Another thing I should have asked you about. How do you make yourself just jump like that? Run like hell and then lift off? I should have asked you, but I didn’t.
Later, Evan
CHAPTER EIGHT
“You have plans for the holiday weekend?” Dr. Penny asked.
I shrugged. I was tense as hell. The Soren-and-Melina carving was driving me nuts, and here Dr. Penny was small talking again, which she did sometimes, though I didn’t get why. Maybe to teach me how to be a better conversationalist? Therapy was fucked up.
I could see why she asked, as it was Friday, July 3. Generally, my dad and I weren’t really the holiday type, but I didn’t know what was standard on the east side, as Baker wasn’t talking to me and Tom had been working overtime for his mom on building her summer theater sets. Jesse had texted me about hanging out, but we hadn’t managed to connect. Clearly I was a dope about having friends.
Meanwhile, my father had lost his mind. When he wasn’t hanging out with the free-love crowd on the lake, playing poker, and making chili—I had no idea he could cook—he was napping on the sofa or playing my video games, the game cases scattered all over the floor. It was like living with a roommate, not a father, and I wondered if he ever planned to get back to normal again.
Dr. Penny was saying, “You’ve made some friends, though, yes?”
I nodded.
“Not just girls, either, your father says.”
“You talk to my father?”
“We talk on the phone once a week.”
Suddenly, I wondered if she knew how much I’d lied to her. All my nodding at her made me feel like a supreme bastard. Dr. Penny never asked to see my letters to Collette; she never asked anything of me, really, except that I show up once a week and listen to her spout catchphrases. Accept responsibility, not blame. Listen to your body’s messages. Welcome all feelings. Don’t think about it too much. Inhabit the fear.
“He says you’ve been showering too. That’s good to hear.”
Now I really felt shitty. Did my dad think I was cured? Was that why he was finally relaxing? Drinking and playing Call of Duty? I was such a dick.
So I explained, uncomfortably, how I’d been bathing in the lake. Faking my dad out. How I couldn’t bring myself to shower.
“If there was a lock on the bathroom door, maybe I could. But I just can’t,” I said.
I thought she’d be mad, but she was okay. I still got a lecture on inhabiting the fear, though. How I inflated my anxiety when I gave into it, how avoidance empowered fear. I tried not to nod like before, though it was hard to look her in the eye, knowing that she and my father had weekly calls about my craziness.
“Keep trying with the shower,” she said. “You might have to go slow. But it’ll come.”
After my appointment, Jesse texted me, so I picked him up. Thinking he might want to smoke out, I’d stashed one of my Uncle Soren’s pipes in the glove box. Having guy friends made me feel like everything I did was somewhat corny in its thoughtfulness, but Dr. Penny laughed when I suggested as much. She said that I was merely being kind and that was what you did with friends, even if you were a guy. Friends support each other, she said, before she had told me to have a good weekend. Which Jesse and I were kicking off early. Because whenever I thought of Soren & Melina, I pretty much wanted to puke. It wasn’t that I was super in love with my father to begin with, given his weird avoidance and everything. But the idea that I was anything like him in the dick department, that my mom was just another dumb chick charmed into shit—by HIM, of all people—was disgusting. And really sad too. For all three of us, if I really thought about it.
We got stoned and went to Dairy Queen, where we sat outside, me eating a Buster Bar and Jesse, a Butterfinger Blizzard. While we ate, I stared at the blonde chick at the counter of the Dairy Queen (profile: long hair, black nail polish, decent face, zero boobs) and Conley the Cheating Blond popped into my head.
“What’s the deal with Conley?” I blurted out.
“Huh?” Jesse asked between bites. With the long red plastic spoon in his mouth, he was basically making love to his Blizzard. His eyes were even closed.
Seeing that made me laugh my ass off. God, I could finally see why people turned into potheads, just for the laughing alone.
When we finally stopped laughing, my stomach hurt and I was sweating like crazy.
“You know, the whole screwing around with Jim,” I said.
“What?” Jesse asked. “Conley and Jim?”
I explained what I’d seen at Midsummer. Jesse’s red eyes widened.
“Conley’s her best friend,” Jesse said. “Baker’d shit if that happened.”
“But didn’t she say they could see other people?”
Jesse laughed. “That’s such bullshit. You’d have to be insane to believe a chick who told you that.”
Hadn’t she basically been talking about Jim and Conley that day on the island, about getting down with your significant others’ friends? Maybe she was just bluffing with all her pronouncements about seeing other people, though. Non-monogramy did sound too good to be true.
“I’ll ask.” He pulled up another blob of Blizzard while somehow dialing his phone. Asking seemed like a terrible idea, but you know, pot and lowered inhibitions.
While Jesse had a broken-off conversation with the Tan Redhead, I thought about Jim and Baker. They were leaving for different colleges, but maybe they were one of those couples that kept constantly breaking up and getting back together for the excitement and drama. Though Baker didn’t seem like one of those girls. Except for her swearing and drinking and weed-smoking, she didn’t fit my preferred profile. She was someone that I would have never picked to like.
Not that it mattered. Baker hadn’t come over in a while, and I wouldn’t have cared, much, except for that easy feeling that day on Story Island and how she had said she wanted to go again. I wondered if she’d gone without me.
While Jesse pushed through a stupid conversation with Tan Redhead, Tom called me and said we should come get him; he was at the high school and sick of making theater sets. Jesse wrangled out of his conversation somehow, and we went to get Tom, who jumped in my car and reached across from the back to tune in a baseball game, which he listened to intently as if the announcer was giving step-by-step instructions on how to save someone’s life, but before I could drive off, Jesse’s phone rang. The Tan Redhead again. He stepped out of the car to get bitched at in privacy.
“What’s Kelly up to?” I asked Tom, during a commercial.
“She’s in Wisconsin for a family reunion. But she’s banned from the lake for a while. Her mom busted her after the Midsummer Party.”
“For drinking?”
“Mmm hmm,” he said. “And for a big old hickey behind her ear.”
“What?”
Tom looked embarrassed. “Well, if she hadn’t put her hair up for church, no one would have noticed.”
I laughed. I’d never given anyone a hickey, never received one, either. I was kind of proud of this fact.
“So what happens on the fourth of July around here?” I asked.
“Oh, there’s fireworks and stuff out on the lake. No party or anything. Not too much patriotism on the east side.”
“Nothing’s going on tonight?”
“Nope,” Tom said. “Not unless we make it happen.”
After Jesse finished getting yelled at, we bought some shitty fireworks and then went to Mackinanny’s to get hamburgers and so Jesse could buy more weed from the dishwasher. Then the three of us drove out to the Starlight Drive-In to see a movie. We all smoked out and then played Frisbee until the sun went down and the movie started.
This would have been a nonevent, except for the fact that I normally had no friends and never did anything that didn’t involve some girl I was trying to get down with. But while enjoyable and probably something that would make Dr. Penny proud, that wasn’t the only significant thing of the night. Because between features, whi
le I was taking a piss in the nasty bathroom behind the concession stand, three girls came by and started talking to Jesse and Tom.
They were a little sleazy-looking but still cute, nothing you’d be hesitant to touch. Long hair, all done up differently, all wearing shorts and tight shirts and everything was tan and made-up and smelled like cake frosting. The blond with the nose piercing kept talking just to me, which made Tom and Jesse snicker, and at first, it was hard to talk to her, but it came back to me. It’d been so long since I’d kicked anyone any game, and this girl looked up for it. She tilted her head when she looked at me, and I could smell Cherry Lick on her breath, which wasn’t an asset or anything, but fit my old profile. And felt pretty awesome, honestly.
We sat on the back bumper of my car talking, until her friends got bored with Tom and Jesse’s loyal-to-their-girls ways and decided to go. But the blond waved them off. She said her name was Lana and she asked me if I wanted to drink with her and I said yes and chucked Tom my car keys and followed her in the dark across the gravel parking lot, the lights of the movie flickering around us. I could hear Jesse and Tom laughing about me and loadie chicks. “Should I call Taber?” Tom hollered.
I didn’t take her up on the drinking (Cherry Lick mixed with Sprite, ugh), but just grabbed her and we started making out behind this beaten-down shed beyond the gravel lot of the drive-in. She tasted like she was a smoker, and of course, there was the Cherry Lick thing, which wasn’t great, but it felt good to touch a girl again. Especially one who let me do whatever I wanted, no objections. I had never done it with anyone standing up, and it seemed like that might soon change. I didn’t have any condoms on me, but Lana looked like the type to carry her own.
Then the worst thing happened. My worst fear, the one I refused to inhabit. The one I’d managed to forget about for a while at a drive-in theater in bumfuck Minnesota.
“Lana!” a male voice growled, and she sprang away from me screaming.
“Who the fuck is this asshole?” the voice said. I was blinded by the lights from the theater screen and couldn’t see shit.
Lana turned to me, like she was struggling to remember my name.
“Evan, right?” she said. “Please, Layne, don’t hit him. Please.”
“Layne Beauchant?” I asked.
“Evan Carter?” Layne said, stepping closer until I could see his face.
“Is this your girlfriend?” I said, my voice cracking. “Because, I had no idea, man …”
“No, this ain’t my girlfriend,” Layne said. “Jacinta’s in the car with Harry. Lana’s my sister.”
“Half sister,” Lana said, all crabby.
Beyond the somewhat-batshit fact that Layne had taken his son to see the R-rated car-crash/fuck-fest we’d just watched was the much more terrifying fact that I’d been making out with his half sister. Which was better than doing it with his baby momma. But not by much.
“Jesus, I thought you were Randy Garrington,” Layne said to me. Then he turned to Lana. “He’s back in town, you know.”
“Like I’d even talk to that fucker! God, Layne!” Lana said, wrapping her arms around herself. I’d kind of undone her shirt, and she hadn’t bothered to button it back up, which I thought was weird. Did she think we’d chat with her half brother and then just dive back into getting down?
“Randy’s fuckin’ crazy,” Layne told her. “You stay away from him. Both of you.”
“Is he here right now?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Layne said. “But Randy’s been obsessed with Lana since he went to jail, so hanging around her isn’t a bright idea. At least not in public,” he added, chuckling.
“Oh, fuck off, Layne,” Lana said.
“What did he go to jail for?” I asked.
“He tried to steal a car,” Lana said, sounding bored.
“And aggravated assault,” Layne added. “Don’t fuckin’ forget that. I’m serious, Lana! Evan here works with me, and you’re not going to get another guy’s ass kicked because you’re being stupid.”
That pretty much was my signal to bail. Lana looked pouty. I told Layne I’d see him at work and then sprinted back to Jesse and Tom. Where I caught a bunch of shit for having lip gloss all over my T-shirt and a hickey on my collarbone—so much for my pride about hickeys. I didn’t realize Lana had done that, but again, I hadn’t really been thinking. Wasn’t that the draw of girls, though? Of sex, in general? So you could stop thinking for one goddamn minute?
When I got home, my dad was asleep on the couch. I woke him to say I was home, and he got up and staggered to his bedroom. I wondered how much of his insane behavior lately wasn’t just another method of getting into Brenda Trieste’s pants. God, it was beyond disgusting, imagining him with his old man body and bald head, putting on the moves to get down like that. The whole thing just made me want to punch him. Plus those names on the tree! I couldn’t think about that without my guts seizing up. Still keyed up from the drive-in drama, I got a towel and my shave kit and ran down to the lake.
The water felt good, washing off the Cherry Lick and cigarette smell. But the high from Lana was gone, and now I just felt like shit. Like all my instincts were pervy and creepy. Like it made sense to get my spleen pried out and my left ear destroyed and my wrist sprained and my nose and ribs broken. The damn cut on my mouth hadn’t busted open thankfully, but it stung from whatever chemical was in Lana’s lip gloss. And I was a dick who deserved all of it.
I swam out and back to the diving platform. Decided I should start running again. It was too bad I didn’t like basketball or football, something teaching me how to take a hit. I thought of what it’d be like to get punched by Layne’s tattooed knuckles. KICK ASS! was pretty much right.
I soaped up and then floated around to rinse while fireworks randomly popped off, Roman candles flitzing up in the air and then sparkling onto the water. I wished I could watch this kind of thing every night of the week. Maybe I’d sleep better.
I was standing at the dock about to push out of the water when I heard her.
“Evan?”
“You’re fucking kidding,” I muttered, sinking back into the water.
Baker. In her bathrobe and those brown boots. Again.
“Can’t you just add ‘Evan’s nightly bath’ to the list of east side traditions and leave me to it?”
“You don’t own this lake.” She sounded snippy but slipped off her boots. “Don’t look.”
“Whatever,” I said. But I didn’t look. Held my breath, kept my palms flat on the dock. Wondered if there should be some special, overly long German word for this feeling I was having, this intense mixture of turned-on irritation.
“What’s that?” She bent over and poked my collarbone. I kept my eyes shut, though I could smell her. Cocoa butter. I thought she was talking about the circle necklace my mother had given me, but no. She’d spotted Lana’s hickey in the light streaming from her screen porch. The one mark on me that I’d never managed to get before this evening. Great.
I wanted to die, but then I heard a splash and turned to see her treading water, her wet hair like little black whips down her shoulders.
“You know?” I said, all pissy. “You do have a dock of your own.”
“You know?” She mimicked my pissy tone. “You’ve been a dick. From a manners standpoint, you should be apologizing instead of being so goddamn hostile.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I swam out deeper.
“I wish you’d told me,” she said, her voice still annoyed. “Instead of having to find out secondhand.”
I thought I knew what she was talking about. But I was currently naked in a lake in the middle of the night with a cute girl who was also naked and I wasn’t sure how to act. There wasn’t a handbook I could just look this up in, unfortunately. Though Baker Trieste probably could have written one.
“Jim and Conley,” she said. “Thanks a lot for telling me.”
Damn, she was pissed.
“I think it�
�s some drug thing,” she said. “Maybe they bonded over their hallucinogenic night together. Which sounds dumb, since what do I know about mushrooms? But then again, Conley and Jim do live on the same street back in Marchant Falls. Could it be just a convenience thing?”
Maybe, but what did I know? Plus this didn’t explain why she was skinny-dipping in the lake with me, unless I was just a tool she’d use to feel better. Which made me think of all the girls I’d known, nationwide, that I’d used similarly. Christ. Add some self-loathing to that overly long German word.
“I thought you weren’t having rules anymore,” I said. “Non-monogramy.”
“Non-monogamy, god!” she said. “Can no one pronounce that word? Is it that hard?”
“Whatever,” I said. “I thought it was open for you guys to see other people.”
“But not Conley! Not my best friend!”
“But did you say who was okay and who wasn’t? You can’t really expect him to know what the rules are if you don’t tell him first.”
I couldn’t believe I was taking up Jim’s side. Jim was sort of a tool, but Dirtbag Evan could relate. Non-monogramy was her idea, and she hadn’t been clear about it. That wasn’t Jim’s fault.
“I think Jim’s doing all this because of Taber.”
“What?”
She looked at me like I was dense.
“Yesterday, Jim was at Taber’s and he saw this photo of me sitting on Taber’s lap. It was from when Jim was at football camp last summer. So Jim freaks out and tells me I’m a whore for cheating with his best friend.”
“Just because of a picture?” I asked. “Why would …”
“Why would Jim get mad about me being with his best friend, if he’s already cheating with my best friend, you mean?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“It’s kind of a long story,” she said. “Jim and I weren’t even going out when that picture was taken. That was in August. Jim didn’t ask me out until September. Conley, Taber, Jim, and me—the four of us hung out on the lake all last summer. Sitting on the diving platform, waterskiing, drinking, going out to eat. All that shit. Then Jim leaves for his stupid football camp and Conley gets grounded and so it’s me and Taber, on our own for two weeks.”
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