by Blake Nelson
“My mom’s moving out,” I said. “So she can be with her boyfriend.”
Justin shook his head. “People . . . ,” he said. “They’re always up to something.”
“My dad says it’s because she’s an alcoholic. But I think she just doesn’t give a shit.”
“Yeah,” said Justin. “Probably both.”
The sun had set and the beach was going dark. Tourists and beach walkers were coming in, climbing up the stairs from the sand to the Promenade.
“I only got one more year at home anyway,” I said. I sipped some of my drink through the straw. The alcohol hit you harder through a straw, I was noticing. I was pretty drunk.
“You goin’ off to college?” asked Justin.
“Yeah,” I said, a little embarrassed.
“College . . . ,” said Justin, thinking about it. “Don’t know much about that. Seems like it could be pretty fun, though. If you’re suited to it.”
“Yeah, I am sort of suited to it. I actually like to study. I’m good at it.”
Justin smiled and nodded to himself. “I bet you are,” he rasped. “I bet you are.”
It was totally dark when we got off our bench and tossed our cups in the trash. There were still people on the main beach, standing around their beach fires. Justin was drunker than I was, or he should have been; he’d been adding extra whiskey to his cup all the time we’d been sitting there. But I was definitely feeling no pain. And my family problems? They were still there, I knew that. They were just further away now. I was seeing them from a new perspective. I looked around, at the people on the beach, at the people walking their dogs. Everyone has problems, I told myself. The world is full of problems.
And that’s when I saw the four guys coming up the Promenade.
30
They were the guys from the Fourth of July, the guys Justin and his buddies had beaten up. One of them had two white bandages on his face. Another was carrying a hammer. By the grim, determined looks on their faces, it was clear they were looking for someone. They were looking for us.
“Uh-oh,” I said.
“Is that . . . ?” asked Justin.
“I think it is . . . ,” I said back. “What should we do?”
“Uh . . . run?”
Run, yeah, but where? In our drunkenness, the first thing we did was knock into each other. Then I turned and started jogging north, up the Promenade. Justin went the other way, running toward the stone railing of the circular viewing area. What is he doing? I wondered.
The four of them had spotted us by now and broke into a run. At first, they ignored me and zeroed in on Justin. Without panicking, Justin ran casually to the railing and vaulted over it. It was a pretty far drop to the sand below. Ten, twelve feet maybe. When the prep guys got to it, they stopped and looked down. None of them wanted to jump. Two of them broke off and ran around to the stairs. And then the other two turned and ran after me.
Jesus Christ, I thought. I had slowed down to see what would happen to Justin. Now I turned and ran hard up the Promenade. I looked back after a few seconds. My two pursuers were keeping up. They were staying right with me. They were probably athletes of some kind. I felt a surge of hatred for their rich-kid haircuts and polo shirts as I pushed myself to top speed. But truthfully I probably had more in common with them than I did Justin.
I ran as fast as I could, then cut right, down a side street. Thank God I knew where I was going. I ran one short block, turned left, ran down an alley, turned right, and then ducked into the driveway of an old garage. I immediately crouched down behind a pickup truck and tried to catch my breath.
It appeared I had momentarily lost them. I wondered if I should try to call someone for backup. I had Tyler’s number. And Kyle’s. I reached into my pants pocket for my phone.
But at that moment I heard footsteps, and, out of nowhere, here came the prep dudes from the other direction. They totally saw me.
I jumped to my feet and ran. I got on Belmont Street and sprinted with everything I had toward the highway five blocks away. There was a gas station there and a convenience store. Hopefully they wouldn’t do anything if I could make it to a public place.
But then a car came ripping around a corner. It was a Jeep. It was coming right at me and I had to throw myself out of the way. I just happened to glance up to see Nicole and Phoebe staring at me in disbelief. They drove by without slowing down. I should have waved for them to stop! But now they were gone, and I still had four long blocks to run to the highway. I scrambled to my feet and started running again. It was hard going now. I was exhausted. And drunk. One of the prep guys was catching up to me, and he was the one with the hammer.
When I couldn’t run anymore, I turned and faced him. “Dude,” I gasped. “No hammers . . . seriously . . . that’s assault . . . with a deadly weapon. . . . They’ll send you to prison. . . .”
The guy stopped running too. He was as gassed as I was. And I guess he believed me about the hammer, because he looked at it once and then tossed it into the street. What did he need a hammer for? He was already bigger than me. And his buddy was right behind him.
I was still back-pedaling away from the two of them. “Dudes,” I said to them. “Nobody needs to get hurt here.” I was totally out of breath. And so were they. But they were still advancing on me, still calculating how to take me down. Finally they charged. I turned and ran, but I had no chance. They caught me easily. One jumped on my back. I managed to stay on my feet for a few more steps, and then the other one jumped on too. We all went down, me first, with the two of them on top of me. The impact with the street was brutal. I was knocked out and lost track of everything, so much so that I didn’t see the Jeep or the girls or whatever happened next.
A moment later, though, the prep guys were scrambling to get off me. I looked up and saw Phoebe standing over us. She had picked up the hammer and was hitting the guys with it. Like really pounding on them. Both of the preps rolled off me and scurried away as fast as they could. Then one of them turned back toward her, thinking he could get the hammer back. And that’s when Nicole maced them both.
“Ahhhhhhh!” screamed the guy who got the first liquid blast in the face. The other guy ducked and ran, avoiding the liquid stream and escaping down the street. His screaming friend followed.
I stared up at Phoebe in amazement. I couldn’t believe I’d escaped. I was about to get the living shit beat out of me, and now I was saved!
I sat up. I moved my head around. I checked my hands and flexed my various body parts. I was pretty banged up, but I hadn’t broken anything. My pants were ripped, and my shirt was dirty, but I was otherwise in one piece. My cheek, though, I suddenly felt it. It had scraped against the concrete. It began to burn and sting. I touched it. It felt like it was on fire.
I looked over and saw that Nicole was calling someone on her phone. Phoebe was standing in the street, looking at the hammer.
“This is a nice hammer,” she said.
“What kind is it?” said Nicole with her phone to her face.
“Stanley.”
“Those are good,” said Nicole.
“Who are you calling?” I asked Nicole. I was still out of breath, I realized when I spoke.
“The police,” she said.
“That might not be the best idea,” I said. “We actually beat up one of their guys first.”
Nicole looked at her nails. “Doesn’t matter,” she said. “You’re from here and they’re not. So they’ll get arrested, and their parents will pay a fine. The police need the money.”
My cheek was really burning now. I touched it with my fingers. “Okay,” I said. “If that’s how you do it.”
“That’s how we do it,” said Nicole.
31
Nicole decided we should go to Phoebe’s, since it was nearby and there was beer there. The house we pulled into looked different from the house I remembered. But it was night now, and the situation had changed a lot.
I crawled out of the Jeep,
in some pain, and followed Nicole and Phoebe inside. It was totally dark. Phoebe turned on the lights.
We went into the kitchen. There was a small table and some chairs. The counter was messy with dirty dishes and empty beer cans.
Nicole lit a cigarette and looked at her phone. I was touching my face, which stung terribly.
“That doesn’t look good,” said Nicole, meaning my face.
Phoebe stepped closer to me. She pulled my hand away and studied my cheek. She was shorter than me, so she had to tilt her head up slightly to look. The angle made her face look even more alluring than usual.
She pointed to a chair and motioned for me to sit. I did as I was instructed. “Yeah, the reason those guys were after me . . . ,” I began, assuming Nicole and Phoebe would want to hear the whole story. But neither of them were listening.
Phoebe sat down next to me and inspected my street-burned cheek. I could feel her tiny fingertips touching the ripped-up skin. “We should clean this,” she said.
Nicole, meanwhile, went to the refrigerator and got three beers. She set one on the table next to Phoebe, one next to me, and opened one for herself.
The kitchen went silent. Phoebe sat back in her chair and lit a cigarette of her own. She took a long swig from her beer.
I held the cold beer against my burning face, which made it feel better. “Do you live here by yourself?” I asked Phoebe.
“With my mom,” she said, flicking ash into an ashtray. “But she always stays at her boyfriend’s.”
I nodded. “My mother has a boyfriend,” I said.
Phoebe drank more beer and then put her cigarette out. Then she went into the bathroom and came back with a bottle of rubbing alcohol. She poured some onto a dish towel and began dabbing the side of my face. The alcohol stung so bad my eyes watered. But I endured it. I enjoyed it. I liked that Phoebe was touching me. I didn’t want her to stop.
“I wonder if those guys got away,” Nicole asked, looking at her phone. “I wonder if they’ll want their hammer back.”
“It’s my hammer now,” said Phoebe.
After she’d finished cleaning my cheek, Phoebe disappeared somewhere and then returned with a pair of tweezers. She showed them to me. “There’s a tiny little rock stuck in your face,” she said. “Do you want me to take it out?”
I didn’t want to look cowardly, so I nodded. Phoebe gripped my skull and tilted my head to one side, considering how best to remove the tiny rock. I enjoyed this, too. I liked how Phoebe moved my head around. I could feel her breath on the side of my face. Then she stabbed the tweezers into my face, which hurt more than the rubbing alcohol.
“Ouch!” I said, jerking my head away.
“Maybe you should use a needle,” said Nicole.
“No,” said Phoebe, standing now. She held my head tightly against her body and gouged me a second time with the tweezers. “I think . . . I almost . . . there! I got it!”
She was going to show me the rock, but it fell on the floor. We both looked down like we might see it, but the floor was pretty dirty.
Phoebe sat back down and drank some more of her beer. I held my cold beer bottle against my aching face.
Nicole’s phone made a ding, and she checked her messages. “That’s Connor,” she said. “I gotta go.”
“Who’s Connor?” I asked, but nobody answered.
Nicole downed the rest of her beer and started gathering her things. I started to stand up too, thinking she could drop me off somewhere.
But Nicole shook her head. “I can’t give you a ride.”
“Oh . . . ,” I said.
“You can hang out here if you want,” said Phoebe. “For a little while.”
“I gotta go,” said Nicole, leaving us to figure it out. She marched to the front door. “Bye!” she called.
“Bye!” said Phoebe.
* * *
When Nicole was gone, it was just Phoebe and me. This was pretty much the exact situation I’d been dreaming about. Now if I could just not blow it. I decided to keep my mouth shut as much as possible. That had worked before.
Phoebe seemed a bit nervous herself. She cleaned up a little in the kitchen, putting away the beer bottles and taking out the trash. Eventually, she returned to the table and sat down across from me. She drank more beer. She lit another cigarette. She watched me. There was that same strange quality in her eyes, like she wasn’t quite seeing me. Maybe she was thinking about something else.
When her beer was gone, she put the bottle in the sink. “You wanna see the family business?” she asked me.
“Sure,” I said.
She took me into the back of the house, into an enclosed porch area that had been walled off and turned into a work space. There were two long tables, a heat-press machine, and a dozen large boxes stacked up along one wall. The boxes were full of different colored T-shirts. That’s what Phoebe and her mother did to make money: They made T-shirts that said SEASIDE on them or CHILL ZONE or LIFE’S A BEACH or I WENT TO SEASIDE AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT. The heat-press machine stamped these slogans onto T-shirts or hoodies. Phoebe and her mother also ironed patches onto the front of trucker hats: pot leaves or silhouettes of naked women or the word SEASIDE or 420.
“And you sell these?” I said.
“Of course we sell them,” said Phoebe. “What else would we do with them?”
“I don’t know.”
“Here, I’ll show you.” She took a yellow T-shirt out of a box and unfolded it. Then she moved to the heat-press machine: “The way it works is . . . you push this button here . . . and then you wait for the press to heat up. . . .” She gave me a cute waiting look. “Then, when it’s nice and hot . . . and the green light turns on . . . you put the T-shirt in here, like this. . . .” She slid the T-shirt expertly into the machine and aligned it perfectly on the first try. “Then you put the press down on top of it . . . like that. . . . Do you smell that burning smell? That means it’s working.” She gave me a sarcastic smile, like wasn’t this the funnest thing ever? “Then you wait a few seconds . . . and then you lift it back up . . . and there you have it! A stupid T-shirt, perfect for friends and family!” She held it out for me to see.
I smiled. I laughed. The T-shirt said, CHILL ZONE. I said: “That is the greatest Chill Zone T-shirt I have ever seen.”
She stopped then and looked closer at my face. “Oh, I forgot to put a Band-Aid on your cheek!”
I followed her back into the main part of the house. She went into the bathroom to find a Band-Aid. “Come in here,” she said.
I squeezed into the small bathroom and stood behind her as she dug through the medicine cabinet.
When she found a large, square Band-Aid, she made me sit on the toilet seat. Before she unwrapped the Band-Aid, she wanted to dab at my face again with the rubbing alcohol. This time, in the cramped space of the bathroom, she put her hand on my shoulder. Then she gripped my chin. Her stomach was also touching me quite a bit. And the front of her thighs. At one point she looked deep into my eyes, then looked away.
She unwrapped the Band-Aid and peeled away the backing. She bent closer, her face right next to mine. Slowly, carefully, she positioned the square patch on my cheek and then pressed it into place.
When it was done, she smiled at me. She casually ran her hand through my hair. Then she moved my knees together so she could sit on my lap.
“Do you mind?” she said, lowering herself onto me.
“No,” I said.
She smiled again and settled her weight on my thighs. I wasn’t sure what she was doing, but I played along, putting one hand on her back and the other on her knee. She in turn began to play with my hair, combing it with her fingers first to the right and then to the left.
“I like your hair,” she said. “Nice and thick.”
“I like your hair too,” I said. She was sitting on my lap, so my eyes were even with her shoulders and chest. So now it was me, looking up at her. And with the bright bathroom light, I could really s
ee every detail of her face. She looked both beautiful and harsh, somehow.
She stopped playing with my hair and let her hand rest on my shoulder. Her expression grew serious. She began to stare at my mouth. I stared at hers. She bent closer and touched her lips to mine.
The kiss was more controlled this time. It didn’t have the random, casual quality like at the party. It was a deeper, slower, more deliberate. It felt very adult to me, very sophisticated. I slipped my hands around her waist and pulled her small body tight against mine. Something began to happen, a craving, an uncontrollable desire. The more we touched, the more we had to touch. I lifted her up and repositioned her, so she was straddling me, so I could press her against me completely. In that moment a kind of current seemed to flow between us. It felt electric, euphoric, supercharged with feeling. Whatever it was, I couldn’t get enough of it. I felt like I would die if we were separated.
The four seconds it took for us to move to her bedroom seemed like an eternity apart.
32
Some time later I woke up in Phoebe’s bed. I wasn’t sure how much time had passed. I turned my head, and Phoebe was lying beside me, on her back, naked. She was holding her phone, her face lit up in the darkness. The sheet was covering most of her, but her pale white shoulders were exposed and glowed in the screen light.
“Finally,” she said. “You’re awake.”
“Yeah,” I said, enjoying the happy numbness that filled my body.
She studied her phone. “You were snoring.”
“I was?” I said.
She nodded.
“But I don’t snore.”
“Nobody thinks they snore,” she said. I was surprised by the flat tone in her voice. But I was too blissed out to care.
“You should probably go,” she said.
“What time is it?” I said.
She didn’t answer.
I lifted my head and looked at the clock radio beside the bed. It was one fifteen a.m. I did need to go. But the thought of getting out of that bed filled me with dread. I didn’t want to be separated from Phoebe.