by Doty, Max
Hass tossed the knife at the dartboard and hit for eighteen. The Kings cheered, raised their drinks, and chanted, “Ninja. Ninja. Ninja.” I took out my cell, scrolled down to Emily’s number, and hit dial.
That night Truck and I walked to the Ford to pick up Emily. As I opened the passenger-side door, he reached into his pocket and told me to hold up for a second. When I turned, I saw he was holding out the keys.
“You’re driving,” he said, pressing them into my hand.
“I can’t.”
“Sure you can,” he said. “It’s an automatic. Just point it where you want to go and hit the gas. Anyway, I’m still drunk. It’s safer this way, right?”
“Maybe.”
“Look. What girl ever slept with a guy who couldn’t even drive her around? This is your night, little brother, I can feel it. Finally stepping up.”
I looked back at the Ford. I’d always wanted to get behind the wheel.
“What about the cops?”
He shrugged. “Drive slow. And one more thing.” He took out a condom a slid it into the front pocket of my jeans. “Don’t fuck up like I did. Girls’ll tell you they’re on the pill or some line about their cycle. Don’t trust ‘em. You got to always wrap it up.”
I put a hand in my pocket and felt the condom’s foil wrapper press against the squishy latex inside.
“Yeah,” I said. “Thanks.”
An hour later, I sat next to Emily is Reggie’s rec room, as we watched the Kings shoot pool and drink. Only a couple of girls besides Emily had come. They were Gina Stephenson and Pearl Tan, a six and an eight, respectively, neither of them virgins. Hass and Wood were teaching them how to hold the cue and line up shots. Classic move, and obvious, but it worked. The guys pressed their bodies up against the girls from behind and wrapped their rough fingers around the girls’ soft hands.
“You could fit my whole house in this room,” said Emily staring up at the vaulted ceiling. Her cheeks were over-rouged and her lip gloss outshone the pool balls. I wondered if her equally-clueless older sister had helped her get ready. Her short skirt revealed her thin, perfect legs, but she still wore her usual long-sleeved shirt, refusing to show off her shoulders or breasts.
“My house too,” I said.
“My parents used to own that whole tract of land out by Little Basin,” said Reggie, lining up a shot. “They sold it a few years back right before the bubble burst, built this place, and had plenty left over. Now they’re out of town most of the time.”
“This is your place?” asked Pearl, suddenly interested.
“That’s right.”
“It’s his parents’ place,” said Hass, putting an arm around the girl’s waist. “He just happens to live here, is all.”
“A toast,” said Wood, pouring vodka into a set of eight shot glasses. “To Reggie’s parents.”
We each took a shot glass and downed it, except Emily. She took a small sip and looked up at me with her big, mascared eyes.
“What do I do?” she asked. “I’ve never done a shot.”
“You drink it,” I said. “It’s good stuff, but you still don’t want to sip it. Toss it down the back of your throat.”
Emily opened her mouth, tilted back her head, and tipped back the shot glass. She made a face and coughed as everyone else laughed. Truck handed her a wine cooler and said, “Here, this’ll wash away the taste.” She sipped thankfully.
“How many bedrooms does this place have?” asked Pearl.
“Six beds, seven-and-a-half baths,” said Reggie.
“You want a tour?” asked Hass.
He took Pearl’s hand, and started to lead her out of the room. As he did, he turned to grin back at Reggie, who mouthed “I hate you.”
“Come on,” Wood said to Gina, following Hass’s queue. “You’ve got to see the master bathroom. They got a mini hot tub in there.”
Emily was still sipping her wine cooler. I thought about asking her if she wanted a tour, too, but it seemed overly-transparent, and she was only on her second drink. Reggie shot pool, knocking each ball as hard as he could, probably pretending they were Hass’s face. Truck nudged me with his elbow and nodded at Emily, indicating I should get on with it. I sat frozen. After a few seconds, he got up and walked to the door.
“Hey, Reggie,” he said. “Let’s go get more beer.”
“We’ve got plenty,” said Reggie.
“Yeah. We’re going to need more.” Truck nodded over at me and Emily, and Reggie put down his cue.
“Sure, Truck,” he said, reaching for his coat. He followed my brother out of the room, talking about a new winter beer he wanted to try. Emily and I were alone.
“I feel light—and hot,” she said, and I looked at her mostly-full wine cooler.
“You’ve only had one drink.”
“Should we have more?” she asked.
“If you want to get drunk.”
She sipped her wine cooler, and her lips shimmered with gloss and wet.
“I want to get drunk with you.”
I took the vodka bottle and poured another shot for each of us.
Three drinks later, I found the courage to give Emily a tour of the place and led her to the closest bedroom. As we went inside, I closed the door behind us and locked it shut. She flopped down on the bed, her blonde curls spreading out like a halo behind her.
“I can’t believe—” She trailed off. I sat on the bed next to her. Her skirt seemed shorter than ever, like if I lifted it a couple of inches I’d see her panties.
“What?” I asked.
She propped herself up on her elbows, then leaned forward. I put an arm behind her and helped lift her up so that she was sitting next to me on the bed.
“I can’t believe I’m here with you. Ted Wheeler. I told my parents I was staying over at Kallea’s—”
My reflection started at me from the mirror across the room. For a second, I swear it looked like Kallea, watching to see what I’d do.
“Your face,” said Emily. “Your face has interesting bone structure. Perfectly symmetrical. But your haircut makes it look crooked.”
“Thanks.” I turned away from the mirror to look at her.
“You’re welcome.”
Her eyes were half closed and her lips parted. The room was dark, lit only by moonlight pouring in from the open windows. Emily looked even prettier than the seven we’d written in the book.
“Ted, are you going to kiss me?”
She was so close that I only had to turn my head. Her lips were right there. The wet gloss of them felt cold, and when I reached for her tongue with mine I accidentally licked her teeth. Still, her body was warm against mine, and I started getting hard. I reached up with my right hand and cupped one of her small breasts.
“I shouldn’t—” she said.
“It’s okay. You’re okay, right?”
She fell back onto the bed and started laughing. The hand I’d used to feel her up hung stupidly in the air.
“Four drinks,” she said. “Four drinks is a lot, right?”
I bent over and started kissing her neck. She laughed again.
“That tickles,” she said.
“It feels good though, right?”
“The room. Is. Spinning. Spin, spin, spin. Kiss me again. Ha! That rhymes.” I put my hand around her breast and squeezed it lightly. She let out a quick gasp and started giggling again. “But really. Kiss me again. Makes the spinning stop.”
I reached my hand down and started moving it up her leg until I felt the soft cotton of her underwear. I was painfully hard in my jeans, pressed up against the zipper. She turned her face to the side.
“Don’t look at me,” she said. “You’re perfect.”
I carefully adjusted myself and unzipped my pants.
“Emily,” I said.
She was breathing heavily.
“Emily.”
Her eyes were closed. Her lips parted.
“Hey, Emily?”
She was asleep.
I sat on the side of the bed and zipped my pants back up. I wasn’t hard anymore anyway. I put a hand in my pocket and felt the condom, destined to go unused, and thought about how close I’d come to doing it.
Outside, the knock of pool balls, one against the other, had resumed, and Reggie’s laugh boomed through the empty halls. I walked out of the bedroom and back toward the guys. In the living room, Reggie and my brother were shooting pool. They’d lined up eight shot glasses each and were pounding one whenever the other guy sank a ball.
“Little brother!” shouted Truck, beaming wide. “How’d it go?”
“She passed out,” I said.
Reggie scratched the cue ball and scowled. He took a shot and wiped his mouth with his sleeve.
“Yeah?” Truck asked. “So what?”
“So I can’t—”
“Sure you can,” he said. “That girl wants you so bad, little brother. She’s probably dreaming of you inside her right now.” He only got like that, talkative, when he got drunk. “You can think and think and think if you let yourself. But sometimes you just got to do it. Just go get it done with, okay? You’ll feel better after you do.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Okay.”
I walked slowly back to the room. Everything was silent, save for the occasional knock of a pool ball followed by a groan or a “hell yes.” As I closed the door behind me, though, all I heard was Emily’s breathing, deep and steady. I took off my shirt and unzipped my pants as I walked toward her. There’d be no going back.
Up on the bed, I hiked up her skirt to reveal white panties, bluish in the moonlight. I knelt over her and, pushed up her arms and took off her shirt, pulling at the long sleeves to get them off. When her arms flopped back down onto the bed, I stopped.
There, running from just below the wrist up to her elbow, were neat little cuts. Some of the scars were old and lifted up high over the surrounding skin like mountain ridges. A couple were fresher, still scabbed with blood.
I got up and rolled off of the bed. I was aware of my own breath now, short and tight, and my pulse in my thumbs and wrists. The veins there seemed to stick out more than usual, over-clogged with blood.
I imagined Emily in a bathroom, a razor in hand. How often did she do it? Had she done it earlier tonight? Why would a girl carve up a pretty arm like that. What did it even feel like?
I took my Swiss Army knife out of my pocket. I accidentally pulled out the miniature saw instead of the blade at first. When I finally did get the knife out, I turned it over in the moonlight trying to hold it up at an angle so that the thin part faced me and became nothing more than a line, barely there at all.
I rolled up a pant leg to right below my knee and ran a hand up the thin hairs of my calf. I listened to Emily’s breath and the sound of pool balls as I put the blade against my shin. I pushed softly, but the blade was old and dull, and though the skin pushed in, it didn’t split.
I took a breath. Then I slashed quickly. A small, shallow, red cut, half an inch long appeared. Three or four beads of blood sprung from the wound and finally merged together, and I touched the cut with two fingers. It barely hurt at all.
I checked the blade to make sure it was clean before I carefully folded it back into the Swiss Army knife and rolled down my jeans. The wound would be shallow enough to scab on its own. I waited maybe ten minutes, long enough for the blood on my fingers to dry, before I walked back to the living room.
The game of pool had ended, and Truck, Reggie and Hass, who’d finished with Pearl, sat drinking beers and watching MTV2. The shot glasses on the pool table were all either drunk or spilled, and the smell of Vodka permeated the air.
“How’d it go?” asked Truck as I sat down on the couch next to him. When I held up my hand and showed him the blood on my fingertips, he smiled and handed me the beer he’d been drinking. He opened a new one for himself.
“Fuckin’ cherry,” said Hass. “Nice. Looks like Little Truck is a man today. Hey, Reg, you got a pen?”
Hass reached into a duffel bag and felt around until he found the yearbook. He pulled it out and flipped to the back page.
“Let’s see here. Seven times two is fourteen. Hell, that puts you—let’s see here—fourteen points ahead of Reggie.”
“Eff you, man,” said Reggie, slurring. He tried to lean forward, then melted back into his armchair.
“This here,” said Hass. “This makes you a King. Then there’s just one more thing. If your brother’s cool with it.”
Truck lifted his bottle.
“To the next King,” he said as Hass and I raised our bottles to meet his.
We did the branding a couple days later, out in a campground near Sawyer’s Lake. During the summer, the place was packed with tow-headed hick children, barbeques and motor boats, but in the winter the lake was completely abandoned. When fresh powder came, guys brought snowboards to the abandoned boat ramps and used them as runs, daring each other to bail at the last second before they ended up in the lake.
On this night, it was cold but not frozen, and the Kings had built a bonfire out of wood we’d gathered from the lakeshore. The five of us sat in fabric and metal foldout chairs around the burning logs, sharing a bottle of Jack.
By Truck’s feet lay one end of an unfolded coat hanger. The other end, they’d bent into the shape of a crown some years ago. Now it reddened in the bonfire’s heart, readying itself to meet my skin.
“Going to be a while before the thing gets hot enough,” Reggie said. “I brought dogs.”
Wood tossed a pine cone into the fire, where its sap hissed and popped. He said, “’Course you did.”
Reggie had whittled down one end of a long stick, and he speared a pair of Ballpark franks on it. He put the meat in over the side of the fire, where their skins soon started to bubble. It looked like bad acne appearing in fast motion and made my stomach turn.
“I was thinking,” Reggie said. “Long as we’re doing Bug, maybe it’s time we do me too.”
“Hell no,” said Wood, stringing out the “hell” so that the word took up a sentence.
“Last time I checked, you didn’t put up any points on the scoreboard,” said Hass. “So unless you drive-by-banged some girl on the way up here while I wasn’t looking, you’re still a virgin. And I’m not putting this here crown on the back of no god-damned virgin.”
“Pearl Tan was totally mine until you cock-blocked me,” said Reggie, bitterly.
“You know,” said Hass. “Come to think of it, she did call out your name a couple of times while I was doing her.”
“Hilarious,” said Reggie, turning his dogs.
“You snooze you lose,” said Hass, taking a drink.
Truck said nothing. He stared into the flame’s heart, drinking from a bottle he didn’t share. Without looking at me he said, “You don’t have to do this, if you don’t want.”
I nodded my head. “I do.”
He finished the bottle and tossed it out into the woods.
“Okay,” he said. “Strip down and come over here.”
He gestured to a nearby spot, and I took off my shirt as I walked over to it.
“Kneel there and put your arms over the log. You’ll want something to bite down on, too.”
Hass pulled a quarter-inch wide stick from the woodpile, broke it into smaller pieces, and walked it over to me as he peeled off the bark with his fingers.
“Here,” he said. “But don’t bite down on it just yet. We got a few questions for you.”
As Hass handed me the stick, Truck took the coat hanger and adjusted it in the fire, plunging it deeper into the coals that had formed at its base. Hass kneeled in front of me and put his face so close to mind that I smelled his bad breath and felt his spit against my skin as he spoke.
“You swear allegiance to the Kings forever?” asked Hass. “We’re your brothers now.”
“Yes.”
“You never betray those brothers. Do you?”
“No,” I said.
<
br /> He slapped my cheek playfully.
“Okay. Bite down on the stick.”
I put it in my mouth and got hit by a memory of eating grass by the sidelines of a soccer field as a kid while I watched Truck play goalie. Looking at the sky, I’d noticed for the first time that I could see the small grains of dust stuck to my eye, like ghosts or black strings, and I watched them roll against the blue above.
I heard the sound of logs shifting behind me and knew Truck had pulled the hanger from the fire.
“Tell me to give you this brand,” said Truck.
I did my best to shout “yes,” but the stick muffled the word in my mouth.
“Tell me!”
“Yes,” I tried to shout again, louder now.
And then it came, the hot bite of it against my shoulder, like a mouth, its teeth on fire, had chewed away my skin. My own smell, like cooked bacon filled the air, and I thought of breakfast. I spit out the stick, coughed on bile, and swore. The guys stepped back to give me space, and I tossed the stick into the fire.
“Here,” said Truck, holding up a bottle of vodka, and I reached for it.
“No,” he said. “For your back. Got to sterilize that mother.”
I turned my scar toward him and let him pour it over me. There was a moment of sting, and then a sudden coolness as my body adjusted. I felt dead sober and aware of every touch as Truck took off his shirt and used it to dry the skin around the wound.
“I’m proud of you little brother,” he said. “Really, really proud.”
I looked at him, standing shirtless and smiling at me, and then down at my own body in the firelight. I’d been lifting for a month now, and sapling muscles had sprouted in my arms and chest. I wasn’t him yet, but the distance between us no longer seemed impossible.
The rest of the Kings were whooping and hollering. “Bug!” They shouted. “Bug! Bug! Bug! Bug! Bug!”
“Thanks,” I said to Truck, and we went back to join the other Kings around the fire.
By morning, the wound had already crusted over, and the t-shirt I’d slept in stuck to it as if the cotton had become a part of me. I spent my first five minutes of consciousness slowly peeling it away. As I finally detached myself from the fabric, a large shadow fell over me, and I looked up to see Reggie smiling down.