpful suggestions. “Can you take the bus?”
Kaitlyn’s eyes rolled out of her head. “No, I’m not taking the bus.” She turned to me again. “Craig.”
“No! We just had a huge fight!”
“And I’m slowly getting over it.”
“I’m not over it.”
“You should be. That’s your fault you’re not over it.”
“I’m not taking you there. My friends are coming over tonight.”
“Nerdfest can survive without you for an hour.”
“I don’t even like Debbie.”
“So what? She doesn’t like you, either. It’s not like you’re invited to the party; you’re just giving me a ride.”
“Maybe you could say please,” suggested Mom, as if that would solve things. Oh. Oh, you said please? I’ll just abandon my principles, then!
“Craig, please, don’t be a loser.”
“I’m not taking you,” I said.
“Yes, you are,” said Kaitlyn. “Yes. You. Are.” She started staring at me, doing a Jedi mind trick.
“It’s. Not. Working,” I said, staring right back at her.
Dad put his head on the island. “For God’s sake, Craig, just give her a damn ride.”
“Language!” protested my mom. “This is where they get it from.”
“Fine!” I said. “Let’s go, then.”
“I’m not ready yet,” said Kaitlyn.
It took Kaitlyn an hour or so to get dressed and do her makeup and make sure that she wasn’t early to the party. I will add that after an hour of preparation, Kaitlyn’s auburn hair looked exactly the same as it did before, which was still perfect. I sat around in the kitchen, twitching, hoping that Debbie’s house was burning down or zombies would attack.
Since her first experience with Dungeons & Dragons, Amy had had the good sense to stay away on Saturday nights. On the night from hell, she was staying home to take care of her mom.
Anyway, around nine or so—just when Groash had showed up—Kaitlyn announced that she was ready for me to give her a ride to the party that I hated.
“Dude,” said Groash. “Aren’t we playing?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I have to give my sister a ride first.”
“You want me to give her a ride?”
“No. No, I do not.”
“Are you sure? ’Cause I would give her a ride all over town.”
“Shut up,” I said.
“What do you think she’s looking for in a boyfriend?”
“Obedience.”
“Cool.” Groash thought about it. “I could do that.”
“Just wait here for Brian and Elizabeth. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“So what am I supposed to do?”
AN IMAGINARY CONVERSATION
BETWEEN GROASH AND MY PARENTS
DAD: So…
MOM: You want something to eat?
GROASH: Dude. Yes. My family doesn’t feed me.
MOM: Oh, I’m sure they feed you.
DAD: Why the hell do you have a safety pin in your ear?
GROASH: Helps with my aerodynamics.
Debbie lived in the rich section of town, which was located in the woods on streets named after planets. Each house was like a medieval castle and had superfluous lighting showing just how much bigger it was than your house. The streets were all dark and curved around each other a hundred times, which I’m sure was designed to keep poor people out. We were basically lost for most of the night.
We drove in silence.
Kaitlyn’s words were still pinging around my skull, cutting me up. You don’t give a shit about anyone but yourself. Was it true? Of course it was true. I tried to think of a way out, some evidence that she was wrong, something that proved I wasn’t the selfish jerk she thought I was. Was my whole college search all about selfishness?
Nothing had been resolved. I felt like my future had been ripped out of my gut. Was I going to college or not? Was Kaitlyn going or not? Were my parents going to make us fight it out, Highlander-style?
I’d had my heart set on GAC since the weird visit in the fall. I hadn’t thought about the money. I guess I had just always figured it would work out. Maybe that was blindness on my part, maybe that was evidence that I didn’t really think about other people, but the place seemed so amazing. I imagined myself there in the fall, maybe hanging out with those women, having discussions into the middle of the night, drinking tea and eating popcorn. Or braving the elements in the winter and running to classes about literature and philosophy and Winnie-the-Pooh-inspired Taoism. I’d write deep, thrilling letters to Amy and we’ d call each other as often as we could, and we’ d fall deeper in love and then get together on breaks and then we’ d get married and have kids and Amy would probably take a job in a think tank in Washington, DC, and I’d write the Great American Novel.
Not that I’d thought about it.
And now? Nothing. A black hole. I had no idea what was going to happen.
“You suck at this,” said Kaitlyn helpfully after the first hour.
“You suck at this,” I said.
“I’m not the one who got us lost.”
“You suck at giving directions.”
“I’m not the one driving.”
“Because you suck.”
“You suck.”
“You suck more.”
“You suck infinity,” she said.
“That doesn’t even make grammatical sense.”
“Your grammatical sense sucks.”
It was nice to have a friendly discussion with her again, instead of the apocalypse that happened earlier.
Finally, after about an hour and a half of this, we arrived at Debbie’s stately manor. There were a few cars parked outside, but I knew that at high school parties, kids parked randomly in a two-block radius. That way it wouldn’t be so obvious that a party was going on if police happened to drive by. Of course, it’s not like police were driving by the rich houses anyway, and if the cars didn’t clue them in, perhaps the shitty pop music blaring from the well-lit manor might have alerted them.
I had been to exactly one high school party in my life, and that was by accident. I was there for an hour, standing around awkwardly and terrified that the police were going to smash through the windows and haul me away to prison. It had been a relief when someone finally shouted, “The cops are coming!” and I broke into a blind run and hid in the kiddie pool at the nearby park. Later I learned that the cops were not, in fact, coming; that was just something you said when you wanted the dorks to leave. And given my experience in Minnesota, I wasn’t exactly champing at the bit to go to another party.
“All right, come on,” said Kaitlyn after I had parked in front of the house like an idiot.
I looked at her like she had just suggested making out with an alien mushroom.
“What?” she said.
“I’m not going in there.”
“It’s been a shitty day. Come in and blow off some steam and then leave. Jeez.”
“I thought I couldn’t talk to people,” I said, pouting.
“Well, here’s a chance to find out.”
I think this was her idea of a peace offering.
I’m sure that the inside of Debbie’s house was normally really nice. They probably had a cleaning lady or a maid or a team of servants to polish the floors or whatever. At the moment, however, the whole place stank like cheap beer and sweat and a rather terrible sweet smell, which I recognized as marijuana.
Oh yay. Just what I was hoping for.
I affected my usual party demeanor—stand awkwardly for a few minutes without talking to anyone—before I started to make my escape.
“Craig!” shouted someone I didn’t know. He was a meaty, red-faced blond guy lightly coated in sweat. “Dude!”
“Hey,” I said.
He wrapped me in a bear hug and put one shiny massive arm around my shoulder. “Oh my fucking God, this guy! This guy is awesome!”
I’m not sure anyone was listening to him, but he kept going anyway. “This guy is like the smartest guy in the world! You know that, right? You know that?” He leaned in really close so that I could see the red lines surrounding his pupils. “You’re gonna be running shit someday, right? Like, companies and shit? Like, all the companies?” Then he turned to the imaginary crowd again. “This guy is like Bill Gates and the other guys! He’s like a genius!”
Don’t bet on it.
Again, I wasn’t exactly sure who this was. He seemed nice, though.
“You know what you need?” he said, pulling me into his armpit. “Beer. You need a beer!”
“I’m actually the designated driver,” I said.
“Awesome! That is so awesome. THIS GUY IS AWESOME! You wanna do a keg stand then?”
“No, I’m pretty sure I’m still the designated driver.”
“Oh yeah. Yeah. Good point. Can I ask you something? Honestly, man-to-man?”
“Sure.”
“You hate me, don’t you? You fucking hate me.”
“No. Not at all.”
A wave of sweat and relief passed over his face. “Oh, man, that is so great. I was worried, dude! I was like, ‘Craig hates me.’ And I just couldn’t stand that, you know. Like, these other people, I could give a shit, you know? But you…that means a lot to me. I want to hug you. Okay? I’m gonna hug you now.”
“You’re kind of already hugging me.”
“I know. But I’m gonna hug you more. Like a real hug. You know what I’m saying? Come on.” He spread his massive bear arms wide. “Gimme some.”
So I hugged him more, and then he lifted me into the air and shouted, “Yes!”
At this point, I had lost track of Kaitlyn, but he wasn’t about to let me go.
“You should come to more parties,” he said. “The beer is in the basement. Come on.”
Then he headed for the stairs, missed one of them, and caught himself on the railing just before he tumbled down twenty steps to the concrete below. “Holy shit I almost died!” he shouted, and then people started clapping for him.
At this point, the party was not exactly what I had expected. Because the gigantic sweaty person was not the only one to hug me or declare that they were honored to be partying with me. I was not, in fact, partying with them. I was looking around, and then I was getting the hell out. We were slated to fight a green dragon tonight, and there was no way I was going to miss that. If I wasn’t there, Groash would have to play my character, which basically meant that he’d charge stupidly into battle and end up dead. Every time.
But these were people I had gone to school with for years.
You don’t give a shit about anybody but yourself.
Some of them I had gone to elementary school with. The faces were familiar, but the names escaped me. I didn’t really know any of them. I didn’t know Amy before this year either, and yet here I was, her sometimes boyfriend. I was graduating in a month, and I didn’t really know anyone. There was a whole ecosystem of other humans who were living their own separate lives, and I didn’t know anything about them.
Maybe Kaitlyn was right.
The basement had been finished into a bar-type area. They had a pool table, which was surrounded by boys with little cups. There was a dartboard, a huge TV, and half a dozen couches. Someone had strung up Christmas lights everywhere, so it was even a little bit magical. Okay, it wasn’t magical. But it was otherworldly.
I was just starting to relax and contemplate perhaps getting one of those red cups and seeing what the beer tasted like.
So I made my way toward the keg, which was sitting in the bathtub.
And that’s when I saw a girl with blond hair who walked slightly like a duck. She had her back turned to me, but it was Amy.
There was a guy standing next to her, with his arm over her shoulder
. He was taller than me, a little heavier, with a wide neck and a scraggly beard. When he turned to the side, I could see his face in profile.
He seemed familiar. But I couldn’t place it.
And then he smiled for a second and whispered something in Amy’s ear, and I knew where I’d seen him before.
In a heart-shaped frame on her dresser.
The room turned freezing cold as I stood there, watching them.
Amy was leaning into him. He was holding her shoulder.
Then she put her arm around his waist.
The arm that had held me. The arm that I loved. There was a tingling in the back of my neck as I lost my balance a little bit.
Amy laughed and tossed her long blond hair and then accidentally looked in my direction.
“Shit,” said Kaitlyn, who was apparently standing right next to me.
Amy’s eyes went wide when she spotted me.
The next thing I knew I was getting the hell out of there. I was up the stairs and past somebody saying, “Dude, it’s Craig!” and then I got turned around and pushed past someone until I was on the back patio. I heard Amy behind me; she was saying something, but I couldn’t make it out from the noise of the party.
Then I was out into the darkness, on the edge of a long sloping yard that led down into a forest. It was a warm night, and there were wisps of clouds snaking through the sky, covering up the hordes of bright stars above. I stumbled down the cool grass, past the smokers, and headed for the trees.
I don’t know why I was heading for the forest. Obviously, there was a whole fight-or-flight response going on at this point, and since I was genetically disposed to run away from danger, this was the flight instinct. Clearly, I was channeling the deer that had run away from me in the woods.
“Craig!” called Amy, racing after me.
I didn’t say anything. I kept going.
“Craig, come on!”
I had reached the edge of the forest, and, stepping over the roots and passing by the trunks of huge trees, I plowed into it. Amy caught my elbow.