The Spaces Between Us

by Stacia Tolman

  I look down at the phone in my hand. It turns out my father was a real person. Whoever he was, I feel a sense of pride that he did something that everybody thought was so stupid. Whatever I know, or don’t know, I’m glad I learned it myself, instead of having it bought for me with someone else’s money. I could cry about that, but that wouldn’t be crying about Grimshaw.

  * * *

  The next weekend, Angel asks me if I want to go out with the cheerleading squad. On the spot, I can’t think of any reason why not, so they pick me up and we go to the gorge. It’s still light. Nobody’s built a fire yet. I sit with a bunch of cheerleaders in the backseat of someone’s car, passing around cans from a six-pack of beer. Nobody mentions Grimshaw. It turns out that a lot less than a thousand years need to go by before a person ceases to matter. It doesn’t even take a month.

  The big news is that Junior Davis has announced he’s going to the prom. Rack is now great with child; she and Junior are not together anymore. The cheerleaders are all talking about how they would never, ever, under any circumstances go to the prom with Junior Davis, they don’t care how hot he thinks he is. I’m sipping on my beer, sitting halfway out of the open car door, half wondering what it would be like to go to the prom or show up at the gorge with a guy, your own guy, to belong with somebody like that, to have the terrible space between you and everybody else go away for a minute. One of the last things Bo said to me on the morning I left him was that the minute he heard Bob talk about me on his CB radio, he knew I was someone special. I was just out of Sacramento, you know, he said. Man, I drove fast. I didn’t know who you were, but I didn’t want you to leave before I got there. What did Bob say about me? I asked him. Oh, he said, just that you were a girl going east and you had a friend.

  I take another sip of beer. I wish I could be that girl again.

  Suddenly, all the cheerleaders shriek and pile out of the car, even the ones in the front seat. I’m left there, alone. A firecracker lands in the car at my feet and goes off.

  I hear somebody say, “She didn’t even move.”

  I look to my left and see a small crowd all focused on me. Tonight, it’s mostly older guys out drinking, guys that graduated from high school a few years back. I pick Lance Hoffman to focus on. When we were in ninth grade, he was the football hero. He’s got a ponytail now and the beginnings of a beer gut. Junior Davis is with him, along with Lars Madsen and Marty Gerard. The cheerleaders are standing off to the side. I hear the fizz of another firecracker near me and then it goes off. I guess that’s what made the girls get out of the car. After all Grimshaw went through, I don’t think I’m about to freak out over a firecracker. I take the last long swig of beer. When I turn my head, everybody’s still looking at me. I look back at them.

  “Having fun?” I ask.

  “Ooh … somebody’s not afraid of firecrackers,” Marty Gerard says.

  “How about my big stick of dyno-mite?” asks Lars. Nobody says anything after that.

  “Hey, who’s got a beer for me?” Junior yells. That breaks the spell, and the party starts up again. After a minute, Junior walks over to the car and gets in next to me on the other side.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask him.

  “This is my car,” he says.

  “Oh.” So Junior and I sit in the backseat of his car and drink another beer and talk about the football coach who won more football games than anybody else in the NFL.

  “Winning isn’t everything,” Junior tells me somberly. “It’s the only thing.” Junior says he’s patterned his life after the guy. Then he drains his beer, crumples the can, and throws it out the window. I ask him how algebra is going. Terrible, he says, and this is his last chance. If he screws up this time, he’s out of college, out of a scholarship, out of luck, stuck in the Valley for life with the rest of these losers. He pulls his math book out from under the front seat. He’s been stuck on the quadratic formula since before spring vacation. I offer to help him with it. He tries to kiss me. I push him away. It starts to rain, and we roll up the windows. I ask him about Rack, and he brings up Grimshaw. I start to tell him about how we met this guy Bo that I think about all the time, but Junior’s attention span isn’t that long. He tells me he’s always been in love with me. I tell him not to be stupid, and he tries to kiss me again. The windows steam up, and I draw the quadratic formula in the fog on the window and tell him if he memorizes it, I’ll give him the best kiss he’s ever gotten in his life.

  “Repeat after me,” I command. “X equals.”

  “X equals.”

  “Negative b…” And so on, plus or minus the square root of b squared minus 4ac, all over 2a. I’ve read my mom’s books on learning styles, and Junior is definitely kinesthetic. He doesn’t understand the plus-or-minus part. I explain to him that since negative times negative equals positive, the square root of any number can either be positive or negative.

  He looks amazed. “Nobody ever told me that,” he says. “That actually makes some sense.”

  We repeat the formula rhythmically, over and over. He gets it down cold and writes it in the steam on his window. And then I take charge of the situation, put my lips on his, and give him the best kiss he’s ever gotten in his life. I pretend he’s Bo and that Grimshaw is alive. For a minute, I feel like a real person again. But it doesn’t last.

  Junior sits there for a minute, stunned. “That wasn’t the best kiss,” he says. “That was only the second best. You better try again.”

  “I’m going to get another beer.” I get out of the car and look for the cheerleaders. They are crowded into a van with the side door open.

  “Are you, like, going to the prom with him?” Raven asks me when I approach.

  “With who?” For a minute this wild, irrational hope takes over that Raven knows something I don’t, that Bo’s about to pull in with his truck and take me to the prom like I’m Cinderella.

  “Oh, Miss Innocent,” one of them says.

  “Well,” says another. “We just want you to know that if you go to the prom with Junior—” I reach for a beer from a case on the ground.

  “We think it’s unethical,” Raven finishes. “She used to be your friend, you know.”

  When she says that word, I realize that’s what I’ve been waiting for, that judgment. Guilty as charged. It’s kind of a relief to finally hear it. Inside my head, I hear a noise of falling glass. It feels like my insides have turned to glass and then shattered. A sound like a waterfall continues in my ears. It lasts for a while. I never get to the beer. I just stand there with my hand outstretched listening to the sound in my head. I walk away from the cheerleaders. Junior is still in the backseat of his car. His math book is open on his knees. I get in next to him. He’s excited to see me.

  “Hey,” he says. “I think I got it! It was the plus-or-minus part that screwed me up. I never knew you were supposed to get two answers.”

  I watch him do a few problems. “You know,” I tell him eventually. “You’re actually pretty good at this stuff. If you concentrate on the math and forget about the word problems, you’ll probably pass.”

  “Don’t even mention word problems to me,” he says. “I have bad dreams about word problems.” He looks at me. “You don’t believe me, do you?” he asks. Junior Davis has beautiful blue-green eyes, the color of the sea. He looks back down at the math. I put my hand on his head. His hair, which I had always thought was wiry, is actually very soft.

  “Hey, Junior, will you go to the prom with me?” Everyone will hate me, but I deserve it.

  He stops calculating and considers. “Will you give me another kiss?”

  “No. But I’ll help you pass your math final.”

  “Okay,” he says. “I was planning on asking you, anyway.” The look on his face is so sincere that I can tell the thought has never once crossed his mind.

  * * *

  Mom is too busy to take me to get a prom dress, and so Scot takes me. Mom tells him to spend some money, and we get a skinn
y, shiny red thing. Allegra helps me put my hair up, and sure enough, the Serena impersonator looks much better than the real one ever did.

  Nobody tells me that we’re supposed to match, and a week later, Junior shows up at my front door in a powder blue tux and a corsage in a clear plastic box with a rubber band for my wrist. Nobody is around except Aaron, who monopolizes him with football talk. He and Junior are deep into the early career of Vince Lombardi when Scot pulls in. Scot is excited about Junior’s car, a 1974 Plymouth Duster. We all troop back outside to talk about it.

  “I learned to drive on these cars,” Scot says, pumping Junior’s hand. “Automatic?”

  “Manual.”

  “What’s it got under the hood?”

  “Three sixty.”

  Scot whistles. “No kidding. That’s a monster.”

  “It was my grandfather’s,” Junior says. “He died about a month after he got it customized.”

  Scot shakes his head about the tragedy of it all. “It’s always the way.”

  The conversation segues back to football, and I leave them in the driveway. I put the corsage in the fridge and poke around the kitchen for something to cook. I find a lump of meat in the freezer, nuke it, and open cans for chili.

  “Serena.” Aaron is standing behind me, looking concerned. “Does your boyfriend, like, know how to read?”

  “He’s not my boyfriend. And he’s in twelfth grade. Of course he knows how to read.”

  “He was showing us something from his Vince Lombardi book, and he didn’t get it right. He mixed up words like sacrifice and success. But he kept acting like he was reading it. He was faking. I could tell.”

  “Vince Lombardi’s a god to him, Aaron. He knows that book so well he has it memorized. He doesn’t need to read it.”

  “But he’s taking ninth grade math for the fourth time! He’s in my class!” Aaron looks like he’s on the verge of tears.

  “I know. He has to pass it, or he can’t get a football scholarship.”

  “You have to help him, Serena.”

  “Why don’t you? You’re good at math.” I take off my apron and hand him a small stack of bowls. At that moment, Scot and Junior come in, still talking football, so Aaron just scowls at me, grabs the bowls, and takes them into the living room. By eight o’clock, the chili is gone, the beer is gone, and all the males are in front of the basketball playoffs. I strap the corsage back on, which consists of one dyed-blue carnation and a silk butterfly on a spring. It’s eight thirty by the time we’re back in Junior’s grandpa’s Plymouth Duster heading for the prom. I drive. The beers have wiped him out, so the conversation isn’t exactly sparkling.

  “Hey, Junior,” I say into the darkness.

  “Hmmm.” His head is rolling around.

  “Can you read?” I ask.

  “I get by,” he mumbles as he falls back asleep.

  Junior snores all the way down to Colchis. His head is thrown back, and his mouth is open. When we get to the gym, the couples are like statues, clutched in a slow dance. Everybody perks up when Junior gets there. His nap has given him a second wind. First, he walks on his hands between the couples and then he capers around the gym, whisking tablecloths off tables. Dixie cups of punch and frilly basket of mints go flying. He says it’s an army trick his father taught him. He’s the life of the party. Nobody speaks to me, of course, being immoral. Toward midnight, I’m sitting alone on a dark corner of the bleachers, wondering when I should start walking home. I look around, and there is Rack, standing in the gym doorway by the trophy case. She looks fat and pregnant. She’s wearing a tight maternity top that shows the outline of her belly button. Junior is now fully out of control. He has lowered the gymnastic rings and has put Lars Madsen’s feet in them, and is aiming him like a huge wrecking ball into the middle of the dancers. I catch up to him just as the missile is about to be launched, and lead him away by a pinch of blue cloth.

  “Look who’s standing by the door,” I hiss in his ear. He looks.

  “Jesus Christ,” he says.

  I push him toward the door. “Go talk to her.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You have to.”

  “I can’t do it.” He walks away from me, holding his hands in the air. “I’m a football player, not a farmer.”

  I stay right behind him. “You’re not gonna be a football player if you can’t pass algebra.”

  He turns. “College isn’t everything,” he says hotly. “I can always play semipro.” He puts his head down, shoulders through the dancing couples, and escapes through a swinging door into the boys’ locker room. I follow him in. I don’t think she’s seen us. The cool air of the locker room is a relief after the stale heat of the gym. It’s dark, except for the murky red light from the exit sign. It smells like feet.

  “You can’t hide in here,” I tell him.

  “Yes, I can,” he says. “I do it every day.”

  Junior body slams a locker and sinks to the ground. Smoothing my dress underneath me, I sit on the floor next to him.

  “It’s not that I don’t care about it,” he announces. “I mean, I think about it all the time. But she told them before she told me! She announced at dinner. Both of her brothers were there. Just like that, in front of all of them. ‘Junior, honey,’” he mimics. “‘Guess what? You’re gonna be a daddy!’

  “I didn’t know. I had no idea. Jesus. I about swallowed my fork. Mr. Mizerak points at me with a steak knife and says, ‘Son, you can finish high school, but by God, you’ll marry this girl, and then I’m gonna teach you how to drive that new John Deere.’ I said, ‘Yes, sir,’ ate my pie, and walked out the door.”

  “Never went back?”

  “Nope.”

  The red from the exit sign outlines the angles of his face and neck, and lights up the ends of his hair. A shower drips in the murky depths of the locker room. In the gym, the band is still playing.

  “I’m sorry about your friend,” he says. “I never got a chance to tell you that.”

  “She wasn’t just my friend,” I tell him. “She was a lot more than that.”

  Junior nods. “You really miss her,” he says. “It’s like you miss yourself.”

  I sigh. “I guess so. I can’t really feel anything. It’s like all the switches got turned off.”

  “I know how to do that,” he says.

  “Is that why you started drinking?” I ask.

  He asks me if I remember that game against Minnechaug where he sacked their quarterback twice and then messed up his hand and they taped him up and put him back in the game. “Broke two bones in my hand,” he says. “But I only missed one play.”

  “You didn’t used to drink. You were the only one who didn’t drink because you were—”

  “I know—” He smashes the locker to his right with his elbow. “Jesus Christ. You think I don’t remember that?”

  “Don’t do that. You’ll break another bone.”

  “So what? I don’t even care.”

  “Junior, I don’t know what the right thing to do is. But—you can’t just leave her out there all alone by the trophy case.”

  “Oh, shit,” he moans. He swallows, wipes his hands on his tux, and stands up. “I wish I had a beer right now.”

  “Go talk to her. She usually has two.”

  “Really?” This interests him. “Okay,” he says. “If she’s still out there, I’ll talk to her, okay? But she’s probably gone.” I reach up, and he pulls me by the hand. There’s so much strength in his arm I practically float up.

  We stand very close together. The air smells like fifty years of sweaty socks, of games lost and won in the youth of men’s lives in a factory town by a river where the Iroquois used to make raids. From out in the gym, we hear the faint strains of two people being crowned king and queen of the prom. Last year it was Junior and Rack. He leans his forehead against my shoulder. I put an arm around him, and he starts to breathe raggedly, long, shuddering breaths that sound like they hurt, emotions with
one-way barbs that are going to feel twice as bad coming out as they did going in.

  But other people’s feelings go off like firecrackers at my feet. I’m just not that connected. Maybe it’s that great space between me and everyone else. And all the switches that got turned off. Eventually, he lifts his head, and the light from the exit sign illuminates the tears on his face. I pick up the hem of my dress. We walk back out of the locker room. Rack is still there.

  “Come with me,” Junior says. “Maybe she’s got three beers.”

  “No.” I point him toward Rack and give him a push. “I’m going home.”

  * * *

  Finals come and go. I go in after my last one, and Mr. C. is at his desk, correcting tests. He stands up when I come in. I give him back all the books I’ve either stolen or borrowed over the past two years, and he hands me my upward mobility notebook.

  “Quite a journey,” he says. “I was honored to read it. It would appear you’re a wonderful writer. And you have something original to say. That’s a combination with a future.”

  “Thanks,” I mumble. The future is one thing I don’t enjoy discussing, so I pretend I’m interested in what he wrote in my notebook. He’s left checks and comments and question marks in the margins, all in red ink, but I guess that would be my fault, for not typing it into an official report. He watches me flip through the pages.

  “I think about her a lot,” he says. “Your friend.”

  “You do?”

  “We all do. I don’t think anybody knew what her potential was—probably she didn’t, either, but—”

  “She knew,” I interrupt.

  “Well. Then it’s doubly a waste.” He turns to the window. He leans on the radiator on his fingertips. He turns his head toward me. “She did know?”