(You) Set Me on Fire

by Mariko Tamaki

  “How did it get broken? I mean, what happened?”

  “Someone cut the power cord.” Carly’s little fingers, tips still painted pink, did a sad little snip.

  “Wow. Wouldn’t that … uh … wouldn’t that electrocute you?”

  “Um. Heh. No. Not if you unplugged it first?”

  “Oh. Shit. Right. Duh. Fuck.”

  “Ha-ha-so. I guess it obviously wasn’t you, huh?”

  “Nope.”

  My phone went off with the weird ring Shar programmed, a maniacal laughing sound that cut into the space like a million X-Acto blades.

  Carly did a quick spin and left my room.

  That night, before she went to bed, Shar came upstairs and popped her head in the door. My room was dark so I couldn’t see her face, just a silhouette leaning into my room, her voice in my ear.

  “Hey, Allison?”

  “Yeah.”

  SIX

  A.k.a.

  Everyone has a name and something that people call them. What these things are, I think, has a pretty big impact on who you are.

  Shar was named after her mother, Sharon, also named after her mother. Until Shar, I had no idea people actually did that, or still did that, to their kids. I thought it was something that only happened in tribes and medieval villages. Why, with the millions of names out there, would you name a kid after yourself?

  “Is Sharon, like, a really old name?”

  Chewing on a fistful of what was left of Carly’s pink popcorn, pre-breakfast at Stack ’n’ Flip, Shar shook her head. “It’s the name of an old person.” Whenever Shar introduced herself or said her name to anyone, she made an obvious effort to make sure that whoever it was both knew her name and didn’t call her Sharon. Very little pissed Shar off more than people calling her something she wasn’t.

  Which was funny.

  Because, from what I could tell, Shar almost never called anyone by their real name.

  First there were the Patties, a name that stuck even after the toaster oven thing. (A week later, the Patties purchased another toaster oven that they kept illegally in Asian Patty’s room.)

  Since the night of the film club meeting Carly was “Superstar.”

  The girl who lived in the room next to Shar, Natalie, was “Rattles” because she was always jumpy and nervous (and because her silent but constant piano practising next door rattled her bed against Shar’s wall and drove her crazy).

  Random people whose real names we never knew acquired tags after various incidents. Whatever the incident was, after Shar tagged them it was forever crystallized across their being. Like “Mr. Pickles,” who may have been a really nice guy aside from the one time Shar caught him picking his nose then scraping the boogers on the underside of his seat. Then there was “Hives,” the really tall, Shar thought gay, guy in our Social Problems class who always wanted to talk about HIV awareness and its impact on any and all social problems that came up in the lectures.

  Not all the names were mean. There was “Notes,” the guy who always gave Shar his notes for Enviro Geo. “Pam,” Shar’s other neighbour on her floor, had a legitimately nice pair of Pam Anderson–sized boobs and Shar didn’t seem to hate her.

  Shar never asked me who or what I was named after. I wasn’t. My mom really wanted me to have a three-syllable name and my father had exes named Stephanie, Isabel, Jennifer, Gwendolyn, and Madeleine. So, my dad often noted, Allison was the obvious choice.

  I’ve never actually had a nickname, although a lot of people in my life, mostly teachers, have called me Allie. Shar never called me anything but Allison, and she called me Allison of a book in the library. s c runningten, the punctuation that bracketed our conversations.

  “Right, Allison?”

  Until Halloween, of course, when I stopped being just Allison and started, from time to time, being Sonny.

  Sonny and Shar.

  Get it?

  Because we were Sonny and Cher for Halloween that year?

  Clearly it was more complicated than that.

  Beyond my name, I was pretty sure of a bunch of things before Halloween. I was sure Shar didn’t sleep with girls, because she’d mentioned a couple boyfriends. I was pretty sure she thought I didn’t sleep with girls either, because when people think you’re not straight, especially girls, they usually want to ask you a bunch of totally inappropriate and stupid questions.

  I was also, on a different level, pretty sure that Shar and I weren’t going to be doing anything specific for Halloween, especially not any shindig put on by the college. Shar had an intense reaction to every -fest and -a-thon St. Joseph’s had thrown thus far, which included the BBQ-fest, the Rap-fest, the (vaguely titled) Culture-a-thon, and the unpopular Fitness-a-thon. The only positive side to any of these events was that they left the TV room free for our personal TV-and-junk-food-fests.

  It wasn’t until Carly brought it up at breakfast the morning of, in the buzz of the early cafeteria rush, that Shar expressed any interest in Halloween festivities.

  “Hey! Everyone’s dressing up and coming to the dance, right?”

  Shar raised an eyebrow. “What are ‘us’ dressing up as?”

  “Uh. Well.” Carly huffed and turned to face Shar, squaring her shoulders. “WE, as in a bunch of us, are all going as Grease. The movie? From Cultural Studies? Were you there for that class? Allison?”

  I wasn’t, but I’d seen the movie. My dad’s company had had a Grease party once. “Right. Oh, so like with the pink ladies? Are you going as a pink lady?” I asked, easily picturing Carly in a pink silk jacket.

  “No way! Are you kidding? I’m going as Danny Zuko! You know, the greaser? I loooooove John Travolta.” Carly curled her lip and did some hunky shoulder moves. “But you guys can come and be pink ladies.”

  “Nope!” Shar cut in, before I had a chance to respond. “We’ve got plans.”

  “We do?”

  “Yes, Allison, we do.”

  I still have no idea where Shar found costumes. She skipped Enviro Geology and then somehow, by dinner, she returned with a set of faux Native American disco suits, which she laid out on her bed on top of a pile of dirty black laundry.

  “Check it out! Sonny and Cher!”

  They were polyester, bedazzled with sequins and trimmed with feathers. The back of the Cher outfit was covered with gold-stitched dreamcatchers and little horses.

  “Holy shit that’s so cool.”

  “Fuck PINK LADIES. Like we’re going as the fucking pink ladies.”

  Shar smiled things I needed to be doingked me . The muscles in her face softened, relaxed.

  “I’m going to dress you up and everything,” she said. “It’s going to be amazing.”

  I’d never had anyone dress me up. It’s a strangely comforting sensation, having someone else be in charge of what you’re going to look like.

  First Shar sent me into the bathroom with a tensor bandage and my smallest jogging bra so I could bind my boobs up. Then we fitted me into the jumpsuit, which required a bunch of safety pins and tape. Shar even borrowed some platform boots from Rattles—a stretch because Shar disliked Rattles—so that the cuffs wouldn’t drag too much on the ground. My wig scratched my burn scar a bit so we added a little red handkerchief that I went and grabbed from Carly. The consensus was that I looked like a discount Sonny Bono.

  “It’s okay,” Shar said. “I’m going to look really good as Cher.”

  By nine, the whole residence was like backstage at Radio City Music Hall, with girls running in and out of rooms borrowing makeup, jewellery, and fishnets. The tops of all the sinks were dusted with eye shadow and sticky with hairspray. Music bumped through the corridors as, cloistered in Shar’s room, I watched her apply a layer of thick eyeliner, her long black wig glistening unnaturally like an oil spill running down her back.

  It’s not surprising that Shar looked really cool as Cher. So I won’t go into it. But she looked amazing. Like long and lean and sparkly and regal, the way Cher looks in all
her videos except in the one where she’s wearing a weird leather bathing suit.

  In the elevator down, after a few beers and a shot in her room, Shar/Cher hooked her arm around me and, with a slight, Cher-like drawl, crooned, “Sonny. Babe. What do you say you and me hit the town?” She smelled like hairspray, which was oddly intoxicating.

  A set of Dreamgirls, in matching sparkly blue dresses, black gloves, and Afro wigs, pressed into the elevator, giggling.

  “Cher. Honey,” I replied, with a fairly un–Sonny Bono somewhat British accent, “I’d, uh, love to get groovy with you tonight.”

  “This is going to work better if you don’t talk so much, Allison.”

  “Right.”

  Surprisingly, college dances are not all that different from high school dances. The Student Union building was done up in typical Halloween paper cut-outs, and plastic jack-o’-lanterns and mummies had been Scotch-taped onto every surface, making it hard to find someplace to lean. The theme was sort of a “dance” type thing and so someone had somehow hung a whole bunch of disco balls from the ceiling. Little orange and green lights flickered around the room like cat toys as the space started to fill up with costumes. There were zombies and Goths (who probably weren’t even really dressed up) scattered everywhere. The engineers who came (including Hope) were all woodland animals (which seemed to entail a lot of humping demonstrations). A couple drag queens circled the room in glittery dresses and tall patent-leather boots, looking like glamorous storm troopers. A bunch of guys came dressed as condoms (not really ideal for picking up a date, but I guess it sent the right message). Carly and a bunch of people, including what looked like some of the guys from the film society, were the entire cast of Grease.@, c

  It’s not strange that things got a little weird and messy that night. Although how and why they got messy the way they did was a surprise. At some point Shar and I were just awkwardly standing in the doorway. Then someone got us some beer. Then we posed with the Village People. Then we posed with the cast of Grease. Then Shar/Cher and I posed for someone working for the newspaper who wanted a picture of us “as a couple.”

  Shar/Cher grinned. “Ya gonna kiss me, Sonny?”

  I think I grinned back. “You wanna kiss, uh, Cher?”

  I remember leaning in and thinking, Fake kiss. No big deal. Fake kiss.

  I was surgically careful. Edged closer in a series of degrees.

  As our lips met, like someone touching a new baby’s forehead, behind us I could hear whoops and hollers.

  “Sonny. That’s the way you kiss your wife?” Shar smirked as we headed to the bar.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What do you think?”

  Shar/Cher spun around, pressed her finger on my already damp moustache.

  Briefly, time stopped. Shar/Cher’s face came so close to mine I could see the ring of perspiration forming along the coastline where her wig dug into her forehead. Her breath smelled like gum. But she wasn’t chewing gum. Her eyes looked different, less calm, less collected, like there was suddenly something happening behind the layer of her irises.

  I couldn’t say what.

  “There’s nothing wrong with it, Sonny.”

  “What? Yeah. I mean, I know.”

  You can make a person’s heart beat faster for a multitude of reasons, medical, social, sociopathic. What kind of person makes another person’s heart beat faster just for kicks?

  And then disappears?

  Cher/Shar was drinking shots at the bar with the rest of Grease and some vaguely familiar girls dressed up like Playboy bunnies, and then she was gone.

  It took me three songs to realize she wasn’t coming back. Not any time soon anyway.

  I guess I had no right to be pissed off, but I totally was.

  Using my (still unreturned) Jennifer Taylor ID, I ordered another drink. Then I went and sat in the corner with a bunch of stoned-looking dudes who weren’t in costume, where I was approached by a tall dude in black, wearing a pumpkin head and a top hat. A tall dude who appeared somewhat magically out of a disco smoke while the Cure was playing.

  “Greetings and salummmfph.” The pumpkin bowed awkwardly, holding his head up so as not to pitch forward and, presumably, lose his hat. His voice was a muffled chirp hidden within layers of what looked like real pumpkin. “May I mmmmphf as to the mmmphf of your seventies atmmph?”

  “What?”

  Removing the head and replacing the top hat, the familiar boy smiled and sat.

  “Uh. Yes. I was saying, uh, greetings and salutations. You’re in my Social Problems class, I believe. I was asking about your, uh, funky seventie basketball">OHs outfit.

  I was, uh, attempting some random college dance small talk as it were.”

  “I’m supposed to be Sonny. From Sonny and Cher.”

  “Ah yes. ‘I Got You Babe.’ Excellent. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Jonathon.” Dude looked more nervous and out of place than anyone I’d met since arriving at St. Joseph’s, which was both thrilling (because it wasn’t me) and super annoying (because other people’s nervousness, unless they’re good looking, is annoying).

  Jonathon, nervous or not, blabbed on in a stream of weirdly accented talk. “It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance. I suppose I am ‘Pumpkin Head’ for the purposes of this particular event.”

  Disco light danced in the crevices of Jonathon’s pitted skin. Looking at him, I had a moment of memory, a burp of recognition. Social Problems class. RIGHT! This was the guy who’d tripped the basketball player in the hallway the first day of class. An underwhelming St. Joseph’s legend sitting next to me.

  Big hairy deal.

  “Right.”

  “And you? Your name is?”

  “OH. Right. I’m Allison,” I blurted, scanning the room for the non-existent Shar.

  “Pretty interesting spectrum, wouldn’t you say?” Jonathon remarked, following my gaze around the room. “A little bit of nostalgia, a little bit of pop culture minutiae. Possibly a few too many boys dressed as serial killer–type creatures for anyone’s comfort. I believe there’s a Paris Hilton by the bar. And there’s about three fellows dressed as Harry Potter, no surprise.”

  “Sure, whatever.”

  “Feels eerily close to every high school dance you ever went to, though, does it not?” Jonathon tilted his pumpkin head up to peer into its empty triangle eyes. “Although of course every nerd here is praying it’s not … high school.”

  “Sure,” I said again. Who was this dude talking to, anyway? Me, a.k.a. the OTHER nerd in the room?

  A lumberjack ambled over and leaned in my general direction. “HEY! Are you a GIRL?”

  “Yes,” I grumbled.

  “Can I get you a beer?”

  “No.”

  I had a sudden urge to either close my eyes or cry.

  Leaning over, Jonathon sighed. “It’s not that bad is it?”

  “What?”

  “Oh. Nothing. Ah. Are you entirely opposed to the notion of a pint with a stranger? I thought perchance I might offer us up some libation.”

  “Uh. I gotta go.” The night was shitty enough without having to spend it listening to a pumpkin head rambling on in Middle English.

  I headed over to the bar and had another drink.

  Walked around the room, weaving in and out of groups of people standing and shouting at each other.

  My wig was itchy and sweat was starting to trickle down my neck into someone’s Bugs Bunny garbage pail.’ed me a bit, little rivers of salt running across the tender surface of past injuries.

  FUCK Halloween.

  More beer.

  My seventh round at the bar I spotted Shar/Cher on the dance floor. A bunch of guys dressed as cowboys pinged her back and forth between them like a pinball machine.

  Technically, I mumbled to myself, I could just leave. Shar was a big girl who could get home on her own. Cher, of course, had a long and fruitful career without Sonny.

  But then Shar/Cher returned as sudde
nly as she’d left. She crept up behind me and wrapped her arms around my waist. Leaned into me and put her chin on my good shoulder. “You’re watching me,” she blurted into my ear.

  “Um. NO,” I said, spinning around, “I’m not watching you. Where have you been?”

  Shar pressed forward, heavy lips curved up into a grin, eyes bent under the weight of plastic lashes.

  “You’re WATCHING ME. ALWAYS. Right? You like WATCHING me?”

  My body buzzed with alcohol. When I run, sometimes the feeling of having my feet move so fast when my head feels so still makes me dizzy.

  This sensation was not dissimilar.

  “I’m just here with you,” I said aloud.

  “What?”

  “I SAID, I’M JUST—”

  “Hey!” It was Carly in her little leather jacket and jeans, looking very much like a tiny Travolta and very much unlike herself.

  “What can we do for you, Superstar?” Shar slurred, gripping my arm even tighter.

  “I think we’re going to the other party!” Carly shouted at me, ignoring Shar.

  “WHAT?”

  “Are you guys COMING?”

  “NO!” Shar screamed, leaning forward, almost toppling Carly over. “We’re STAYING because THIS party is the BEST!”

  The B-52s came on and there was a rush. Shar pulled my arm and backed into the crowd, all the while shouting at Carly, “BYE, SUPERSTAR!”

  Bodies pogoed around us. It was like being an egg in a pot of boiling water.

  “You want to dance with me, RIGHT? RIGHT Sonny?” Shar’s eyes were completely dilated. Hard dark circles that jittered with the music.

  “Okay!”

  Dropping her body weight onto me, Shar/Cher planted her face by my ear. “I have to tell you something.”

  “What?”

  Pulling back, she yanked me out the other side of the dancing crowd. “Come here.”

  They say that when a person looks at your lips it means they’re about to kiss you. Unless the person is a dentist. As far as I know, this is true. The first time I kissed Anne I’d been staring at her lips for hours, sitting on the couch next to her while we watched soaps. I remember reaching forward and touching Anne’s knee, feeling the tiny prickles of the spots she’d missed shaving. First kiss. Body shaking. basketball">