Set It Off

by Myanne Shelley

  Chapter 5Filling the Void

  Blossom Valley, 1980

  In the fall of 1980, Karen Emerson felt like she was trapped in some weird twisting time space warp, the type of thing that so fascinated her older brother in his love of Star Trek. Because days like the typical school day stretched out endlessly before her. Hours dragged, minutes were endless. The last ten minutes at the end of class, the hands on the big clock on the wall might have been glued in place, so slowly did they spin.

  But at the same time, she could look back and realize weeks and months were passing at lightening speed. Her senior year, finally the last year of high school, was already whizzing past. Of her closest friends, Karen thought she might be the only one who was at all appreciative of this time in their lives, who remembered to stop and smell the roses, as her mom would say.

  It could be fun, being a senior. You didn’t have to try so hard anymore, either in class or out. Kids had pretty much established who they were, where they fit in amongst the broader circles at Blossom Valley High. And the teachers knew that last year’s grades had been more important, along with activities, test scores. Senior grades hardly counted. Although most of Karen’s friends were already stressed about college applications, the SATs, essays.

  Karen had three colleges already in mind. Her mom and dad had included her in the conversation they had with her brother Peter a couple years back, about setting sights high but being realistic. There was a college fund for the three of them, but it wouldn’t be enough for expensive private places. They could get a perfectly good education by applying themselves to their fullest abilities at any reasonable state school, or a modest place that came with scholarships.

  Karen had long been interested in graphic arts, first as a hobby, and more recently with the thought – broadly and excitedly pushed by her mom – that it could lead to a career. Rochester Institute of Technology had a great program. Karen had gone, junior year, to a college fair and met with this woman who gave her all kinds of information plus told her they were eager to recruit women to the program. There were many more guys than girls at the school, which wasn’t exactly the best reason to choose a place, but sure wouldn’t hurt once she got there.

  Her scores and grades and the way the lady urged her to apply early admission made her feel okay about the whole college thing. Like everybody, she had a couple back ups in mind. One party last summer a whole group of them sat around laughing about how they would all end up still hanging out together if nobody made it into their first choices.

  Karen had been right in the middle, laughing too. Although it seemed to her that it didn’t matter so much what particular college they ended up attending. The point was to leave Blossom Valley behind, go somewhere, anywhere bigger than here.

  Lately, just doing her thing day to day, she kept thinking how small it was here. How very small – the town, and her life within the town. Stuff that had once seemed so important now had become trivial. Miniaturized, like the weird little doll furniture collection the old lady neighbor had down the street. Was she pretty enough, popular enough? Blossom Valley High was just so little – Karen realized that now. Most or least pretty or popular were only a few dozen people apart.

  What did her friends think of her, had she done well enough on her homework, would she get a good date for homecoming or the prom. Well, now she could see all her friends wondering the same thing, obsessing on their own problems, barely noticing if anyone else was acting weird. The teachers would give the same grades they always did; a student who came in with good grades would automatically get treated well. The teachers here, some of them had been teaching so long they could barely tell one kid from another. And those school dances, fodder for so many slumber party fantasies and nail biting nerves years back? The cooler kids didn’t even go anymore.

  Karen had had one, then another boyfriend junior year. When everybody seemed to be pairing off, of course she had jumped at the chance too. Been flattered when the first boy asked for her number, even though he hardly talked when he called. And they had gone out for pizza, later parked, like everybody. She had giggled with her friends about it, about the awkwardness, trying to enjoy it at the same time as making sure nothing really happened. How stupid the guys acted when they were, quote, aroused. (She wished she had paid more attention to health class. That got another round of giggles, but nobody wanted to discuss that sort of thing further.) She liked him, but wondered if this feeling was at all related to the stuff people wrote songs about, or cried over.

  Boy 1 took her to Homecoming. Boy 2, who happened to be friends with Boy 1 and was probably why he had ever was interested in her in the first place, lasted through Junior Prom, a great relief to both of them. Karen wasn’t surprised when he suggested they take a break for the summer, while he would be away as a camp counselor. And probably had a summer girlfriend, she later realized. Nobody was surprised when their summer break became permanent.

  This year, she felt okay not paired up. She was just coasting, as far as all that, waiting until there were better choices than the immature guys she had known since the second grade. When her mom asked – not that she would ask outright, but when she hinted around, broached related subjects then watch her questioningly – Karen just said she was happy socializing with a group. Parents were supposed to like that answer, envisioning a clean, Coke drinking basement party, lights on, no pot or beer, no backseats of cars or teenage pregnancy.

  Mom would just gaze at her, eyes narrowed. Unable to argue with this plain response, but in her eyes a lingering suspicion that it wasn’t really that simple. And it wasn’t, of course not. Of their group, one girl had gotten pregnant in spite of her secretly purchased contraceptive cream. The other girls had helped out with money, collecting enough for her “birthday present” and covering for her to her parents while keeping quiet to all the guys. One guy had gotten into coke, and not the soda kind, making clandestine trips into Philly, saying he was going to track meets long after he had quit the team.

  Karen’s escapades were far tamer. Enough pot to get pretty high, but only on weekends, with her pals, not buying any herself. Occasional make out sessions with some guy or another that she was not going out with, laughing these off later to her friends. They didn’t care about the making out, but that she hadn’t extracted any sort of commitment from the guys. Not explaining – she didn’t think they would understand, or that she could even articulate it – that for the most part, these guys were just stand ins for an older college guy she had met briefly last summer. In her mind, far away from the squirming bodies in a darkened corner of a basement party, it was him instead. And rather than kidding around with her, treating her like a little kid – the way he had actually behaved – he was wild with passion for her.

  Passion. That was another thing pretty much lacking in Blossom Valley in general and in Karen in particular. It was like an insult to read the so called classic literature in English, and know these characters fell madly in love back hundreds of years ago. Or read in History about the Spanish Civil War, or here, the civil rights movement. Know that people were willing to sacrifice everything for a cause. At school, the big issue kids might talk about was whether the ice cream bars had shrunk in size while costing just as much as last year. It was pathetic.

  In that lull after Thanksgiving but before the Christmas season was really underway, Karen found excuses to stay late at school or go over to friends’ houses. Anything to fill the void that seemed to envelope her when she was home staring at the four walls of her bedroom, wondering when her life would really begin.

  Until recently, her friend Jackie’s house felt like a noisy refuge from the numbness of her own head and heart. Jackie’s sister had gotten into sports and often half her volleyball team would be over, and her little brother was louder and wilder than ever. Jackie herself was one of the most hyper of all of them about college applications, constantly talking and
worrying about them. But even that – just the strength of her feelings about getting into the “right” college – lifted Karen’s spirits in a weird way.

  Then Jackie had suddenly started seeing this guy she had met from a couple towns over. He went to a private school, which made him like doubly exotic to the rest of them. It seemed like she wanted to keep him to herself, which was funny for a girl who kind of liked to brag about her accomplishments. Finally she had brought him to a party just before Thanksgiving. The guy, William, seemed nice enough. Maybe a little full of himself, kind of dominating the conversation with the other guys, talking about how competitive his school was. He didn’t say it, but you could pretty much guess he meant as compared to the puny public school the rest of them attended.

  But he made a point of seeking out Jackie, winding an arm around her waist, leaning in close to her, whispering. Both of them were tall, both had big smiles that night. Before they left – early, with other things in mind, Jackie made clear – she whispered to her friends that William had invited her to meet his family and his grandparents. The whole family would be coming for the holiday and she would visit for lunch the next day. William (he never allowed anyone to use a nickname, she added with odd pride) apparently didn’t bring a lot of girls to meet the family.

  At the time, Karen wondered idly where William planned to go to college, if that would alter Jackie’s plans. Later she wondered if William just used family lunches as a way to push things along, relationship-wise, since Jackie almost immediately started going to his house afternoons, just the two of them, no proud parents or doting grandmas around.

  A couple times she even agreed to baby sit for little JJ while Jackie went to William’s house. She and another girl watched TV and did their homework while JJ tore around screaming. And Jackie did whatever she was doing, racing back to join them before her mom got home from work, no idea that Jackie had just arrived 10 minutes before her.

  Jackie would go from blissed out happy to eye rolling pissed off in a matter of seconds, because JJ inevitably had broken something in the house or left something out in the rain or was bruised himself from having crashed into a wall in between the girls yelling at him to stop running around. Young and seemingly scatterbrained as he was, JJ had some intuition for recognizing bad behavior in other people. He would notice in a second if any of them tried to sneak a drink out of the liquor cabinet, for instance. And he had with Jackie a funny, sophisticated arrangement of bargaining to cover for each other. He not mentioning to her mom that Jackie went to William’s house or had him over in her bedroom with the door shut, she helping him repair or hide stuff he broke or flat out bribing him with candy or even money (JJ didn’t really understand money, Karen thought, he just knew it had value and he liked shiny stuff).

  It made Karen just as glad her brothers were closer in age – they basically left each other alone, especially now that Peter was in college. Of course none of the three of them got in much trouble, or at least didn’t get caught. Karen wondered if her whole family lacked some essential spark of innate passion that made them all destined to be as boring as their parents were their whole lives through.

  Early in December she had her answer: no, she did not lack deep feelings, in fact she would later wish felt less. It started late on a Monday night. Homework done, TV abysmal and anyway not wanting to be in the living room with the parents, Karen had the rock station on in her room.

  They interrupted it with the announcement, cut right in the middle of a song. Someone had shot John Lennon. No joke, the DJ sounded hoarse, barely able to speak. The hospital wouldn’t confirm anything but people there said he was dying. Yoko had been with him, they had been at their apartment, and now he was dead. She didn’t want their son to hear about it on the news – the DJ whispered this, as if afraid the boy might be tuning in, or one of his listeners would call him.

  Karen was alone in her room. And alone in her life, in a way she had never felt before. Imagining Yoko’s grief. Not able to believe one of the Beatles could be gone – they were from the 60s, he just had an album come out! It was too late to call anyone, anyway, who would she call. What could she and her friends say, high school students who had never done anything, never seen him play. The radio played “Imagine,” and Karen stood in front of her mirror watching tears course down her cheeks.

  At school the next day, everybody talked about it. He had been shot, he had died. Most people were somber though a few guys made rude comments. Even the kids that laughed weren’t really laughing, Karen thought. She went through her day feeling numb. Like a robot. Going to class, twisting the combination of her locker, brushing her hair, watching teachers talking without hearing their words. Watching the clock.

  At 2:20, she walked straight away from her locker. Called a quick goodbye to the friends that were gathered nearby, talking loudly about who knows what, homework, going out later, whatever. Karen just walked. She didn’t want to be on the bus, or around people.

  There was a single road that led from the high school, and she followed it, head down, arms crossed to ward off the cold air. Even feeling that air, the chill it brought, seemed like an improvement – she could feel something. She started passing houses, the ones they blew by on the bus every day. On foot, she could see little differences in each, the colors of the houses and doors and yards. One with a pile of kid’s toys out front, another pristinely swept with sharply trimmed hedges, another messy and overgrown. No people around. Everybody at work or at school or busy with some stupid tasks to keep them from thinking about the real meaning of life, Karen thought disgustedly.

  A breeze swept over the last of the leaves still clinging to trees. Some fell, or blew lazily along the sidewalk. Karen’s shoes were thin and scuffed. She wished she had on her sneakers. Nobody cared what she looked like, she should have just worn comfortable shoes. She paused, a little out of breath, and turned on the street that ran into the center of town.

  A car cruised past then abruptly stopped and came backwards. Karen stood, annoyed. This was the kind of thing Jackie’s mom was always going on about, girls getting kidnapped in stranger’s cars. But a lazy voice called her name. It was William, Jackie’s boyfriend. He was driving this big new looking car. “Hey, Karen, right? Need a ride?”

  Karen shrugged. Her feet were cold and kind of tired. Her nose was probably red and running, but who cared. She walked around to the passenger side. “Thanks. Where are you going?”

  William shrugged. “Nowhere really. Just driving. Where do you want to go?”

  “I don’t know. I just got out of school, and I just didn’t want to, you know, be around people acting like everything’s fine. Because of the shooting,” she added.

  William was already nodding. “I can’t believe it. I just sat there playing my old albums last night.” His voice was soft, emotional.

  Karen wished she had the whole album collection too. And wondered if maybe William was deeper than she had first thought. “I just kept the radio on, but it was so sad. Listening to those lyrics.”

  They just drove in silence for a few slow blocks. When they got near Jackie’s street, Karen told him he could drop her off, that her house was close by.

  William shook his head. “That’s not where I’m headed. Me and Jackie, we’re not like a boyfriend girlfriend kind of couple, you know? We’re both seniors, we’re both going to college out of state. So we’re not really…” he drifted off. Paused, turned south, toward the little creek that ran through town.

  Karen didn’t say anything. Had no interest in going home. Though she was a little surprised what he said about Jackie – she was pretty sure Jackie had said my boyfriend about William.

  William pulled into an empty lot in the park by the children’s playground. This time of year it looked desolate, the swings crooked and creaky in the wind, the monkey bars like rusted prison cells. The grass seemed beaten down, and the
trees bare and exposed. There were a couple little kids down near the water, bundled in heavy jackets, throwing rocks into the creek, but the rest of the place was empty.

  They talked about John Lennon. Karen felt her eyes water, felt stupid and shallow and terribly emotionally fragile all at the same time.

  “Hey, hey,” William said, leaning close.

  She closed her eyes and felt his gentle finger wipe away her tear. Eyes back open, she stared at his face, so close, so warm and so alive. Foxy, actually like a fox, she thought stupidly as they started to kiss.

  I don’t even know this guy’s last name, she thought. And, what about Jackie. But in a moment the thoughts were gone, and she was entirely encompassed in the now. Her mom had used a phrase like that recently and it hadn’t made sense, but now it totally did. There was nothing more than the two of them here. Moving, circling, breathing as one.

  In a few easy adjustments he pushed the long flat seat of the car back, and Karen slipped off her coat. They paused, eyes locked, laughing and then diving in further, tongues slipping around, hands moving, probing. Time either stopped or moved like lightening, because the next time Karen looked outside it was getting dark.

  They were sprawled onto her side of the car, she half over him and his head awkwardly against the car door. Grinning, he sat them both up. “Well, now I feel bad for feeling so good,” William said, that slight canine smile on his face.

  Karen nodded. She felt suddenly shaky, not sure if it was from feeling good or sad or just how far they had gone so fast. “I need to get home,” she whispered.

  “Yeah, my parents are going to start to wonder. But, listen, I’m really glad I ran into you,” he said, then paused, looking, what, embarrassed?

  “We don’t have to talk about it,” Karen said. It was as if this afternoon had been set apart, somehow, from the rest of either of their lives.

  He nodded, and started up the car. Still, she noticed as he drove, he was smiling. She was too. She asked him to drop her off at her corner, not even in front of her house, because her father had been coming home early from work lately, complaining about one ache or another, nothing better to do than stare out the window and ask questions about her friends. Which was ironic now that her mom was finally developing interests of her own and had stopped asking so many of those sort of questions.