Jack Kerouac is Dead to Me

by Gae Polisner

  “Getting a beer for the road, then?” I shrug and he takes my cup and fills it, and hands it back to me. “Kidding. Stay. Really. We were about to play chicken and you’re dressed for it, and we need teams. Half these bozos didn’t wear a bathing suit to a pool party.” He eyes me in my new bikini in a way that makes me wonder if he’s interested, but it’s a stupid thought, and anyway, I’d never do that to you. Never. Then again, I seem unable to stop pining for Ethan, which is worse and gross and horrible, and I know you’d so totally never forgive me.

  “Okay,” I say, my eyes scanning the crowd, but Ethan has disappeared, probably off in the bushes with Carly.

  I sit by the pool with Dante, listening to him tell me his whole long college application story, which is even more boring than it sounds, and waiting for a game to start up, but by 11:00 p.m. the crowd is starting to thin and there’s no game of chicken to be found.

  Ethan is to be found, though—back from wherever he disappeared to—and not with Carly Witherspoon, who seems to have, thankfully, gone home.

  By 11:30, I’ve had at least two more beers, and Ethan comes over with another, and tells Dante to scoot, and suddenly he’s sitting right next to me.

  It’s then I realize how out of control my brain feels. Like the earth is spinning right up and out from under me.

  To tell you the truth, Aubrey, I liked how it felt, to be all dizzy and free like that. Maybe I felt like my mother in that moment, like I wanted to spin and whirl with my kimono falling open, my molecules loosening inside, till I spilled breathless and sprawled onto the dew-dampened grass, my limbs splayed dangerously wide, my whole beautiful body—its bare, uncovered skin—glistening beneath the star-dotted sky.

  I liked how it felt to be out of control, a moth on a carnival ride, ready to be swept off by the wind, every tenuous hair, every fiber, every quivering speck of me, lit up, on end, and electrified.

  Someone has thrown someone in the pool, and Ethan takes off running, and dives into the deep end. When he surfaces at the side, he calls to me.

  “Hey, Markham! Come in! Now! You’re on my team. The water is fine!”

  I make my way over, aware of the light, and smells, and sounds, as if all my senses are firing, both sharp and blurred by the swirl of alcohol. The waffle of water reflecting across the yard from the pool light, slicing across the high tree branches like specters. The swish of my feet in wet grass. A breeze on my stomach. The trill of crickets in the space between hushed shouts that rise in the nearly autumn air.

  “We have to keep it down,” Ethan says. “I don’t want my parents to come out.”

  A girl named Shamika teams up with some kid named Randy, and a girl named Mariah teams up with Dante, and I feel a little better about you missing this since she’s not nearly as pretty as you.

  Ethan pushes water aside as he wades to the shallow end steps, and holds out his hand for me. “Come on, slowpoke. I’m going to need you to get in fast and climb up here.”

  My heart beats overtime as he turns his back to me, his broad, tanned shoulders waiting for me to climb on, my legs now straddling his neck. He wraps his hands around my thighs, pulling me against him.

  “Hold on tight,” he says, parading forward.

  And we’re in motion, a frenzy of splashing and laughing, and hushing each other, and tugging, and parading, and bodies falling, tangled, into the water, then scrambling to get back up.

  At first, Ethan is tentative with me, but as the game gets more raucous, his hands slide higher up my thighs, squeezing my ass. I find myself breath holding as I wait for each new place he might inadvertently touch me. My butt, my waist, my back. I want to feel him there, holding me. I want the current that runs beneath the surface of the water to explode like lightning up through his body and into mine.

  More than that, I want the pool and the game and the remaining partygoers to all disappear, and for Ethan to carry me out of the pool and onto the grass, and crawl on top of me, and have his way with me.

  Granted, I’m not sure what this means, and granted, I know it’s wrong, but I don’t care. I can hardly breathe thinking about how much I want it all.

  When someone announces it’s almost 1:00 a.m., we finally get out, and stand around waiting for the last, exhausted dregs of life to be sucked from the party, from your backyard, from the keg, for the parents to pick everyone up, or designated drivers to sort out who they can fit in their cars, and Ethan comes over to where I stand, more than drunk, desperate with wanting, shivering in a towel by the fence.

  “You okay, Markham?”

  “Yeah. Just a little tired and cold.” His eyes bore through me in the dark, in the haze of the moon.

  “You should go inside.”

  I want to scream, No! I want to wrap his arms around my body, I want to re-catch the lightning in a bottle that minutes ago I was so sure was us, in the pool.

  He takes off his towel and drapes it over me, pulling me toward him. I look at him, my eyes surely pleading, trying to tell him.

  The air hums, silent but alive.

  “You know I need to kiss you,” he says.

  My breath releases. “You do?”

  “Yes. Badly. For a long time.”

  I try to say no for you, Aubrey; I do. I want to. I think the word, No, loudly in my head. Urgently. But what comes out instead is, “I want you to.”

  And like that we’re kissing, and he’s moving me backward into the shadows of the bushes, and his hands are on me, in my hair, down my back, in the fabric of my bikini top, everywhere.

  It’s delirious. I’m delirious. The air swirls. My legs feel boneless, so I can barely stay upright.

  I think I’m fucking in love with him.

  “Can I?”

  I nod, and whisper, “Anything,” and he opens my towel, and pushes in against me, and kisses my lips again, and lets the towel fall to the ground, his mouth moving down to my collarbone, his fingers pulling my bikini top aside so his lips brush the skin of my nipples, before moving down my stomach toward my bottoms. And the whole time he’s saying things like, “Jesus, Markham, you’re beautiful,” and, “You sure it’s okay? You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to…” and I’m nodding without breath, and figuring out how to keep upright.

  “I love you, Ethan,” I say without meaning to, and hear his name again, “Ethan,” in my ears, except the second time it isn’t me, my voice, my words. It’s coming from elsewhere, but he doesn’t hear it.

  “Ethan,” I say, urgently this time, yanking him back up, and checking his face in the moonlight, in the darkness, because I need to—because before it’s all over, I want to be sure.

  “Yeah?” he says, confused, but then he hears it, too, and says, “Oh shit, oh Jesus. I’m so sorry, Markham.”

  Except I don’t want him to be sorry. I don’t want him to stop, or leave, or worry about who is coming, except we have to, even if I want this, it, us, to keep going.

  “Ethan? You out here?” The voice grows closer and I try to focus on the pool through the trees, but the air is spinning and the yard is spinning, and I want to cry at how his mouth is gone from mine. “Ethan!” His name louder, in our direction.

  Your mother, Aubrey.

  Your mother.

  “Out here, Mom!” Ethan calls, trying to make his voice sound normal. “We’re cleaning up.” He pushes me back, grabbing the towel from the ground and holding it up as some sort of proof of I don’t know what, as we move out from behind the bushes. “Kids left stuff everywhere. JL was helping. I’ll get this whole mess cleaned up before morning.”

  Your mother’s eyes are on me, suspicious, taking in the scene. I have nothing in my hands to show I was helping. I didn’t have that kind of time to think.

  There is nothing to indicate I’m innocent.

  “Shouldn’t you be home, JL?” Your mom’s words are sharp, scolding. “Mr. Andersson can drive you. It’s way too late to walk alone.”

  I could sleep here, I want to say. I always sleep he
re. But I don’t. I can’t. I’ve betrayed you, and your mother is rightfully sending me home.

  My eyes dart to Ethan for help, for solace, for him to stand up for me, declare his love for me—anything—but he’s busy picking up cups and napkins and empties, as your mother disappears across the lawn.

  * * *

  And then the U-Haul is in your driveway, and Ethan is shoving his stuff into the back. And if you ever find out what happened, Aubrey, you’ll kill me. You’ll never want to be my friend again. And with my dad still gone, and my mother seeming more and more ill by the minute, I can’t lose you, too. I just can’t.

  * * *

  When the last of his possessions are stuffed in the truck, Ethan’s eyes catch mine for one split second, and he says, “That’s it, I think. Everything I need is loaded up.”

  And I know right then, there is not a single person in the whole wide world solid enough to rely on.

  No one, Aubrey.

  Not even myself.

  MID-MAY

  TENTH GRADE

  “I take it that’s a yes?” Ethan moves his grip on the steering wheel, drumming his fingers on the dashboard to the turned-down music. “You’re mad at me,” he clarifies, as if his understanding of the obvious is what makes it so.

  He turns the car off, and pulls the key from the ignition. I trace the rays of sunlight from his hair, to his cheek, to his fingers, trying to block out the flashes of shoved-away things.

  The pool.

  Me, on his shoulders.

  His lips.

  His tongue in my mouth. Down my stomach …

  “No. Not mad.” I want this to be true. “Distracted. Preoccupied. Overwhelmed.” I search for words, but none of them seem right. They all sound like lies set loose.

  “So I see.” It’s not clear at first that he’s teasing me, being sarcastic, but then he motions around the empty parking lot and laughs. I’m tempted to blurt out about Max, how I’m waiting for him, how every day, practically, he meets me here, how his hands have been all over me, too. How I’m going to sleep with him the minute I turn sixteen. How I’m going to California with him.

  Max Gordon will be here soon, so you might want to leave, I want to say. Max Gordon who hates you. Who pretty much hates all you Anderssons.

  “They think they’re too good for everyone,” Max once told me when I was complaining how Aubrey had ditched me. “I could do circles around them, and not just in an open field on my bike. Give me any class, any test. On the fucking APs if I wanted to. But some of us don’t have anything to prove.”

  Now I wonder if that’s true, Aubrey. If there’s anyone who doesn’t have something to prove.

  Ethan opens the car door, and strolls toward me.

  Shit.

  I busy myself slipping the study packet into my backpack, and try to find something normal to say, opting for the inane, “So, you’re home for the summer already?” when he reaches me.

  “Yeah, last week.” He places his hand down on the concrete wall next to me, flat, open fingers, and I want to trace each one, touch him for a second. It’s been more than eight months since I’ve seen him. “Penn finishes early. I’m surprised I haven’t seen you around?” It’s a question accompanied by a look of concern, which only makes me madder. I guess Aubrey hasn’t told him about Max, about how she and I aren’t really that great of friends anymore, about how much has changed since he left for school. I count the weeks back in my head since the butterflies arrived. I haven’t been to their house in almost two months. “Don’t you usually live at our place?” he asks.

  I shift my gaze to him, focusing not on his face but the strands of blond hair lit gold in the sunshine, on the small crescent scar on his forehead he got in sixth grade. I think of that day, how we were all riding our bikes in the rain, down by the creek in the woods behind Holly White’s house. Ethan hit a rock and fell, and smashed his head on a downed tree limb. I didn’t give a crap about Ethan Andersson then. He was just my new best friend’s nerdy older brother. In my head, I trace the physical path back from the Whites’ house to our cul-de-sac, anything to keep my mind from wandering.

  Besides, why all the concern from Ethan now? I haven’t heard from him since he left for school. Not on breaks, not in texts, not for anything. Not when overachieving Ethan Andersson decided to skip Christmas break to do a J-term in the Sudan, or over Thanksgiving break—which was short and the only one he came home for—the Anderssons busy with their relatives and us busy with my father home, which was mostly stupid chaos.

  “The Sudan? Are you kidding me?” I had asked Aubrey after Thanksgiving, when she first mentioned Ethan was planning on it. “Like, isn’t that dangerous? Isn’t there a war going on there?” And we had both rolled our eyes, because that was so like good old Ethan. But unlike Aubrey, I was pretending. I was worried, and more than desperate for him to come home, and for me to have a chance to see him.

  “You know my brother,” Aubrey had finally said, shrugging. “Mr. Social Justice. He’ll be okay, though. Good riddance.”

  Good riddance. Right.

  “Markham?” Ethan breaks through my thoughts.

  “Yeah.” If he really cared, in all those months he would have reached out to me.

  He turns his back to me and I think he’s going to leave, but he reaches up and hauls himself next to me on the wall. My heart pounds so hard, I’m sure he’s going to be able to hear its insane drumbeat filling the few inches of sweltering air between us. He bumps my shoulder with his. “You sure everything is okay, kid?”

  Kid.

  “Yeah, why?” I sound so obviously like the liar I am. I should blurt something—anything real and honest—even if it’s stupid, about my mother getting worse by the hour, about Dad renewing his California contract yet again. About the rift between Aubrey and me. I’ve known Ethan forever. Whatever happened between us, I don’t hate him. I shouldn’t be afraid to tell him what’s going on.

  Besides, if I don’t tell him something soon, and get him out of here, Max is going to show up, and wrap his arms around me, and say something obnoxious to Ethan to humiliate me. A trickle of sweat slips down between my shoulder blades.

  “Okay, I’ll leave you be, I guess,” he says. “I just figured when I saw you, you’d know where Aubrey is. Got a clue where that sister of mine has gone to?”

  “No,” I say. “As a matter of fact, I don’t.” A lump settles in my throat making it hard to swallow.

  “Really? How come?” I shrug, because now I can’t get any words out without crying. “Well, she has a dentist appointment and I’m supposed to retrieve her and deliver her there. If you see her, she apparently forgot. So let her know.”

  “Will do,” I say, and he reaches his arm around my shoulder and gives me a squeeze.

  “It really is good to see you, Markham,” he says.

  I close my eyes against tears and the dizzying swirl, but that only makes it worse, so I snap them open and blurt, “She’s at Meghan Riley’s house with Niccole Saunders, where else?” I nod in the direction they walked off. “Her new best friends. Meghan lives over on that short street off Burberry? You know it? The dead end. Call Aubrey’s cell. I’m sure you’ll reach her.”

  He turns and gives me that same intense look he gave me earlier, like he’s super-worried, then shakes his head as if it’s none of his business. But he was leaving a minute ago, and he’s still sitting here now, and I don’t have a clue what to do.

  “It sure is weird to be back in this place, you know?” he says after a few seconds of silence. “Like you can never go home again, or something like that.” He kicks the wall with his tennis shoe, and it occurs to me I don’t even know if he’s still playing or not, whether he sits or gets on the court. I don’t know how the Sudan was. I don’t know anything. I should ask him. About classes and sports and stuff, about wherever the hell it was he went last December.

  “Yeah, more than you know,” I say instead, but my words barely come out. I stare out past his
car to the center mound. The poplar leaves catch a soft gust making their gray shadows shimmy on the ground. I glance at my cell, wondering where Max is; if, mercifully, he decided not to come.

  “You’d better go get your sister,” I say. “I forgot the reception sucks around here lately. Even if you text her, she may not get it. It’s the big blue house at the end of that block.”

  “Okay,” he says. “I could give you a lift home?”

  The question holds hope, or maybe just worry.

  “No, I’m good. Turns out, I’m waiting for someone.”

  “Oh?” He raises an eyebrow, and I want to laugh, or maybe punch him. Tell him to go fuck himself. Does he think he’s the only guy who ever liked me?

  “Yeah, I’m good here,” I say, and wait for him to put an end to all this misery.

  “Well, okay, then.” He moves toward his car, and I breathe a sigh of relief. But at the driver’s side he stops and turns, and walks all the way back toward me.

  “You know you can talk to me, Markham.”

  But he’s wrong. I don’t know that. I don’t know it at all. In fact, I don’t know anything. I close my eyes to stop the tears from spilling over. It’s all so dumb. None of it matters anymore. I don’t want or need any help from Ethan Andersson.

  The sound of a bike engine revving, picking up speed, rounding the bend, fills the air. And the sight of Max Gordon follows.

  Max, like some crazy derelict, zipping in through the far side of the parking lot, toward us.

  LATE FEBRUARY

  TENTH GRADE

  “Come on, Wingfield. Follow me.” Max has been calling me this—Wingfield—ever since we read The Glass Menagerie.

  It’s smart and sounds like a name on a sports jersey, so I adore it.

  It’s freezing out, and Max is clearly insane for taking us down to the water, which shouldn’t surprise me; it’s basically what I’ve been told about him from anyone who knows him in our grade. “Max Gordon is crazy.” “Max Gordon is an alcoholic.” “Max Gordon is a total dog.” All those things have proven untrue, but I still should have known better than to agree to get on the back of his dirt bike and go down to the shore on the cusp of night with him. Especially here, on this unlit beach in the middle of nowhere.