by Larry Brill
Russell lingered on the porch and she ignored him until he left. She shut off the television, doused the lights and sat in the dark with her head in her hands. She might have set a new record for gullibility. In the history of all the relationships between men and women since the beginning of time, had anybody ever been so stupid as to suffer through a bikini wax for a stupid football game?
Happy New Year.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Skateboarding Through Life
Recreating the best year of his life was going to be trickier than Nate thought. Over the month since he dreamed up the idea on New Year’s Eve while video chatting with Eppie and the gang, he managed to make progress. Living at home and decorating his bedroom to approximate the way it had been back in high school was the starting point. Recreating other parts of those years required looking at the big picture and compromising on the details. So he made a list with two columns.
What had made him happy in his senior year of high school? That was one column. Conversely, what had made him sad that year? That was the second column. All he had to do was maximize the activities in column A while correcting the screw-ups he had listed in column B and he’d get his life’s mulligan.
Everything back then revolved around school and his friends. He liked school. Column A.
Dating. Definitely on the A list.
Playing baseball. He was captain of the school team.
Trips with friends to spend long summer days on the beach.
Milkshakes at the Dairy Barn.
The B list wasn’t long and included items that would be not only prudent to avoid but impossible to recreate. Like the hickey he got from Rhonda “Hoover” Willows on a date at the Capitol Drive-In and TP-ing Kevin Howard’s house for some reason Nate could no longer recall.
Some items were perfectly doable but created a conundrum’s conundrum for putting it into practice.
Things like skateboarding.
“So, dude, how old is he?”
Nate barely heard the question. He stood scanning a wall full of skateboard decks with eyes that had glazed over from an overload of choices.
“Who?” he asked the voice behind him.
“Your grandson. And how long has he been skating? You’re gonna blow him away getting him something like this. Birthday?”
The clerk smiled at Nate from one corner of his mouth. He wore a light gray Old Navy knit cap and a black T-shirt with a red Rolling Stones tongue and lips on his chest. He was so thin Nate could imagine him hiding easily behind one slat of a picket fence. With a wispy moustache and goatee, he was a character right out of a Doonesbury comic strip. Zonker was in the house.
“Nah, this is something for me.”
The clerk laughed. “No. Seriously, dude.”
“Yes. Seriously. Dude.”
“Wick-ed.”
Nate told him he had a skateboard as a teenager and wondered what it would be like to try again after all these years. How could he explain to a kid like this that he wanted to feel like a kid himself again? “I thought it might be fun to see if I could still handle a skateboard without killing myself after all these years.”
The clerk said his name was Jason. “Are you sure you wouldn’t be better off with a starter board at WalMart? Costco?”
That was his conundrum. It was a matter of principle. In high school, he didn’t have the money to buy the kind of high-end deck that the cutting edge kids on wheels were getting, the kind he would have given his left wheel for. So recreating that part of his life meant compromise. He could stick to his principles and go cheap, or he could pull out the credit card and upgrade his life this time around.
Seriously, dude? Like there is anything to think about?
“I like that one,” Nate said. He’d have to bite the bullet and live with the fact that he had more money than a reasonable teenager of his disposition could spend in a year. He could treat MasterCard like the allowance his mother had given him, at least until he found a job.
He circled the store, shopping the walls hung with skateboard decks, to make sure nothing better stole his heart. He thrust his hands into the pockets of an extra-large Hollister brand hoodie that he soiled, ripped and cleaned the newness out of with four cycles through the washing machine with a throw rug from the kitchen. He wore baggy cargo shorts and had switched from tighty-white skivvies to boxers in order to have a couple of inches showing above his waistband and had a Hurley logo ball cap backwards on his head. His dress was another concession to the times. If he was going to be cool, he had to dress the part. Thirty years earlier, cool was bellbottoms and polyester. That shit was goofy enough the first time around.
It turned out Jason owned the shop along with two other stores on opposite sides of the valley. His voice was tired. Nate heard in it the weight of disillusionment. He suggested the soon-to-be skater magnate didn’t sound very happy.
Jason grinned. “It’s turned into such a business. It’s a much bigger deal than I imagined. Or wanted. I’m not the CEO type.”
“I hear you. Growing up is a bitch. I really don’t recommend it.”
Two hours later, Eppie Johnson gave him grief as they moved along a path in the Japanese Tea Gardens for being, in no particular order, a baby, immature, emotionally stunted and pathetic in too many ways to count because he refused to grow up.
“And frankly, you’re creeping me out, Evans.”
With one fluid push, Eppie Johnson rolled a step ahead of Nate and spun her wheelchair to cut him off at the pass. Nate pulled one hand out of the pocket of his sweatshirt, bent and pinched a pink snapdragon at his knee, avoiding her eyes. With a soft pop, it opened and spread its petals as if it bloomed to greet him. “You think I’m wiggin’ out?”
“Look at how you’re dressed. That answers that.”
Nate admitted he might have gone overboard. Sure, disco was dead, but letting his shorts sag from below his waist had him constantly grabbing the belt, paranoid that they would fall off his drooping butt to the floor. He wasn’t sure how the boys did it. Tomorrow, he promised Eppie, he would dial back and be a little less grody.
“Did you just say grody?”
“Right on.”
“Whoa. I think we just crossed some kind of perverse line here. It’s weird enough that you want to live in the seventies, but do you have to talk like it, too? You are absolutely insane.” Eppie spun and wheeled her chair in the direction of a gazebo on the other side of a bridge.
He jogged forward laughing, took the handles of her wheelchair and pushed her up one side of the arched wooden bridge over a stream in the heart of the garden and let her roll free down the other side. “I’m trying to have some fun with it.”
“And how long do we have to put up with this shit?”
Nate wasn’t sure. Until he got his shit together.
“You are pathetic, Evans. F-ing pathetic,” she said. Then she added, “But that’s okay; you can’t help yourself. You were born pathetic. It’s part of your charm. And you are nothing if not pathetically charming.”
Nate had become her pathetically charming pal the day Eppie first rolled into Mt. Hamilton High their sophomore year and threw a book at him when he rudely tried to help her up the handicap ramp. She had been in a wheelchair since she jumped off the train trestle over Coyote Creek on a dare the summer before seventh grade. If she had only landed two feet to the left, she would have missed the lone sandstone rock just below the surface.
“Thanks, but get lost,” Eppie said that day.
“Just trying to help.” Nate moved around to face her and then ducked when Eppie chucked her student handbook at him.
“You throw like a girl.” Nate thought she was cute. She was only a few pounds over slim, had long blond hair with a bit of strawberry that draped to her waist and more freckles than stars in the night sky. He told her she could be real cute if she would smile.
“Cute is not my style. And I’m warning you right now, neither is pity.”
“Cool be
ans.” He decided right then it would be his mission to make this girl smile a few times before they graduated even if it meant aggravating the snot out of her.
Nate wheeled Eppie to the edge of the gazebo and sat down on the lip of its floor next to her. Foot traffic was light for a late Saturday afternoon. The winter blooms were colorful, but they were as sparse as visitors. Nate and Eppie had the garden to themselves. As they talked, he placed a hand on the armrest of her wheelchair. Just as naturally, she laid a hand on top of his. Life had softened her, though he would have been disappointed if she had lost her sharp tongue and the wisecracking shots she took at him. She was content. Who could ask for anything more?
“You sound happy with the way things turned out,” he said. “But have you ever wondered what life would be like if you hadn’t jumped off the train trestle? Wouldn’t it be great to go back and do it differently? Maybe pick one thing to fix? That’s sort of where I am right now.”
“Didn’t we have this discussion once upon a time?”
They had. One starlit night in a vineyard clearing, they’d stretched out on a blanket and pondered the meaning of life. How much had her answer changed over the years?
“Sure, I’d like to walk like everybody else, but everybody has regrets of one kind or another that handicap us. Some big and some small. My legs are mine. Yours is you think too much. At least lately,” she added.
“It wouldn’t be the first time.”
She said, “You can dress the part. You can talk the part. You can do all this stuff you’ve been doing and pretend you’re seventeen again, but sooner or later, you’ll have to quit it and get back to reality.”
“As soon as I find a reason, I will,” he said. He winked at her. Then he told her about his list of things to replicate. “I’m making progress on that.”
“And where is Julie Cooper on that list of yours?”
“What do you mean?”
“She’s on the list somewhere. You wouldn’t be you if she wasn’t there.”
Was he that easy to read? “I gave up on that long ago. I poked around online and couldn’t find her.” Maybe he was searching in all the wrong places. Unlike Eppie, Julie Cooper was nowhere to be found on Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, Instagram, Snapchat and every other social media site. She wasn’t even in the crystal ball of a fortune-teller he had come across at sunset near the Santa Monica pier one day. Twenty bucks. He should have demanded his money back.
“I don’t suppose you know where she is?”
“Sure. Doesn’t everybody?” Her sarcasm was unmistakable. “I’m a little surprised it’s taken this long for you to bring it up.”
“You brought her up,” he reminded her.
Eppie put the tip of a finger between her teeth. Thinking or teasing him with her silence, he wasn’t sure which.
“Well? Are you going to tell me? Because I don’t know how to get in touch with her.”
“That’s because you’re a doofus.”
Nate was in no position to argue that.
Eppie said, “I can help you out, but promise me you won’t screw it up this time.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
But…But…But
The problem with putting a girl on a pedestal was that it drove a boy at any age into tongue-tied foolishness, the kind that made him overthink even the simplest task, like asking her to the senior prom. When he was seventeen, that turned out to be an affliction worse than a serious outbreak of zits. He’d fretted nearly a month over finding the perfect time and place to pop the question when procrastination, a noble heart and Eppie came between him and prom night with Julie Cooper.
It was a classic case of thinking too much and doing too little because Nate wanted to make this more than your average, run-of-the-mill, once-in-a-lifetime, happily-ever-after prom date. He dreamed how it would unfold, tweaking a detail here or a comment there. He had been working extra shifts at Albertson’s, where he bagged groceries, so he wouldn’t have to scrimp on a tux, corsage, dinner and after-dance party. None of it. First class all the way. Plus now he had enough to take Julie to a nice restaurant on Friday, where he would ask her to go with him to the dance. And then, holding her during a slow dance to some song that would become “their song,” he would sweep her off her feet. He’d ask her to go steady, and they would leave their childhood behind together, hand in hand. The relationship would grow and would ultimately end up…where? At seventeen, he was looking forward to finding out. Yep. He had it all planned.
These things were on his mind as he walked across the Mt. Hamilton High campus on a beautiful spring day. Steve Miller Band was playing “Fly Like an Eagle” in his head. “Do da da-do do.” He sang the bridge when he stopped to perform a smart little shuffle, head down and watching his feet on the concrete path. Oh, Julie was going to like that move. He would practice it a few more times and refine it before the dance. The Nate Date Shuffle, he’d call it.
He stopped in front of a sign hanging on the library wall reminding students that senior prom was less than a month away. Buy tickets now. At least he had done that part already. Debbie Caldwell and her twin sister, Denise, were leaning against the wall near the sign. Debbie and Denise were A-listers and didn’t bestow their attention on just anyone, but he got along with them okay. Debbie was most likely to wind up prom queen, while Denise appeared to be a shoo-in for being voted most popular girl. Or maybe it was the other way around.
Nate walked down the corridor to his locker. Joanne Traveras, another A-lister, and two other girls—A-list by association only—were giving Eppie serious grief. Their boyfriends crowded Eppie on either side, willing to be led around by their dicks and showing off for the girls by taunting Eppie.
“C’mon E-Piff-any. Get up and dance. Show us some of those Cripple Disco moves.”
Nate shouldered his way into the group. “Let go and leave her alone.” He pushed the boys away from the wheelchair.
“Stay out of this, Evans.” It came at Nate in stereo, the bigger of the boys and Eppie Johnson both warning him off.
There were threats and name-calling and insightful exchanges like “Oh, yeah?” And “Yeah. So there.” There was just enough shoving to make everyone feel good about himself, and then Nate rolled Eppie away. He was as surprised as anyone that the confrontation almost turned into a fistfight and by how much he wanted to bop those creeps. That wasn’t his style, but then, even Sheriff Matt Dillon had to shoot the bad guys on Gunsmoke every so often.
Nate was headed to baseball practice after school when he saw Eppie sitting at the far end of the student parking lot, waiting for her mother to pick her up. He stole behind her and touched her on the arm. She spun her head, recognized him, and then wheeled around away. It was like a dance where she kept her back to Nate no matter which way he dodged. He had seen her eyes at that first glance and asked her if she was crying.
“I’m not crying.” She wouldn’t face him. Nate stopped chasing her so that Eppie could safely dry her eyes without being obvious. She sniffed.
“I didn’t think you were. I know you don’t cry,” he said. But he knew what he saw, and he was starting to get angry all over again. “If I had those clowns ganging up on me, I guess I’d feel weird about it.”
“I don’t give a shit about them.”
“Me, neither.”
Eppie said it started because Joanne was upset Eppie was blocking her locker and it was taking Eppie forever to get out of her way. Then somebody brought up the prom and they started making fun of her. Eppie let them know that Principal Conklin had told her that morning that she had been chosen prom queen.
“I was supposed to keep it a secret. The prom committee picked me, poor pitiful cripple that I am, so they could feel good about themselves. Conklin said he only told me because they wanted to be sure I was going to the prom.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I didn’t. I was going to tell him no tomorrow. But when those bitches got all snotty about how I couldn’t possibly go
to the dance because… Well, things got worse.”
“That’s when you dropped the prom queen news on them, I’ll bet.” It was a sure bet. “Good for you.”
“Are you kidding? Now I have to go. It’ll be all over the school by tomorrow and embarrassing if I don’t. But I don’t have a date. I won’t be able to get a date. Now I can’t even tell Mr. Conklin no thanks.”
Nate dropped to a knee, put his elbow on the armrest of Eppie’s wheelchair and propped his chin on the palm of his hand. On the far side of the parking lot, his teammates were lollygagging on their way to the practice field. Coach was going to make him run laps for being late. He stayed by her side, not sure what he could say.
It was a long time before she said, “I hate them. I hate this school. I hate this wheelchair and especially I hate proms.”
“I hate it when you feel this way.” Nate knew it was a lame response and that it didn’t sound the least bit funny like he had hoped, and he wished he hadn’t said anything at all. Eppie was sad, so Nate was sad. He’d give anything not to feel sad.
“I didn’t need to be pitied by those assholes on the committee. I didn’t need to be reminded that prom is one more thing I’ll never get to do because I’m in this fucking wheelchair!”
Eppie didn’t try to hide the tears that welled in her eyes this time.
“So why not show them up and go to the dance? I mean, you can move to the music in your own way. I’ll bet guys would dance with you. I know I would.”
Eppie stared at him. So that’s what they mean by looks that kill. He shifted his eyes away to avoid getting burned down to his soul by her glare. “So go. Why not?”
“Why not? Evans, you’re a real dork. What am I supposed to do? Everybody will be there with their dates like you and Cooper, and I’m supposed to go by myself and sit there all night, waiting until you can squeeze in one dance or two with me? And if nobody else does, that’s my whole night. Big whoop. No thanks.”
