Before You Go

by James Preller

  “Do you play putt-putt?” Jude asked.

  “I’m beast!” Becka said. “You are so dead.”

  “Oh, really?” Jude asked skeptically.

  Becka nodded. “When it comes to putt-putt, I’m pretty much a ninja.”

  Jude laughed, pushing her gently on the shoulder. “Ninja, huh? We’ll see about that.”

  Jones Beach had a two-mile boardwalk, with the sand and the Atlantic to the south, and various concessions, pools, and sport activities on the other side. There was shuffleboard, tennis, basketball, and more. Like the boardwalk itself, most of the courts were in a semi-dilapidated condition. The entire place had seen better days, including the ocean itself. Yet on sizzling summer afternoons, the whole place jumped. Not today though, when it felt like the park had been built expressly for Jude and Becka’s pleasure.

  “It’s quiet,” Jude observed. “I like it.”

  “Look at that surf,” Becka said, marveling at the ocean. “The waves are kicking up pretty high. Storm’s coming.”

  “I wish I didn’t feel like such a dork in this uniform,” Jude said.

  “So take off your shirt.”

  Jude had spent a lot of time over the past few years at the beach. It was no big deal for him to hang out all day in bathing trunks, shirtless. He had a firm stomach, did push-ups, looked okay—nothing to be ashamed about. But this felt different, alone with Becka. He rolled his shirt sleeves above his shoulders and left it at that.

  At the third hole of the putt-putt course, as Jude struggled to direct his ball safely through a rotating windmill, he asked Becka why she decided to work at Jones Beach instead of some other job.

  Becka balanced the putter upright in her palm, making small adjustments to keep it from falling. “My older brothers worked here, so did a lot of their friends,” she said. “I guess it felt like an easy job.” She popped the club into the air, spun around, and caught it with her right hand.

  “What’s the matter, no jobs at the circus?” Jude joked.

  “I wish! You should see me on a unicycle,” Becka said. “Do you want to know why I’m working?”

  Jude ventured a guess. “You love the smell of sunscreen and grease?”

  “Yeah, sure, who doesn’t?” Becka replied. “Actually, I’m saving for my dream guitar.”

  “Really, you play?”

  “Since I was twelve. I love it.”

  “Me, too,” Jude said. “What kind of guitar do you want to buy?”

  “Rickenbacker 330,” Becka answered.

  “You like that jangle sound, huh?”

  “John Lennon, Johnny Marr, Peter Buck, they all played Rickenbackers,” Becka said. “You know Guitar World in Massapequa? That’s where I’m going to buy it. I’ve got mine all picked out.”

  “Tell me,” Jude said, tapping the ball into the hole. He didn’t bother to fill in the scorecard. Jude hated those ultra-competitive guys who took things like P.E. way too seriously. He and Becka randomly cut over from the third to the eleventh hole. Nobody was around, nobody cared, and this one had a fake pirate ship in the middle of it to enhance the awesomeness.

  “You should see it, gorgeous guitar,” Becka enthused. “Semi-hollow maple body, fireglo finish, rosewood fretboard with dot inlays, single-coil pickups—”

  “Wow, you know your stuff,” Jude said. “That’s not a cheap guitar.”

  “Almost two thousand balloons,” Becka said. “My parents are willing to go halfsies.”

  “Halfsies?” Jude laughed.

  “You know what I mean,” Becka protested, a hint of color rising to her cheeks. “I’ve been staring at that guitar for the past year. It’s my goal for this summer. I need that guitar.”

  Jude knew exactly how she felt. He was always coveting a new guitar, or considering a trade-in. Every guitar had an individual sound, a character of its own, something that most people didn’t understand. Jude and Becka talked guitars and music, compared iPods and favorite tunes, thrilled to have that connection. “I’d love to hear you play,” Jude said.

  “I sometimes jam out with my brothers and their friends, nothing serious, just goofin’ in the garage,” Becka said. “You should come over someday.”

  “You’ve never even heard me play,” Jude said.

  “I can tell about these things—it’s part of my ninja powers. I know you’re good,” Becka replied. Teeing off, she swung mightily and bounced the green ball off the turf and into a bush.

  “Nice shot, tiger,” Jude chided. “I hate to say this, but for a ninja you’re kind of hopeless. Me, I’m more like Chuck Norris. Last time I played an eighteen-hole golf course, I scored a twelve—two off my personal best.”

  Becka laughed, said, “Chuck Norris doesn’t bowl strikes; he knocks down one pin and the other nine faint.”

  For the next few holes, Becka surprised him with her knowledge of cornball Chuck Norris jokes. “I learned them from my brother Matt,” Becka explained. “He’s a pop-culture killer—he’ll run a joke into the ground till it’s good and dead.”

  This girl was cool, Jude thought—like a guy. If it turned out Becka liked chicken wings and college basketball, he’d drop down on his knees to propose.

  And at that, the sky cracked open. The rain that had threatened all day finally came, in torrents, soaking them instantly. Jude and Becka ditched their clubs on the spot, ran hard toward the car, pausing in the shelter of an echoing underpass. They laughed together, shivering close, while the rain drummed overhead.

  Becka had a towel in her car and dried off. She even tried to lend him a Batgirl T-shirt, but Jude couldn’t see himself in it. “I’d rather die of hypothermia,” he explained. Becka shrugged and drove to Jude’s house, door-to-door service. “Here you go,” she announced, pulling over to the curb.

  “Thanks, Beck,” he said, and paused. “I really had a great time.”

  “Me too.” She smiled at him, studied his house from the road. “This isn’t too far from where I live, you know. I’m just on the other side of the Seaford-Oyster Bay Expressway.”

  Jude waited, not ready to leave the car. It was still raining pretty hard. Becka flicked off the wipers, let the water stream over the windshield. The windows clouded, closed in on them like a canopy bed.

  Becka looked toward the house. “I hate to say this, but that is one sorry-looking tree you have in front of your house.”

  She wasn’t the first one to make that observation.

  “I know,” Jude said. “My mother likes it, though. She calls it her giant parasol, keeping out the sun and rain.”

  Becka shook her head. “Nothing can stop the rain.”

  Jude nodded, lips downturned. “You have plans for tonight?”

  For the flash of an instant, Becka looked distressed. Then recovered, said, “Yeah, kind of do. You?”

  Jude shrugged. “Probably the same old thing—another Saturday-night brodown.”

  Becka laughed. “A brodown, huh? Sounds fierce. What do you boys do? Play video games and burp a lot?”

  “Something like that,” Jude said. “If you fart, nobody has to apologize. That’s how we roll. Seriously, we won’t go big. I have to be at work by nine tomorrow.”

  “Really? Same here.”

  “I’ll see you then.” Jude lifted the handle, cracked the door.

  “You don’t have your license yet, do you?”

  Jude shook his head. “I was thinking about running to work tomorrow.”

  “Running? Like with your actual feet?” Becka asked.

  Jude grinned. “It’s not that far, probably take me an hour. I can shower and change when I get there. Jessup let me stash a spare set of clothes in his office.”

  Becka’s head ducked forward, shock registered on her face. “Really? Won’t you be exhausted?”

  “I love running,” Jude answered. “It beats waiting for the bus.”

  “Are you some kind of track star?”

  “Used to be,” Jude admitted, “but I quit. I guess I’m not a te
am guy. The coach was super-serious.” Jude remembered the pressure, the high expectations everyone had of him. As a ninth grader, Jude almost beat the school record in the mile. He was shocked at that, because he wasn’t even really trying. After he pulled in that time, things changed. Everyone’s eyes were on him, watching, watching. So he ditched. “I just love to run,” he tried to explain to Becka. “It doesn’t matter to me how long it takes. I’m not trying to beat anybody. I don’t want to be the star.”

  Becka listened with interest. That was her gift, Jude realized: She had a way of making him open up about stuff he rarely talked about.

  “I could give you a ride … if you want,” Becka offered.

  “Okay, you sure? I’d like that,” Jude said. “I’ll be ready at, um, what time?”

  “I’ll text you.” So they did the phone swap thing, punching in the numbers, before saying good-bye.

  Jude ran into the house, darting between raindrops. Becka Bliss McCrystal, he thought.

  Becka, Becka, Becka.

  By the time he reached his bedroom, there was already a message on his cell. It was from Becka: Hey u! Now what r u doing?

  TEN

  That night, Jude told Corey Man about his rainy afternoon with Becka and the message she’d left on his cell. “What did she mean, ya think?” Jude asked.

  Corey was sprawled on the bedroom floor, Jude’s acoustic guitar in his hands, strumming artlessly. Corey couldn’t play except for three simple chords, but he loved holding Jude’s guitar, striking hilarious rock star poses. Corey shrugged. “She likes you, I guess.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Lemme see, lemme see,” Corey said, indicating the phone. He tapped some buttons and parsed the message. He pointed to the screen, hmmmmmed thoughtfully. “You didn’t tell me about the first part, where she started with ‘Hey, you.’ That’s promising, Jude.”

  “‘Hey, you’? That’s a good sign?”

  Corey shook his head definitively. “Do I have to explain everything? ‘Hey, you’—that means she’s way, way into you. I mean, if she wrote ‘Hi,’ you might as well give it up. Forget it, you’d be done. ‘What’s up?’ that means she’s like a buddy,” he opined. “And I have to say, I like that she doesn’t have emoticons sprinkled all over the place; that shit’s annoying.”

  Jude could almost see the logic behind Corey’s analysis.

  Corey continued: “This here, where she asks, ‘Now what are you doing?’ That means she can’t stop thinking about you.” He handed the cell back to Jude. “You’re on her mind, Jude. The girl’s obviously obsessed. Only danger is, she might be a stage-five clinger.”

  “I hate that about girls,” Jude countered. “Everything’s in code. They never say what they mean.”

  “True,” Corey said. “But you have to remember, they are not of this planet. She’s using a secret language. It’s what girls do.”

  “When I asked her what she was doing tonight, she got this weird look on her face,” Jude confided.

  “Hmmmm,” Corey murmured. “That’s not good. What did she say exactly?”

  “She ‘kind of’ had plans,” Jude recalled, placing air quotes around the key words.

  “Oh, I got it,” Corey said, stomping his feet and laughing. “She’s got a boyfriend!”

  “You think?”

  “Oh, yeah, no doubt,” Corey teased. “I’ve seen this movie before, and believe me, Jude, she’s got a guy stashed away somewhere.”

  Jude prodded at Corey with his foot, a little annoyed by him. He decided against mentioning that Becka herself had already admitted to “crushing on some guy”—her words, not his. Maybe it was a problem, maybe not. Corey didn’t know Becka. Hell, Jude hardly knew her.

  “She might be in transition,” Corey mused.

  “What?”

  “Maybe she’s open to change,” Corey said. “I don’t know, I’m not the love doctor. We better get over to the Stallion’s house. He said Lee’ll pick us up over there.”

  “Lee has his mother’s car,” Jude complained. “Why can’t he swing by here to pick us up?”

  “He’s power trippin’,” Corey explained. “It’s no big deal. We’ll be there in five minutes on our bikes.”

  “It’s not raining anymore,” Jude said. “Let’s walk.”

  “That’s what I said,” Corey agreed.

  Vinnie Canino was the next member in Jude’s inner circle. The boys started calling him Stallion after Corey saw the movie Rocky. So Vinnie Canino became the Italian Stallion. The name, shortened to Stallion, stuck as an affectionate epithet between friends; it never went viral. To the rest of the high school, he was simply Canino, or Vinnie C.—always Vinnie, never Vin or Vincent.

  Teenage boys are rarely exactly like their fathers. They say the acorn never falls far from the tree—but sometimes it bounces, rolls down a hill, and strays as far from that tree as acornly possible. Especially if it’s a teenage acorn and Dad’s a dud. Few sixteen-year-olds wanted to hear they were just like their fathers, including Vinnie Canino. Except in Vinnie’s case, it was so totally true. He was a younger version of his old man, spit out by the Master of the Universe’s awesome copy machine. A mini-me. A clone. A glance at Mr. Canino revealed Vinnie’s fate. So the best way to describe Vinnie would be to walk up to his house, ding-dong the doorbell, and hope his father might answer.

  “Hey, hey, how ya boys doin’ tonight? Stopped rainin’, huh?” Mr. Canino said now, peeking his head out the door, breathing it all in. “Will ya look at those clouds. Beautiful. Am I right or am I wrong?” It was a rhetorical question. Mr. Canino knew he was right; it was never in doubt. He had that confidence all fathers had, whether they had any brains or not.

  Mr. Stanley Canino was short and solid, an Italian fire hydrant. He wore expensive pressed jeans, a perpetual tan, and a black satin button-down shirt like a Vegas entertainer. Squiggly chest hairs tried to climb out of the shirt. His black hair was pulled back into an exceedingly tight ponytail, which set Mr. Canino apart from his neighbors, who did not wear ponytails. On weekends he moonlighted as a drummer in a wedding band, playing all the hits from the seventies, eighties, nineties, and aughties. He was a grown-up Romeo, and his lovely wife, Melinda, had benefited from obvious surgical enhancements that had puffed and pulled and plumped things to alarming dimensions. Something about her face seemed off. Vinnie’s mom was at war against both time and gravity, urged on, no doubt, by Stanley Canino’s hirsute zeal and open checkbook.

  “Vinnie’s up in his room—you know the way, boys. Come on inside; you’re lettin’ the bugs in.” He smiled brightly, if distractedly, and spoke in a rapid-fire rhythm. Mr. Canino liked Jude and had even jammed with him a few times on old classics like “Bell Bottom Blues” and “Little Wing.” He often pushed CDs into Jude’s hands, sometimes even breaking out the vinyl. Even so, Mr. Canino laughed most with Corey, going down in the boxer’s crouch, the whole buddy-buddy routine. It was a fact. Everybody’s parents loved Corey; he had a natural way of saying the things that parents liked to hear. Not phony, either. Without effort, Corey made people happy.

  The boys knew to slip off their shoes upon entering; it was that kind of house, and the Caninos were that kind of family. The furnishings were ornate and stunningly ugly. Lots of brass—everything seemed to shine—and no chair looked like it would be comfortable to sit on.

  Vinnie was in his room, blasting rap, doing curls with forty-pound dumbbells, alternating with sets of push-ups. He was shirtless and glistening, the room smelling of stifled air and sweat. There was a full-length mirror on the closet door that got plenty of use.

  Vinnie was upbeat.

  “Hell, yeah, I’m ready to go out,” he told the boys. “I’m up for anything, why the hell not? Let’s lock and load and burn this damn town down.”

  Not in those words exactly, but that was the prevailing Canino sentiment. Vinnie approached life like a Labrador puppy. He was bounding, enthusiastic, flowing with excess energy, good-natured, and ofte
n clumsy. Though Vinnie wasn’t a natural fit with Jude and Corey, in real life these kinds of accidental friendships happened all the time. Sometimes the people you hung out with were just old habits, like the worn pathways of shortcuts to school. People got comfortable with each other, tolerant, and accepting. Vinnie was a nice guy and good for a laugh. The Stallion always had money and, like his friends, hadn’t yet found a better way to spend the days and nights—though he was working on it, pretty much full time. Like a fisherman on a pier, Vinnie forever angled for some girl’s affections. That was usually the first question out of Vinnie’s mouth. “Where the girls at tonight? Any parties? Anything going on?”

  The Stallion knew the answers would be dismal—the basic info had already been texted and digested—but that was Vinnie, ever the optimist. He was preternaturally on the prowl. There was a girl out there somewhere in the sea, maybe an acrobat or an escapee from some carnival eager to perform unspeakable acts. It was only a matter of putting out the right bait and reeling her home.

  Stallion took a quick shower, shaved, splashed on cologne (chum for the ladies!), and was ready by the time Lee, a red-haired senior, showed up in his mother’s Explorer. He pulled alongside the curb and honked.

  Stallion charged out the front door and called, “Shotgun, no blitz!”

  Corey and Jude never had a chance. When it came to calling shotgun—the right to sit in the front passenger seat—the Stallion was the fastest draw in the East. By adding “no blitz,” Vinnie protected his claim from the dreaded “blitz attack,” when another passenger could still run ahead to reach the passenger door first. The boys followed the official rules of shotgun, a strict set of guidelines that were accepted as if Moses himself had carried them down from the mountaintop on stone tablets. Even amateurs knew that if you yelled “Shotgun!” you got to ride in the front seat. But there existed several complex clauses and loopholes. For example, shotgun could not be called in advance or from indoors or if the caller was not wearing shoes. The boys knew this as “the Canino Addendum,” a rule instituted after barefoot Vinnie had run outside while his guests slipped on their sneakers by the front door. A driver’s girlfriend was not required to call shotgun; it was assumed. And so on.