by Karen Rivers
“Sorry,” she said.
“Whatever.” I shrugged. “When are you off?”
I’m not that guy. I don’t talk like that. I’m not him. I have a girlfriend. Had a girlfriend. Then. I still talked to Glass every day, even though she’d already done the “seeing other people” speech (the day after I left). I was still hoping. And she’d already mostly stopped answering my calls.
In seven days.
The truth was that Glass wasn’t the kind of person who wanted to be needed. She wasn’t that kind of girlfriend. She was the kind of girlfriend who appreciated the amount of camera time I gave her. She was the kind of girlfriend who thought I was going to be famous one day. She was the kind of girlfriend who was smart enough to see when someone was about to bottom out and to get out of the way. She was the kind of girlfriend who made drugs look pretty.
Fuck her.
Tanis was still staring at me. “Are you going to pay me or just stand there and stare?” she said.
“Uh,” I said. ’Cause I’m smooth like that. She tucked her hair behind her ear. It was so shiny, it looked like it had been oiled. Coils of it. Medusa snakes. The thing with Tanis. Well.
I couldn’t figure out why I’d never noticed her before.
Before I moved away, Tanis and I hadn’t exactly been in the same social circle, if you know what I mean. She was a skid. I wasn’t. If you think of us as bars of soap, I was Ivory and she was the cheap kind that slipped off your skin before cleaning it. Hard, and carved into some kind of shape, like a fish or a golf club.
But she was hot. Tanis was always hot.
And I wanted to fall into her crooked face. I wanted to lick it. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I felt like a dog in heat. I held out my money and she took it.
“Ten,” she said. “I’m off at ten.”
It was only nine. I didn’t go anywhere. I sat in the car and ate three apples. The way they crunched and dripped when I ate them was weirdly satisfying. I drank a soda.
I nearly froze to death.
I was waiting for her outside the front door of the Safeway at exactly ten, standing on the sidewalk covered with flattened chewed gum and cigarette butts and a thin layer of frost where the snow had been plowed off. The chewed gum under that ice made me think of fish frozen into the lake. Which made me think about me frozen into the lake. I could almost see myself, under my own feet. A chalk outline under the ice.
I shook my head. Rubbed my eyes. “Stop it,” I said.
It was dark and so cold that my hands turned blue. I didn’t care. Tanis came out. She walked like she was nervous, too straight, like she was being judged. She kept touching her hair. We kissed right away, fast and hard, our teeth jarring and crashing, like we were drunk and hooking up at a party in someone’s parents’ basement. But we weren’t drunk and it wasn’t a party.
“What was that?” she said, pulling away.
“I couldn’t help it,” I said. “I was just…well…”
“What?” she said.
“I think I was looking for you,” I said.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. “You’re just horny.”
“I’m not,” I lied. “I mean, I am now. Who says ‘horny’?”
She was laughing. Her teeth were narrow and a bit too long. She had a dimple high up in her right cheek. I wanted to stop noticing things. I sort of wanted to consume her.
“You really have changed, Dex Pratt,” she said. “I guess we have to talk first, maybe, huh?”
“Not if you don’t want to,” I said. Her lips were pink, but it couldn’t have been lipstick. That would have been gone by now. I stared at her mouth.
“But,” she said, “I do.”
It wasn’t like in the movies. We didn’t sit down right there and share everything. I had to go. Dad would be worried. She was laughing, like this all was the funniest thing in the world. And maybe it was. Or she was laughing at me. I couldn’t tell. I didn’t care. I felt like something had tilted and I was just scrambling to stay on it. She picked up a handful of snow and threw it at me. If I’d been myself, I would have thrown it back or blocked it, but I didn’t and it hit me square in the nose. A block of ice. My nostril dripped blood.
“Fuck,” I said.
“Oh my god,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”
“I’ve got to go,” I said. “I’ll see you.”
Back then, I couldn’t leave my dad alone for long. That was before we had extra help. I was everything. And the whole time I was worried that he was doing something. That he’d do something. Something crazy.
I didn’t trust him yet.
“Wait,” she said. “You can’t do that, you jerk. You can’t come here and kiss me and run off.”
“I have to,” I said. “My dad…” My nose spattered blood onto the white snow. We both looked at it. It looked like one of those shapes you’re supposed to interpret and that tells you something about your personality. I thought it looked like a blood splatter on snow.
“Looks like poodles dancing,” she said. “Those things always look like poodles to me.”
“What?” I laughed. The laugh felt funny, like I was going to be sick. Maybe it was just blood on my gag reflex.
“Oh,” she said. She was going to say something else, but I stopped her by walking away. That’s how it was with us. She was always wanting to say something more and I was always leaving.
I got back to the motel and Dad was asleep in his chair. He was all slumped over. He looked so old. I never fucking cried except for then, when he was asleep and couldn’t hear me. For a second, I thought about killing him. Then it would be over. He ’d be dead. I’d go to jail. Maybe that would be easier. Maybe then I’d know who I was.
I was just so mad. Inside, bubbling over. And so goddamn sad.
The TV was showing infomercials for some kind of gym equipment. The guy on the screen was bouncing an actual quarter off his own abs. I could do that, I thought. And so what?
Dad was smiling in his sleep and I couldn’t even take it. The floral smell of the motel room and the way the carpet was worn in a pattern from the bed to the bathroom and the lights of the cars going by on the highway and flashing in the window every few seconds like searchlights, looking for something that was long, long gone.
The next day, we moved into the house.
I was back. There was T-dot. There was Tanis. And there and there and there and everywhere was my dad, needing me. And never once saying, “Hey, thanks.”
Speaking of entitled pricks.
chapter 8
september 6, this year.
By the end of the school day, the sun is out and it is sweltering hot. The kind of hot that says there is a thunderstorm coming. The kind of hot that makes you remember that just last week—just yesterday—it was summer. Not the kind of summer you expected to have, maybe, but still summer.
The kind of hot that makes you laugh, makes things funny—T-dot doing a cartwheel in the hall, the tall new guy smacking his head on the door frame and falling backward, Mr. V’s crooked toupee—even though you aren’t a laughing guy anymore. It isn’t really you anyway.
It’s Pretend You. Fake You. The New You.
Hey, you’re pretty good at this, after all.
Everyone tumbles out of the doors after school like kids younger than they are. People are always tripping to get out those doors, and the doors are always just slightly too narrow. And you can imagine that from the outside it looks like the school is vomiting kids in fits and starts, finally spitting out the last few stragglers and then leaning over, done. Spent.
Or something like that.
After school, I shoot hoops with the boys, just like we did every day last year after I suddenly arrived back in town. And they opened up and accepted me like I’d never left. Just tossed me the ball and kept playing.
Just like they probably did the year before when I wasn’t there, and the year before that while I was with Feral, filming things and
laughing, and with Glass, doing drugs and fucking and not necessarily laughing. I was somewhere else, being someone else, but maybe this is who I was all along.
A normal guy.
This guy. With the basketball. The sound of it being dribbled on the pavement, the slap of my hand on its skin, the metallic sound of ball hitting rim, the thwack of it on the backboard, the way it feels in my hand.
And I’m not going to lie. I do feel normal and I like it. I am hot. Sweating. The moisture trickling down my spine in a good way. Tanis is watching from the sidelines, leaning on her friend Kate. People are always leaning on Kate. I think I mentioned that Kate was big. She is huge. She is like a planet. Not loose, but held tightly together and just totally enormous. It doesn’t help that she wears a lot of green and blue.
She’s a globe.
Mother Earth.
I wonder if she does that on purpose, looks that way. And I think fleetingly—not really, I mean, I don’t think I think it—that maybe I should have picked Kate. Like it would have been a choice. But still. I don’t know. Tanis is so sharp. It’s the way she’s sure of everything. But she’s Tanis. So.
But whatever it is, there is something totally hot about Kate.
Maybe it’s just that she hates me. Maybe it’s that simple.
Something we have in common.
T-dot is doing her and not telling. I didn’t know this, and then I did. It fell into place today at lunch, the way she reached over and wiped some stray crumb off his shirt, and in that second, the way he looked at her, I knew.
If I’d had my camera, I’d have filmed it and showed him later. He’s a better actor than he knows. In that split second, he told me everything everything everything, and I was so surprised, I choked on my chocolate milk and nearly puked on the table.
“Are you okay?” said Tanis. “Don’t die.” But while she said it, she rubbed my back.
“No,” I gasped. “Choking.”
“Mrs. D is such a bitch this year,” she said to Kate. “She hates me.”
“No, she doesn’t,” said Kate. “She hates us.”
“Jealous,” said Tanis. “Because we ’re hot young things.”
They giggled. I looked at T-dot. He grinned and shrugged. I raised my eyebrows. Nothing.
It made me miss Feral. It made me miss him like someone physically reached into me and tore out my stomach through my skin and squeezed it. It made me text him even though I knew he wouldn’t answer because he wasn’t the kind of guy, anymore, who shared either. Couldn’t. I don’t know. Maybe he changed his number. People do.
I did.
For some reason I flashed back to the first day of school last year. We wore uniforms, white shirts, blue striped ties, gray pants. Fucking uniforms. But that morning, I wandered into Feral’s room and he was shirtless, sitting backward on his desk chair, staring at his bed. There were these two white shirts laid out, like a maid would do, but we didn’t have a maid. Perfectly laid out. They looked like the same goddamn shirt. Feral was twitching his leg up and down, jittering.
“Are you gonna get dressed or go to school naked?” I said.
“I can’t decide,” he said. “I can’t decide.” He kept saying it, staring at those shirts.
“It’s the same shirt, F,” I said. “Who cares?”
“They aren’t the same,” he said. He spun around on his chair and his face was furious, like I didn’t understand anything. “They aren’t the same.” He tapped his foot. His hair flopped into his face. “They aren’t the same,” he repeated.
“Whatever,” I said. I picked one up and threw it at him. “Try this one, and hurry up, asshole, or we ’ll be late.”
He tensed; I thought he was going to hit me. There was something about the way he was looking at me, at the shirt, that I didn’t understand. Feral was so…Feral. He was the one everyone followed, the one everyone wanted to be. Something was wrong and I didn’t know what to do. The shirts were the same. The fucking same.
I walked out of the room. That’s how I helped him. I turned my back, walked away. Aren’t I a champ?
Tanis tapped me on the shoulder and I jumped about a mile. “What?” I said.
“You were sleeping,” she said. “Or daydreaming.”
“No, I wasn’t,” I said. Right away, flash point. I was angry at her for no reason. At least, no reason that was her fault. “Fuck off,” I said. The cafeteria was too loud and bright. It was hurting my ears, my eyes, my brain.
I could see the hurt flash across her face, and then she shrugged. That’s Tanis. It’s like you can penetrate her wall, but just as quickly, she puts up her shields.
“Sorry,” I said.
“Whatever,” she said. “Be an asshole.” She stuck out her tongue.
“I said sorry,” I said.
“Yeah, well, wish you didn’t have to,” she said. She turned back to Kate and whispered something in her ear. Girls whispering. I hate that shit. Kate looked at me and smirked, and I wanted to throw my tray in her face, but I didn’t.
I didn’t.
I made myself smile. Teeth. Eyes. Look at me, I’m smiling, I thought. I’m not a bad guy. It’s just me, Dex.
I’m okay.
“Hey,” I said to Tanis. “Want to come over later?”
She shrugged. “Maybe,” she said. “I hate that place. Maybe we could go somewhere else.”
“Can’t,” I said. “Gotta be there for Dad.”
“I guess,” she sighed. “Let’s go, Kate.” They pushed back their chairs and left without a backward glance.
“Yo,” I said to T-dot. “There they go.”
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s time to go, Dex. Bell went.”
“Oh,” I said. I didn’t hear it. I’m underwater and my ears are full.
Something is wrong with me. My nerve endings are all exposed to the air and breezes hurt and my eyes want to close and I want there to be water closing in over me.
I texted Tanis, What’s up with Kate and T?
She didn’t answer. I kept staring at my phone, waiting. Wasn’t she supposed to tell me everything? Isn’t that what girls do? T-dot drummed the table with his hands. Crumbs flew around on it like hopping fleas. I watched the crumbs. Drum, drum. “Gotta fly, dude,” he said, darting away. The crumbs settled. I still couldn’t move.
I should have known about T-dot and Kate. It should have been obvious. The way she looked at him. The way he never looked back at her unless it was late and he was sort of wasted. I’d watched it all summer and missed it. All summer.
Summer was a blur. It got hotter and then it got cooler again. Sometimes it rained and there were mosquitoes. We drove to the lake in Dad’s Volkswagen and sat there for days at a time, it felt like. We must have gone home at night. We did go home at night. Except for that once.
When Tanis told me what she told me.
Didn’t she know she wasn’t supposed to need me?
Mosquitoes in the air between us, one settling on her cheek. I slapped it. Her. I slapped her. She told me this awful thing and I slapped her and I cried, and now I can’t remember what it was. How fucked up is that?
I remember the mosquitoes and the way it felt like they were in our ears, the buzzing was so loud. We ate them when we talked. There were so many. My skin was red and itchy. I scratched and bled. And then we slept there, in the shack, and we woke up, naked, covered with those fucking bites like you wouldn’t believe.
The thing she told me was about Our Joe. It was like a handful of shocks. Here’s one and here’s another. Our Joe is Tanis’s grandfather.
Zap.
And there was this time. This one time. No, all the time. She stayed at the house. She lived in the house. She didn’t.
I can’t get it straight. What happened? I am mixing it up with something else, a movie that I saw.
Did she say what I think she said?
She showed me a scar, fat and angry. In a place where there shouldn’t be a scar.
And she said he…
When her grandmother found out…
And then he…
And her grandmother died.
But I can’t remember. I can’t remember. I can remember, but it’s too much because it’s worse than my goddamn story, worse than any story. It’s a movie I didn’t want to see. I hate those fucking movies and did she say that he…?
We slept in the shack.
The next morning we were covered with bites, and Kate and T-dot were still there. Where did they sleep? There was a tent. They weren’t bitten. They were happy. They were laughing. Tanis and I weren’t laughing. She probably wished she hadn’t said. I didn’t know what to do. It was like someone threw me a ball and I didn’t know what sport it was supposed to be, so I just put it down and…
We had a fire. We made a fire to cook on. No, it wasn’t a fire; it was a little cookstove and there was bacon and eggs spitting in a pan. They were goddamn good eggs. And it was hot already even though we ’d just got up. It was really hot, so we had beer and pot instead of coffee, and Tanis was giggling a lot, nervous. Giggle, giggle.
It wasn’t funny. I was so mad. Why was I mad?
I can remember, but I don’t want to remember. I remember that we were all there. The four of us. There was a plan.
What was the plan?
I don’t know what I’m talking about. I didn’t know then. I remember crying. Tanis was crying. The sex was hot. We didn’t have sex. I don’t actually remember. I was high as a fucking kite.
She shouldn’t tell me shit when I’m high.
I should have listened.
I did listen.
Stop.
I think about the summer and it tastes like Doritos and warm beer that, in turn, tasted like failure. I got a sunburn that turned into a tan that peeled off in sheets, and Tanis and I did it again and again and again. And she said, “I love you.” And I dove into the lake and my ears filled with water, and just for a few seconds I sank and couldn’t remember how to swim, and then I swam.
The truth is that the only time I loved Tanis, really loved her, was when we were in that old fisherman’s shack with the thick fog of cobwebs filling in all the sharp angles and the stink of old urine and dead mice. And we ’d fucked up against the wall and she ’d stared at me with her squinty eye and her regular eye. It was like diving into the lake.