by Tom Leveen
“For the party? No. I just have to keep to my old schedule, which is school, school, dance, and more school.”
“That sucks.”
“Yeah. But now we’ll have Fridays. Right?” She pokes me in the chest.
“Right. Fridays during first.”
“Cool. Hey, we’re late. Let’s go.”
I grab her arm. “Wait a sec.”
She turns. I pull her close. Kiss her. It’s much better than when we were both drunk.
After a minute we split up. Now she really is smiling.
“See you later,” she says. Runs down the hall.
Laughing.
Never heard her laugh before.
VIVI
Thursday afternoon, Mrs. Garcia hands back our latest assignment one minute before the bell. There’s a big fat A on my essay about Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Brianna Montaro gets a B.
“Shit!” she shouts, pounding both hands on her desk. It makes me jump.
Mrs. Garcia arches an eyebrow and says, “Brianna? It’s an eighty-nine. Not a big deal.”
But THE Brianna Montaro looks like she’s going to hyperventilate. She swings her head toward my desk. I don’t cover my grade. THE Brianna Montaro fixes me in her crosshair gaze.
I smirk.
The bell rings. Everyone gets up and heads for the door. Sam waits for me. I squeeze past Zach Pearson as he heads down my row and slow my walk toward Sam, watching Zach sit at my desk and say something low to Brianna. Brianna throws her essay into the air and shouts at him, “It doesn’t matter, I can’t win! I can’t win in this place!”
There’re only a few of us left in the room. Sam and I see it, Mrs. Garcia sees it, a couple other slowpokes see it. Brianna doesn’t care. She tries to grab the straps to her Merona bag but it gets snagged on her seat.
“Brianna?” Mrs. Garcia asks gently, coming from around her desk. “Do you have a question about the essay? I’d be happy to—”
“No!” Brianna shouts, finally unsnagging her bag and standing up. “It’s not your fault, I did it wrong, that’s all that matters, right? Right?”
I pull close to Sam as she shoots through the doorway and into the hall. She’s got kanji lettering written across the backside of her yoga pants. She has to stick out her butt in that awkward way too-skinny girls do to make it look like their butts aren’t flat.
Before anyone can speak, I hear two people colliding in the hall. I hear Brianna wailing, “Look out, you vamp freak!”
Sam and I peer out the door. Brianna stalks down the middle of the hallway, her rage forcing people to the sides like the tip of a spear. Across from the doorway, Cadence’s friend Danny, the weird kid we met at the coffee shop a couple of months ago, stares after her for a second before calling, “Looking lovely today! Your bitch is extra shiny!”
And right after that, a cluster of basketball players jostles him aside, calling him a number of names. Danny regains his balance, nods, and walks down the hall with an odd, deliberate smile on his face.
“I always thought the Dez sucked,” I say to Sam. “But all we had to worry about there was getting shot or stabbed. It’s way worse here.”
He raises his eyebrows in agreement. He and I move into the hall, and Zach Pearson pulls up alongside Sam.
“Hey,” he says. “What’d you guys get?”
“Ninety-eight.”
“Eighty-seven,” Sam says. “You?”
“Seventy-nine,” Zach says. “I don’t think I’m allowed to speak English anymore.”
“It’s a hard class,” I say.
“Not for you,” he says, but grins. He holds up Brianna’s essay. “Did Brianna go this way?”
“Yep,” Sam says. “Just follow the line of bodies.”
“She does get a little intense,” Zach says, then nods at us and jogs off down the hall.
“That’s not the word I’d use,” I tell Sam.
“Well, whisper it real sexy to me,” Sam says, and kisses my hair just above my ear. I can barely feel the kiss up there— but I also feel it everywhere.
“Did you see her butt?” I ask Sam.
“Oh, man, is this one of those girl tests?”
“Not this time. She had kanji on her pants.”
“Oh, that. Yes. Hard to miss. I don’t think there’s a lot of ‘Montaros’ in Japan.”
“What do you think the translation is? I bet it’s ‘Juicy.’”
“Yummy?” Sam says.
“Spank This.”
“Slutty McOpenlegs.”
I’m giggling by then. And it’s no longer an entirely foreign sensation. “Maybe I should ask her.”
“I’ll give you a dollar if you do.”
“Maybe I don’t want a dollar.”
I try to say this in some kind of sexy way. I’m not sure it works at first, not until Sam eyes me and says, “God you’re hot.”
So that helps.
“Muy caliente,” I say, and squeeze him closer to me as we walk. It’s hard to sync up our steps, but I don’t care. People are watching. And I like it. It gives me an idea, and not a new one. This is Thursday, which means Marlene will be taking Daddy to rehab this afternoon.
“Let’s ditch seventh, go to my house,” I say to Sam. I haven’t actually taken him inside before.
“Well— sure, yeah. You’re so daring.”
“I know, right?”
I take his hand and we head for the parking lot. Nobody stops us, because a lot of seniors don’t have seventh hours, and we blend right in with them.
I drive us to my house and park in the garage, letting us in through the garage door connected to our kitchen. Sam follows me in, past the kitchen and toward the foyer where the staircase begins. His eyes are enormous.
“This is your house,” he says. Like he can’t believe it.
I look at the bare, beige walls. The polished marble entry floor. New carpet. Chandelier shining down above us. Double front door. Suddenly everything I’d planned in the last hour blows right through my head, and all I can feel is embarrassed.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
Sam turns. “For what?”
I can’t answer.
“Oh, hey,” Sam says, touching my shoulder. “Viv … jeez, what’s the matter? I didn’t mean to be a jerk or anything, I’m just not used to it is all. Viv?”
“It’s not us,” I whisper. God, I sound like it’s the first day of school again. What was I thinking, bringing him in here?
“Not who?” Sam asks.
“My dad and me.” I count flecks of gold in the floor. Is it real gold? It can’t be. Can it?
“What do you mean?” He sits on the step leading down into our front room. It might have another name. Something proper. I don’t know. I could ask a neighbor, except they don’t like us.
I want to tell Sam that.
I want to make him see what it’s like. That our old house would practically fit into Dad’s new bedroom, but that it was us, it was where we belonged. That I belonged at Southside High near the Dez, not here.
That this is a dream, or a nightmare, and eventually it’s going to end.
And it won’t bring Mom back. Even though it should.
What I do instead is sit next to him and say, “Nothing.”
Sam smiles at me. “You’re a very strange person. Anyone ever tell you that?”
I nod. It’s not the only word they’ve used.
“Who?” Sam asks.
His question surprises me. Did he read my mind? No— he’s replying to my nod, that’s all.
Sam fakes some kind of Mafia-movie voice. “You want I should whack ’em? Take ’em out? I can do dat. I do it for you. Don’t worry about it. Fugget about it, I’m known. In all da five boroughs.”
No one but Dad has ever been able to make me laugh like Sam does. It’s not even that funny. But the way he says it, I can’t help it.
“Are we dating?” I ask when we’re not laughing anymore.
Sam raises his eyebrows. “Um— I don’t know, a
re we? I mean, that would be cool. Totally.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Really.”
I’ve never met anyone like Sam. Maybe we can get married someday. I guess that’s a long time from now. But it would be nice.
And we could afford a huge wedding.
Maybe the money isn’t all bad. I wouldn’t have met Sam if Daddy hadn’t been hurt.
“You want to see my room?” I say.
“Sure.”
“There’s no furniture. My clothes are still in boxes.”
“How come?”
Sam is smart. I want him to figure it out so I don’t have to say it. But he doesn’t. He just watches me, eyebrows still raised, waiting.
“Because,” I say finally, “I didn’t think it would last.”
“But it has. And probably will.”
“Probably.”
Sam puts an arm around my shoulder and squeezes. “I like boxes.”
I take his hand from my shoulder, kiss the top of it, and then guide him up the staircase. I’m still not used to it. The carpet is too thick under my feet. I want to creep along the edge where it’s just bare wood.
“Where is your dad, anyway?”
“Rehab. He goes all the time.”
We reach my room and I open the door. I could park a couple of school buses inside. Until we moved here, I’d never seen a house with rooms this size. And this isn’t the biggest house on our block.
The three boxes I packed look small and insignificant. Daddy says not to worry, we’re going to fill my room with everything I want. I don’t even know what I want. I don’t think Daddy cares.
“Okay, so, this is nice,” Sam says, walking in.
There’s not much to see. The walls and ceiling are white. A dark wood ceiling fan sits in the middle. I’ve got a walk-in closet at one end. I have two windows, both looking out over our swimming pool.
I have a swimming pool.
I close the door as Sam walks silently over to a window and looks out. “That’s a great yard,” he says. “If I was ten, I would totally play War down there.”
“You played War?”
“Every day after school, and every weekend,” Sam says, turning to face me.
His eyes flick toward the door, where I’m standing against it, hands tucked behind the small of my back. Then Sam’s gaze meets mine. In that heartbeat, he knows. He knows I’ve already decided. I can see it in his face.
“Hey,” he says softly.
I push my shoes off with my feet, shoving the heels off first. Sam sits against the windowsill and pulls off one shoe, then the other.
He shoves the white plantation shutters closed, swish-clack, swish-clack.
“Shit,” he says.
My hands freeze at the hem of my shirt. “What?”
“I don’t have any … you know.”
“Oh.” My hands are trembling.
He turns back around. “We could probably, you know, think of something, though. I mean, we don’t have to … actually …”
“Okay,” I whisper. It briefly—very briefly—crosses my mind that if we can’t say it, we probably shouldn’t do it.
But that leaves a lot up to interpretation. We’ll think of something.
The carpet feels at least an inch thick under my feet. It’s like wading through a soft stream to where I meet him, in the middle of my new bedroom without a bed.
It feels just as thick underneath me as we fall to the floor together.
DANNY
My sister appears contrite for the first time in her pathetic life. She won’t even look at me. Not that that’s unusual.
“You,” I say.
She nods, and finds something fascinating to study on my carpet.
“You. You stole my phone. On the first day of school.”
“It was a joke, Danny. I was pissed about how you were dressed and the way you were talking, so I just grabbed it when I came to get my—”
“The police department is investigating me for child pornography,” I say, pointing to the wall as if the SWAT team is right outside it. “And you’re just now telling me?”
“I said I was sorry— I am sorry— I didn’t know.”
I start giggling. It scares even me. I haven’t slept much lately.
“Didn’t know? You didn’t know someone used my phone to take a picture of a naked kid and I got blamed for it? You’re—”
I choke. I can’t stop giggling. And I’m not even high.
“You’re trying to tell me that between Mom and Dad and the … what is it … ah yes, entire school, that you didn’t know?”
“Danny—”
“Are you shitting me? Ha ha ha! You didn’t know. That’s great. That’s, that’s unreal. How dare you? How can you stand there and pretend you had no idea, dude?”
“I didn’t want anyone … I didn’t mean for anyone to get in trouble. It was supposed to be a prank, just a joke, okay? So, it’s over.”
“Oh, ain’t that the truth, sis.”
“Look, don’t be all weird about it, okay? It was a mistake, it wasn’t supposed to go this far. So just—”
Still laughing, because
I
CAN’T
STOP.
I hold up my index fingers. “Ohhhhh, hold on! Now I get it. Of course. You know who took the picture, don’t you. You know who it is, and you didn’t want to rat them out. You were afraid you might get— get whacked or something, huh? They’d rub you out? That’s it, isn’t it.”
“Danny, it doesn’t matter. It was just a joke, it got out of hand, and I’m totally sorry. Okay? Can we just forget it?”
“Yeah,” I say, wiping my eyes. “Okay. It was a joke. You win. Ha ha. Get out.”
“Hey, look, I—”
“Get the almighty shitballs out of my room. Pretty please.”
When she’s gone, I stare at my closet door for a while, considering my options. Halloween is tomorrow. My costume is all ready to go. Nobody’s going to like it, but what have I got to lose now? If they’d just listened when I said to send me back to my old school, we wouldn’t be in this mess.
Okay.
I’ll give him
ONE
LAST
CHANCE.
But then that’s it.
I figure Big Sis must’ve already told Mom and Dad that this whole cluster-schlong was her doing. She wouldn’t want it to come from me. So now all I have to do is give them the opportunity to set the record straight with me. Easy. Then I can go back to my school, forget any of this ever happened. Maybe I’ll even start taking my meds again. Why not.
I go into the living room and stand in the doorway. My head hurts. It takes three full minutes for Dad to look up.
“So?” I say politely.
“So, what.”
“Is there anything you’d like to say to me?”
Dad says, “Okay … have you done your homework?”
He must be joking. Breaking the ice. “That’s it? That’s all you got?”
“Danny, I’m tired. Can we not screw around right now?”
I watch him for a few more seconds, waiting for a burst of insight, an epiphany.
“Sure thing,” I say, friendly. “No more screwing around.”
I start to go, but stop and peek back inside. “You know, I … I hope you have a great weekend. Really. I mean that.”
Then I leave before he can respond, although I’m pretty sure he wasn’t going to.
Tomorrow is Friday. There will be a game. Friday Night Lights and all that. There’s a rally after lunch. A costume contest. Strict rules, of course. But less strict, most likely, than the usual dress code. Everyone will be dressed up. Ten bucks says all the Athleaders will wear their jerseys as a costume, because that’s how brilliant they are. Or maybe they’ll do something cute like trade outfits with the cheerleaders— which is not at all gay, so long as they all do it. Kilts? Gay. Skinny jeans? Gay. Hypocritical motherfuckers.
Halloween. No on
e will think twice about someone wearing a mask.
So, that’s it then. I take pills and play games, mostly, for the rest of the night. Think about Cadence. I should text her. She deserves that much.
Happy Halloween.
CADENCE
Thursday night, I’m on the verge of passing out with a novel on my lap when my phone buzzes. I check it for a new text message.
Do not go to school tomorrow.
Danny. Nice. First time he’s made contact since Monday after lunch. I almost don’t respond, but then I do because I’m still a big dopey sucker.
How come? I write back. Are you ditching? Ditching is bad for you, you know
I add a smiley and set the phone down, picking up my book again. Maybe I wasn’t as sleepy as I thought, except then after, like, a paragraph, my head starts bobbing.
My phone goes off again.
The screen reads: Just don’t.
“Oh, great,” I say out loud, and start typing back.
What’s he up to now? I can’t even begin to consider all the pranks he must be waiting to pull tomorrow, since it’s Halloween and all that. Rotten eggs in a water balloon launcher, maybe? Or isn’t there some old gag with cherry bombs in the toilets? I’m not sure exactly what a cherry bomb is, but something tells me Danny does and that he wouldn’t hesitate to blow up a couple heads—that’s navy speak for toilets— just to make everyone jump. I even catch myself grinning at the idea. Maybe it would be kind of funny. And hey, at least he’s trying to give me a heads up.
I write, What are you talking about?
Then I wait for his response, but it doesn’t come. Great, he’s probably being all cranky-boy, since he loves doing that so much. Still, I try again, anyway.
Hey man, what are you talking about?
Five more minutes go by.
What’s up?
Then:
Dude come on
I yawn. It’s so late already! I think about trying to find some kind of costume to put on tomorrow after all, but really, Halloween’s not my thing. I don’t exactly have a lot of costume pieces lying around. Maybe I’ll wear a skirt. That would be enough of a departure for me for no one to recognize me!
Danny still hasn’t answered. Well, fine. I’m tired, and I’m going to bed. I send one last message.
Text me back
And then I put my book away and climb into bed.
