“All right, all right,” the singer said between songs. “Take care of each other out there. You might’ve heard this next one…‘Take It Back.’”
George and Colleen sat at the back of the crowd, in the kitchen, the boy across the table from them. The racetrack wound in a figure eight on the floor and electric cars sped around under the command of two triggered controls in Jason Becker’s hands.
“He’s so cute,” Colleen said quietly. She pointed at Jason.
The boy looked and smiled.
“Want to go for a walk?” she asked George.
George shook his head. His eyes were on the television across the room.
“I knew you wouldn’t,” she said. “Teddy?” She looked at him.
He shook his head.
“Come on,” she said, standing. “Take me for a walk.” She came around the table and took his hand.
He looked at George.
George made a motion with his head and the boy got up. He felt awkward walking through the crowd with his hand in Colleen’s, so he pulled it free. He followed her outside and around the corner of the apartment complex. She rifled through her purse and came out with a cigarette and a lighter.
“What are you doing?” he said, louder than he had expected to.
“Want one?” she said.
“You’re going to get me killed.”
“I have gum.”
He stayed silent for a moment, looking at her. Colleen’s face didn’t change.
“No thanks,” he said. He walked in small circles while she smoked. He could see the lights of their high school in the distance, but he didn’t want to think about school. Without his father around, he had little energy for his studies. He knew his grades were lagging already this quarter and he knew he would hear about it from his father, but he also knew he wouldn’t have to hear about it for long. His father would be home to bark at him for two or three days and then be gone again for two or three weeks.
“What was it like?” Colleen suddenly said. She took a drag off her cigarette and exhaled. “When that boy died?”
The boy balked and for a moment he was speechless. “I’m not supposed to talk about it,” he finally said.
“How come?” she said.
“There’s an investigation.”
“Could you go to jail?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know,” he told her. “How do you know about it?”
She chuckled. “Everyone knows about it, Ted. Why do you think they’re so interested in you? You’re like their cause.”
The boy stared out into the darkness. He was about to ask for a cigarette when Youth members began streaming out the door behind them. Colleen dropped her cigarette, stepped on it, and exhaled before turning around. George approached them.
“You need to go home,” he told Colleen. “Come on, Ted.”
“What?” she said. “No way.”
“You smell that, Teddy?” George said. “That smell like cigarettes to you?”
“Fine,” she said. She walked over and hastily kissed him on the cheek.
“Good night,” George told her.
At the parking lot, the Youth divided among several cars. The boy found himself in George’s mother’s sedan.
“I don’t think it’s cool,” Peckerhead said.
“This is not about thinking,” George replied. “This is principles.”
“His parents,” Peckerhead said. “They just divorced, for crap sake.”
George didn’t respond.
“I’m not doing this,” Peckerhead said. “Screw this.”
“You don’t have to,” George said. “I just wish you wouldn’t make up excuses.”
“What does that mean?” Peckerhead said.
“You don’t have the stomach for this kind of thing,” George said. “Fine, but don’t make excuses for Dan when they’re really for you.”
“Fuck you,” Peckerhead said.
“Fuck me?” George said. He paused for a moment. “I expect better from you, J.J.”
No one spoke for the rest of the ride. They stopped behind a supermarket not far from their high school. No one else was there. They got out and the boy was glad when George pulled him aside and whispered, “Stay back—let the veterans take care of this.”
Becker’s car arrived shortly. He and Birch climbed out of the front seat and several of the younger guys weaseled out from the backseat. Another car rolled in with another couple of guys. The group mingled about until they had effectively isolated Dan.
In a very formal tone, George said, “You’ve been untrue to us, Daniel.” He paused. “You were drinking at a jock party last weekend.”
“No way,” Dan said.
“Are you calling me a liar?”
“Not you,” Dan said. “Whoever said it.”
“I’m saying it,” George said.
Dan didn’t reply.
“If you come clean, we can begin to forgive you,” George said. “But this, this gets us nowhere.”
“Fuck this,” Dan said.
There was a moment of silence.
George walked back to the crowd.
Two of the younger guys stepped forward and tried to get ahold of Dan’s arms, but he shucked them both. They tried again, and again he shucked them, shoving one in the chest and one with a palm to the face. The two stepped back and Becker moved in. Becker swung and Dan ducked, lurched forward, and got ahold of Becker’s upper body. He heaved Becker off the ground and toppled him to the pavement. With Becker lying on his back, Dan could’ve easily kicked him, but he didn’t—he kept moving, not allowing the group to corner him against the building.
Birch stormed in and dived at Dan’s hips, but Dan sprawled his legs back and forced Birch’s face to the pavement. Dan quickly jumped off him and Birch came up holding his cheek, his pompadour in a mess.
“What the heck?” George said.
“He’s a goddamn wrestler,” Becker said. His palms were scraped and he was trying to brush the sand from the cuts.
“All go at once,” George blurted.
When five of them moved in together, Dan turned and sprinted off. No one followed. The group stood around, speechless in their defeat. A few rubbed at sore spots.
They spent the rest of the night driving around the nearby roads, but Dan was not to be found. At a loss for what to do next, George sent a contingent to Dan’s house. They broke down his mailbox and someone pissed on the door handle of his parents’ car.
9
The first time she called, she asked the boy if he had seen George. When he said no, she said okay and hung up. The second time Colleen called, she said, “You seen George?”
“No,” he said. “I think he’s at the shop.”
“I thought so.”
“Why don’t you call?”
“I don’t want to talk to him,” she said. “What are you doing?”
“Homework. Algebra.”
“I hate math,” she said.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Trying not to smoke cigarettes.”
“You trying to quit?”
“Don’t you ever just want to say, ‘Screw it,’ and get wicked fucked up?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes.”
“We should do it,” she told him. “Just me and you, sneak off and get totally cocked.”
“Yeah. Maybe.”
“You’re afraid of them.”
“The guys?” he said.
“You shouldn’t be,” she said. “I bet you could take any of them.”
“One’s not the problem.”
“You shouldn’t let them tell you what to do.”
“You do.”
“I do it so I can be with George.”
“I do it so I can hang out with them.”
“Why?” she said.
“The politics—I don’t know.”
“I hate that crap the worst,” Colleen said. “They just sit and talk. It’s so boring.”
He laughed.
“What?” she said.
“I’m surprised to hear you say that.”
“I don’t believe in any of their crap,” she said.
“Then why are you with George?”
“I don’t know. The way he talks. He’s smart. He really listens. Sometimes.”
He nodded. “I know what you mean.”
“Listen, I have to go because my mom needs the phone, but you should call me,” she said. “We should do what we talked about.”
He hesitated and she hung up before he could answer.
The third time she called, sometime later in the week, she asked if he’d seen George, he said no, and she asked if she could come over to his house.
“Here?” he said.
“Yeah, I’m bored.”
He’d never invited a girl over and he didn’t know how his mother would react to this. He certainly didn’t know how he could entertain Colleen because what he did know for sure was that his mother would insist upon the two remaining in some supervised space such as the living room or kitchen.
“My mother’s home,” he said.
“We don’t have to stay.”
Her answer relieved him.
“We could go to the mall,” she said. “Let’s go there.”
He agreed, as this solution settled the problem of the mother. But as he hung up the phone he thought of the altogether separate and still unsolved dilemma of George Haney. It didn’t necessarily rest upon him yet, though, for surely if this was merely two friends going to the mall, there was no dilemma.
During the drive, Colleen continued her habit of touching the boy. Her hand reached for him when not busy shifting the manual transmission. She stalled the car at a traffic light just before the mall entrance. “Fucking piece of shit,” she said. Her timing of clutch, stick, and accelerator had yet to be perfected, and often the car bucked in between gears. After restarting the car, she revved the engine and popped the clutch, making the tires spin weakly and scratch at the dry pavement.
Colleen drove around the outskirts of the mall and parked in the back, outside one of the smaller department stores. She looked at the boy, leaned over, and kissed him. It caught him off guard, but the quick kiss didn’t require much—he’d managed to slightly purse his lips before she got to him. She leaned back to her side of the car, smiled, and got out. The dilemma of George Haney had arrived. Inside the mall there were other brief pecks here and there—slight taps of their lips together. Since it was a weekday evening, the mall was nearly empty.
Colleen reached down and squeezed his hand. He squeezed back, but he didn’t look at her. She pulled him through a set of doors, into a back hallway that led to some restrooms. She leaned against a wall and pulled him close. She closed her eyes and cocked her head to the side. He leaned in and pressed his lips to hers. Her mouth opened and he felt her tongue slide between his lips. He opened his mouth and cautiously let his tongue touch hers. She opened and closed her mouth ever so slightly and he did his best to follow her lead. Just when he thought he was getting the hang of it, Colleen opened her eyes and pushed him back.
“You have to close your eyes,” she said.
“Okay.” He leaned in toward her, but her hand kept him at bay.
“I’m not kidding,” she said. “It’s important.”
“All right—I’ll do it.”
They closed their eyes and kissed again. He pressed his body tightly to hers and Colleen did not shy from this friction. With her hands on the small of his back she pulled him tighter. He ran his hands over her breasts, but when he tried to slip his hand under her shirt, she stopped him.
“Nope,” she said. “Sorry. Not here.”
“Someplace else?” he said.
She smiled and shook her head. “You boys are all the same,” she said, straightening her shirt. “Come on.”
The comment confused him. Wasn’t she the one who pulled him back there? And just how many boys was she basing this on? He knew he wasn’t the first—with George and all—or even the second or third. He had heard what the guys said, that she and George often fought over the fact that she had slept with two guys from the punk-rock crowd before they got together.
As they strolled, he began to distance himself from her. Casually at first—he pulled his hand away from hers to yawn or stretch—then he moved out of range of her outstretched arm to look at something in a storefront window. Soon he ran out of polite maneuvers and his remove became obvious. Colleen didn’t wait to respond. She stopped and grabbed his shirt.
“What’s wrong?” She looked up at him with squinting, suspicious eyes. He shrugged at first and tried to turn away but Colleen held on to the handful of his shirt and turned him to face her.
“I don’t know,” he said. This was followed by another jolt to his shirt. “All right,” he said, pulling her hand from its grip on him. “What about George?”
“What about him?”
“Yeah,” he said. “What about him.”
“I was with him—now I’m with you,” she said.
The simplicity of it puzzled him. He doubted it could work out so neatly.
“They’re going to kill me,” he told her.
“It’s not like you stole me,” she said. “Me and George broke up two days ago.”
This news was somewhat settling to the boy and momentarily it did seem as simple as she claimed: She had been with George, and now she was with him.
On the drive home, Colleen insisted on holding his hand, and when that became sweaty she placed her hand high on his thigh.
“Where do we go now?” she said. They were stopped at the traffic light at the end of the exit ramp into town.
“I live that way,” he said, pointing east on the bypass.
“We’re not done yet.” Colleen smiled. She patted his thigh. “Where can we go?”
The only place he could think of was Woodbury Heights.
When the Escort pulled into the culvert at the end of the road, it parked amid charring and scars in the road. Black streaks of squealed tires and unskilled graffiti marred the pavement.
Colleen and the boy kissed and fondled each other for some time. He reached around her waist to the lever that controlled her seat. He pulled at it and leaned into her so that she was nearly flat. Before he could climb atop her, she stopped him, hands up, on his chest.
“We’re not going to have sex,” she said.
“Okay.” He stopped and pulled away.
“Is that why you’re here?” She paused. “Is it?” It was as if her affection had fled and turned to disgust.
“No,” he said. He said nothing else, but seeing Colleen’s unchanging face, he realized that nothing else would not suffice. “I care about you.” He said it because it was the only thing he could think to say—the only thing he could think to say to make her like him again.
“Good,” she said, suddenly smiling. She pulled him down to her so they could continue kissing. He felt a tinge of something, perhaps guilt—shame, maybe—but that feeling was lost when for the second time he slid his hand under her shirt and under her bra and this time she did not stop him. She let him undo the front of her pants and she let him touch her there. He shivered. He tried to ease her pants past her hips but she shook her head. She started to reach into his own trousers when a strange cramp gripped his abdomen. He winced and had to pull away.
“What?” she said.
“I don’t know.”
“What is it?”
“Nothing,” he said. “My stomach’s weird—I don’t know.”
“You’re nervous,” she told him.
He shook his head.
“It’s cute,” she said.
He bent back down to kiss her, but he heard something. Both of their heads jerked upright. A car was coming. He scrambled back toward his seat but he was only halfway there when the car passed. The engine raced and its tires squealed around the turn. He heard hollering over the rumble of the engine and recognized several
of the local metalheads in the half-rusted muscle car. Terry Duvall sat in the front seat with his fist out the open window. Another hand protruded from the backseat, the middle finger raised at them. The boy ducked, fearing that if they saw him they might stop. When the car reached the far side of the culvert, he heard the engine thunder and the tires squeal. It was gone as fast as it had come.
“Jesus,” Colleen said. Her head was crooked down, looking to button her pants. “Such assholes.”
“They’re all right,” he said.
“They’re idiots,” she said.
He shook his head. “I grew up with them.”
“If they’re so great, why don’t you hang out with them?”
The boy shrugged. He looked at her. One of her breasts, the one closer to him, was sandwiched between her raised shirt and her lowered bra. Once she finished with her pants, she dipped two fingers into her bra cup and pulled it out, allowing her breast to settle. Then she pulled her shirt down.
“Why not?” she said.
“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s complicated.”
Colleen sat and stared at him. “Tell me,” she said.
After a moment, he started, “When I was getting questioned about the shooting, I told the cops some stuff that pissed Terry off.”
“Did he get in trouble?”
He shook his head.
“So what’s he mad about?”
“I don’t know. It’s complicated, I told you.”
“It sounds stupid to me.”
“Maybe I don’t care what it sounds like to you.”
“I didn’t mean that you or him were stupid,” she said. “I just meant the reason you guys are fighting seems stupid.”
The boy sat silently, looking out the windshield of the car.
“What happened that day?” Colleen asked him.
“You know what happened. Kevin Dennison shot his brother by accident.”
“I know I know that,” she said. “But what happened?”
“I can’t talk about it, I told you.”
“Because of the investigation?”
He nodded.
“Will you tell me after it’s over?”
“Why is it so important?”
Colleen shrugged. “It just seems important.”
American Youth Page 8
