by P. E. Ryan
Slowly the zipper came down and Charlie peeked his head through. “What are you doing here?”
I’m running away. You want to come with me? Sam couldn’t bring himself to say it. The idea sounded crazy now that he was standing over Charlie. “I couldn’t sleep,” he said. “I thought I’d see what you were up to.”
“Just…reading.”
“You alone in there?” Sam joked.
“Yeah.”
“Well, do you want to hang out?”
“Now?” Charlie looked up at the night sky, then glanced into the tent behind him. “Yeah, sure. We just have to keep the noise down ’cause my folks are asleep. Lose the shoes.”
Sam stepped out of his sneakers without untying them. Then he squatted down and entered the tent.
It was warm inside. There was a sleeping bag taking up half the floor, a few magazines, and a little battery-operated camping lantern in the corner. Charlie was sitting on the sleeping bag, wearing only a pair of green Cernak High gym shorts. Sam sat down on the floor next to him. “What is this, a nudist colony?”
“It’s my tent,” Charlie said. “I’m in nature. What the heck are you doing roaming the neighborhood in the middle of the night? You’re gonna get picked up for being a pervert.”
“I don’t think so. I’m not the one camped out nude in some creepy tent.”
“Doesn’t this tent rock? It’s almost twice as big as my old tent.”
“It is pretty cool,” Sam said. He glanced around at the orange vinyl walls and dark window netting. The tent was plenty big enough to sleep two people comfortably. The idea of running away came into his head again: He pictured the two of them on the road, living by their wits, pitching the tent at night wherever they happened to be. They could live like that for years.
Charlie stretched out flat on his back on the sleeping bag and put his arms behind his head. “You know that girl who does the Anchor Club announcements during homeroom?”
“No.”
“You know her. She’s got dark hair and it’s kind of wavy. Her name’s Kelly, or Kate, something like that.”
Sam shrugged. “What about her?”
“She’s fine, that’s all. I was just thinking about her.”
“I thought you were reading,” Sam said, making finger quotes around the word.
“Shut up! She and I have the same lunch period, that’s all. I was thinking about her.”
“Well, I have the same lunch period with Mrs. Ornest, but I don’t spend my time thinking about that old bag.”
“Don’t be a doof. You know what I mean,” Charlie said.
“You’re hot for her.”
“If this tent had door prizes, I’d give you one.”
“She’s been going out with that guy on the year-book staff, Brad Crawford,” Sam said a little too quickly.
“So you do know who she is.”
Sam shrugged again. He knew who she was—but only because Brad Crawford was so cool and good-looking, and was always hanging on to Kelly, or Kate, or whatever her name was, in the halls between classes.
“I don’t think they’re a real couple or anything,” Charlie said.
“How would you know? You’re not even sure what her first name is.”
“Doesn’t matter. I’ve seen her checking me out.” Charlie gazed up at the orange ceiling. “I mean, I don’t know, maybe she’d never want anything to do with a jock. Maybe to her, all jocks are stupid. A lot of girls feel that way. But I think if you really like someone, if you really can’t get ’em out of your head, you owe it to yourself to at least try.”
Sam felt his mouth go dry. It was a warm night, even warmer inside the tent, and he was already sweating. He could see a lacquer of sweat on Charlie’s chest and stomach. “What do you mean, try?”
“I don’t know. Try. Make your move. Maybe you say something. Maybe you just lean over one day and plant a kiss on their lips, see if there’s any kind of spark. If it doesn’t work out, you cut your losses and move on.”
“That’s pretty bold,” Sam croaked.
“Well, maybe that’s what it takes. If you’re not bold, you’ll never know what you’re missing out on.”
The two of them lapsed into silence for a long moment, Charlie staring at the ceiling and Sam staring at Charlie. Then Charlie glanced over, grinning. “And I know who you’re thinking about right now, so don’t even pretend you’re not.”
“Who?” Sam asked, his voice rattling with nervousness.
“Oh, come on, like I even have to say it.”
“Say it. Who?”
“Laura Vickers.”
“Who?”
“The editor-in-chief of the Fountain. That totally hot redhead you spend every afternoon with after school, laying out the paper. Dude, you’ve got such a hard-on for her, it isn’t even funny.”
Sam heard himself exhale. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Yes, he spent a lot of time with Laura; she liked his work, and she was grooming him to be the next editor of the school paper. Not to mention the fact that the two of them often spent long hours picking up the slack for other, lazy staff members so that each issue of the Fountain could make deadline. But Sam had spent absolutely zero time thinking about Laura Vickers—or any girl, for that matter—in a sexual way. “You’re whacked,” he said nervously.
“Could be,” Charlie said. He unclasped his hands from behind his head and folded them over his stomach. “All I’m saying is, if you want it, you’ve got to at least try to go for it. Otherwise, you’ll never know.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Sam said.
After a while, Charlie announced that he was beat and was going to sleep and that Sam was welcome to crash in the tent if he wanted to. Charlie turned the lantern out, and its light was instantly replaced with the glow of the moon, which shone through the orange ceiling of the tent enough to outline every shape like an underexposed photograph. It was too hot to sleep inside the sleeping bag; Charlie stayed on top of it and eventually rolled over onto his side, facing Sam, and began to breathe audibly in his sleep.
Sam was stretched out on the vinyl floor beside him, wide-awake. His heart was thumping. Charlie’s words were playing like a tape loop in his brain: …If you really like someone, if you really can’t get ’em out of your head, you owe it to yourself to at least try…. If you’re not bold, you’ll never know what you’re missing out on…. Maybe you just lean over one day and plant a kisson their lips.
His mind raced through all kinds of scenarios. The craziest one had Charlie realizing, at last, that he liked Sam more than as just a friend, that he liked him as much as Sam liked Charlie, and that he wanted to find out how incredible they could be together. The most tame scenario had Sam just kissing Charlie lightly on the lips, in his sleep, so that Charlie would be none the wiser and Sam could always know how it felt, at least, to kiss his friend. His thoughts were like a roller coaster without any brakes: one hill after the other. The whole time he thought about it, he was watching Charlie, who still lay on his side, facing Sam, breathing evenly through lips that were just slightly parted and barely visible in the dim light.
…Maybe you just lean over…
He did. His face was inches from Charlie’s. Then less than an inch. His entire body was trembling and his lips were so close that he could feel the warmth of Charlie’s breath against them.
Then he panicked and drew back, slamming his body onto the tent’s floor.
When he glanced over a moment later, Charlie’s eyes were open and gazing at him sleepily. “You look totally wired, dude.”
Sam muttered, “I’m fine.” His chest was heaving.
Charlie grinned. “You’ve got Laura Vickers on the brain.” He rolled over, turning his back to Sam.
You’re crazy, Sam told himself. You have to get out of this tent. He waited until he was sure Charlie had fallen asleep again and then crept outside as quietly as possible. He stuffed his feet back into his sneakers, crossed the yard to the gate, and r
etrieved his pillowcase of belongings from the bushes under Charlie’s window.
When he was back home in his room, under the covers of his own bed, he stared up at the swirled plaster of the ceiling and got glassy-eyed, almost tearful, realizing how close he’d come to doing something terrible. If Charlie had seen what Sam was about to do (or if Sam had actually done it!), he would have been furious. He would have pounded the shit out of Sam, or at the very least punched him and told him to get the hell out, and then he would have told who knows what to people at school. Or—what somehow felt even worse—Charlie might have known what had almost happened and been controlled enough not to blow up about it, in which case he might be lying in his tent right now thinking, Sam’s queer! He almost kissed me! How the hell can I face him tomorrow?
There wouldn’t be any tomorrow, Sam had decided, lying in his bed. His eyes had gone damp enough to spill over onto his cheeks, but his heartbeat had begun to level off in its thumping, and the more he’d held the thought in his head, the more he’d begun to calm down. No tomorrow. Not with Charlie. Cut your losses and move on….
7.
(We’ll start with the steaks, and see where it goes.)
Charlie walked a slow circle around the Volkswagen, waving mosquitoes away from his face and glancing at his watch every few minutes. They’d picked a hell of a place to meet up. The little parking lot behind the Clam Shack was poorly lit, and there was a nasty smell coming out of the Dumpster. Nine fifteen, they’d said. On the dot. Well, it was almost nine thirty now and he was practically dizzy from having circled the car so many times.
He made a mental note to Armor All the tires this coming weekend. And it was probably time to wax again; it might just be the dim light from the pole lamp, but the fenders were looking a little dull. Sam would ride me if he saw how much attention I give this baby, Charlie thought. Sam had always been something of a slob. His room looked like a clothes bomb had gone off in it. And he totally didn’t get the keeping-your-good-sneakers-clean thing. “Man,” he’d said one afternoon, watching Charlie rub Armor All onto his basketball shoes, “if you ever get a car, you’re gonna mother it to death.”
“No, I won’t. It’ll be the happiest car in the world. I’ll go through a gallon of this stuff a week.”
“You’re already doing that on your shoes!”
“Well, you should try it sometime. Your running shoes look like mud boots.”
Had Sam seen Charlie’s fantastic car? Surely he must have run past Charlie’s house at least once in the past year and seen it sitting in the driveway. He might have thought it belonged to Charlie’s father. Or even his mother. Did Sam even know that Charlie’s mother had died?
When he’d spotted Sam the other night in the food court, Charlie’s first impulse had been to wave. His second impulse had been to go over and harass Sam about whatever that thing was he’d been wearing on his head. But that was the kind of stuff friends did, and they weren’t friends. It irritated Charlie that he had to keep reminding himself of that lately.
He licked a finger and rubbed a dirt smudge off the VW’s front bumper.
Headlights rounded the back of the Clam Shack. It was the twins, in their mother’s Cadillac. They pulled up alongside Charlie’s car. “Anthony wants to be the man next year,” Troy said, as if announcing the eighth wonder of the world.
Charlie drew a complete blank in his mind. “Who’s Anthony?”
“Arbizi,” Taylor said, getting out from behind the wheel. “That little punk with the buzz cut. He’s gone completely delusional. He wants to be point.”
“Isn’t that insane? I mean, it’s true he’s a shrimp, but he can’t even keep his eye on the ball,” Troy said, opening the passenger door.
Charlie couldn’t think of anything he cared about less, at the moment. “So, did you get the stuff?”
“Keep your shirt on, Perrin. We got your buzz. You owe us forty big ones.”
Charlie pulled the money out of his pocket. Troy took it and handed over a sandwich Baggie rolled up into a cylinder.
“Thanks, guys.”
“Our pleasure,” Taylor said.
“Yeah, our pleasure.” Troy threw a fake punch through the open window. His fist came inches from Charlie’s face. “We love being errand boys. We’re thinking of charging a fee.”
“A double fee,” Taylor said.
“Well…” Charlie looked down at the Baggie, then tucked it into his back pocket. He didn’t want to prolong this, standing around some stinky parking lot with the twins. “Thanks again.” He started for his car.
“Wait, we have a message for you,” Troy said.
“Yeah. Derrick says hi, and he’ll be talking to you soon.”
Charlie stopped in his tracks. He looked back. “You saw Derrick?”
“Hel-lo. Where do you think we got the buzz? We just came from his place.”
When he’d asked the twins if they could sell him some pot, it hadn’t occurred to him that they’d be getting it from Derrick Harding. Idiot, he told himself. Where else would they get it? He’s their dealer, too. They’re the ones who hooked you up with Derrick in the first place. He felt himself nodding stupidly, as if trying to say to himself and them that everything was cool. “What else did he say?”
“You want a transcript? He said a lot of stuff. We were there for over an hour. Us and him and…what’s that jerk’s name again?”
“Wayne,” Troy said.
“Wade,” Charlie corrected.
“That’s him. Total loser. He wouldn’t exhale if Derrick didn’t tell him to.”
“What else did Derrick say?” Charlie asked.
“Nothing. Just hi, and that he’ll be talking to you.”
I really wish you hadn’t mentioned me, Charlie thought. He could just picture Derrick’s dark, thin eyebrows arching up when the twins told him that some of the pot they were buying was for Charlie. “I’ve got to go.”
“Wow,” Taylor said, glancing at Troy. “Guess we know when we’re not wanted.”
“Yeah,” Troy said. “Guess we’re only good for one thing.”
Not even that, Charlie thought. “I’ve just got to get home, that’s all. Thanks again, guys.”
“Anytime,” one of them said. “Not,” said the other, and then, “Be prepared for Anthony to be point. Coach Bobbit’s good friends with his parents, so it’s probably going to happen.”
“I’ll do that,” Charlie said. He opened the driver’s door of the VW and dropped behind the wheel. As he started the engine, one of the twins waved good-bye; the other one flipped him a bird.
He drove down San Marco Avenue for a few blocks, then pulled over in front of a strip mall that was dark and deserted at this hour. He opened the glove compartment and was fishing for his pipe when he remembered that he’d thrown it out the window to convince Kate he wasn’t smoking pot anymore. She hadn’t been herself around him after that argument. The evening they’d gone to the movie, she’d been quiet, and she’d seemed only half into it when they were making out in front of her house at the end of the night. I ought to give her a call, touch base, he thought. He looked around and spotted a pay phone in front of one of the darkened stores.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Mrs. Bryant. It’s Charlie.”
“Oh, Charlie! Hello. How have you been?”
“Great.”
“We haven’t seen much of you lately. I know you and Kate have been spending time together, but you ought to come over now and then when Mr. Bryant and I are actually home. We’d like the chance to catch up with you.”
“That would be great. Is Kate there?”
“Yes, I’ll get her for you. It’s a little late to be calling, though, isn’t it, Charlie? I hope everything is all right.”
“Everything’s fine,” Charlie said. He pulled the receiver away from his ear for a moment and rolled his eyes. “Everything’s great. I was just wondering if Kate was around.”
“I’m getting her for you. How’s your f
ather doing, by the way?”
“Fantastic.”
“We’ve been thinking about him.”
It suddenly felt to Charlie as if everyone knew his business, but they were too polite to come right out and say it. As if the walls of their house were made of clear glass. “He’s okay,” Charlie said. “He’s, you know, keeping busy.”
“That’s good. It’s very important to stay occupied. It keeps the heart young. Well, all right then, I’ll expect to see you soon. Come for dinner one night. Bring your father.”
“I will,” Charlie said. He could never in a million years see that happening.
“Kate!” Mrs. Bryant called away from the phone. “Pick up. It’s Charlie.”
A moment later, Kate picked up the extension. They heard the click when Mrs. Bryant hung up the phone; then Kate said, “She’s certainly in a friendly mood.”
“Yeah, she was pumping me for information.”
“Did she ask about your dad?”
“Yeah,” Charlie said. “Why’s the Bryant household suddenly so interested in him?”
“Easy,” Kate said. “My parents know…used to know both your parents, remember? My mom brought it up this afternoon—not even in a nosy way, which says a lot, for her. She just wanted to know if you and your dad were doing okay.”
“Sorry,” Charlie said. “I guess I’m just kind of tired and edgy. So what are you up to?”
“Reading,” Kate said.
“The philosophy book?”
“No. I visit that one now and then. I’m rereading Walden.”
“Oh, yeah,” Charlie said. “Is that”—he searched his brain for the name—“Kant?” He pronounced it Can’t, which he knew was wrong as soon as he said it, but he was glad to have come up with the name at all.
“No. It’s Henry David Thoreau. You know, the guy who went off into the woods and built his own cabin?”
“Oh, that guy. He was pretty cool.”
“I wouldn’t call him cool,” Kate said. “I’d call him brilliant. He’s the guy who wrote Civil Disobedience. Where are you? It sounds like you’re calling from a tunnel.”