Sex & Violence

by Carrie Mesrobian

  “You better keep an eye on him,” I said as we walked down the dock. “Mushrooms make you do some weird shit.”

  “What?”

  It had been so obvious to me that I couldn’t believe she didn’t know, but I guess she was a fairly normal girl. Drinking is one thing, but doing drugs still is a big deal for some people, especially for Virginal Student Council types.

  “Well, it could be acid,” I said. “But usually you puke up the ’shrooms at some point. Plus his eyes. That’s what made me think of it.”

  She stopped. The lights were off in our cabin; had my father gone back to bed?

  “Is that why he went all nuts climbing up Story Island?”

  “Maybe he thought it would look cool. Natural surroundings are much easier to take sometimes.”

  “Conley must have done them too. I don’t think Taber did, though, do you? Since he was the one driving the pontoon.”

  I didn’t know how anyone could say the word “pontoon” without laughing, especially so serious about it like she was.

  “I can’t believe they did this,” she said, walking toward her cabin, her legs dripping water. She was shivering now, and the sun was all the way down. “Without even telling me. My fucking boyfriend tripping while wearing track pants. Track pants! He looks like he’s in the Russian mafia. I don’t believe in wearing track pants unless you are in an actual athletic situation, just so you know. And Taber goes along with it, like a damn dog! And me, too … Fuck! Why the hell did I wear white?” She had tripped on a branch and stumbled. Her shirt had gotten all stained and wet.

  So I could see your bikini through your shirt, I thought, being a complete dirtbag. I smiled then too, proud that I didn’t own one single pair of track pants. And I had run track, even. But the cut on the corner of my mouth cracked and started bleeding and without thinking I lifted up my T-shirt to dab the blood.

  “Hey, are you okay?” she asked. “Evan?”

  I turned away from her, then, toward my cabin. But she rushed beside me.

  “Evan? What happened?”

  She tipped her head to one side, staring at the scab on my nose. My elf ears too. God. I wished I could wear a fucking ski mask in public.

  “Were you in a fight or something?” she asked.

  “I wiped out on my bike,” I lied.

  “Bicycle or motorcycle?”

  “Bicycle,” I said. Though I didn’t own a bicycle. Couldn’t remember when I’d last ridden one, either.

  She didn’t look like she believed me, but she said, “My mom’s boyfriend makes this salve that’ll help that cut. I’ll give you some if you want.”

  I shrugged. “It’ll be fine if I don’t smile.”

  I remembered, again, clearly as if it were on a video screen in front of us, the feeling of Tate’s fist when it broke my nose. That nasty crunch sound so loud in my brain that I wondered if Baker could hear it too. That same sound kept me awake at night.

  “Don’t be a dork,” she said. “Not smiling is fucking horrible.” She poked me in the shoulder, like I was being a brat. But then she smiled and I could see she didn’t think I was really a dork but just sort of funny, and even though she was griping about how she looked, she was super pretty again to me. I felt kind of drunk and dumb for some reason.

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  “Why are natural surroundings easier to take when you do mushrooms?” Back to her own concerns. Good. I didn’t need her asking me any more questions about all my broken parts.

  I explained about my one and only mushroom trip, in San Diego with Mandy and the movie theater bathroom.

  “But isn’t that dangerous? An old creepy island? And the sun going down?”

  “Well, there’s that house out there,” I said. “My uncle went in it once.”

  “The Archardt House?” she asked, and I wondered crazily if she’d read Under the Waves too. Maybe it was required reading in Marchant Falls public schools?

  “It was a long time ago,” I said. “Maybe it’s not there anymore.”

  “I thought that was just an urban myth,” she said. “Though I read that Barrett Archardt owned the island, before it turned into a bird sanctuary.”

  Then she looked kind of embarrassed. Like she’d said something dumb.

  “Where did you read about it?” I asked. Maybe, like bibles in hotels, every Pearl Lake cabin came with a complimentary copy of Under the Waves.

  “I kind of … oh, don’t laugh,” she said.

  “What?”

  “I work at the Kent County Historical Society,” she said. “I file things and work with the curator. Last summer I did an electronic conversion of letters from the Archardts. And I read them too. I’m kind of a history nerd.”

  Then my father opened the front door.

  “Evan? Baker? Everything okay with your friends?”

  Instantly, Baker slipped from her history nerd mode back into her chirpy student council mode. “Yeah, it’s all taken care of, Mr. Carter!” she said, all cheerful. “Thank you so much for letting Evan take me out there.”

  “You going to the party now, Evan?”

  I looked at Baker, and she looked like she wanted me to come, so I just lied. Told her I would. My dad looked pleased and slipped back inside.

  “I need to shower and change my shirt quick,” I said.

  “Me too.” She laughed at how dirty she was. Desperate to get away from her, I told her I’d meet her at Jim’s and then went into the house. Where my dad was putting on his shoes and smoothing his non-hair.

  “I’m going over to the Tonneson’s to play some poker,” he said.

  “Cool,” I said. My father would probably kill them all in poker, since he could count cards and do all sorts of unfair calculations. I never played poker with him for this reason.

  “I kind of overdid it last night, so I won’t be late,” he said. “But you go and enjoy yourself.”

  “All right.”

  “They seem like nice kids, don’t they?”

  “Yeah, they’re nice,” I said, kicking off my flip-flops. I took off my shirt, which was bloody and gross, and my father flinched away from me, as if seeing my scar hurt him—the exact effect I was hoping for.

  “I’m gonna just hop in the shower,” I said.

  “Sounds good.” His eyes widened, like he couldn’t believe Dr. Penny had already fixed my shower aversion. Acting as natural as I could, I went into the bathroom and turned on the shower. I watched a big black spider silently struggle as it washed down the drain, and then I sat on the toilet and watched the steam billow around the shower curtain for I don’t know how long. I sat there until I couldn’t stand how much energy I was wasting, and when I came out, my father was gone.

  It was way after midnight, about a week later. I waited until I heard the logoff ding from my dad’s laptop and the snoring that followed, then tossed my shave kit in a towel and slipped out to our dock. The blinding porch light from Baker’s cabin was off and everything was dark and quiet. Safe enough.

  The June water wasn’t much warmer than it had been in April and May, but it was warmer. I’d been doing this long enough to notice the change, however small. I stripped and jumped into the water.

  I swam out and back twice to the diving platform floating between Tom’s and Baker’s shorelines, touching the ladder like a goal, a compulsive thing I did each time to warm myself up. Plus the laps helped wear me out. I always slept great on bath nights.

  I shaved in the dark, feeling bad about the chemicals in the shave cream, as usual. Would they make frogs turn hermaphroditic? What would E. Church Westmore say if he could see me? I shaved quickly because I hated thinking about those things and, in doing so, nicked the cut on the corner of my mouth. Again. That was almost another part of the ritual too.

  Then I washed with a bar of soap, rubbing it everywhere, including over my head. My hair was so short now I didn’t bother with shampoo. To rinse, I swam to the diving platform once more, then pulled myself onto
the dock and wrapped my towel around me. I sat for a while with my feet dangling in the water. This was my habit, every other night. When Baker had said she’d seen me, I started doing it much later. The bugs were less thick after midnight, actually, which was confirmed by E. Church Westmore in his chapter on mosquitoes.

  “Evan?”

  I jumped and my shave kit almost fell into the water. I stood up, checked the towel around me.

  “I didn’t mean to scare you,” Baker said. “What are you doing out here?”

  “Uh …”

  “Do you always take baths in the lake?”

  “Uh …”

  She stood in a bathrobe at the end of the dock, wearing big unlaced brown boots. I hadn’t seen her since that night I’d skipped Jim’s party, and it occurred to me, again, how cute she was.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, stepping closer. My entire body popped up in goose bumps, and the scar on my chest felt as obvious as the yellow line on a highway.

  “What are you doing out here?” I finally managed to say.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “Is that why you’re out here?”

  No, I’m out here because I was beaten nearly to death in a gang shower at a redneck boarding school in North Carolina, I thought. And I can’t face using a shower in a bathroom without a lock on the door. Maybe not even then. I’m lucky I can take a shit in there.

  But I just told her that I couldn’t sleep, either. That I swam to relax.

  “Cold water doesn’t sound too relaxing.” She folded her arms over her chest in a way that made me realize she wasn’t wearing a bra.

  “You would think that,” I said, a little peeved at her bossy tone. “But actually, it has the opposite effect. Cold temperatures make the body shut systems down.”

  I sounded like a dick. And a nerd. A dickish, defensive nerd.

  “So,” she said. “How’ve you been?”

  “Okay. How about you?”

  “Totally crappy. I think I’m depressed again. I get this way sometimes. It’s just because of graduation and everything. I’m not good with change, I guess.”

  This all rushed out of her like she’d been waiting for someone to ask. Girls are like that sometimes. Asking you something they just want to be asked themselves. I knew this, but I never remembered it at key moments, of course.

  “Uh, I’m … sorry?” I said.

  “Jesus,” she said. “You’ve got goose bumps everywhere. Come inside—I’ll make us a fire.”

  “Uh …”

  Was Baker hitting on me?

  “My mom’s at a craft fair with Keir. Don’t worry.”

  “Uh …”

  “That way you can put your clothes back on and warm up a little,” she added.

  No. Not hitting on me. Thank god.

  I followed her inside, and she showed me the bathroom, which had a lock and was not nearly as gross as ours. Probably because it was all girls and that one gay-seeming guy living here. Plus there was a huge tub and shower and girly products all over the sink counter, including the cocoa butter lotion that she smelled like. I put on my boxers and T-shirt, which wasn’t my idea of being dressed, of course, but it wasn’t like I had a choice. Then I sat on her sofa with my hands over my thighs so that I wouldn’t flash her my junk through the slot of my boxers, and she made a quick fire, which impressed me, because I hadn’t met a girl who could build a fire before. Which of course I did not say.

  Then she was quiet. She slipped off her boots and curled up in the chair across from me. She looked at the fire, and I looked around the cabin. It was nicer than ours, much cleaner, except the table was full of beer cans and a half-full bottle of Cherry Lick, the drink of choice for girls, Tom had explained when I asked him one day. Cherry Lick tasted sweet at first but went down like cough medicine. Tom said he couldn’t stand the stuff, but Kelly loved it.

  “That scar on your stomach is really big,” Baker said.

  “Yeah,” I said. And then, so she couldn’t push for more details, I asked, “When was graduation?”

  “A few days after Memorial Day. I thought it would be such a relief, but now it’s like I’ve got nothing to do. And Jim’s all about making up for lost time, and it’s getting a little old, you know?”

  That sounded like Jim was bugging her to have sex with him. Though I wondered then if maybe she wasn’t a virgin, after all. I mean, she seemed pretty chill just sitting here with me in her bathrobe.

  “What have you been doing lately?” she asked. “You’re never around.”

  Fuck. I’d been hoping she’d just keep talking. Some girls just go on and on, not realizing you’re silent.

  I shrugged. I didn’t know why she cared. I didn’t know what I was doing here, either. Though the fire felt good. Almost too hot. Like it was going to burn off my leg hair.

  “My mom told me about your mom,” she said.

  I must have looked panicked. Because I was panicked. Fucking Adrian Carter! Why did he choose to become so forthcoming NOW?

  “It’s okay,” she said. “They probably bonded over it. My mom’s a widow too. Though they were separated when my dad died.”

  “Oh,” I said. “When did … that … happen?” I was clearly becoming one of those squeamish idiots who can’t say “dead” or “died.”

  “When I was five,” Baker said. “He was in Texas for work—he did electrical engineering—and a car hit him while he was walking through a crosswalk.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Yeah. He was in a coma for three months. Down in Texas. I had to stay with my grandparents the whole time, which was okay—this cabin is where they retired before they died. I thought it was a vacation. But then he never came home.”

  “I’m sorry.” I sounded like a goddamn funeral director.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “It’s not like I’m in therapy over it.”

  Right. Therapy. Anything but that. Therapy was obviously drastic shit for people with elf ears and Auschwitz hair.

  “What happened with your mom?” she asked.

  This was the question I’d been dreading since she brought the topic up, so I said the line I’d rehearsed in my head: “When I was eleven, I went to Scout camp, and she had an accident. She was taking out the recycling behind our apartment and there was a puddle of oil someone dumped back there and she slipped and hit her head. She was in a coma too, just a couple of days, though. She was dead by the time the camp director drove me back.”

  Dead. God. Such an ugly word to apply to your mother. My mother was a nice lady. Nice in such a way it was hard to think of her without my throat getting all tight and the rest of me getting Almost-Weepy. She was also very pretty. I’m told I look like her, but it’s kind of hard to see a boy in the face of a pretty woman. Plus, she’s all serene and relaxed in her pictures, and I go around in life pretty much twitching like a goddamn hummingbird.

  “That’s awful,” Baker said.

  “Yeah.”

  Now I really wanted to go home. I thought, almost pornographically, of E. Church Westmore’s mind-numbing words.

  “You want to smoke a bowl?” she asked.

  Jesus. I’d have never guessed she’d suggest that next.

  “Okay,” I said, never more eager to smoke weed in my life.

  Baker pulled out a Hello Kitty pencil case and unloaded a baggie of shake, a blue metal pipe, and a lighter onto the coffee table. She packed the bowl competently, like it wasn’t her first time, and I tried not to act like blown away while we passed it back and forth. She didn’t even crack a window, and I asked if I should, to air things out.

  “You think my mom’s gonna say anything?”

  “Is she a big pothead?” I exhaled and leaned back on the sofa. Suddenly I felt so sleepy. And good.

  “Not like the Tonnesons, but she smokes from time to time. It’s not like she’s irresponsible about it. She just thinks I don’t know.”

  “What about that guy she’s with? That gay guy?”

  “Keir’s
not gay! Oh my god! You sound like Jim and Taber!”

  I laughed. “I don’t care if he’s gay, but he dresses weird, you know?”

  “Keir’s just way into yoga,” she said. “He’s a hippie. He keeps bees and raises sheep. He’s a hobby farmer, you know?”

  “I’ve never met a farmer,” I admitted.

  “Have you ever eaten sheep’s milk cheese?”

  “No.”

  Fast forward to Baker spreading all this food out on the table off the kitchen. Cheese and bread and salami and potato chips and Hershey’s kisses and licorice and a huge jug of this weird nutritional kind of strawberry milk. And Baker and me eating it all. This wasn’t just weird because it was the middle of the night and I was in my underwear. For one thing, I never indulged in munchies in front of other people. Usually if I smoked weed, I was with some pothead chick and my focus wasn’t food. For another, I’d never seen a girl eat like Baker. Girls tend to act like they survive on air. You only see them eating really wholesome stuff, like apples. Or super-seductive foods they can lick, like lollipops or ice-cream cones. But they never act like pigs like guys do, eating multiple bowls of cereal or an entire pizza, at least not without barfing it up. I’d known some of those barfit-up girls, and they were the worst. So crazy. So clingy. The first to get deleted from my phone.

  Baker ate with her hands, telling me to try a bite of this or that. Talked with her mouth full. Acted as if she didn’t have a strawberry milk mustache and crumbs all over her bathrobe and one-half of her boob sort of hanging out. For being so normal-looking, Baker was one weird chick. Not a girl you’d picture to go with a football guy, though she looked the part, I guess, though she wasn’t blond. But maybe Jim thought she was awesome. Because even high out of my skull, I could see that she was. Pretty awesome. And not just her body.

  As if thinking summoned him, Jim appeared. His hair all messy, in his boxer briefs and no shirt. Looking like an underwear ad. Though he had a little more hair than your average underwear ad.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Jim asked.

  If it was possible to run straight into the lake and drown myself, I would have. I was that shit scared. But being high made me fully immobile.