Spontaneous

by Aaron Starmer

  Dylan came from a farm, which meant he was poor. His father died doing something stupid, which, if you’re taking genetics into account, meant Dylan was stupid. On top of that, the stupid thing involved a pile of manure that Dylan pawed his way through, and now you’ve also got a kid who’s dirty. And stinky.

  So almost immediately, Dylan was known as a dumb and smelly hick who was probably scarred for life by what he came upon one afternoon out there in Pennsyltucky. Everyone felt bad for him, but no one wanted to be his friend. Myself included.

  Story Number Two: He burned down the QuickChek.

  Again, this requires a bit of elaboration. At the intersection of Willoby and Monroe, there used to be a QuickChek convenience store. In the summer after seventh grade, Tess and I would ride there on our bikes and buy Mountain Dew, Twizzlers, and the latest issue of Vogue. We’d take it all down to a nearby creek, sit on the rocks, and use the Twizzlers as straws to drink the Mountain Dew while we’d tear pictures of models out of magazines and then fold them up into little paper boats that we’d race in the currents.

  “Go Adriana! Go Svetlana! Go, go, go you glorious anorexic Romanians!”

  Okay, fine. I’m fairly certainly we didn’t use the words glorious or anorexic or Romanian, but we got pretty damn excited about it. What else was there to do? We couldn’t drive. We didn’t drink, yet. Boys were an interest, of course, but they were all inside killing zombies or watching people kill zombies and Tess and I really weren’t that into zombies and . . .

  Sorry. Zombies aren’t the point. QuickChek is. So it turns out that thirteen-year-old girls buying the occasional fashion mag, caffeinated soda, and bag of strawberry licorice isn’t enough to keep a convenience store in the black, and by the winter of that year it closed down. It was kind of a craphole to begin with, but once people stopped using the building, raccoons and teenagers took it over, sneaking in at night to do the things that raccoons and teenagers do, which is primarily making a big fucking mess.

  Big fucking messes tend to be pretty flammable and so it was no surprise when some boys set the place on fire. Well, one boy set it on fire, if you were to believe the stories. No arrests were made, no parents found out, but the incoming freshman class entered Covington High convinced that on the last night of eighth grade, Dylan Hovemeyer had accompanied Joe Dalton and Keith Lutz to the abandoned QuickChek with the intention of smashing shit. You know, as a celebration of their manhood. Only Dylan brought an unexpected guest to the party: a Molotov cocktail made from an Arizona Iced Tea bottle filled with lighter fluid and wicked with the T-shirt we got for graduating from the middle school that said GO GET ’EM, YOUNG SCHOLARS.

  Apparently, Young Scholar Hovemeyer got ’em and got ’em good. That is, if ’em was a stack of old newspapers that he pelted with the burning Molotov cocktail before Joe and Keith had any idea what was what. The three bolted out of there with flames licking their haunches and promised never to speak of the incident, a truce that lasted a full fifteen hours.

  In the end, everything worked out for the best. The building’s owner probably got insurance money. The police never implicated the guys. And now there’s a Chick-fil-A on the lot and everybody loves Chick-fil-A. Except for the fact that they’re closed on Sundays. You can thank Jesus for that raw deal.

  Story Number Three: Dylan is the father of three kids.

  This was the least corroborated of the stories, but the other two stories certainly helped make it believable. Remember, by the time he was in high school, Dylan was known as a redneck pyromaniac with a dead father. In other words, he had nothing to lose, and so whenever something suspicious happened, he was a suspect.

  A fire alarm pulled on the first day of finals? Gotta be that Dylan kid.

  Laptops stolen from the computer lab? Paging Mr. Hovemeyer.

  Spontaneously combusting students? You bet his name was whispered more than once.

  But even before the spontaneous combustions, there was the curious case of Jane Rolling. Jane had always been a bit chubby. Not obese. Just consistently soft. Well, during junior year, she got softer and softer and softer still. Then one day, she stopped showing up to school.

  “Triplets!” Tess told me a few weeks later.

  “She was . . . with child? That whole time?” I said.

  “With children. Yes. Three. All boys.”

  “That’s boom-boom bonkers,” I said, because junior year was the year I said nonsense like “boom-boom bonkers.” Trying to land my own catchphrase, I will freely admit.

  “What’s even more boom-boom bonkers,” Tess said in a mocking tone, “is the identity of the father.”

  I shrugged because there was better gossip than Jane Rolling’s love life.

  “How about Dylan?” Tess went on. “Manure-dad Dylan. Fire-starter Dylan.”

  “Damn,” I said. “That’s right. They dated. Used to cuddle on the front steps before first bell. It was . . . nausealicious.” Yep, nausealicious. Another junior year gem.

  “So there you have it,” Tess said. “The delinquent has reproduced in triplicate.”

  “Guy’s got powerful sperm.”

  “I thought you passed bio. It’s more about Jane’s eggs. Girl’s got a chicken coop down there.”

  “Well, I don’t envy either one of them,” I said, which wasn’t the whole truth. Having a trio of babies is not without its advantages. Once they learn to walk and talk, you can teach them song-and-dance routines and who doesn’t love a little soft shoe and three-part harmony?

  Jane didn’t come back to school, of course, and Dylan became more of a lurking, mysterious presence than ever. I guess he talked to other kids. I guess he had friends. But to people like me and Tess, he was simply a bundle of rumors and suspicion, dressed up in jeans and ringer tees.

  Literary Analysis: Dylan was sad. And dangerous. And fascinating.

  back to the action

  Monday was Halloween and school was back in session. The majority of kids and teachers skipped the getups entirely. I spotted a few “laser loafers” in the hall as a tribute to Brian, but that was the extent of the masquerading. Everyone was trying to pretend that things were back to normal, or at least the type of normal where you play football again.

  All sports seasons had been put on pause after Brian, because obviously fit and limber kids need free time to grieve and freak out, the same as the rest of us sloths. Certain parents weren’t thrilled about the hiatus, though, and they had a point. Our teams were usually state ranked, playoffs were around the corner, and there were college scholarships at stake. Not for Tess, necessarily, but it was still a vital part of her high school experience. While I didn’t give a single shit about sports myself, I could at least appreciate that many of my peers depended on them for their health, sanity, and future.

  The majority appreciated that too. After an open session of the PTA that Sunday, democracy declared Play Ball!, starting Friday with a football game against crosstown rivals, Bloomington. It was a rescheduled version of the previous week’s homecoming game, there were apparently “playoff implications,” and while there would be no dance and no parade with floats ferrying high school royalty, the stands would be full of current and former students and anyone who wanted to give a defiant finger to our predicament.

  For most kids, football games weren’t ever about the football. These sporting events were excuses to hang out in the bleachers and catch up with friends, or lounge behind the bleachers in the softball fields, where blankets could be spread out and kids could watch the stars in the sky instead of the ones on the field. These brutal battles were distractions from our cloak-and-dagger variety of partying, where booze mixed with Gatorade was smuggled past lazy-eyed security guards. These rousing contests were perfect for covert kissing in the shadows and heart-to-hearts scored to the sounds of cheering parents and girlfriends.

  The homecoming game was going to be my first
date with Dylan. It was his idea and the arrangements were made by text, since there wasn’t much time in econ to discuss such things. As the week chugged along, the three stories and their subplots fizzled in my head and mixed with the dizzying memory of his hand on my hand. I know, I know. Getting all worked up by a little hand-holding? Total middle school. Elementary school, even. But when you think about it, hand-holding can be really sexy, especially when you’re holding the hand of someone who may or may not be any number of things.

  Was I leery of Dylan? Obviously. Was I excited about seeing him again? Uh . . . yeah. During lunch on Wednesday, Tess made me promise to be careful. “If he’s half the things we think he is,” she said, “I’m not sure you want to be alone with him.”

  “That’s why the football game is perfect,” I said. “Plenty of people around, but no one listening in on us.”

  “I wish I didn’t have practice that night. I want to watch over you.”

  “That’s sweet. But that’s also creepy. I’ll be fine. What are you worried about? That he’ll fill me with quadruplets during halftime or that he’ll douse me in gasoline to celebrate every touchdown?”

  Tess took a potato chip from my bag and poked me playfully on the nose with it. “Do you really want to get close to someone who has three kids? Plus all the other stuff? Do you want to have a look inside all his baggage?”

  I snatched the chip from Tess’s hand, stuffed it in my mouth, and as I chewed, I said, “I’ve got plenty of baggage myself.”

  “A carry-on at best. This guy would have to pay hundreds of dollars to check his.”

  “Is Walsh doing a unit on metaphors in AP English or something? Because I don’t think you get extra credit for using such pathetic ones, especially outside of class.”

  “I should poison your drink,” Tess said with a fake sneer as she watched me take a slug from my strawberry smoothie.

  “Should, but never would,” I said as I wiped my mouth. “You know why?”

  “Why?”

  “Because you would be sad. You would feel . . . All. The. Feels.”

  Tess raised a finger. “How dare you? You know how I hate those words.”

  “You won’t hate those words when they’re on the cover of my novel, the blockbusting award-winner that I dedicate To My Darling Tessy.”

  “Royalties,” she said as she patted me on the cheek. “Dedications are sweet, but cutting me in on the profits would be a whole lot better.”

  “Fine,” I replied. “I’ll be your sugar mama until the end of days. I’ll keep your toes dipped in sand and your body draped in silk.”

  She put out a hand out and I shook it. The deal was officially sealed.

  fun and games

  Front row center.

  Or so said the text from Dylan that arrived Friday afternoon. I got a ride to the game with the Dalton twins because Dylan hadn’t offered one. I figured there wasn’t enough room on his skateboard.

  The Daltons shared a red RAV4 bought with money they made bussing tables at Covington Club, the restaurant at our local golf course. At least that’s where they told their parents they got the cash. In reality, the majority of their income was the redirected allowances of kids who partook in illegal plants and pills. Kids like the late great Katelyn Ogden. Like me.

  Joe Dalton was older than Jenna Dalton by a few minutes, but he was definitely the younger at heart. And mind. Since he was supposedly one of the guys with Dylan the night the QuickChek burned down, I could have asked him if the whole Molotov cocktail thing was true, but I wasn’t sure I wanted the answer to spoil my evening. So instead I sat quietly in the back, while he drove and argued with Jenna about whether it would be better to retire to Florida or Buenos Aires.

  Joe was advocating, poorly, in favor of Florida. “Bikinis, bottle service, and alligators, Jenna! Doesn’t get any better!”

  Jenna, on the other hand, was selling Buenos Aires like a real estate agent, highlighting “the mild climate, the European flavor, the dancing till dawn, and the steaks as big as laptops.”

  After a while, they seemed to forget I was there and were trading inside insults, which are like inside jokes but even worse because as Joe hollered, “You’re such an Aunt Jessica!” and Jenna yelled, “Go puke on Donald Duck again,” I had no idea who was winning. It was getting unbearably loud and so I started fantasizing about the two of them screaming themselves to death and leaving me all their drug money so I could hop on the back of Dylan’s skateboard and the two of us could catch the next plane to Argentina where we’d forge a new life full of red. Red wine. Red meat. Red-hot love.

  When we reached the lot for the football field, I slipped out with a “mucho appreciation, amigos,” and hightailed it to the bleachers. The fight song was pumping and the seats were as full as I’d ever seen them, but sure enough, there was Dylan in the front row with a bag of popcorn next to him, saving me a seat.

  “Here I am,” I said, and sucked in a deep breath. I was not in shape. I had never been in shape.

  He pulled the popcorn to his lap, revealing a buttery stretch of aluminum for me to sit on. “And there you go,” he said, but he failed to wipe any of the sludge away. It didn’t bother me, necessarily, though it did leave me with a decision. I didn’t see any napkins, and I didn’t want to be a pain in the ass from the get-go and ask him to fetch me some. I especially didn’t want to call him out for being either clueless or inconsiderate. So I was left with a choice between having a buttery hand or a buttery butt.

  Protip: Always avoid the buttery butt.

  And that’s what I did. I ran a hand across the seat a couple of times while Dylan was watching the referee flip a coin. As I sat, I flicked the butter down into the chasm beneath the bleachers. “What the, what the—?” muttered some poor dope who must’ve been beneath me, but that was all I heard because the crowd went absolutely apeshit when our team won the coin toss. The coin toss. It was going to be that kind of game.

  “So,” I said once the cheering petered out. “You prefer the bleachers to, I don’t know, somewhere we don’t have to actually watch the game?”

  “I’m looking forward to the game,” he said without even a hint of sarcasm.

  “You are?”

  “Sure. I’ve been a fan of the Quakers since I was a kid.”

  Yes, you heard that right. We are the tenacious, the proud, the fearsome . . . Quakers! It goes back over three hundred years to when this area consisted of a few scattered communities of Quakers who didn’t make it as far as Pennsylvania. The lazy Quakers, if you will. We’re a public school now, without any religious or philosophical affiliations, except for a mascot who basically looks like the guy from the oatmeal box, except with a Quakerly sneer in place of a Quakerly smile.

  “So always a Quakers fan, huh?” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say to something like that. And then it dawned on me. “But wait, didn’t you move here during sixth grade?”

  “I’ve always been here,” he said. “Sixth grade was when I started taking classes. I was homeschooled until then.”

  “Oh. That’s news to me.”

  “News to most people,” he replied, and as he spoke, he kept his eyes on the Bloomington players preparing to kick off, sizing them up like my grandpa used to size up horses at the track. “My dad died of a stroke that year. Out in a field while laying down some fertilizer. He was a dairy farmer, but he also helped my mom teach me. Once he was gone, it was too much for Mom to do alone, so I was transferred to the general population.”

  He put his hands out and motioned to the crowd, which leapt from the bleachers as Jalen Howard caught the opening kick and returned it to the forty-yard line.

  “That must have been tough,” I hollered over the noise.

  Dylan shrugged. “Another Hovemeyer for your dad’s favorite graveyard.”

  It was a callback to the night at my house. And
it was funny. Not because Dylan’s dad was dead and buried, but because my dad is definitely the type of guy who would have a favorite graveyard. After all, he has a favorite public restroom (Covington Town Library, second floor), a favorite fire hydrant (the shiny blue one on Gleason Street), and a favorite park bench (the warped beauty in Sutter Park he calls Ol’ Lucy).

  So I laughed. And Dylan smiled.

  “I never pegged you for a football fan,” I said.

  “Drama,” he said. “There’s always a different story. I like drama. I like stories.”

  Our quarterback, Clint Jessup, threw an errant pass that went into the bleachers and the crowd let out a collective sigh. “What’s the story this time?” I asked.

  “Depends on your religion.”

  “Meaning?”

  He turned to me and his beaming face opened him up like a sunrise opens up a landscape. “This is a resurrection story. We’re back.”

  the thing about comebacks

  We were back. Our team had gone into the game as underdogs. Bloomington was a perennial powerhouse and we’d missed far too many practices to realistically compete. But compete we did. Leads were exchanged, and new numbers were constantly lighting up the scoreboard.

  There was a certain amount of excitement and it was fascinating to see Dylan glued to every pass and tackle, but it confirmed to me that no matter how much drama there was, I still didn’t care about sports.

  What I did care about, however, was Harper Wie, Perry Love, and Steve Cox. They were players on our team. Benchwarmers, basically. Which was important. More than any touchdown, I wanted to see the three of them sit next to each other on the bench.

  Why ever would you want to see something so mundane, you ask? Well, it goes back to junior year. In general, I don’t have a problem with football players. At Covington High, they’re mostly nice guys. They don’t beat up people in the bathrooms. They don’t cheat their way through classes (as far as I know). They don’t record their dalliances with cheerleaders and post them on RaRaBang.com or whatever the amateur porn site du jour is called. Sure, they’re not saints, but they’re usually too busy being football players to be much of anything else. Harper Wie, Perry Love, and Steve Cox were the exception. Or at least they were for a brief moment, and sometimes all it takes is a brief moment.