by Rob Rufus
“I love Frostop!” I said. “That’s cool as hell.”
Ali laughed as she leaned back into me.
“Whatever, if my friends knew they would fucking disown me. Why do you think I work all the way out in Barboursville?”
“They sound like pretty shitty friends.”
She sighed. “Don’t say anything. You’re the only one who knows.”
“I won’t—I promise.”
“Just please tell me if I start smelling like French fries, okay? I really don’t want to smell like fucking French fries.”
“I’ll stay vigilant,” I swore.
I could feel her body warming mine. The swing was still now, and we sat unmoving in the dark. I’d lost track of time. I’d lost track of everything.
“You know, I listened to the tape you made me,” she said.
“Really? Did you like it? I wasn’t sure about a few of the songs. You know, I only put that Ataris song on there because—”
“Rob,” she said.
Her eyes met mine.
“Yeah?”
“Shut up.”
She kissed me right then. She lit up my world.
FIVE
Parked Cars
1
Although Ali dropped off the cheerleading squad, she still swung enough weight at school to get a late transfer into my first-period class. This move was a big deal for me. I’d had plenty of girls try to get away from me, but Ali was the only one who ever tried to get closer.
Each morning in class, Ali passed me a note she’d scribbled on the cheesy pink paper she liked to use. These messages were little nothings—about what she was up to after school, a movie she wanted to see—but I carried them in my wallet like currency, rereading them incessantly through the rest of the school day.
The two of us had no other classes together. We were on separate schedules, and I was lucky if I even passed her in the hall. So while my teachers droned through boring lectures, I just read her notes. Then I read them again.
* * *
Although Ali and I spent the days apart, I couldn’t seem to turn a corner without running into her friends. They were openly disgusted at the thought of us dating, and they couldn’t help making shitty comments whenever I walked past.
But I didn’t let it bother me. I mean, in a way I agreed with them—shit, I couldn’t believe she was dating me either. But she was. And if Ali didn’t care what her friends thought about it, why should I? As long as she could ignore them, I could too.
At first, the thought of Ali and me together seemed as off to my friends as it did to the cheerleading squad. She was above my pay grade, and I think they were nervous I was taking on more than I could handle.
But having a girl like Ali around came with benefits. For one thing, all guys know that attractiveness multiplies—pretty girls know pretty girls—so as long as Ali was dating a punk rocker, there was a chance that other chicks might decide to slum it with one of my friends.
Even more important than the possibility of girls was the reality of free fast food—Ali started showing up at band practice with carloads of Frostop milk shakes and fries. The seats of my van were littered with paper bags and wadded-up foil wrappers. The basement started smelling like a grease trap. It was amazing. As far as my gang was concerned, Ali ruled eternal.
She still partied with her friends every weekend, but Ali spent the rest of her free time with us. She went with us to bad movies and the crappy restaurants we loved. She took us seriously and always laughed at our dumb jokes. It wasn’t long before she started ditching school on Tuesdays to go record shopping with the boys.
* * *
When we were alone, we only did two things: make out, or find places to make out.
It was too cold to skateboard in January, so the dudes were usually at my house. With Ali’s dad out of work, our options in the privacy department were limited. We generally retreated to the ancient sanctuary of the American teenager—the backseat.
We just kissed, mostly—I was afraid to try much more, scared I’d embarrass myself—I clawed and fumbled at her clothes, and my fingers inched nervously up her thighs. I was scared that she’d stop me. I was scared that she wouldn’t.
On back-road turnoffs and empty church parking lots I lost myself. That Ford van was our hour-rate dive motel.
It became impossible to focus on anything else. If I wasn’t around her, I wanted to be around her. I wanted to feel the way I did when she pulled me toward her—I needed it all the time, every minute. I wanted to watch the car windows steam up. I wanted I wanted I wanted.
I was completely obsessed.
This was an obsession that was different than music. I know I’m supposed to say music would always be my first love but shit, come on.
Of course I love music—everyone loves music! But music didn’t wear tight black jeans. Music didn’t have perfect 34-Ds I was allowed to feel up. Music touched me, but it never touched me—when Ali and I were alone, the music faded into the background.
Whether it was Bon Jovi, the Clash, or radio static, it didn’t matter. Every moment with her sang.
* * *
Around the time we officially began dating, I started to have coughing fits whenever Ali lit up beside me. I could feel the smoke drift into my nose and down my lungs, causing these deep, sporadic coughs.
It was embarrassing as shit. She already knew that I wasn’t cool enough to smoke—but being so uncool that I couldn’t even handle secondhand smoke? How was that level of lameness even possible?
The cough began to follow me.
It stayed with me long after the butts of her cigarettes dimmed and died on the blacktop. Mom started asking if I felt okay. She said she heard me coughing in my bedroom some nights. She started to worry that I was getting sick.
I told her I was fine.
But the more I coughed, the harder it was to avoid her nagging about me being sick. I told Mom that it was probably allergies—“No one has allergies in January”—or that maybe spring was coming early.
Didn’t that seem plausible? I mean, maybe it was allergies—there must be people in the world allergic to cigarette smoke. Incredibly unhip people, sure, but people nonetheless.
I finally told Ali that I’d diagnosed myself with a chronic cigarette smoke allergy. I said that she should quit smoking.
“Well, yeah, I could,” she’d said, “but it would be easier if you just quit coughing instead. . . .”
We both had a pretty good laugh at that one.
2
The more I kept coughing, the less I was convinced it had anything to do with cigarette smoke. By February, I was at a point where I would break into these loud, room-clearing coughing fits; not just around smokers either. Now I coughed if I tried any physical act. It had nothing to do with exertion—I was just as likely to cough playing drums as I was simply walking up the stairs.
Mom kept nagging me to go to the doctor, and I kept brushing her off. The more I coughed, the more she nagged. It became a nightly debate at our house—Mom getting on my case, me saying that she was overreacting.
My dad finally told her that if I said I felt fine, then I felt fine. He gave me more credit than I deserved.
* * *
If I’d just listened to my body, maybe I would’ve known something was seriously wrong with me sooner than I did. It all seems so obvious to me now, but the truth is, if you woulda asked me back then, I would have told you there wasn’t anything wrong at all.
In my experience, a cough or a sneeze was just a lead-in to a cold or flu or something. So I waited. And waited. But nothing came. Besides that cough, I felt fine. I felt great, actually; between the band and Ali, I was feeling no pain. I didn’t have so much as a headache.
So it was easy for me to push the cough into the back of my mind. I didn’t want to waste time going to some
stupid doctor’s appointment over a stupid cough. I had way more important shit to focus on.
So I didn’t give it a second thought—at least until the blood.
* * *
On the morning I coughed up blood, I was sitting at the kitchen table, eating breakfast and listening to my mom bitch at me about going to the doctor. Dad was upstairs getting dressed, so I had no one to back me up.
Apparently, sometime in the night my cough got loud enough to wake up both my parents. In my mom’s book, that settled it—I was going to the fucking doctor. But I still kept saying I felt fine. I didn’t need to see a doctor.
“You’ve gotten the mistaken impression that I am asking,” she said.
She ordered me to stay home from school and rest. She would call our family doctor once she got to work and schedule my appointment. He and his wife had been friends with my parents for years, so she didn’t expect much of a wait.
I finally told her if I had to go to the doctor, fine—but I wasn’t staying home. Not doing it. Nope. No way.
I hated school as much as any other kid—and of course I wanted to get rid of my cough—but it wasn’t about school, and it wasn’t about the cough. It was about Ali. If she was going to be at school, then so was I.
Mid-argument, I went into another coughing fit.
I dropped my spoon and leaned over the table as my body drove dry coughs through me with the force of an invisible fist on my back. I raised my hand to signal that I was fine, but then I kept right on coughing.
When I finished, I was sweating. I struggled to catch my breath. My eyes were fixed on the table.
“Yeah . . . yeah . . . okay . . .” I panted. “I’ll . . . stay home. . . .”
Mom kept talking, but I was barely listening anymore. My attention was on the empty cereal bowl in front of me, and the blood that was now inside it.
It wasn’t a lot of blood—only about a teaspoon’s worth, just little droplets that floated on my leftover milk like dark-red lily pads. Before Mom could see it, I took my spoon and swirled it in with the milk, diluting it all into a soft, safe pink.
As the blood disappeared, I tried to rationalize what had just happened.
This doesn’t mean I’m sick, I thought. In fact, this is proof that I’m not.
I was sure that—because I wasn’t sick—I had no phlegm or snot to cough up. So those dry, forceful coughs of nothing must have been so dry that this particular coughing fit irritated my throat, making me spit up a little blood. Because what else could it have been?
Only something I’d rather not think about.
Mom walked back upstairs. I could hear Nat watching MTV in the other room. I sat at the table, stirring. I looked out through the window at the new day ahead.
3
It looked like I was gonna be stuck at home for the rest of the week. Our family doctor had returned Mom’s call but told her he was on sabbatical—I wasn’t sure exactly what that meant, only that he wasn’t at work. He promised that his receptionist would fit me in with the next available doctor. He said I needed to stay home until somebody checked me out.
I was balled up on the couch, watching Ricki Lake in between coughs, when Ali stopped by. I hadn’t talked to her much that week, so it was a surprise. A nice surprise.
We ended up driving by the park, in the small lot where the hiking paths ended. It was on the section opposite the playground and was almost always deserted. There were no other cars, no bikers, no joggers—nothing.
Ali put on our worn-out Bon Jovi mixtape, turned the volume low, and we climbed into her backseat.
We made out for hours, and I didn’t cough at all. Ali had her shirt off, and her thighs rubbed against my love handles as we kissed. Bon Jovi was quiet now, and the sunlight beyond the windows had grown dim. I didn’t notice.
She started unbuttoning my pants, and I started unbuttoning hers. I didn’t know where it was going next, but it felt too awesome to stop.
She stopped.
“Oh shit,” she whispered.
She jumped off me and started grabbing for her clothes.
“What is it?”
“Cops,” she hissed, strapping on her bra.
I jerked my head around—a black-and-white cruiser crept slowly into the entrance of the lot.
“Shit,” I said, and started to cough.
“Shit, shut up! Shit!”
She climbed into the front seat. Her shirt was still unbuttoned, and her pants were halfway down her hips. I was still in the backseat with my head between my knees, coughing. I saw one of Ali’s shoes lying on the floor.
She pulled out of the parking lot slowly, and the cops followed us. We were driving through the neighborhood at about five miles an hour, with the cops stuck right on our bumper. I tried to get Ali to relax.
“It isn’t like they saw us doing anything,” I said. “How much shit can they give us for sitting in a parked car?”
“When the car has a ziplock full of pot in it, they can give us a lot of shit!” she said nervously.
“Jesus, how much pot do you smoke?”
“Rob, just hand me my shoe.”
While she tried to slip the shoe on, she jerked the wheel—barely—and the cops hit their lights.
Their sirens squealed. Ali cursed and pulled over. I sat in the backseat, dumbstruck—I couldn’t believe it. They’d pulled us over right in front of my fucking house.
The cops just sat in their cruiser. They turned off the siren, but the lights kept circling blue and red. Neighbors started to walk onto their porches. Soon, another police car arrived—“backup”—and the light show doubled.
Finally, an officer walked to the car.
Ali rolled down her window. She handed the cop her license. He didn’t even look at it. He leaned down into the car, grinning.
“You swerved a bit back there, miss. You haven’t been drinking today, have you?”
“No, sir.”
“What about your little brother back there?” he said, nodding toward me.
“He doesn’t drink.”
“But you drink?”
“I . . . no, sir . . . I just meant he hasn’t been drinking either.”
He nodded. Then he told her to look into his eyes. He stared—hard.
“Your pupils look dilated,” he said. “I’m gonna need you to step out of the car.”
Ali did as she was told.
The other cops were out of their cruisers by now—watching my one-shoed, half-topless girlfriend do a field sobriety test in front of my entire block. Ali’s shirt blew open in the wind as she touched her finger to her nose. I looked toward my front porch . . .
Fuck.
My parents were standing there, watching the entire scene unfold. If they hadn’t already seen me sitting in the car, I know they saw me now—because Nat came out and stood beside them, laughing his ass off.
The cop led Ali back to her car.
I could hear the other cops laughing behind her. The doors of their cruisers slammed, and the lights died. Then they were gone.
Ali sat in the car with the engine still off. There was a rap at the window—my window. Dad and Nat stood on the curb, laughing. I sighed and rolled it down.
“Aren’t ya gonna introduce me to this outlaw?” Dad said.
Mom had already walked back inside.
SIX
The Outline of a Heart
1
That first meeting between Ali and my parents could have been worse—the shit with the cops sucked, but we chalked it up to a misunderstanding (they’d thankfully missed the part where her shirt flew open). The air was getting unseasonably warm, and it seemed like winter had begun its long-overdue fade-out. Maybe the weather made everyone a bit more easygoing than usual.
Whatever the reason, all I know is that even though it was awkwar
d at first, after a few visits my parents were as charmed by Ali as all of my punk friends had been.
My girlfriend and parents bonded over only one topic—my cough.
I thought it was stupid. What was the point of worrying about it? I was still coughing, wasn’t I? Worrying didn’t change shit.
But I did worry—secretly. Not about the cough, but about how it affected my drumming.
For a while, if I went into one of my fits we’d end practice. But that didn’t last long—soon, instead of stopping practice, we’d just take little breaks until the coughing subsided. But shit, those breaks began to eat up half our rehearsal time!
So I finally decided I just needed to play through it.
I’d be coughing my lungs out, but I kept on playing. Eventually, the coughs would subside or the song would end—one way or the other, it would be fine.
* * *
I’d never really spent much time in the hospital. I’d had a few checkups, and I broke my arm once, but that’s it. So when Mom and I went in for my first appointment on Monday, I felt a little uneasy.
But my anxiety may have had less to do with the cough than it did with my mom coming with me.
A mom driving her kid to the doctor doesn’t seem like a big deal, but in those types of situations, my mom was a little intense. I knew she was worried about me, and I knew she wanted answers—and when she wanted them, she got them.
I also knew that the doctor would direct his attention to her, and not me. I’d just sit in the corner, embarrassed, and let the adults speak.
But whatever. The appointment was really for her, anyway. I figured that the cough would go away soon, doctor or no doctor. Mom was the one who was worried. So at least the appointment would get her off my back.
* * *
We walked into the lobby of the hospital, past the gift shop, toward the elevators. The place was full of old people—the staff, the doctors, the asses in those squeaky plastic waiting-room chairs—they were all so fucking old.
But none of them looked sick. Old as hell, sure—but not sick.
I don’t mean sick like the way I was sick. I mean sick sick—with AIDS, or Ebola, or a gunshot wound. A few sick sick people had to be in there somewhere—it was a hospital, after all. The disinfectant smell made me think it was some sorta cover-up, like all the sickos were hidden away.
