by Dalya Moon
“And that's why everyone should adopt a mutt from the pound,” Krystal says. “Or a dachshund, because they snuggle under the covers.”
I agree with her, hand over a spare house key, and run off to wait on my own porch for James and Julie. As I'm halfway across the street, Krystal calls out, “You're in a hurry! Is everything okay?”
“Awesome like possum!” I shout back. I sit on my porch and wave at her, still out on her own front step. She waves back and hesitates before returning to her house. Perhaps she notices a change in me as well. I am different. Lighter. My curse has been lifted, and I'm in love.
* * *
I want to talk about this new feeling I'm having, but James is not really a hearts-and-flowers kind of guy. He only wants the physical details. Actually, I didn't think I was a hearts-and-flowers guy until today. Love at first sight is something that happens to girls, or so I thought. This morning, I find myself staring out of the window of James and Julie's Jeep, at a flower shop, and wondering which flowers Austin would like best. Purple flowers. I think she'd like purple ones.
James is squirming around in the driver's seat, twisting to stare at me periodically when traffic allows. His interest in my recent activities is palpable, but I'm concerned about Julie's feelings. She's also up front, in the passenger seat. She has a book open on her lap, but she hasn't turned the page in the last five minutes.
James, who is also aware of her unrequited crush on me, asks me questions, in code.
“How late were you up playing that video game?” he asks.
“Like, uh, three maybe. I sorta dozed off without checking the time.”
“Did you play more than one video game?” he asks.
Julie turns around and looks at me suspiciously. “You should probably get a summer job,” she says. “Video games are a waste of time.”
“Pff,” James says. “Like the stuff you do is so superior.”
“I played two video games,” I say. “The first one was more of a warmup.”
“Was the first video game more about speed or accuracy?” he asks.
I don't even know what he means by that. “I didn't know it was a competition,” I say. As happy as I am about last night, I'd like to move away from this particular topic.
Julie gives me a squinty-eyed look and asks me to hand her an orange juice from the cooler. Orange juice was what Austin drank last night. I would have made her bagels this morning, and more—maybe even bacon—if she hadn't run off so fast.
“Do you ever miss bacon?” I ask James.
He snorts. “Of course. Every vegan or vegetarian misses bacon. That's why there are three or four different brands of fake bacon, but you'll notice they don't make fake chicken.”
“Bleh,” Julie says. “Fake bacon is the cruelest of the pretend things, because it actually smells like bacon, but they never get the texture right. I'm telling you guys, the day they can nail the texture, pigs are endangered.”
“Endangered? What?” I ask.
“Duh. You don't see pink little piggies running around in forests. If not for farms, they won't exist. So that's why I'm doing my part.”
I can tell from the side of his face, James is grimacing.
Julie tried going vegan like her brother for a few weeks, but the no-animal-products diet didn't stick. Technically, she only tried being a true vegetarian, because vegans like James don't wear leather, but there was no way she would give up her closet full of shoes.
Of the diet, she said it was too restrictive, but personally, I don't think it was quite restrictive enough. We describe Julie as a pickavore—as in, she's bloody picky and won't eat random things for random, unknowable reasons. One time she told me she'd gladly switch to food pills, if they were available, so she wouldn't have to worry about what to eat next. Hearing her talk about food and diets makes me glad I'm not a girl.
“Are any of your girlfriends meeting us at the lake?” I ask Julie. For a moment, I soar up to the sky, imagining the fantastic luck of Austin meeting up with us at the cabin.
Julie shrugs. “I'm not really that close to any of the girls from school. Besides, they're not as much fun as you guys. It'll be like old times, just the three of us.”
“That's true. This might be the last time for just the three of us,” I say.
She turns and gives me a worried look. “What do you mean by that?”
I draw circles on the window with my finger. “Nothing. Well, we're getting older, and next year we'll graduate.” I draw a giant circle, my finger squeaking on the glass. “Man, I am so craving bacon right now. Can we stop somewhere? I can't stop thinking about bacon.”
“We just ate,” Julie says. She's right. The wrappers are still on my lap. I don't know where my head's at today.
James turns up the music, probably to discourage bacon talk. I stare at the outskirts of town: yellow house, yellow house, brown house, blue. The houses are getting further apart as we get into the country.
I shouldn't have let Austin leave. I suppose I couldn't have forced her to stay either—that would technically be kidnapping. But I could have been more convincing. I love you, I said. Why didn't she just shoot me right then and there?
Could I get her phone number from Julie's friend, or ... from Julie? Man, that would be awkward to ask. I need to change the subject, and get my mind off Austin while I'm stuck in a vehicle for the next hour with James and Julie.
What were we talking about? Bacon. Right. I could say something about how I think little piglets are super cute, but I could probably hold one in my arms while I ate a bacon and tomato sandwich, and does that make me truly evil?
“I had sex last night,” I say.
Julie sprays orange juice out of her mouth and all over the windshield, coughing and sputtering.
CHAPTER 7
After my confession about what happened last night, James goes, “Ah! Ah!” in a combination of shock and laughter.
“With a nice girl,” I say matter-of-factly, as though it's perfectly reasonable that I had sex, for the first time, with a girl I'd known less than twenty-four hours.
Julie sops at the sprayed juice with a napkin. “You gave her your v-card?” she asks.
“Dude. Guys don't have v-cards,” James says to his sister. “Try. Try to be cooler around my friends, okay?”
“I bet it wasn't her first time,” Julie mutters toward the side window. I can't see her face, except for the edge of her cheek, flushed red.
“Julie, you're like a sister to me,” I say. “I don't feel that way about you. It's science. We all played together in the same tub growing up.”
James says, “Hey. We don't talk about tubbie bubble time.”
“You only have a crush on me because it's safe,” I say to Julie. “Like how girls love ponies and baby-faced boy singers. I'm just a baby-faced singing boy pony to you.”
James squeals, “Ooh, I love that pony! I don't want him to grow up, ever.”
“Are you crying?” I ask Julie.
“Screw you.” She pulls the hoodie from her jacket over her face.
I thought I might feel better after breaking the news to Julie, but I don't. Isn't the truth supposed to set you free? My blabbing just created a whole new set of problems.
“Nice one, bro,” James says. A few minutes later, he reaches his hand back and whispers, “High five for two whole video games.”
I slap his hand, but there's no joy.
* * *
An hour of excruciating silence later, we pull onto the off-ramp for the lake. Julie's angry with me for being with another girl and probably humiliated by my openly acknowledging her crush on me. If I put myself in her little sporty sandals for a moment, I can understand her being upset. I don't know how I can fix that. Maybe by showing her we're still friends?
I punch her on the shoulder. “Hey, Julie, we're still cool, right?”
She clears her throat and continues to ignore me.
“You know you and James are still my buds though, ri
ght? Best bros? I mean buds. Best buds.”
James takes his gaze off the gravel road just long enough to give me a withering look. “Easy, soldier. Give the new paradigm some time,” he says.
Time. I pull out my phone to check the time. I click the button for missed calls, hoping to find Austin's name there, even though we didn't exchange numbers. My hopeful heart still believes she may have called, despite not having my number, and despite my being deep in the woods with no cell phone reception.
From what she said this morning, I guess Austin's at her job now, at The Bean. I know where the coffee shop is. In my head, I imagine her there, at the counter, grinding espresso. The floor is grey and white checkers, and the counter is orange. Everything's orange, and she's wearing the same dress she wore when I met her—navy blue with stars. She tips her head to the left and looks up at the ceiling. Her long, pale hair pools on the counter as she remembers the great time she had last night. Her eyebrows knit together as she wonders why the guy she met isn't coming to bring her flowers today. Or at least calling. She doesn't know he's at the lake, out in the middle of nowhere, with his best buds, one of whom hates him.
Julie starts yelling, jarring me out of my daydream. “You little prick, you prick!” she says.
“I'm sorry, I'm sorry,” I yell back.
“Don't make me pull over and discipline you two,” James says. Bits of gravel from the road are flying up into the bottom of the Jeep, banging away aggressively. A vehicle coming from the other direction sprays us with more gravel. “Jerk,” James says of the other driver.
“Prick!” Julie yells.
“She was really hot, okay?” I yell at Julie. “I'm sure you'd meet someone too if you got your face out of your books! No need to call me a prick.”
“Not you,” Julie says, waving her arms and pulling off her hoodie. “In my sweatshirt, he stung me. A bee, or a hornet, or whatever, flew in the window and stung me!”
“So I'm not a prick?” I ask. “The bee is the prick here?”
“Oh, that's good luck,” James says.
Breathing heavily, Julie glares at her brother as though he raised the bee from a tiny grub and trained it to sting her on just this occasion. “Good luck?” she spits out. “In what culture?”
“Some culture, probably,” he says. “Lots of things are good luck. Depends how you look at it. You can't make something up and not have it be true somewhere in the world.”
“Getting pooped on by a bird is good luck,” I say.
“Lucky you,” James says.
She rubs the red welt on her arm. “This is not good, whatsoever. I hope you get stung by a bee,” she says to her brother. “And break a leg. You too, Zan, stop laughing.”
“Hey, you just talked to me,” I say. “You're not choked.”
She crosses her arms.
“You're a good friend,” I say.
The big, red welt on her arm stares sullenly back at me.
* * *
I'm scraping away at the black gunk on the barbecue when James hands me a beer and tells me to stop moping. I was concentrating, not moping, but I let his comment go.
“Beer? From whence cameth beer?” I ask.
“Enjoy that one, I only found three and sacrificed one to Julie. I'm surprised there were any at all. One of my dad's business buddies must have left them behind.”
I examine the label. “Fancy. European.”
“Julie's inside with her novel, so you don't have to pretend you're all contrite and stuff.”
“I'm not feeling contrite, because I didn't do anything wrong. I'm thinking about stuff. Can't a guy be serious now and then?” I don't say so to James, but I've been thinking all afternoon about my so-called gift, my power, and how free I am now that it's gone.
“You look like you got sexually-transmitted sadness,” James says, punching me in the arm. “Was your performance that lousy? I could give you some pointers, for a few bucks.”
“I'll pay you ten dollars not to.” I open the beer and take a drink. It's warm, which makes me think of my granddad—Gran's husband—saying tastes like piss whenever he drank beer that wasn't chilled. People often say things taste like piss, or like crap, but how would they know? I know what vomit tastes like, for obvious reasons, but not the other stuff, and I hope I never will. To steer clear, all I have to do is not join a fraternity ... or work at Arnold's Bar and Grill.
“Warm. Tastes like piss,” I say, in honor of my granddad's spirit. I imagine him smiling up in heaven. And bowling. I picture him bowling in heaven.
“So, are you going to give me all the details about last night, or what?” James asks.
“When a man loves a woman,” I begin.
He sits down in the aluminum-framed deck chair, which squeaks ominously. “I missed that day in school. Tell me how the fallopian tubes work. They're like a subway, but for eggs, right? Whenever they say eggs, I picture chicken eggs floating around in there. Like with shells and yolk and everything.”
“That sort of explains the vegan thing,” I say.
He takes a swig from his beer and grimaces. “Mmm, good.” The deck chair groans and squeaks as he leans back. “So, what's the problem? The real problem you're not telling me.”
I scrape at the black gunk on the barbecue until my arm aches. “The problem is she left rather fast. And this may not be a problem, but I've been going over the things she said, and she might be weird, you know.”
“Girls are weird. Have you not met my twin sister?”
“Not like that. She talked about seeing auras and stuff.”
“Zan. Seriously? You yourself have creepy, x-ray, future-matic visions.” He waves his hand in a rainbow shape. “So she's a bit woo-woo. You, of all people, should be more understanding.”
“That's the thing. She stuck her finger in my belly button and nothing happened. I think it's gone. Gone.”
We're alone on the deck adjoining the cabin, but I'm suddenly aware of the neighboring cabins, and people who could overhear this conversation. I listen for laughter or conversation, but pick up nothing but the wind in the trees and a few birds. The cabins next to us show no signs of life.
James rubs his chin thoughtfully. “Gone, you say. Or ... maybe she's perfect and there's nothing to see. Or maybe there's nothing so bad it would scare you away. Or maybe one of you is going to die.”
I drop the barbecue grill brush, sending it clattering to the weather-beaten wood deck. “What the hell? One of us is going to die?”
James fidgets in the squeaking chair. “That was meant to sound more lighthearted. Like when people say 'Screw it, maybe I'll get hit by a bus.'”
The birds have stopped chirping and a hawk circles overhead. “People don't say that.”
“I saw a girl get hit by a bus,” he says. “At one of those big bus loops. She was standing there talking to her friend and didn't get out of the way, and the bus was going maybe two miles an hour and just sort of ... bop.” He makes a motion like pushing someone into a swimming pool. “Over she went, books everywhere. It was the funniest thing.”
Now the image is in my head: the girl from his story, in her white jeans, with her hair up in two ponytails because she thinks it's cute, even though she's got dandruff that shows along the part. She's the kind of girl who'll say rude things and swear like a roofer, but acts positively outraged when someone else steps over her line with a slightly tasteless joke, then she'll dress him down on behalf of all humanity everywhere. She probably deserved to get lightly knocked over by a bus.
“Finish your beer and we'll go down to the dock,” James says. “I want to find out if your power is really gone or not.”
“It's gone, I feel different.”
“Don't be a suck. You're just missing your v-card.” He kicks off his sandals and says, with the high-pitched version of his voice, “I can't believe you gave it up without her even buying you dinner first.”
Something clicks in my brain. “You sound exactly like Julie when you talk th
at way,” I say. “I think I know why the thought of kissing her makes me feel nauseous. It would be like kissing you.”
“I've been told I'm a good kisser,” he says. “But I'm serious about tonight. We need to test this thing on some girls, figure out what we're dealing with.”
“You're the one who advised me to stop. I thought you'd be happy.”
“Yeah, but I want to know if your power's broken. I said to stop using it for yourself, but you could still use it for me, on my behalf.”
I pick up the tool and go back to scraping the grill. I don't know if there's even any metal in here. It's just black stuff on top of black stuff. If I keep scraping, there'll be nothing to cook our veggie wieners on.
I'm not looking forward to my tofu dinner, but another thing is bothering me. Power or no power, I don't want some other girl's finger anywhere near me. I only want Austin.
* * *
Four hot dogs are my dinner. If I'd been thinking clearly, I would have asked James to stop at the little gas station convenience store to get some hamburgers, or lunch meat, or anything not soy-based. Still, having eaten four, I admit vegan hot dogs aren't too bad. Even meat hot dogs are mostly filler, so the taste is not dissimilar.
Julie won't look at me at all during dinner. The bee sting on her arm is red and angry, but fading, and I hope her feelings are also calming down.
She eats her two hot dogs with mayonnaise—no ketchup or mustard, just mayonnaise, and lots of it, with crumbled potato chips. I crush some barbecue corn chips on top of my fifth hot dog and compliment her for the idea. She stares at the wood planks on the deck.
I make the arp-arp noise that always amuses her—the bark their neighbor's dog makes ever since he had a growth in his throat removed. “Arp-arp,” I say again. “Who am I?”
This goes on for twenty minutes: me making sounds and doing funny things, Julie's mouth twitching, but not opening except to eat. I'm exhausted and relieved when she finally goes back into the cabin to read.