The Lighter Side of Life and Death

by C. K. Kelly Martin

  “You were good,” I tell her. “That stuff about the furniture—you’re a good liar.”

  “I’m not,” Colette says. “She just pissed me off being so bossy.”

  “So who was she expecting?” I curve my hands around the edge of the counter. “Your boyfriend?”

  “He’s not my boyfriend.” She tilts her head and scratches her neck. “I didn’t say I had a boyfriend. I said there was someone else.” She tugs off her high-heel shoes and tosses them into the hall. “But, yes, that’s who she was expecting.”

  “Ari?”

  “Yup.” She half smiles as she looks at me.

  “This is screwy.” I’m in over my head.

  “Yes, I know.” Now she’s full-out grinning and I can’t help it; she’s contagious. “I told you it was.”

  “Okay,” I tell her, fighting a smile. “I think I’m beginning to get it, but you know you never said what you wanted. I mean, okay, you’re this hot older woman and I’m looking for someone to bonk without it getting complicated.” Her words, not mine. “But what’s in it for you? What’s your angle?”

  “Mason, come on. I’m not going to stand here and tell you how beguiling you are.” My cheeks are sore and I bow my head so I won’t have to look her in the eye. Would asking for clarification on the beguiling issue damage my case much? Because I’d give my left arm to hear that. “So are we close to getting this worked out?” Colette continues. “Are we good or do we have to stick with this discussion?”

  “I guess we’re good.” I stifle a sigh. “I still think it’s too bad.” Between feeling flattered, let down and steadily in lust with the incredibly revealing nature of Colette’s thin-fibered top, that statement’s a half-decent approximation of what I’m thinking.

  “I know,” she says, “but come on, seriously. You’re only sixteen. You’re practically operating without a brain.”

  “What?” I throw my head back and roll my eyes. “First off you’re saying how together I am and now I’m operating without a brain. You can’t have it both ways, Colette.”

  “Okay, okay,” she says. “Let’s just eat and then I’ll take you home, all right?”

  She sets the kitchen table and we sit down to eat together, almost like a real date, except where Colette’s considered, I bet a date usually means wine, and she’s basically just told me to get lost. It’s uncomfortable and acutely confusing for a long while but then she gets me talking about acting and the play. I tell her about missing Chris Keller and how sometimes I’ll be in the middle of a situation, like this one for instance, and find myself wondering how he’d handle it. His words pop into my head from some other place.

  We talk a bit about Brianna, Burke and Nina too and then I tell her it’s not fair because I’m doing most of the talking and she’s hardly said anything about herself. “What do you want to know?” she asks.

  “Anything. The story of your life.”

  She smiles again. She has the kind of smile that instantly softens her face. Like one minute she’s sexy in this edgy unpredictable way and then she smiles so warm and pretty that you want to say something that’ll freeze the expression a couple seconds longer. She starts telling me about tenth grade and how she was in this club called SAC (Student Activist Club) that wanted to change the world and how that was really the best part of high school and she wants to get back into “the struggle to change things for the better” and be less self-involved because she used to hate people like that so much when she was in school. Then she talks about how conflicted she used to be back then because at the same time she secretly admired the people who seemed like the center of their own universe.

  “So you’re saying right now you’re too much the center of your own universe?” I sum up.

  “Pretty much,” Colette replies. “I think it’s a reaction from being the opposite for so long but it’s also incredibly easy, you know? It doesn’t give you time to think about anything else. Why worry about issues like global warming and human rights when you can spend your evenings weaving twisted romantic webs and shopping for your new summer wardrobe?”

  “You can’t be that bad.”

  “Not that bad,” she clarifies, “just mind-numbingly ordinary. Anyway, that was the old me. The shameless, soulless early-twenties one that I’m trying to put behind me.”

  I don’t think she’s trying to put me off anymore. I think she means all that. I’d like to hear what she’s planning for her mid-twenties but we’re finished with dinner. Colette tells me to just leave everything where it is and she’ll take care of it after she drives me home.

  “Don’t worry about that,” I tell her. “I can get home on my own.” I’m not sure how but I’ll figure something out. Having her chauffeur me back across town would just emphasize everything she said about me being a kid. That’s not the impression I want to leave her with; I’d rather she remember our conversation.

  “How?” she asks.

  “Don’t worry about it. I’ll take care of it.” Maybe I’m being pathetic. It doesn’t matter. I’m not letting her drive me home.

  “Okay,” Colette says, like she understands. “I hope I wasn’t too overwhelming. I know this was weird but at least you’ll remember me.”

  “Of course I’ll remember you.” I bite my lip and peer into her eyes. At this point I have nothing to lose. “You know, we never had a real kiss.” I didn’t see the earlier one coming. It was finished by the time my mind caught up to the event.

  “Okay, Mason,” Colette says somberly. She stands in the kitchen in her bare feet, waiting for me to do it. My arms are numb and my fingers are tingling like I’ve got frostbite. I step slowly towards her, holding my breath. We don’t touch. My mouth is sloppy on hers: too fast, too hard. I should know better but I’ve been waiting for a second chance all night.

  So I slow down the pace and follow her lead. She teases me with tiny jabs of her tongue. I suck her bottom lip. We play-kiss until it turns hungry. Then it’s raw and deep and relentless and I have to yank my head back to make it stop.

  Colette looks at me in surprise, her dark lashes blinking slowly. I do a fast scan of the room, searching out a pen. It’s so quiet in her apartment that I’m afraid of the sound of my own voice. I snatch a pink highlighter from her coffee table, flip over a stack of unopened mail and print out my phone number on the back of an envelope. The scrawl looks childish because my hand is trembling.

  “This is my cell number,” I mumble, setting it down on the kitchen counter. “In case you ever want to get a hold of me.” I turn and walk towards the stairs, taking them two at a time. I have heavy footsteps for my frame. She could be thinking that down in her apartment with the dirty dishes. She could be tossing my telephone number into the trash along with the unfinished lettuce. She could’ve let me kiss her like that only because she knows she never has to see me again.

  The possibilities are endless and my right hand, it’s still shaking as I step out onto Colette’s street. I don’t notice a thing. The driveways, houses, passing cars, anorexic trees. None of it registers. The beat raging in my chest is the only thing I know. That and the one possibility my mind keeps rushing back to and smacking up against like it materialized out of nowhere.

  Maybe …

  Maybe that kiss was exactly what Colette wanted too.

  nine

  The fire alarm wakes me up during homeroom. I was thinking about us in her apartment again—or dreaming it maybe; my brain is too tired to know the difference. “Move it, people!” Mr. Stafford booms from the front of the class. “You want me to burn to a crisp because you didn’t get your eight hours last night? Come on! Let’s go!”

  In the hall behind me two girls are talking about Monica G and the talent scout at the airport, confirming that if the incident was any less of a secret you’d be able to watch it on YouTube. I shuffle outside and squint into the morning sun. Usually I like fire drills but having one this early is a waste. There’s nothing to interrupt.

  “Okay,
roll call, people,” Mr. Stafford shouts. “Listen up!” He fires off a series of names, including mine and Michelle Suazo’s (who happens to be in my homeroom). Then there’s nothing to do but stand around and wait for the all clear. Normally Michelle and I would stand around together but instead she’s obsessing over her iPod, keeping herself hyper-busy. Lately Michelle and Sondra don’t have much to say to me. I wonder what Kat told them. Did she turn me into the bad guy?

  I scope out Jamie by the bleachers with Yolanda and decide to get this over with in one go, like Colette wanted last night. I shouldn’t have to do this, but otherwise Jamie will stomp around avoiding me indefinitely and the truth is I feel a little sorry for him. He’s been into Kat for so long and this can’t be doing his ego any good. It was okay when we could mouth off about her shitty taste in guys together. Now everything’s been whacked off balance because even though Kat doesn’t want to hear about it, she remembers that night and it was me there with her. More than that, it was good.

  So I walk over to the bleachers, say hi to Yolanda and ask Jamie if we can talk a minute. Jamie tries to look bored. He tells Y that he’ll catch up with her later, his voice weary like he’s doing me a favor. Once she’s gone he folds his arms in front of him, freezing his eyes on me. “Look, whatever, okay,” he says cynically. “I don’t give a shit anymore.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Jamie blinks but his eyes don’t move. “Say whatever you want, Mason. It doesn’t change anything.” His fingers dig into his sleeves. “You could’ve at least told me, you know?”

  “You know what really pisses me off about this?” My molars clamp down as I look at him. “You accuse me of getting her loaded or something and then …” My right hand slices through the air in frustration. “You think I’d do something like that?” I’m aggravated all over again. He should’ve been the one to start this conversation. Why did I come over here?

  Jamie gives me a James Dean squint and drives his fingers through his hair. “You’re not flipping this over on me,” he says unapologetically. “Don’t even try. You know you should’ve said something. All these years the three of us have been friends and you think you can just—”

  “I wasn’t going to tell anyone,” I cut in. “This wasn’t about you, and I know it sucks because we’re talking about Kat but the truth is it sucks for me too. She’s hardly spoken to me the past few weeks. It took Monica Gregory getting scouted to get her to look me in the eyes.”

  Jamie squeezes his eyes shut, short on sympathy. “Man, sucks to be you,” he says sarcastically.

  “Apparently not as much as it sucks to be you,” I shoot back. “Shit.” I glance down at the overgrown grass under my feet. “This is stupid. It didn’t mean anything in the first place, except that maybe she wanted revenge on Hugo, and now it’s over and she obviously wishes it never happened.”

  “But it did happen,” Jamie says quietly.

  “I know. But it’s done. It’s over with. It feels like it happened about a hundred years ago.” My apologetic tone comes as a shock. Why am I still trying to justify myself? I don’t regret what happened and I have nothing to be sorry about.

  “I hate when you get like this. Can’t anyone ever be mad at you?” Jamie kicks at the grass with his shoe. “You get the girl and I’m still supposed to feel sorry for you? What the fuck is that?”

  Get the girl? Is he kidding me? I’m treading water here, getting nowhere. He doesn’t understand that my night with Kat is history.

  “Forget I came over here this morning,” I mutter, beginning to back away. “Bury your head in the sand and feel sorry for yourself if that’s what you want.”

  Jamie shifts his weight and stares blankly. “You crossed a line. You know it.”

  I’m not even sure whose line he’s talking about—Kat’s or his—but we’re done talking it over. “See you later, Jamie,” I say, and this time I don’t sound sorry or mad. I’m finished butting my head against a brick wall and Jamie knows it. He shrugs and turns his face away.

  I’m walking off in Mr. Stafford’s direction, my thoughts drifting away from Jamie and Kat and back towards Colette, when Miracle grabs hold of my arm.

  “I’ve heard a lot of crap that I don’t even want to repeat,” she says breathlessly. “I just wanted you to know that I’m in if you want to bail on lunch today.”

  “Thanks, but I’m still going to the cafeteria.” Otherwise I’ll feel like I’m advertising a guilty conscience.

  “Cool,” Miracle sings approvingly. “See you then.”

  It turns out Kat, Sondra and Michelle aren’t at lunch anyway. Kat was late for history earlier so we never got the chance to talk and now Jamie sits between Y and Z in the cafeteria, pretending that I’m an empty chair. It’s exactly what I expected of him after what happened this morning, but I don’t let on that it bothers me. Zoe’s nearer to me than Yolanda and she talks to me in spurts, zipping in and out of the conversation to rejoin the parallel one happening on her other side. She tells me that her mother advised her to start watching what she eats because her thighs and breasts are starting to get big.

  “Isn’t that called puberty?” I ask, glancing quickly at her chest. I’m tired of defending myself—it’s a relief to be able to talk about anything else.

  “I know, right?” Zoe pulls her top tight across her back and juts out her breasts for me. “They’re not even C cups. She says she’s looking out for me because she was fat in high school and it was horrible, but I’ve seen her photos and she wasn’t anywhere close to fat.” Zoe rakes her Caesar salad, the moody Z hovering overhead, preparing to take possession.

  “Don’t listen to that bullshit,” I tell her. “Your mom is psycho, Zoe. She’d criticize a dentist for not brushing his teeth right.”

  I picked that up from my dad, and Zoe smirks and says, “She wouldn’t, actually. She’s not like that around other people.”

  After lunch Yolanda and I have Presentation and Speaking Skills together and on the way she tells me she’s so frustrated with Zoe’s mom these days that she doesn’t even know what to say to Zoe about it anymore. “When her mom answers the phone it takes all my willpower not to scream at her that she’s toxic, selfish and emotionally retarded. The only thing stopping me is that Zoe and I would never be able to see each other again but I swear to God, if we ever break up I’ll do it in a second.”

  Z’s mom doesn’t know the truth about their relationship, not because she’s homophobic but because Z’s afraid her mom’s criticism would suddenly sharp-focus on Y and that would be harder to deal with than keeping their relationship under wraps.

  Our conversation gets me thinking about Colette again, not that I ever really stopped. She’s like a movie constantly running in the background. I keep seeing her face, that strange look in her eyes after I kissed her. I wonder how much difference it would make if we didn’t have to worry about Andrea and Nina. What if I was just some random sixteen-year-old guy she met at the mall?

  Miscellaneous Colette-related thoughts loop through my mind all afternoon. I’m so lost in my own head that I don’t notice Kat coming at me in the hall after final bell. She’s six feet away before I jolt back into the real world. Her wide brown eyes seek out mine as she says, “I wanted to catch up with you before you left today.”

  “Okay,” I say, surprised. Seems to me she’s been trying to achieve just the opposite lately. “But if it’s going to be anything like the discussion I had with Jamie this morning I’d just rather skip it, all right?”

  “He’s being weird with me too,” she says hurriedly. “Can you come outside with me? There’re some things I want to say but it’s not going to be like your talk with Jamie, I promise.”

  We slip out the nearest set of doors and edge away from the buses until we’re standing by an unclaimed patch of brick wall.

  “So what did Jamie say to you, anyway?” Kat asks, looking worried.

  I throw one of my hands up into the air as if to say it doesn’t matter, but she
doesn’t understand—this still feels like life and death to her. “He’s really pissed with me,” I reply. It’s hard to feel the least bit generous towards him today, but when it comes down to it the one thing I genuinely care about in all this is my friendship with both of them. Maybe getting things out in the open will do some good. “Because of what happened between me and you,” I continue. “Basically it seems like … like he thinks I manipulated you somehow.”

  “That’s not what happened,” Kat says, chewing her fingernail.

  I push my left foot against the wall so my knee juts out into the space between us. “So you noticed that too.”

  “Everybody knows about us now,” she says fixedly. “It’s going around the whole school.”

  “Does it really matter? People hook up all the time, Kat. This is just the latest thing to hit the headlines. In a few days it’ll be something else and no one will give a shit.”

  “I will.” She’s pouting so bad that I want to pinch her cheeks and tell her not to worry. “I’ve been horrible about dealing with this, I know, but it wasn’t in the plan.” A wisp of hair falls forward as she bends her head. “It’s not about you. I mean, if it had to be someone I’m glad it was you because I know I can trust you.” She grabs the stray strand and holds it in place against the wind. “I know I should be able to get it together and deal with it maturely and that it shouldn’t be a big deal but the fact is, it is a big deal for me.” Her cheeks suck in sharply as she flicks her hair back behind her ear and then drops her hand. “The only reason that night happened was because I felt so comfortable with you, and I really messed that up in a big way because I don’t anymore. Now I’m panicked anytime you’re around—and you’re always around. I sit down to lunch and there you are across the table. Then you’re sitting next to me in history or coming up to me in the hall and I’m all confused, like I’m into you or something—but I don’t want to be.”