The Aqua Net Diaries

by Jennifer Niven

  In the car we gulped Jack Daniel’s, which Joey had stolen from his brother. It burned horribly and tasted disgusting, and we put it away after a couple of swigs. We strolled into the dance at eleven o’clock—one hour before it ended—as Angie Oler was crowned queen and Dan Dickman king. Everyone turned to look as we came in, and we were met at the door by Linda McRally, my adviser, who was hovering around sniffing for alcohol.

  Out on the dance floor, Joey said, “Stumble a little now and then so Ronnie Stier will think you’re drunk.” Ronnie Stier was in our AP History class. He was blond, a football player, good-looking. He wore braces. We were always trying to impress him.

  We loved to cause scenes, like Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, our idols. If there had been a fountain in the RHS cafeteria like at the Plaza in New York—the one they had splashed in so famously all those years ago—we would have jumped right in. Instead I tripped into Joey and he caught me and we laughed. Ronnie turned and looked. We danced and danced. The last song was “We Built This City” by Jefferson Starship, and everyone danced together in a circle, jumping up and down and singing along. When we finally got into the spirit the lights came up and we heard the party would be at Rip’s.

  There was a flurry of what-to-dos and shouting and searching for coats and purses. We ended up at an all-night eatery, and then we went to the party and found ourselves in Teresa’s room, the entertainment of the entire evening, Joey smoking and advising. Someone was passing around Jack Daniel’s and we said no thanks, we’d had plenty. We didn’t tell them that we couldn’t stand the taste or mention the still-full bottle hidden in Joey’s car. I did an oral inventory to all who listened of Teresa’s wardrobe, while Joey dressed our hostess in his red tie, which he never saw again. Lost also were my pearls and his left penny loafer.

  The downtown Promenade

  Survival

  It’s funny—everyone here is always asking, “What was it like to grow up in a small town?” “What did you ever do for fun?” And then I usually relate some story involving water balloons or quick trips to Dayton, and after that, I kind of lose steam, and I think, Hey, what did we do for fun in Richmond? Did we have fun? I mean, I know we must have …

  —Jennifer to Joey, from Los Angeles, October 20, 1991

  Even after we were old enough to drive, there was never anything to do in Richmond. There wasn’t any place to drive to, for one. The only places to go were the same places we had already been a thousand times, like the Skate and the Putt-Putt and 40 Lanes. For movies, there was the Mall Cinema, with its two screens, Cinema II with four screens, and the Sidewalk Cinema, which was one screen in an old theater downtown on the Promenade across from Readmore Books, where I had once bought all my Nancy Drews, Betty and Veronicas, and Tiger Beats.

  The first movie Joey and I ever saw together was Footloose. After that there was Risky Business and Purple Rain, and everyone was there even though it was rated R. We laughed through The Legend of Billie Jean, even though it wasn’t supposed to be funny, and we laughed so hard at Troll that we were asked to leave. We fell asleep in Pretty in Pink, and Jessica Howard, who was a cheerleader, had to wake us up. Joey jumped a mile when a gun went off in Beverly Hills Cop so that the people behind him snickered through the entire film. But my favorite was Out of Africa, not just because we loved the movie, but because afterward he stole the “O” for me off the marquee as a souvenir.

  Being scared was something a lot of us enjoyed, mainly because it was so much more interesting than just about anything else we could think up to do. On sunny weekend afternoons or on dark nights, preferably under a full moon, Cliff Lester picked me up in his convertible, and sometimes Ross would be with us and Robert Ignacio, who was smaller than the other boys and smarter than most of them. He was the only Filipino we knew. We drove over to Crestdale to pick up Joey and Hether Rielly. Then we drove out, out into the country near Fair Acres to the Devil House, which was the creepiest house outside of a Hollywood movie. It sat on a country road, on the rise of a small hill, surrounded by fields and corn, and which everyone knew was filled with evil creatures, some of which were invisible. There was a long, overgrown drive under a canopy of scraggly trees that looked like people in the night, and even during the day, and we crept down this in the convertible, the windows up and the top down (Joey called it a hood).

  The house itself was just a burned-out shell with only a fireplace left and skeletons of the rooms. The house was made of brick and had once been two stories. Pentagrams were spray-painted on the walls. The skulls and skins of dead animals lay scattered about the ground in a circle, up to no good. It was the scariest place in the world, even in the middle of the brightest day. Sometimes we just drove up to it and looked at it, and sometimes we got out and stood in the middle of the room with the fireplace, running away at the first strange sound.

  There were other ways to scare ourselves and one another. One of Ross’s brothers had constructed several enormous spotlights for a Junior Achievement project, and Ross had taken these lights for himself. The lights were so bright and big they could have guided ships home across the sea. Ross kept them in his Camaro because, as he said, “You never know when they might come in handy.”

  Sometimes when he was out driving, he would pull those lights out and shine them on his friends and we thought the cops were after us. He and Cliff were out one night, cruising around, when they ran across Joey and me in his mom’s car, also cruising around. They pulled out the searchlights and blinded us, and those lights were so bright it was like aliens had landed, like something out of Close Encounters.

  Joey stepped on the gas and began driving wildly through the streets, which of course made Ross start chasing us just as wildly.

  “Go to Hell, Ross!” Joey shouted. We were always damning people to Hell behind their backs and sometimes to their faces. We were fascinated by Hell, Joey being a Catholic taught to fear Hell and me being a Quaker taught that Hell didn’t exist.

  We careened through Richmond, Cliff and Ross blinding us with those damn spotlights. They chased us through the Reid Memorial Hospital parking lot back by the old people’s home, Cliff’s maniacal face hanging out the passenger’s side window, laughing and holding that beam steady on us.

  “Park the car!” I screamed. “Pull up next to those other cars and maybe they won’t notice!” Joey parked the car in a line next to a handful of other cars in the middle of a vast, dark parking lot, lit up every now and again by the glowing moon and the parking lights. We tried to duck down and hide as low as we could, as if Ross and Cliff suddenly wouldn’t be able to see us, as if by parking we would become invisible. “Are they gone?” I whispered. I was truly terrified. Suddenly there was a flash of light that seemed to shine down right into the car. They were on top of us.

  Joey turned the key and hit the gas without even looking. He peeled out of the parking lot and back into Crestdale and we abandoned the car in front of Laura’s house, just blocks from Joey’s. We fled on foot, screaming like girls, both of us, crashing this way and that through the trees and the bushes, and somehow Ross kept coming. We cut through to Joey’s street, out of breath, fleeing for our lives, hearts racing, enjoying the sheer terror of it, and there came that black Camaro, roaring down on us, the spotlight growing brighter and brighter. We made it to Joey’s front door, somehow, in the knick of time, scrambling to let ourselves in as Ross turned the car down Capri Lane, that spotlight coming for us. We slammed the door and looked out the window. “Assholes,” Joey said. Ross pulled into the driveway and honked the horn. We went outside and got in the car and went for pizza.

  On the night of the water balloons, there was a party at Eric Ruger’s house, way out in the country. His parents were always there, keeping out of the way. Every now and then his dad would appear at the window or just outside, hands on hips, to make sure we were okay. His mother stayed inside. She was pretty and had a nice smile, but someone said she’d had an aneurysm once. I had never met anyone with an aneurysm, and
it made me want to look at her closely or stay far away in case it might happen again.

  Jennie Burton drove her station wagon. Joey and Hill and Hether and I were there, and it was Joey’s idea to buy some balloons and fill them with water. We went to the party for a while, but by that time it was all the same people and we were tired of them and ready for a change. Joey and I bought the balloons at a thrift store and said they were for our children. We stopped at Jennie’s house to fill them with water, and then we loaded them in the back of her car, where Hill and Joey sat by the window.

  We drove out in the country and ended up by Eric Ruger’s. The party was still going on, but just as we passed by, Cliff Lester pulled out of the drive in his convertible, the same one that had carted us to the Devil House. Jennie lowered the back window and Joey threw the first balloon, which flew into Cliff’s windshield and smashed, water going everywhere. Crazy Vicki Mulla was with him and she immediately started yelling.

  Joey fired one balloon after another and Cliff chased us around town for two hours, running through every light and over curbs to catch us. He drove with his head out the window screaming, “Jennie Burton! I know it’s you! Stop it! Stopitstopitstopitstopit!!!” in that crazed baby-shriek of his. Jennie swerved through downtown, out toward the country again, then back into town, this time over on the east side by the mall. Sometimes when we went over bumps, the balloons exploded, soaking us all. Cliff drove like a demon, pulling up as close as he could to Jennie’s bumper. Hether and I screamed and Hill swore and Joey kept hurling balloons until we ran out.

  Before they gave up, Vicki Mulla leaned her whole body out the window and cursed us out. After we finally, somehow, lost Cliff, we pulled into Burger King to fill the remaining balloons with water. Jennie waited in the car while Hill and Hether and Joey and I went inside. Tom Dehner and Teresa were there with Leigh Torbeck and Todd Irwin. We were soaking wet and laughing and my mascara was running. Rip waved us over.

  “What the hell have you guys been doing?” she said. She was staring at our wet clothes, at the balloons.

  “Oh, just driving,” Joey said.

  “Can I use your napkin?” I said to Todd. He handed me Leigh’s napkin by mistake and her retainer fell out onto the floor. She turned bright red. “There is nothing so important as a healthy mouthful of teeth,” I said, and I picked the retainer up with the napkin and handed it back to her. Then Hill, Hether, and I went to the bathroom to fill up more balloons while Joey stayed and talked.

  “Why is your group always sneaking about?” Tom Dehner wanted to know.

  “Because the most interesting evenings can only be found if one sneaks about,” Joey said.

  Back in the car, Jennie drove over to Reeveston, where she and Ross and Cliff and Rip and Dehner and almost every other popular person lived. We cruised by Cliff Lester’s giant colonial house with the outdoor lighting and the four garages and then sat idling in the shadows. His car wasn’t there and he always parked in the driveway, so we knew he wasn’t home yet. Joey grabbed the largest of the balloons and ran across the street to the side entrance of Cliff’s house. There, beneath the yellow bulb that shone on the doorstep, he placed the water balloon where he knew Cliff would find it. Hill held the car door open for Joey to jump back in, and Jennie floored it, brakes squealing as she peeled away from the crime scene. We drove around for another hour before she took us home.

  On Monday morning, Jennie told us that someone had trashed her car. We knew it was Cliff, but Jennie couldn’t tell her dad because then we’d have to tell him about the water balloons. Jennie’s dad was older than regular parents and a lawyer, and we didn’t think he would understand.

  Someone getting pulled over on National Road

  Law and Order

  We had so many horrible times in traffic didn’t we, because we could never figure out how it was supposed to work?

  —Joey to Jennifer, May 3, 1996

  One night when there were no parties and no football games and no one we knew was doing anything interesting and I was in between boyfriends, Joey picked me up in his mom’s car and we drove to Earlham College. I had just begun to make friends with some of the freshman soccer and lacrosse players there, boys named Shane and Tim and Bill.

  The campus was quiet and dark and nobody was out. We drove to the very back of it, back behind the student center, back by the soccer fields, which were empty. There was a turnaround there—a large circle surrounding a grassy center.

  We cranked up the stereo—Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy”—and began driving round and round the circle as fast as we could. We sang and screamed at the top of our lungs like we were on a ride at King’s Island Amusement Park, the Calais making those turns over and over like a race car at the Indianapolis 500.

  This went on for at least two rounds of “Let’s Go Crazy”—possibly more—before Joey hit the curb and the tire blew out. Because neither of us knew the first thing about cars or tires or what to do when something like this happened (my dad had once explained it to me, but because I didn’t drive myself I hadn’t paid attention), we sat there in the dark and then stood there in the dark, trying to figure out what in the world to do.

  “Goddammit,” Joey said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  We were faced with the same thing we were always faced with: we had done something to the car and now we were going to have to call someone. But which parent? My parents were closer in proximity, but we were at Earlham. Where my dad worked. Where we had just been driving like we were in the Indy 500, blasting Prince and screaming like maniacs.

  It was after midnight and past my curfew. Joey’s parents were across town. Mr. Kraemer would be furious. He had already been grumbling about taking the car away from Joey after our last run-in with a flat tire and a brick on the interstate. Mrs. Kraemer would just call my mother and tell her what happened.

  We stood there for at least twenty minutes and tried to make up our minds.

  When it was clear the tire wasn’t going to fix itself and no one was going to magically appear to help us, we walked into Runyon Center, which was dark and quiet, and found a pay phone and called Mr. Kraemer. I could hear him through the receiver as Joey held the phone from his ear and rolled his eyes at me. Joey hung up and said, “He’s on his way.” We sat down on the curb in the dark, the stars twinkling overhead—every one of them visible, as they are in the wide Indiana sky—and waited.

  “I have got to learn to change a tire,” Joey said.

  “Maybe we should take Auto Shop,” I said. “With the smokers and the hoods.” Some of them were good-looking. Okay, one or two of them. I was good at Metal Shop in junior high. I wondered how different Auto Shop could be.

  We chattered on about that possibility, so easily distracted, until Mr. Kraemer showed up. We saw the headlights of his car coming from a half mile away. He got out of the car and smiled and shook his head—on his warmest behavior for me. I thought of my own father, and how he wouldn’t have smiled or acted nice at all about this. He wouldn’t have said a word, just gone right to work on that tire like I wasn’t even there. Mr. Kraemer made jokes and called Joey “Buddy” and scolded us a little and asked us what in the world we’d been doing to hit that curb.

  After they dropped me off, when they got back home, Mr. Kraemer threatened to take the car away from Joey. This, of course, was not the first time something like this had happened while Joey was driving. And it wouldn’t be the last. Mr. Kraemer clearly knew that. But Joey was persuasive. He promised to be more responsible, to be better, more careful. We wouldn’t drive in circles anymore. We would watch the road for bricks. Joey would be a model driver, someone his dad could count on.

  Joey had a way about him. Parents and teachers wanted to trust him. Even when he did things like rip the pages from Mr. Brumley’s math book and change our grades in Mr. Foos’s grade book, they looked at his sweet, cherubic face, the glasses, the halo of blond hair, and believed that he had only the best intentions.

/>   He got to keep the car.

  One week later, we were driving back from Dayton in the Calais. We had been to one of our favorite destinations—the Dayton Mall—where we shopped and ate hot pretzels with cheese and just got the hell out of Richmond for a while. On the way home, we drank chocolate chip milk shakes from Rax and listened to Billy Idol and Madonna and a few of our other favorites—the Police, Adam Ant, the Clash, Talking Heads, and Peter Gabriel’s “Big Time” (which we felt was written for us)—and then we decided to see what was on the radio. This was something we didn’t often do, but while Joey drove, keeping his eyes responsibly on the road, I searched through the handful of radio stations, even the AM ones.

  As we crossed under the blue Ohio arch into Indiana and took the exit that would lead us right into Richmond, we heard it: the beginning strains of an instrumental song, tinny and scratchy, on one of the AM stations. The sole instrument was piano, and it plunked along somberly, an unrecognizable tune.

  As we passed Bob Evans and the Putt-Putt Golf, Joey began to sing: “Back again in Richmond, where the people all drive slow …”

  Without missing a beat, I joined him, making up the next line: “Back again in Richmond, where the people never go.”

  We went on, inventing words to the entire song. I happened to have a tape recorder in the car because sometimes I liked to record our conversations for our future biographers. With luck, it was on when we began to sing.