Ballads of Suburbia

by Stephanie Kuehnert

  “You look like you need to sit down.” Adrian took my hand and led me over to the steps. He put his arms around my shoulders and carefully lowered me into a seated position. His touch still felt electric even though the thought of him touching that Viv girl made my stomach churn again.

  “Can you get my brother?” I pleaded.

  “Sure, but tell me what you wanted to talk about first.” He sat down on the step beside me, his knee brushing mine.

  Damn Jessica. I’m sure she’d hoped that I would drunkenly confess to Adrian that I had a huge crush on him and he’d laugh at me and I’d puke on him. I was determined not to embarrass myself that way.

  “Uhh…” I stalled before remembering the last time I’d talked to him on the porch. “I was thinking about writing my ballad. My parents announced they’re getting divorced this week. That’s why I’m drunk. Too drunk to write about it like I was going to. Besides, I’m not really sure if that’s my ballad.”

  Adrian chuckled. “Yeah, you’re definitely too drunk. And I think you’re right. You’re an interesting girl. I’m sure there’s more to your story. Now I’ll go get Liam.”

  And then he did it. As he rose to leave he kissed the top of my head. But he kissed it with those lips that had just kissed another girl. I dropped my face into my hands, not sure if I should smile or cry or puke some more.

  I really, really hated liking Adrian.

  2.

  I SPENT SATURDAY NURSING MY HANGOVER AND anguishing about Adrian. I’d mentally replay him kissing Viv and grow queasy. Then I’d relive him kissing me on the head and get butterflies in my stomach. By Sunday, I just wanted to blot it out with more booze. Fortunately, Maya invited me over for an afternoon of wine drinking while Liam and Christian skated at Scoville. Christian had a stockpile of wine from a party his dad had thrown and he’d given it to Maya.

  Maya still lived at the hotel. Her father had finally found a house, but now he was remodeling it and their move-in date kept getting pushed back. I enjoyed the novelty of her living situation, though. We pretended to be on vacation whenever we hung out in her room, a mind-set that lent itself nicely to our wine buzz.

  Even after we’d knocked back a bottle apiece, I still hadn’t managed to get Adrian out of my mind. I gave in and decided to share my dilemma with Maya.

  “Adrian’s definitely cute,” Maya said through gritted teeth as she struggled to open a fresh bottle of wine. “Yes!” She held the cork aloft and took a celebratory swig. Passing it to me, she warned, “But Adrian doesn’t do serious.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He and Cass have been good friends for years. They decided to lose their virginity together at a party during her freshman year ’cause they were bored. He’s been sleeping around ever since.”

  “What?” I exclaimed, choking on the wine.

  “You didn’t know that? I thought everyone knew thanks to Jessica and Mary. It wasn’t a big deal or anything. There’s never been anything serious between them.”

  “Sex kind of is a big deal, though. Maybe I’m totally old-fashioned,” I mumbled, staring uncomfortably at the floor.

  Maya squeezed my hand, forcing me to look into her solemn gray eyes. “I feel that way, too. Cass has this whole thing about growing up and getting things over with. I think that was her mentality. I can’t speak for Adrian. All I can say is if you just want to make out with him, go for it. But if you want a boyfriend or something…”

  “Honestly, I have no clue what I want.”

  We sat in silence until she snatched the wine and hopped to her feet. “Boys are buzzkills,” she declared. “Fuck love, let’s dance!”

  She ran to the stereo, cranking the Ramones, and we danced drunkenly around the room. Maya grabbed me by the arms so we could bounce up and down and shriek to each other that we wanted to be sedated, but she caught me right as I was bringing the bottle to my lips. Wine sloshed out, splashing across my face, temporarily coloring my pale blue bangs purple. We both cackled hysterically and Maya stumbled to the stereo to stop the music. I wiped wine out of my eyes, smearing my makeup. Then I looked down at my drenched T-shirt.

  “Shit, you’re soaked. We have to find you something else to wear,” Maya exclaimed, hurrying to her closet. She began throwing shirts and skirts and dresses on the bed. “Hey, let’s get dressed up! We could be twins,” she suggested, indicating a vintage black velvet dress with a frilly lace collar and a nearly identical red one. “Or do you want something that goes with that?” She pointed at a shrug made of black and silver netting that I was eyeing. “Here, try it on!”

  She tugged at the thin flannel I wore over my T-shirt even though it was summer, freeing my left arm before I could stop her. Talk about a buzzkill.

  “Oh, Kara!” Maya moaned pitifully. “What are you doing to yourself?”

  She gaped at the red welts and scabs that stood out against my pale skin like the imposing bars of a jail cell. I scrambled to cover up, but Maya gripped my shirt in her fist. She stared a moment longer, asking, “Why?” before she let it fall like a curtain on the body-strewn stage after the last scene of a Shakespeare tragedy.

  I sighed, fumbling for an answer. “It sounds stupid, but when I’m really upset I need the pain to remind me I’m alive. I have to let the hurt out or I can’t even breathe.”

  Maya nodded and lowered herself onto her bed, seeming satisfied with my response, but she questioned meekly, “How?”

  “How?” I repeated, pushing clothing aside and sinking beside her. “With a knife.”

  “No.” Maya took a deep swig of wine, her intense, smoky eyes zeroing in on mine. “How do you make yourself stop? I wanted to bleed so bad when my mom killed herself, but I was afraid I’d never stop.”

  She ripped her gaze away and hugged her knees to her chest.

  My jaw dropped. “Your mom…” I couldn’t even repeat her sentence, it was so heartbreaking. She’d never mentioned her mother before except to say that she was Cass’s mom’s sister. I thought it a little strange, but always assumed there’d been an ugly divorce that no one wanted to talk about.

  But suicide?

  Maya clutched the neck of the wine bottle with two hands, like she wanted to strangle it for loosening her up enough to confess such a secret. “Yeah, I don’t like to talk about it. But that’s why we moved here. My dad thought that maybe my mom would have been happier before she died if she’d been closer to her family. So here we are, closer to her family without her. Don’t ask me how that works.”

  “It’s probably about as logical as my cutting.” I forced an awkward laugh.

  Maya echoed the hollow sound and said, “You know what’s weird? That I just told you that and you didn’t even ask. Christian’s been hounding me about it for weeks. One day he told me that his mom died of cancer when he was two and asked me where my mom was. I said my story was a little different and I didn’t want to talk about it. But he keeps bringing it up. Says if I ever want an ‘actual relationship’ with him that I’ll have to tell him because he can’t handle secrets.”

  “Do you want a relationship with him?”

  “I want a friendship. I don’t think I can fall in love. I loved my mom and trusted that she would always be there and then one morning…” Maya sniffed back tears and I put my arm around her. “I love my dad and my grandma, because I did before I learned how bad it hurts to lose someone you love, but I can’t intentionally fall in love. I’m damaged goods, as my grandma would say. Christian deserves someone who’s open and trusting. I can’t open up to him about this. I don’t want everyone knowing. I mean, look how long it took me to tell you and you’re my best friend.”

  “I am?” I asked, surprised.

  Maya laughed a true laugh that cleared the tears from her throat. “Of course you are, silly!” She rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand, smudging eyeliner everywhere. “Oops,” she said as soon as she realized what she’d done. “I guess we both have to fix our makeup now.”

  I
hugged her again, reassuring, “It’s just us here. We can look like fools.”

  Maya smiled and slid out of my embrace. “You’re right. It’s just us and we have wine. We should be dancing and singing like fools, not crying.” She walked over to the stereo, flipped through her records, and retrieved a forty-five in a yellowing sleeve. “My grandma’s Peggy Lee record. I promised I’d play it for you someday, didn’t I?”

  She’d taught me the lyrics to “Is That All There Is?” in chemistry class. It was a song from the late sixties that her grandmother once taught her. Maya would randomly sing it while we were doing lab or at Scoville or drunk in the corner booth in Shelly’s basement. I was eager to hear the original.

  Maya carefully put the needle to the record. The speakers crackled and a piano played. She sat down in front of the stereo, facing me as she began to recite the first verse in a husky voice.

  The verses were spoken word. They told the story of a girl’s life through experiences that were supposed to be momentous: a house fire, going to the circus, falling in love. But the girl was always disappointed by her experiences. The chorus, which Maya had me sing with her, basically said that if all there is to life is disappointment, we should just dance and drink and have a ball.

  Maya and I both liked that philosophy. We swayed dramatically as we sang the choruses, waving our empty bottles of wine. But when Maya reached the last verse, the part she always recited with the most gusto, my whole body grew cold. What Maya’d shared about her mother put a whole new spin on the end of the song.

  Maya closed her eyes as she murmured, “I know what you must be saying to yourselves. If that’s the way she feels about it, why doesn’t she just end it all?”

  Her eyelids snapped up as she broke into the final chorus, belting it out like Janis Joplin. Maya’s voice filled the room and she didn’t seem to notice that I’d stopped singing. I expected her to burst into tears when she finished, and I prepared to leap up and hug her.

  Instead, Maya just laughed. “I love that song,” she proclaimed with a grin before putting the Ramones back on.

  3.

  ADRIAN WOULD ALWAYS SAY THAT I came up with the idea to turn his scrapbook of newspaper articles about the darker side of suburbia into a script, but it wasn’t really a stroke of brilliance, just a comment I happened to make at Scoville one afternoon.

  I’d been avoiding Adrian at the park all week because I was still grappling with how I felt about him. Should I try to be his friend? His make-out partner? Would I end up getting hurt if my feelings grew more serious? But on Friday, Maya and Christian disappeared to have another one of their friends-versus-more-than-friends debates. This meant I could spend my afternoon alone watching Liam skate by the statue or I could join Adrian, Quentin, and Cass at the bottom of the hill. I decided that spending more time with Adrian might help me figure things out.

  Adrian had the notebook on his lap when I approached, so I asked if I could look at it again as an excuse to sit down beside him. He reminded me that I couldn’t read the ballads until I wrote my own, but the five-subject notebook was half filled with newspaper clippings, so I had plenty of interesting reading.

  After learning how a bunch of moms in suburban California were lobbying to put all the local sex offenders on an island, I remarked under my breath, “Rapist Island, that would make quite a movie.”

  Adrian jumped to his combat-booted feet, declaring me a genius. “Kara, that’s a great idea. We should write a script out of all these articles!”

  “I was just talking to myself,” I mumbled, but I celebrated on the inside, thrilled to have impressed him again. Besides, school had been out for two weeks, and sitting around smoking cigarettes and the occasional bowl at Scoville was already starting to get boring. Writing a script would make for an interesting summer project.

  Adrian led us to the library across the street from the park to look for books on screenwriting and to a store to pick up another notebook. We returned to Scoville and I quickly familiarized myself with screenwriting format while Adrian culled his notebook for the perfect story. He went with a football game where a girl had actually gotten beheaded when the bleachers collapsed.

  “Start with the head,” Adrian instructed me, “that’s a strong image.”

  EXT. PRESENT-DAY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL FIELD-NIGHT

  JANET DAWSON, perky, blond, sixteen-year-old head cheerleader for LINCOLN PRAIRIE HIGH SCHOOL ushers the rest of the squad away from the rickety wooden bleachers that have just collapsed into rubble. People, some injured, stand in small groups nearby.

  JANET

  (shrieking)

  Oh my god!

  A brown, ponytailed head sits severed from its body among the splintered wood and dust, its face frozen in shock.

  Adrian read what I wrote, affirming, “That’s awesome!”

  Quentin flipped through articles, his black braids falling in his face. “Next maybe we can do date rape at an out-of-control party. That’s a suburban classic.”

  Cass contemplated Quentin’s suggestion, exhaling from her cigarette. “It is, but we need to think about how to tie all these incidents together into one story. Are the kids who were at this football game really going to go to a party after they just witnessed a girl getting beheaded?”

  “Sure they would,” Adrian insisted. “It’s the suburbs, the land of ignoring your problems. And that’s exactly what we want to illustrate in this script.”

  Cass inclined her head in agreement and recommended to Quentin, “Look for the one that happened in Minnesota. That was particularly violent.”

  We had fun that afternoon, but I was surprised when Adrian pulled me aside before I left Scoville and said, “So, there’s this new place to see punk shows. A bowling alley in Logan Square, the Fireside. Wanna go see some bands with us tonight?”

  Even though Adrian had both of his hands on my shoulders when he asked me and he stood close enough that if he lowered his head six inches he’d be kissing me, I knew this was not a date. He’d said “us,” meaning Quentin and Cass, too.

  I wanted to become closer friends with the three of them and I always wanted to see some bands, so I said yes. For purely non-crush-related reasons. I mean, would I have brought my little brother along otherwise?

  4.

  THE FIRESIDE BOWL WAS A SIGHT to behold. Giant, tacky red-and-white tiles covered the side of the building. A large red bowling pin loomed above the doorway, stating redundantly, “Bowling,” and though it was probably secured well, the threat of it crashing down seemed imminent, due to the worn state of the establishment.

  I’m sure many a driver innocently cruising down Fullerton before a show at the Fireside wondered why droves of scruffy kids with colorful Mohawks and liberty spikes were lining up to go bowling. You didn’t get advance tickets to Fireside concerts, you just showed up. If the band was popular, you showed up really early, claiming your spot on the grubby concrete outside of the venue, which you would trade in for your place right in front of the band. If you got there early enough, you would probably see the band unloading their equipment while you waited in line outside. There was no stage entrance, no backstage, absolutely no border between audience and band. It was the way a punk show should be.

  Adrian, Quentin, Cass, Liam, and I passed beneath the huge bowling pin, paid our five bucks, got our hands marked so that supposedly we couldn’t drink-Adrian had a beer in his mitts within minutes-and emerged into the bowling alley. It was still a functional bowling alley. The bands played on a small platform next to the first two lanes and sometimes people bowled at the other end while the show went on.

  Adrian led me toward the ball return between lanes four and five, helped me up, and then climbed beside me. We stood there with our feet uncomfortably hovering over the gap where the balls usually rested. We held hands the whole time. At first, I thought it was because I kept wobbling, my toes and heels the only things that had something solid to rest on, but he didn’t let go once I gained balance. He h
eld my hand and swigged from his illegal beer and occasionally shouted something into Quentin’s ear. Much like with the kiss on the head, I didn’t know what to make of Adrian’s gesture. Excitement would bubble inside of me for a moment, but then I’d hear Maya say, “Adrian doesn’t do serious.” Instead of analyzing the situation, I forced myself to focus on the concert.

  Cass and Liam left us right away, pushing their way into the pit. I watched them more than I watched the bands. Cass’s dreads wriggled like snakes and Liam’s skinny body collided with the shoulders and elbows of bigger, burlier guys.

  Eventually, as much as I enjoyed having my hand in Adrian’s, I wanted to be out in the middle of it all. I nudged Adrian in the side and he leaned down so I could shout into his ear. “I’m gonna go in the pit!”

  He shouted back, “You’re gonna go in the pit?”

  I nodded enthusiastically.

  Psyched by my decision, he turned to Quentin and shouted, “Pit!”

  But Quentin shook his head and remained perched on the ball return, his toes tapping along with the beat.

  Adrian jumped down and held his hand out to me. I steadied myself on his strong forearm as I leapt to the sticky floor. Then I led the way, shoving through the crowd to the place where it was most frenzied.

  I’d been in my share of mosh pits by then; a good thing, because this one was by far the most intense. If I didn’t know how to keep my balance, I’d have been flying around like a balloon that somebody had suddenly let the air out of. I lost Adrian to the tornado of people almost immediately (though I did see Cass fly by in a flash like the lady on the bicycle in The Wizard of Oz). I fell to the ground twice and got helped up by strangers. There were enough girls and nicer boys in the pit on that occasion. A few weeks later, I would learn the hard way not to expect to be helped up at a hardcore punk show when the pit is all boys with bulging biceps and shaved heads. I acquired a split lip that night, but on our first outing to the Fireside, I came out merely bruised.