by S. J. Adams
It felt weird to ring the bell at all. I usually let myself in, just like Kimmy Gibbler always let herself into the Tanners’ place.
Lisa’s mom, Carla, answered the door.
“Hi, Debbie!” she said. “How are you?”
“Okay,” I said, trying to sound upbeat and positive. “Is Lisa home?”
“No,” she said. “She came by for a minute, but she went somewhere with Jennifer.”
“Jennifer R or Jennifer P?” I asked.
“P, I think. Are you looking for your backpack?”
“Yes!” I said. “Did she have it?”
“I’m not sure,” she replied. “But she said you left it at lunch and she was sending you an email about it. You want to come in? I’ll see if I can get ahold of her.”
“Okay,” I said, stepping in.
Lisa’s mom was a very pretty woman. Well, “pretty” maybe isn’t the word. “Clean” is more like it. Her face looked like she didn’t just scrub it, she sandblasted it. She couldn’t have possibly looked any more different from my mom, who always looks like she’d just slept in a tanning bed. Some people think a tan looks healthy, but on my mom, it just makes her look like her skin is made of Fruit Roll-Ups.
But the inside of Lisa’s house looked nothing like you’d expect from the outside, or from how clean her mom always was. It was almost as messy as Emma’s car.
To call Carla Ashby a pack rat would be putting it very, very gently. There were newspapers stacked as high as my head—one that I noticed on the way in was dated three years ago. There were books all over, knick-knacks, junk, empty jars, and washed-out butter containers. And there were dishes stacked up everywhere. All clean, of course—she wasn’t so messy as to leave dirty dishes out, but they owned about three times as many dishes as they had room for. She and Emma could have gotten all their junk together and started up an interfaith flea market or something.
Lisa didn’t let most of her friends into the house—she was sort of ashamed at what a mess it was. But I always adored her mom for being so messy, because, in a way, she was kind of like me: she was trying to be what Lisa and the people at her church wanted her to be, and kind of failing at it.
“Sorry about the mess,” said Carla. “I keep swearing that I’m going to get around to cleaning it soon. But … you know.”
“Totally.”
I sat down at the table, which was covered with stacks of books. In front of me was the Home Care section of her table library—a stack of books with titles like Kill Your Clutter and Clean Crusade: Maintaining a Christian Home. Next to those was a stack of books about how to quit smoking, and a full ashtray that served as proof that the books didn’t work.
Now, it’s not that Carla was the least bit trashy or anything—she took her domestic work very seriously, even though she kind of sucked at cleaning. She didn’t get a lot of company, since Lisa never brought anyone but me over, but she was a wonderful hostess. The second I sat down, she shoved some books out of the way and put down a glass of iced tea and a Rice Krispies treat for me.
“How’s everything at school, hon?” she asked. “Have you decided on a college yet?”
“Not yet,” I said. “I probably won’t even start looking until next year.”
“It’s never too early,” she said as she lit up a cigarette and went back to looking for her phone. “We’ve been trying to talk Lisa into going to a nice private school on the East Coast someplace. She has the grades for it. But I think that’ll be a losing battle now.”
“How come?” I asked.
“Well, you know,” she said with a smile. “She’ll probably want to go where Norman goes. And he’s going to Iowa State.”
“Ah,” I said.
I hadn’t even thought about that. I’d been waiting to see what college Lisa chose, since I didn’t really care too much where I went—my family didn’t have any deep-running ties to any college sports teams or anything. The only brochures I’d seen were ones that my mom picked up from places like the Maharishi Vedic University and other schools where I could probably major in astral projection.
I’d rather major in pest control down at the Shaker Heights Institute of Technology.
“Have you guys talked to Norman much?” I asked.
“He’s been out to dinner with us a couple times,” she said. “He’d probably be an excellent provider for Lisa.”
“Sure,” I said.
“What do you think of him?”
I took a bite of Rice Krispie treat and chewed on it while I counted to twenty-five in my head. I didn’t want to, like, mentally pick a fight with her or anything.
“I don’t know much about him,” I said. “But he’s not into drugs or anything, I guess.”
Lisa’s mom found her phone under a stack of magazines and tried to make a few calls while I ate the rest of my snack and drank my tea. It sounded like she wasn’t getting ahold of anybody.
Regardless of what happened after I finally talked to Lisa, things were never going to be the same between her mom and me. And I knew Carla well enough by then that she was practically like a second mom to me. She’d never seemed like she was judging me or looking down on me or expecting me to live up to anything.
But even if, by some miracle, Lisa and I were officially girlfriend-and-girlfriend by the end of that night, her mom would become sort of like … not an enemy, exactly, but someone we had to team up against. Someone we had to keep a secret from. I mean, I loved her mom to death, but she was still kind of old-fashioned when it came to gay rights and stuff.
And if my encounter with Lisa was a train wreck, there was a chance that I’d never see her mom again. Maybe we’d nod at each other from afar after graduation or something, but this would probably be my last time in their house.
“I just can’t get anyone on the phone,” she said. “Lisa’s phone is going right to voicemail, and I don’t have a number for Norman or either of the Jennifers.”
I was actually kind of relieved. I had been sort of nervous about why Lisa hadn’t called me back. I mean, I didn’t blame her for not answering a number she didn’t recognize, but she should have at least checked the voicemail. If she wasn’t answering her mom’s calls, either, maybe she really just didn’t have her phone turned on. It meant that it was nothing personal, at least.
Carla dialed one more number, then said, “Sorry. No one’s answering.”
“Thanks for trying,” I said. “You mind if I go up to Lisa’s room and check my email on her computer?”
“Not at all!”
I took a last gulp of the iced tea and headed up to Lisa’s bedroom, which was pristine and uncluttered—Danny Tanner, the Full House neat freak, would have loved the place. I think part of the reason Lisa liked Full House so much was that she kind of dreamed of having a parent who was a neat freak. One of the few things I didn’t like about her was how upset she got at her mom whenever she seemed less than perfect.
It was kind of overwhelming to go into Lisa’s room. It smelled like her. The Full House DVD set was sitting under her little TV, and one of the beanbag chairs against the wall still had what was probably my butt print in it from the last time I was there. I thought of all the nights I’d slept on the floor, or even in her bed, coming so close to this one dream I had, where we were cuddled up close in soft cotton pajamas …
1, 2, 3, 4, 5 …
Her pink leatherette appointment book was sitting on her desk, and I flipped through it a minute, but didn’t see any phone numbers or addresses. I didn’t think there would be—those were usually stored in her phone. There was nothing that indicated where she might be in the
calendar part, either.
But on one sheet, she had written things like Mrs. Hastings, Lisa Hastings, and Mrs. Lisa Hastings over and over—every possible version of her would-be married
name except for Lisa Ashby-Hastings. She was too traditional for that, I guess. That didn’t bode well for me.
I turned on her computer monitor, signed her out of gmail, and signed myself in. She’d sent me an email, just like I’d hoped.
Hey Deb,
You okay? Angela said you were upset about something, but seemed better by the end of the day. Hope you’re all right! We’ll schedule some time just for the two of us soon, okay? BTW, in case you didn’t notice, you left your backpack at lunch! Norman’s going to swing by your house and drop it off with you on his way to FCA bowling after school. If no one’s home, he’ll give it to me tonight and I’ll hang on to it for you. See you soon!
My vision was going blurry by the time I got to the last line.
Norman had my backpack.
It was official. My life was over.
I signed out of gmail, then picked up a little scrap of paper from Lisa’s desk and wrote I love you on it in really tiny letters. I figured maybe I could hide it someplace in her desk, back behind a drawer or something, where she wouldn’t find it for a long, long time. Maybe not ever. So, one way or the other, no matter what happened, I would have left a little mark. A little bit of myself.
I pulled out the bottom drawer of her desk, so I could put the paper underneath it, and that’s when I saw it.
A box of condoms.
And it had been opened.
Now, if it had been one or two condoms in the drawer, I would have been able to tell myself that she just got them from that Condom Lady who comes to health class now and then, and kept them to use as a gag gift or as a prop in some ACTs skit or whatever. But the Condom Lady only passes out a few at a time—not entire boxes. A box could only mean one thing.
Lisa was thinking about having sex with Norman. There was no other reason she’d have a whole box of condoms sitting around.
And she hadn’t even told me, her best friend, about it.
A few drops of juice that had re-formed in my heart dribbled their way out and trickled down through my arteries.
I looked at the box and saw that it was a pack of twelve, and I actually counted to see how many were in there.
Ten. Two were missing.
Why would she be thinking of doing it with Norman after all those years of pumping her fist and chanting “True love waits” at abstinence rallies? Maybe she bought them to give a couple to a friend. Angela, maybe.
Even if that was the case, though, she kept the rest.
I sat on her desk chair for a good five minutes, thinking everything over and trying to get ahold of myself and trying to keep a panic attack from coming.
It was becoming more and more apparent that even though I’d been telling myself I’d just tried to live like I was in an old family sitcom to be more like Lisa, I was the only one of the two of us who had really bought into that whole fairy-tale world.
Either that or the thought of sex with Norman, of all people, was arousing enough to make her instantly abandon every ideal she ever claimed to have.
I put the box and drawer back, made my way downstairs, and thanked Lisa’s mom for the tea.
“Oh, you’re welcome, Debbie,” said Carla. “Say ‘hi’ to Lisa and Norman for me later if you run into them, okay?”
I looked her square in the face, feeling like I should tell her that her squeaky-clean little girl wasn’t as squeaky-clean as she’d always made herself out to be. She had condoms in her room.
But I didn’t. I wasn’t like that.
“I will,” I said.
“And try to stay dry! Sounds like a heck of a storm is coming in.”
As I walked out of the house, possibly for the last time, I felt like I was leaving a lot behind. Lisa’s room, which felt more like home than my own room. Lisa’s family, which was like a second family to me—one that lived in the gorgeous white house in the pretty neighborhood.
And my vision of Lisa as the totally innocent type.
That should have been the hardest thing in the world for me to leave behind, but, in another way, it also gave me hope. Maybe she would be more receptive to other things that didn’t fit in with the ACTs view of how the world should be … like being with me.
As long as she didn’t want a threesome. There was no way I was letting Norman Hastings see me naked, and I sure as hell didn’t want to see him, even if seeing a naked guy was one of the stupid goals of the holy quest.
“Any luck?” Emma asked as I got back to the car. “You were in there a while!”
“No,” I said. “She wasn’t home. I just wanted to say good-bye in case I’m never there again.”
“You will be,” said Emma. “This is totally going to work out for you!”
“I hope so,” I said, as she started the car back up. “But you’ll never believe what I found in her room.”
“Condoms?” asked Tim.
“Yeah,” I said.
“No way!” Tim said. “I was just kidding!”
“There was a whole box in her desk,” I said. “And two of them were missing from the box.”
“You went digging through her desk?” Tim asked.
“I went up to her room to get my email.”
“Was your backpack there, at least?”
“No, that’s what the email was about. Norman has it.”
“Oh, not good,” said Tim.
“He’s the last guy in the world I want reading that note,” I said. “He was going to swing by my house on his way to FCA Bowling, but I’m sure my mom wasn’t home, so he still has it. We’ve got to get to the bowling alley.”
“Which one?” asked Tim.
I went pale again. “I don’t know,” I said. “Whichever one the FCA uses for bowling nights.”
“Mid-Iowa Lanes,” said Emma.
“You sure?”
“Trust us,” said Tim. “We’ve ended up there on plenty of quests.”
“It’s the perfect place for one,” said Emma.
I couldn’t say anything but “huh” as we drove back down Spruce Lawn Drive. Mid-Iowa Lanes was kind of a dump. It didn’t sound like a great place for a holy quest to me. Then again, I’ll bet that all of Moses’ followers thought the same thing about the desert every day for forty years.
Tim’s phone rang, and he looked at the ID. “Debt collector,” he said. “That’s the fourth time these guys have called me today! I don’t even owe anyone anything!”
“Probably just looking for information on some other deadbeat,” said Emma.
Tim shrugged. “We should have a holy quest where the goal is to find these guys and beat them up.”
Emma put on a song by another guy she said was a prophet, and as we drove along I tried to think about all of the Church of Blue stuff, if only to keep myself from picturing Lisa putting a condom onto Norman’s thing.
Nothing seemed too wacky or out-there about the religion Emma and Tim had made up. It wasn’t even so much a religion as just a way of looking at the world. I didn’t think I’d ever heard side two of Abbey Road, but I sort of understood what Emma meant. Like, sometimes you can hear two good singers singing the same thing, and even if they do it exactly the same way, one of them might just have this certain … something … that makes her version way better.
I guess there’s a fine line between “magic” and “style.” And if “Blue” was what they called that line, and it could make Lisa love me back, then I was ready to follow it anywhere. Even to a bowling alley.
We rolled through Cornersville Trace, past the strip malls on Cedar Avenue and the Burger Box where Nate worked, and across Merle Hay Road, which put us inside the Des Moines city limits.
The further east you go on Cedar, the older the stuff you drive past gets. In Cornersville, Cedar Avenue is a street full of sparkling new shops. On
the other side of Merle Hay Road, the white strip-mall buildings give way to things made with dirty red and brown bricks. It becomes a land of droopy old buildings—insurance offices, payday loan centers, and nasty-looking taco places. The streets get narrower, the houses get smaller, and the potholes get deeper.
I rolled down the window, mostly because the smell of the laundry was getting to me. Outside, it was starting to smell like rain, and the sky was all shades of dark gray, midnight blue, and even a weird shade of green that matched the snot stain on my shirt.
A storm was coming, all right.
Nine
The inside of Mid-Iowa Lanes smelled like cigarettes and shellac, and the walls were covered with paintings of guys with mustaches holding bowling balls. Everything in the place was a shade of brown, orange, or yellow, except for the glowing pink and blue neon lights that were set up here and there. There was a bar where people were drinking, even though it was barely four o’clock. Speakers in the ceiling were blasting “Don’t Stop Believing” way too loudly.
“I never realized how dirty this place looked,” I said.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” asked Emma as we stepped inside. “A place unsullied by the present standards of design.”
“Or cleanliness,” I said.
“They haven’t even changed the music since about 1989,” said Tim reverently. “Or the posters.” Sure enough, there was a faded poster for the 1989 Chicago Cubs on the wall by the bar.
“That’s the beauty of a bowling alley,” said Emma. “There’s nothing classy, modern, or sterile about these places. Space-age gothic on the outside, ’70s leather-bar chic on the inside. And wait til you see the bowling alley skanks who hang out in the arcade!”
Tim started singing a song about bowling alley skanks to the tune of “Don’t Stop Believing.”
“And we mean ‘skanks’ in the nicest possible way,” said Emma. “They’re good kids.”
We started walking down along the area between the bar and the lanes themselves, and I looked around at the people. There were a whole bunch of guys in ugly shirts bowling. Most of them looked sort of grimy, even from a distance. There were a lot of comb-overs in evidence.