A bunch of people were sitting on the floor, lounging on cushions and rolled-up blankets. The stereo was embedded in the wall. A little tray poked out of it, propping up a pink iPod stickered with fake diamonds.
A guy with an eyebrow ring lounged on the floor below it. “You mind if I change this?” I asked him.
“Go ahead, s’not like I’m the DJ.”
I put in the CD and switched the music. Nobody seemed to care.
I don’t know what I was expecting to hear. The music Dave Mizra usually brought over was fast and upbeat, but this was different. This was a dirge, something you might hear at a funeral. It started with a piano, playing a sad, slow melody in a profoundly minor key. Here and there, the piano was complemented by a few plucks on something with strings, a cello maybe.
“This?” said the guy with the eyebrow ring. “This is what you wanted to put on?”
I nodded weakly and the music changed. It blossomed and swelled. It was still a funeral march, but it had gone from the burial of somebody old and decrepit to the death of an acrobat or a clown. Maybe the death of a whole circus. It was the same sad melody, only with trumpets and drums and a wheeze of accordions. That was when everyone in the room shut up. But it wasn’t because of the music. No, everyone was staring at me like I was a freak because of the voice.
Imagine a set of vocal cords pickled in whiskey for twenty years, then smoked over coals for another ten. Got that? Good. Now scrub what’s left with sandpaper. That’s Shain Cope. Imagine that voice—singing.
He heard there’s rain in Paris
Gotta wonder if she’s there
She always looked her prettiest
With drizzle in her hair
The sky’s got nothing in it
Just the flapping of the crows
The sun’s as bright as—
“What the hell?!”
Guess who it was, swearing at me from the patio doors. (A hint: she wasn’t wearing a red bikini.) I hit the Stop button on the stereo and the room went horribly and embarrassingly silent. Meanwhile, Christina Muñoz was striding across the room and—even sans bikini—she looked hot. And, yes, I know they teach us that boys-slash-men aren’t supposed to objectify women’s bodies, and that makeup is a tool of oppression, and that high heels murder your calves, but when you see Christina Muñoz coming toward you, it’s easy to forget everything you learned in social studies.
“Who said you could touch my iPod?”
“It’s yours?”
“Uh, yes.”
“There was a guy in the kitchen. He told me to put this on.”
“You always do what people tell you?”
“No. But … the guy had cool glasses.”
Christina laughed, but not in the way I’d hoped. Not in a nice way. I don’t think she got that it was a joke.
“His beard was pretty cool, too.”
“Oh, I get it. You’re high.”
We were on track to set the record for Longest Conversation Ever with Christina Muñoz. Sadly, it wasn’t going well.
“Actually, I’m not, I was just—”
“Okay, well, no offense, but whatever you put on just now? It sucked.”
“Oh.”
“This what you were playing?” She grabbed the CD case out of my hand, squinted at it for a second, and then said, “Ew! ” She jammed the case into my chest, pushed past me, and put her iPod back in charge of the music. She even scrolled back a couple songs, obviously to make sure we didn’t miss anything.
“There, that’s better.”
“Uh, Christina?”
She responded with a How-do-you-know-my-name? slash Have-you-been-stalking-me? face.
“For a couple years, didn’t we go to the same junior high?” I asked this like it had suddenly just occurred to me, and, to add to the lameness of the question, I actually stuck out my arm as if to shake hands. “Nice to see you again.”
Christina stared at my rigid palm like it was a disease. “You want to shake my hand ?”
I went limp from the shoulder down. “No! I mean, we don’t have to.”
“I know we don’t.”
At this point, Devon Whitney came out of the kitchen, coolly inserting himself into the awkwardness of the conversation.
“Hey, babe,” he said (not to me). “What’s going on?”
Babe. Bold move.
“This guy put on, like, music from hell.”
Devon wagged his finger in my face. “Don’t mess with a girl’s music.”
Thanks, Devon. Maybe you could’ve dropped that advice back in the kitchen. I was just about to say something to this effect when Devon Whitney did something appalling. Something horrifying. He put his arm around Christina’s waist.
“’Specially my girl’s. She’s fierce!”
“Your girl?”
“We hooked up this week.” He said it like it was the easiest thing in the world. He didn’t even bother to look at me as he spoke. He was gazing out through the big living room windows, the ones overlooking the patio. “Anybody in the pool yet?”
Christina nodded. “A couple people.”
“Let’s go, then. You brought your bikini, right?”
“Uh-huh,” Christina told him, smiling as bright as a holiday in the tropics. “My red one.”
21
Names with Z
So it turned out Devon Whitney was faster than me, both on and off the track. I didn’t feel like moping back into the kitchen to tell Calen. So I decided to take a walk.
Out back, I deliberately ignored the people splashing in the pool. Topher’s property was massive. There were several paths leading away from the patio. I chose one at random. It wound through a few curves between some hedges before leading to a small gazebo. A dim light under a metal shade hung down from the center of the roof, giving off a gentle, smoky glow.
Someone sat alone on the bench. It was a girl in a red pleated skirt, high-laced boots, and a black camisole that showed off long, willowy arms. She had a book in her lap, so her head was cast down. Even so, I knew who she was by her hair: blonde, pink, and purple dreadlocks.
“I know you,” I blurted.
She looked up quickly, as if I’d startled her, and her eyes hardened. She looked tense. “You think? From where?”
I wanted to answer, but I couldn’t. I was too struck by her face. Her face was gorgeous. She wasn’t “hot,” not like the girl I had just lost to Devon. This girl was more like movie-star gorgeous, the kind of face you don’t believe exists, not in real life, and certainly not in a gazebo out behind Topher Briggs’s house. But here she was.
“Hello? ” She waved her hand. “You slow or something?”
“Sorry, what was the question again?”
She sighed, but her body remained rigid. “From where? Where is it you think you know me from?”
I put one foot on the bottom step of the gazebo. It creaked softly. I could see her face clearly now. Her skin was pale and her lips were thick, curved down slightly in the corners. It could have turned her face into a frown, or made it fish-like, but it did neither. It was because of her eyes. You barely noticed her mouth because her eyes were so bright. They caught so much light, everything else went dim.
“I saw you. I work at a laundromat on Steinway. The Sit ’n’ Spin. You walked past the window.”
She seemed relieved. “Oh, yeah, I know that place. I play across the street sometimes.”
“That’s a crazy instrument you have.”
She nodded vaguely. I expected her to elaborate, but she didn’t. “What is it with grass?”
“Grass?”
“I was just thinking about it. Like, why? Why grass?”
“Are you talking about marijuana?”
She laughed—she threw her head back and let out one sharp whoop. “HA! Grass? Where are we
, 1972? The least you could do is say weed. Or chronic. Ganja. Doobs. Skunk, kif, boom.” The words sounded like sound effects in a video game. “Not even my dad says grass.”
She closed her book and pointed over the railing, to the shadowy yard that stretched on forever. “I mean actual grass. It’s boring. Just look: you have this big house, you have all this property, you obviously have shitloads of money, and what do you do? You cover your property with the most boring plant in the world.” She took her beer off the railing and took a long swallow. “If I had a lawn—which I don’t—but if I did, I’d plant something good. Something interesting. You ever seen a shell flower?”
I shook my head.
“They have these really long stems, all crowded with leaves like little green seashells. They remind me of the ocean—and they also happen to be good luck.” She turned her shining eyes to me. “What would you plant?”
“Never thought about it.” I took another step up the stairs. “But now that I am, I guess you’re right. Grass is kind of boring.”
“I hate anything boring.”
“Venus flytraps,” I said with a certain authority.
She smiled. “Definitely not boring.”
I was on the gazebo with her now. Her dreadlocks were tidier than I expected. There was style and precision to them, as if they were the work of a salon. Something about that surprised me.
“I like your hair,” I told her, maybe to explain why I was staring.
She took one dyed-purple dread and held the tip in front of her face. “I have a confession to make.”
“You do?”
“I know you too.”
“What do you mean?”
“It was you who just tried to put on some decent music for once. Wasn’t it?”
“Were you inside just now? I didn’t see you.”
“I was by the pool. I heard through the windows. I love Shain Cope.”
I nodded, trying once again to appear knowledgeable. “He’s great.”
She frowned. “Too bad the skank made you turn it off.”
I laughed.
“What’s funny?”
“The skank. She’s sort of the reason I came tonight. My friend told me she was single, and I thought—well, let’s just say my friend was wrong.”
For a second she looked disappointed (or so I hoped). Then she shrugged, turning back to the boring grass. “Guess I can see why you’d like her.”
With her head turned, I could take in her profile. The sharp line of her jaw, the smoothness of her forehead, the thin tendon that ran up the side of her neck.
“I’m not sure I do anymore,” I said.
“Because she’s taken?”
“No. I think I finally realized … she’s not for me.”
“Here’s what I know,” she said, still gazing at the grass. “If you shaved that girl’s head, she’d look terrible.”
“Please don’t tell me you scalp people over their choice of music.”
She laughed. “No! I just think you can tell the most beautiful girls if you imagine them bald. If you can do that—and if they still look good—then yes, they’re the real deal.”
I tried to imagine Christina Muñoz without any hair. I couldn’t.
“So … ” I said, not knowing where to go next. I thought about her playing across the street. “Do you know Dave Mizra?”
“Nope,” she said, shrugging. “I asked him if it was okay to play my rattler on that corner and he said it was cool.”
“Your rattler?”
“The rood rattler. That’s what I call it.”
“What’s so rude about it?”
She laughed. “Not rude as in ‘you forgot to say please.’ I mean rood. R-o-o-d. It’s a totally different word.”
“What does it mean?”
“You know the giant cross they put up behind the altar in a church? That’s called a rood.”
“I’m not really religious.”
“Me neither. I just think it’s a cool name and it fits, you know? Rood rattler. Just because of the shape.”
A little pocket of silence fell between us. I went right up to the bench and leaned against the railing. Our legs were almost touching.
“Dave Mizra,” I said. “The guy who runs the jewelry shop—he’s really into your music.”
When she heard this, she grinned. “He is?”
“He told me you were his angel.”
“Angel?” She laughed, but not like before. This time it was a quiet, nervous laugh. “Trust me, I’m nothing like an angel.”
You look like one to me, I thought. Which—unfortunately—is when Calen came crashing up the path, clomping right up on the gazebo with us.
“Kaz! Dude! ” he panted. “What’re you doing out here? I looked everywhere! You goootta come see this!”
“I was sort of in the middle of a conversation?”
Calen’s eyes shifted to the girl on the bench. I could see him trying to make sense of her, trying to figure out who she was. “You guys neighbors in Evandale or something?”
The girl shook her head. “We just met.”
“Okay, well, I’m sorry to interrupt, but this is serious.” He grabbed hold of my arm. “You have to come see this. Like, right now.”
“See what?”
“Toph bet some guy a hundred bucks he could light a twelve-inch blue angel!”
I looked at the girl on the bench. “That’s funny. We were just talking about angels.”
She rolled her eyes at me, but in a nice way. She was smiling. Calen didn’t really care. “Are you coming or what?”
Still looking at the girl, I said, “You wanna?”
“Sure, why not.” She stood up and linked her arm in mine.
Calen’s face went all twisted. “Sorry, Topher said no girls.”
Instantly, our arms came unhooked.
“I’ll be right back,” I told her. “I’m Kaz, by the way.”
She looked at me intently. “Like K-A-Z?”
“Yeah.”
“Cool. I start where you stop.”
“What?”
“K-A-Z. All the best names have a Z in them.”
“You think?”
“Of course,” she said. “My name’s Zoey.”
22
The Inherent Danger of Placing
an Open Flame between Your Legs
A blue angel describes the action of farting as hard as you can while trying to light your ass-gas on fire. Just so we’re clear on this. It also explains why the “angel” in question is blue. Ass-gas has methane and hydrogen in it, so the resulting flame would resemble (theoretically, and somewhat disturbingly) something you would cook with on a gas stove.
I say theoretically because truly robust blue angels are rare. When we were kids, Calen and I tried many times to light our farts on fire. Sometimes we lied to each other for encouragement, claiming we saw a purplish flicker, a little cherubic spark, but more often than not all we succeeded in doing was singeing our fingertips when the match burned down.
A twelve-inch blue angel? No, Calen and I were fairly certain that was impossible.
To get to Topher’s room, you had to crawl under the spider’s web of masking tape, the skulls, the crossbones, the KEEP OUTs and the FUCK OFFs.
His bedroom was a palace. Even crowded with a bunch of guys, you couldn’t miss the king-sized bed, the massive flat-screen bolted to the wall, the separate cabinets for each of the Big Three game consoles—along with a copy of every game you could think of. To top it all off, the end of the room was dominated by a huge aquarium full of monstrous tropical fish.
When we walked in, however, we didn’t notice any of it. That’s because Topher was sitting on the edge of his bed, dead drunk and naked from the waist down. He had his legs splayed wide with his
unit lumped on the covers, pink and greasy.
“Shit,” said Calen. “I don’t need to see that!”
“He’s really gonna do it,” I said.
To my surprise, Becky was standing in the corner of the room.
“Hey, Kaz,” she said, with a slightly subdued but still perky wave.
“I thought it was ‘guys only,’ ” I said.
“You can’t count Becky,” Calen reminded me. “It’s not like it’s anything she hasn’t seen before.”
“A hundred bucks,” someone said.
“You sure you wanna do this?” asked somebody else.
“Shut up,” Topher told the room. He held up a Zippo lighter in one hand and a ruler in the other. He shut his eyes for a moment, and after a little concentration, he said, “Okay, I think I got one.”
He lowered the ruler and the lighter between his legs and started trying to get a flame. The lighter sparked and sparked, and finally, after a bunch of tries, it lit up with a wavering yellow flame.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
The voice came from a girl, but it wasn’t Becky. I turned around and there was Zoey.
“You’ll blow your ass off,” she said.
Topher was so startled he dropped the lighter.
“Shit-shit-shit-shit!” He scrambled to cover his exposed crotch with a pillow. “What the fuck?! I said no girls!”
“Yeah, I know,” said Zoey, discreetly averting her eyes, “but I figured you wouldn’t mind if I was saving your life.”
Topher looked at her like she was crazy. “What are you talking about?”
“Think about it. If you light a fart on fire, you can be sure as shit—no pun intended—that it’ll burn faster than you can contract your ass muscles.”
“What does that even mean?”
“It means the flame’ll sear right up your asshole and burn the shit out of you. Literally.”
Topher sat there for a moment. “Really? Is that true?”
Zoey laughed at him. “There’s one way to find out, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“You gonna do it or what?” someone asked him. It was the guy with the eyebrow ring, from the living room floor. “If not, you owe me a hundred bucks.”
Blues for Zoey Page 5
