Crash and Burn

by Michael Hassan

  She moved in closer to me.

  I glanced at the pool house. Bosco was leading people away from the entrance. Another thing you had to say about Bosco, he followed orders perfectly as long as you kept it simple for him.

  “I think maybe we should talk,” she said, touching my arm, me thinking that if Burn found out she even touched me, I was fucked. Still, there was a spark of something in her touch that almost made it worth it anyways. “We haven’t talked since like eighth grade.” Slurring her words slightly and touching my arm again.

  “How’s the acting thing going?” I fumbled for words.

  “When we made out, do you remember?” she continued, her arm still on mine. “Why haven’t we talked since then?”

  I started not to think about Madelaine Brancato at all, or the fact that I had a girlfriend, even though in my mind she wasn’t my girlfriend. Point being, Christina was making me forget about the original plan.

  Until I saw Tyler out of the corner of my eye, leading Stacy Richman over to the pool house. And seeing that, I knew that I had better move quickly. Bosco would cave to one of the Prime Timers. He was, after all, the supreme pussy.

  “Gotta go” is what I told her, leaving her and her extended arm and flying back into the rec room where Maddy was. Except she was now passed out.

  I looked at Evan, hate in my eyes, and he quickly swore that he did everything he could to keep her up. “She just folded, Crash. Nothing I could do.”

  I wasn’t giving up. The pool was open. No one was in it as the water was still winter cold, so what if I accidentally threw her in?

  I tried to lift her up, but she was dead weight. No that wouldn’t work, who was I kidding? Then another thought, leave her, go back and find Christina again. The night did not have to be a total loss.

  Except Christina was now on the other side of the room, watching me attempt to lift Maddy, and I must have appeared to be a caveman or something because she had this look on, you know, that “you have got to be kidding” look, as I heard someone tell her, “Brancato was supposed to take care of him tonight.”

  I didn’t know that everyone knew, but everyone knew now.

  That was the last time Christina and I had any contact until junior year.

  And my night of humiliation was far from over, because as soon as I left Maddy in a pile in the rec room, wandering back to the beverage tree again, I was stopped again by another girl, her voice practically coldcocking me from behind.

  “Yo, Crashinsky,” in that slightly raspy voice that oozed sarcasm.

  I turned.

  Despite her distinct emo look, she was easily one of the hottest-looking girls at the party, even though it took me a full second to recognize her latest appearance, bangs covering her right eye, piercings above her eyebrow, jet-black hair again, this time with added blue streaks, and underneath it all, as girl-pretty as she was when I first saw her in McAllister.

  “Yo, Roxanne,” I answered with a cautious nod, not knowing whether she was new Roxanne or old Roxanne and whether I was a friend or an annoying younger brother of an enemy.

  “You do get high, don’t you?” she asked. She gave me the blunt she was holding. I took a very tentative hit. She was with a mostly emo group that I heard she hung with. They all looked college; I knew one of them from town but mostly didn’t recognize the others. I don’t even know if she hung out with any other seniors from Meadows at that point.

  “I didn’t think we were talking anymore,” I said, testing her and watching for a reaction.

  “Heard you were hooking up with Brancato tonight. Came to watch.”

  “You heard wrong,” I said, sounding as frustrated as I was and also trying to hide the fact that I was nervous around her.

  “So you’re still a virgin,” she said more than asked. All her friends laughed. I was, not gonna lie, still a virgin, and she knew I was, and I also knew that she wasn’t.

  “So you’re still crazy,” I said more than asked, determined not to let her embarrass me in front of her loser friends. Still, I knew it was wrong to say and immediately felt terrible about it.

  “Yeah,” she said matter-of-factly. “No amount of frickin’ beans is gonna change that,” she said, laughing out loud, and I understood that she was making a private joke to me and that she wasn’t at all insulted by my comeback. In fact, she inhaled the blunt again, got close up, and told me to open my mouth, which for some reason, I did, as I could never say no to Roxanne.

  “Inhale,” she said as she passed the smoke into me in this liplock kiss thing. This completely turned me on, no surprise there. I hadn’t done this before.

  “It’s called shotgunning, Crash,” she said.

  “I know that,” I told her, even though, at the time, I didn’t know it.

  Then she whispered to me. “About the virginity thing. If you wanna go, just say the word. I owe you.” This in a voice so low that her friends couldn’t hear. It was just me and her and, from what I could tell, she was offering, really offering, not just messing around the way the girls in my grade would.

  “You mean, now?”

  “Whenever you want,” she said.

  I saw Bosco still guarding the pool house. I was rock hard and ready, and I still had everything in place.

  And then I heard Burn’s voice, as clear as a bell, in the back of my brain; this time it was saying stay away from my sister. So for the second time in less than an hour, my shot at changing my sexual status was ruined by a kid who wasn’t even there. “I don’t think David would approve,” I told her.

  “I won’t tell him if you don’t.” She did that inhale, exhale shotgunning thing again, passing the smoke to me, but this time, also gently grinding herself against me, so she knew how ready I was.

  “Someone will tell him. Your brother has his ways. He will definitely find out.” Me, sounding defeated, not believing I was turning down a sure thing.

  “Have it your way, Crash. Call me when you’re ready.” She laughed. “And you will call.”

  This time, it was all kiss and no smoke, and she knew she totally had me. And then I was standing there, fully stoned, still in kiss mode as she stepped back, and her friends were laughing at me and my stupid pose. As I straightened up, they were gone, and I was alone by the pool with massive wood hoping it wasn’t showing and filled with mind spin, so much so that I was dizzy. It hit me that I now had exactly what I wanted: not only my first chance at a guaranteed path to manhood, but with a girl who has totally mesmerized me since elementary school, not gonna lie, and I had just balked at going through with it that very night with the one girl who totally would have rocked my world, because no question about it, Roxanne would have known exactly what she was doing. No question, now that Roxanne was even a remote possibility, Maddy was going to be a great disappointment, at best.

  But I also had to deal with the cruel fact that she was probably teasing me in her Roxanne way, and who was I kidding, I was, in all probability, as much a toy to Roxanne as Maddy was to me.

  Which brought me back to Maddy, because I did have the obligation to get her home, that was part of the deal, and maybe, just maybe, she was up by now, and if so, one last attempt wasn’t going to hurt. At least it would be safe, even though all I could think about was Roxanne now, as she totally did a number on me. So one last attempt would allow me to refocus . . .

  Except that across the property, Tyler and Stacy were pushing past Bosco, into the pool house, and Bosco just shrug-motioned to me that he had done all he could do and was officially resigning from his job. Fucking Bosco.

  I headed back to the rec room, still spinning, thinking about Roxanne and the whole shotgunning feeling. And there, on the couch, sitting next to a now fully conscious Madelaine Brancato, was a fully sober David Burnett, totally making his move on her, and she seemed totally into it.

  “Yo, Crash” is what he said, though he wasn’t looking at me, he was looking at her, in fact with one arm around her and holding a redcup filled with, m
y guess, a fresh round of jungle juice. She was drinking again and looking at him, not me.

  Which really pissed me off, not because I felt any jealousy whatsoever, which I totally did not, but because I could possibly have been, at that very moment, using the pool house with his sister, who as far as I knew he had no real care in the world for, at least no more feelings than I had for Lindsey.

  Which reminded me to call Lindsey, because she was supposed to drive me home and we had a midnight curfew and it was now 11:45.

  Fuckme.

  I flipped open my cell phone, made the call. She complained, but I reminded her that our mom had already worked it out with her and that she had to drive Maddy home too. I heard her curse me and I hung up smiling, knowing that she was on her way and I would make her wait at the end of the driveway by Kelly’s house for a good long time before I emerged from the party.

  “Saw your sister,” I told Burn, who was still all about Maddy.

  “Heard she was here,” he said, not looking at me. “She won’t be for long; not her kind of scene. Definitely not enough action.” From what I knew about him, this wasn’t exactly the kind of party that he normally showed up to either.

  “Christina is too,” I said, wondering why I was baiting him. “I saw her by the pool.”

  “Yeah, well good for Christina,” he answered, then whispered something in Maddy’s ear which made her laugh, and I wanted to ask her, and everyone else, was I the only person left who realized this guy was still crazy? Because everyone was treating him like he was just a normal kid. No, better than a normal kid, like some kind of royalty, because he seemed to always get his way now that he was all jacked and everything.

  I was thinking that I liked him better Down than Up. As for Up, he seemed way Up at the moment, like indestructible Up, one arm around Maddy, turning the other way to flirt with Amanda, who was on the couch with Bobby and who Burn knew was one of Christina’s closest friends. So he was not only flirting with her but making her laugh, and I could tell Bobby was getting annoyed, because Bobby, being the most competitive member of Club Crew, knew what my goal for the night was, and Bobby was doing what he could to beat me at my own game (this was easily the third girl he was hitting on that night, although, come to think of it, I was also zero for three, as in Maddy, Christina, and Roxanne, but I had real shots at my three, at least two of the three, while his choices were near impossibilities).

  Then Lindsey was calling my cell, which meant she was waiting. I signaled Maddy that our ride was there, and she dutifully pulled herself up from the couch, stumbled over to me with a quick “sorry,” as I helped her maneuver around groups of other people. Her breath smelled like vodka and some kind of luncheon meat, not pleasant at all. I was, tell you the truth, buzzing with anger.

  To make matters worse, as I was leaving, a crop of the hottest freshman girls showed up, all short skirts, tight shirts, and too much makeup.

  “Hiiiiii, Crash,” a few said in unison, all giggly.

  I knew some of them liked me, which left me with a choice: I could bail on Maddy, avoid Lindsey and blow off my curfew and leave Maddy there, positive that she would get a ride with one of her friends’ mothers or brothers, but that would cause a problem with respect to my future plans with her. Plus there was my mom to deal with the next day.

  “I’m not feeling so good” is what Maddy said.

  More luncheon meat smell.

  Great. My anger level boosted, knowing that I was going to do the right thing anyways.

  Down at the end of the driveway, Lindsey was already out of the car, looking for me.

  “I called you like ten times.”

  “So I’m here.”

  “So you completely ruined my night.”

  “Yeah, well too bad,” I said, wondering how Lindsey’s night could be more ruined than mine. I shoved Maddy into the backseat of the car and got in after her, noticing for the first time that Lindsey’s best friend, Erin, was in the front seat. We had made out once years before, when she was learning how to kiss and practicing on me. Unfortunately for Erin, she did not get any prettier, though she was mad smart, as in going to Harvard the following year smart. Lindsey, no slouch either, was accepted to U-Penn and Georgetown, causing a minor quake in the Caroline/Jacob coexistence treaty, because my mom was all about U-Penn and Jacob was insisting on Georgetown—to him there was no comparison.

  I was fairly positive at that point in time that there would be no similar arguments when I graduated from high school, if that ever even happened.

  Maddy burped loudly. Trust me, you do not want a description of what that smelled like.

  Congratulations on Harvard, congratulations on Georgetown, she told the two older girls. They were clearly annoyed, offered totally nonenthusiastic thanks in return, clearly not wanting to talk, but Maddy would not stop, going on about how she wanted to go to Brown or Williams, like who in our grade even knew the names of colleges.

  Why did I not stay at the party?

  Lindsey interrupted Maddy to talk to me. “Dad called. He wants us to visit him next weekend.”

  “No way” is what I said, knowing there would be another party and another chance for success, if not with Maddy, then with someone else. I wasn’t going to wait much longer.

  “It’s Felicia’s birthday,” she said, knowing that I wouldn’t disappoint my father’s girlfriend. “She’s having some cousins come in from her country and she wants to introduce us.”

  “Good times,” said Erin sarcastically. I later found out that she had just started having sex with some college guy who she met online. Didn’t sound like a particularly Harvardy choice, if you ask me.

  Lindsey stopped on Maple, slowed to a crawl, asked which house and Maddy pointed. Call me, is what she said when she got out of the car. Sure, is what I said, though I wouldn’t, knowing that she would be all about IMing me by the time I got home anyways.

  Door slam. Madelaine was not even across her lawn yet when Erin started in.

  “She’s just like her sister.”

  Lindsey: “I hate her sister. I hate all the Brancatos.”

  Erin: “Everyone hates her sister. Everone hates the Brancatos.” Then, to me, “Steven, what do you see in her? She’s not even pretty,” which, OK, she wasn’t, but she was, in her defense, a lot hotter than Erin.

  Lindsey: “What do you think he sees in her?” As if I wasn’t even there.

  They went on like this all the way home, or at least most of the way, because no sooner did we pull up to my street when I got a text from Evan.

  Looks like Bobby wins.

  I call him. He tells me that Bobby is in the pool house with April Walker. No contest. We all know that when April is shitfaced she will deliver. And April was shitfaced before I left. I saw her but didn’t even consider it. I tell him that April shouldn’t count, and Evan says he asked the rest of the Club Crew and it’s unanimous, April counts. Bobby wins.

  I stagger into the house, not realizing until I hit the kitchen that I am also shitfaced drunk, plus still stoned from Roxanne’s superblunt. I will have to avoid Caroline Prescott and her obsessive questions. Only there she was at the top of steps, launching right in—as in where were you, who was there, how was Maddy, I saw Mrs. Brancato at the market, and did you see David, I heard from Elaine that David decided to go to the party, good for him, he had a hard time dealing with the breakup with that girl in your grade, you know, the actress, did he look OK, do you think he’s doing all right, did you drink anything, tell me the truth, Steven. And me, keeping it simple, Kelly’s, everybody, OK, he was there, seemed OK, I had a beer, just one, I swear, no mom, everybody drinks now, just ask Lindsey.

  Closing my bedroom door behind me, popping open my laptop to see who was on, not being able to think about anything else except the lost opportunities and how Burn, in his own way, totally ruined my big night.

  Lights out and I tried to sleep, but instead completely replayed in my mind the minutes I had with Roxanne, sharing a
blunt with me and supercharging me with a kind of electricity.

  “It’s called shotgunning, Crash.”

  I heard this over and over again in my brain. No way was I getting to sleep, not with my mind spinning and Roxanne, after all these years, calling me Crash, not Crashinsky, without making fun of my last name. That had to mean something.

  And Christina, what was up with her? She did look good too. And smell great.

  But not as great as Roxanne.

  I replayed the shotgun feeling and the body contact and the mouth-to-mouth contact.

  And everything she said.

  “Have it your way, Crash. Call me when you’re ready.”

  She actually did say that.

  Yep, no sleep at all. After I convinced myself that I should call her, I convinced myself that she was definitely fucking with me and that I could never actually call her, so I had to stop thinking about her and put her out of my mind completely.

  And besides, now I had a new goal, and I was going to be a hero on this, because I was not going to waste any more time on trying to get oral, oral is for losers, and besides, Bobby had already won that tournament, so it was time for me to go all in. If Maddy wanted to continue to go out, I would go out, but she had to put out as in all out, or I was moving on.

  Summer was coming. A few more weeks of school, finals (ugh, I was really, really, really sucking at school), and then ten weeks, just my boys and summer ball and no more missed opportunities.

  I would give Maddy until the end of the school year.

  Then, there was always the summer. Point was, if I wasn’t devirginized by the middle of August, I would, regardless of the consequences, call Roxanne. She did say to call, after all. Actually, it had to be the second week in August—I couldn’t afford to go beyond that. Like Lindsey, Roxanne was starting college in the fall, and I had heard that she was heading out west somewhere. I couldn’t risk waiting any longer than that.

  With the weed wearing off, I was starting to drift into that place between alertness and sleep, absolutely optimistic, because, when I thought about it, Burn hadn’t ruined my night at all. Actually, I was the one who bailed on Christina, and at the same time, Burn’s sister, if she was serious, had offered me an absolute gift, when you think about it.