After Dakota (15 page)

Cameron stands at the mailbox, holding two envelopes, both with identical Berkeley, California addresses on the outside.

Inside envelope #1: A college application for Cameron Andrew Casey. A traditional application essay, addressing an issue of national concern (affordable college education for all). He felt like vomiting as he typed the words.

Inside envelope #2: The same application, a very different essay. The honest one. The one he felt good writing.

The rational side of him knows to send #1. He’s starting to hate that side of him. The fact is, he cannot screw up this chance. Period. Not after all the work, all the hours of studying while his friends goofed off. With that in mind, which face would be best to present: the real one, or the one colleges are probably looking for?

He cannot screw up this chance.

He places an envelope in the mailbox and raises the red metal flag.

Claire dreams she’s on
Fantasy Island
, where the mysterious Mr. Rourke makes wishes come true, only the wishes don’t always turn out how the customer wants. Claire steps off the plane: there are the dancing hula girls, and Mr. Rourke saying, “Smiles, everyone, smiles” in that accent of his.

Claire knows she’s got the perfect fantasy, the one with no loopholes.

She snaps awake in Dakota’s room. Noni sleeps in a gray ball at the end of the bed.

The Vanzants left on vacation a few days ago. Claire came over last night, happy to have a place to escape her family. Their dad and Bryce returned from the mountains after cutting down a Christmas tree, and when they spilled needles all over the floor bringing it inside, guess who got to clean them up? Claire didn’t even want a real tree – she liked the fake white kind that Meredith’s family put up every year.

After pot roast dinner, she, Bryce, and their mom hung tinsel and ornaments; their dad started the fireplace, then sat on the never-used-except-for-company living room couch and watched them, drink in hand. “Dad doesn’t participate, Dad supervises,” was his line any time someone questioned him.

Christmas music played on the stereo, the old records that came out once a year. Bing Sinatra or whatever his name was.

Their mom insisted on hanging the hideous ornaments Claire made in elementary school, the ones with photos of her on the front and
Merry Christmas Mommy and Daddy
in a child’s writing carved into the back.

The log in the fireplace spit and popped.

They were about done and Claire could go hide in her room when her dad said, “Sweetie, why don’t you move that Santa up higher? The branch there looks a little crowded.” He rattled the ice in his glass.

Claire set down the last strand of tinsel, said, “I’m suddenly
so
tired,” and walked out. She stayed in her room until the house went still, then snuck over to the Vanzants’.

She gets up off Dakota’s bed. Noni lifts her ears but otherwise doesn’t move. 4:30 a.m. according to the grandfather clock.

Claire opens the front door to a cold slap in the face. The first snow of the season, the cul-de-sac painted like a postcard village. She zips her jacket and steps out. The world is perfect white silence, glowing unearthly in the moonlight. Maybe this is what nuclear winter will look like: emptiness. She crunches down the driveway, her breath a series of cloudbursts.

She stands still in the exact center of the street as scattered flakes pass her on their way to the ground. Steve and Bo left their porchlight on, the only other sign of life.

“Dakota, it’s snowing!” you call from the living room window. Just the two of you tonight, with your parents at a Christmas party, and Bryce staying over at his friend’s house to play the dragons game.

Dakota has been sitting at the kitchen table since she got here. Sitting, dialing the phone every few minutes and hanging up. You suggest fun things but the reply is “Not right now.”

You close your eyes and ask God to make the snow fall faster, so maybe you can make a snowman that Bryce won’t laugh at. The windowpane chills the tip of your nose.

You open your eyes when Dakota stands behind you. “You think your mom would care if we went for a drive in her car?”

“You have your license already?” you ask.

“Close enough.”

Of course your mom would care. You say, “I think it’s fine.”

You don’t need to ask if you’re going someplace fun – with Dakota, everything is fun. This night has been a hiccup so far, that’s all, and now things are getting back to normal.

The two of you armor up in winter gear, then drive to a Four Hills neighborhood, where all the houses are vined with colorful lights. Dakota parks across from one that has a group of plastic reindeer grazing on the front lawn. She rests her forehead on the steering wheel; you open and close the glove compartment full of maps; snow constellations form on the windshield.

You sit and sit until a black truck pulls into the driveway. When Dakota sinks down in her seat, you do likewise. A man gets out of the truck, so bundled up all you can see is a mustache and glasses. He stamps his feet on the front porch before going inside the house.

“D’you know him?” you whisper.

“He’s nobody important.”

You sit some more without talking. You play with a loose string on your mitten, to keep your teeth from chattering.

“Um, do you think we could turn the heat on?” you ask. “I’m freezing to death.”

Dakota never looks away from the house. “Freezing’s the best way to die, y’know. You fall asleep and never wake up.”

The man appears in the tall window, where he plays with a kid – boy or girl, you can’t see for sure – in diapers.

This night is different from all the others of your life. Not just the driving part, but the way the world feels. Every moment like going super high on a swing so you think you can do the impossible and loop all the way over.

“I’m in trouble,” Dakota says to the window.

“Can I help you?”

“Not unless you have a time machine. Or you know where I can get a lot of money fast.”

You tell her, “I have a hundred and fifty eight dollars in my bank account. You can have it.”

Half a smile. “You’re cute, Claire.” Dakota runs the back of a gloved hand across her eyes. “Wanna know something? Men suck.”

“Steve and Bo don’t,” you say. The new neighbors, who smile and wave, stop to toss a Frisbee or watch bike tricks. They’re also the only people you’ve ever seen who always dress nice, even on weekends, and whose clothes never look wrinkled – like maybe a wizard brought two department store mannequins to life.

“That’s different, they’re homos.”

You’re not entirely clear what the word means. You’ve heard it used before – boys at school call each other that all the time – but have never been sure till that moment it’s a real thing. “I know.”

Dakota unfolds the Swiss Army knife from her pocket, the blade catching a slice of the winter moon. “You’re the lookout, ok?” She runs across the street, crouched low, toward the man’s car before vanishing into shadow. The car sinks corner by corner.

Through the window inside, oblivious, the man lifts the little kid up high and spins him around. A woman watches and claps.

Dakota jumps back in, breathing hard, her nose red. Smiling, if only for the moment. “The blade broke off,” she says, holding up the incomplete knife. “Piece of crap. No wonder the Swiss never fight anybody.”

She honks the horn three long times before driving away.

Back at home, the two of you have coffee cake and root beer. “Tonight is our secret, ok?” Dakota says. “No one else gets to know.”

“I won’t tell.”

“You have to swear.”

“I swear.”

Dakota stares at you for what feels like five minutes, with eyes ringed in smudged mascara. “I trust you, Claire. You’re my favorite girl in the whole world.”

You and Meredith have secrets, but none like this, which seems something altogether more serious, beyond your middle school games. Maybe you and Dakota are best friends now.

Dakota doesn’t smile again that night.

As time passes, you have ideas about the nature of the secret she’s keeping. If it was anyone other than Dakota, there would be a likely explanation – like what supposedly happened to Jeanette Jordan – but you simply can’t picture your neighbor doing something with a guy who has a
mustache
. Disgusting.

Claire sticks her tongue out and catches a snowflake. A car engine from somewhere disturbs the silence momentarily, like a boat crossing calm water. She lies on her back in the street and makes a snow angel.

If she wanted to really disappear, this would be the time. Her footprints would give her away, but if more white comes it will be like she’d never been here.

Like there was never a person named Claire Rollins.

Cameron wakes at 10 a.m. on the first Monday of break, makes two Eggo waffles and tops each with a scoop of chocolate ice cream, then sits down to watch TV. Rosemary left for England yesterday and his plan is not to think about her while she’s gone. Well, not to think about her much. He certainly won’t spend every moment doing so.

Halfway through
The Price is Right
he can’t think about anything else, not even the hot model Janice. He takes the wallet-sized copy of Rosemary’s senior portrait from his desk drawer and stares at it; he could do so all day.

He has to get out of the house.

“Let’s go do something,” he says to Bryce on the phone. “We can see that movie about the killer car.
Christine
.”

“I’m sick.”

“So don’t kiss me, fag. Come on, we’ll go to the arcade too.”

“I can’t, ok? Sorry.”

Cameron still has to get out of the house.

After lunch at Lottaburger, he wanders around Grand Central to kill time. “Yo, bitch!” Geoff shouts in the music section. “I’m here to get a present for my girlfriend. Prolly some jewelry. Chicks dig that.”

Cameron has never heard of this girlfriend before; he wishes Bryce were here for confirmation.

Geoff goes on to explain he also wants Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” tape but doesn’t have enough money for both. “So I may just steal this.” Suddenly everyone likes it since the video with the zombies came out.

“Dude, they have hidden cameras and stuff,” Cameron says.

“You think I can’t beat those?” Geoff laughs. “Just kidding. Or maybe I’m not kidding, maybe I already have the tape stashed in my underwear. Nah, Michael Jackson sucks anyway.”

In the parking lot, where Geoff has somehow followed Cameron out, he says, “So what are we doin’ now?”

The sign at Coronado mall welcomes them to Holiday Wonderland. They’re relegated to parking on the outskirts of the lot, stepping through ice and slush to the entrance. Inside, garlands, giant candy canes, disembodied voices singing Christmas carols. People everywhere, some appearing no more than pairs of legs connected to masses of bags and boxes. Kids bounce in line for Santa Claus, who holds court on his throne under a tinseled gazebo. Plastic reindeer stand watch in puffy cotton.

The songs change from “Winter Wonderland” to “Sleigh Ride” to “Silent Night.”

In the arcade, the boys debate whether Dragon’s Lair, which has real cartoon figures instead of regular graphics, is worth fifty cents per play. Cameron says no, having been burned multiple times already by miscommunication between the joystick and the knight. Geoff says yes, and all his quarters are gone in five minutes.

The movie theater is a big one – two different screens! – and after
Christine
(cool deaths but a disappointing amount of sex), Cameron starts toward the exit in the lobby when Geoff stops him. “Watch and learn.” He walks up to the usher, a college kid in a bowtie and vest, and spins a story about forgetting his wallet in the other auditorium. Cameron looks out toward the lobby so his face won’t be associated with this pathetic lie.

Then they’re walking into
Scarface
without paying anything. “That’s how you do the Obi-Wan Kenobi shit,” Geoff says.

In the dark, Geoff grins and makes weird sounds as Tony Montana dispenses bloody vengeance with a variety of weapons. Cameron slumps low in his seat, convinced the usher is about to burst in with a team of employees. They’ll drag the two lowlifes from the auditorium while the rest of the audience shakes their heads at the state of youth today.

About halfway through the movie, he stops worrying about being busted and gawks in fascination at the couple necking hot and heavy down in front. First, who sits in the front row when the place is mostly empty? And who comes to a movie like
Scarface
to make out? Soon both boys are looking back and forth from the couple to the bloodbath unfolding on the screen. Geoff says, “Come on, baby, go down on him.”

The lights come on the couple is still going at it. “My girlfriend and I do that all the time,” Geoff tells Cameron. The couple stops and stands, realizing they’re not in the dark anymore.

It’s Zaplin.

What nasty girl did he find to…

Claire
.

Cameron thinks he’s not seeing it right. He stops and stares, waiting for the moment when he realizes it’s not them at all and can tell Bryce about the horrifying illusion he conjured.

It’s Zaplin. The apelike walk gives him away. Cameron hurries out after Geoff.

“That was a blast,” Geoff says, back in the Grand Central parking lot. He zips up his jacket against the descending darkness. “Now I’ve gotta go see the missus for a little you-know-what.” Normally Cameron would indeed know what, but he can’t imagine the girl who would date Geoff, or what that couple would do for fun. Is there such a thing as a female ninja?

Cameron plans to drive home and break the news to Bryce, but as he listens to that lame song about turning Japanese, he has a change of heart. He doesn’t think he’d want to know, if he had a sister and his sister was making out with the Spawn of Satan.

The lead story on the news that night is a bomb going off at Harrods department store in London. He can’t remember if Rosemary said anything about shopping there. He sits through speculation about the number of dead or injured, waiting to hear mention of a teenager from Albuquerque. He bites his nails without realizing it.

He knows she’s gone. He looks at her photo again, wonders if he’ll keep it or rip it up when he gets confirmation.

His second chance with Dakota was nothing but a giant tease.

She’s not mentioned in the morning paper. Or the next morning’s, or the next after that. As Cameron makes pizzas, watches TV, listens to music, or pretty much anything else, he marvels at the laughably naïve version of himself who had planned not to think about a certain someone.

As the Emperor said to Luke in
Jedi
, “Young fool, only at the end do you understand.”