After Dakota (20 page)

Whatever happens tonight is ok.

Rosemary has shown no allegiance to Cameron, so why should he have any to her? Their most recent conversation was at the snack bar, when she stood in front of him, Bryce, and Geoff and invited them to a Peace Club demonstration outside Los Alamos National Lab. Cameron hadn’t even gotten his own personal invitation.

He wasn’t sure Anna would remember him from Halloween when he called her on his break at work, but she said, “Hi, Legolas” before he was halfway through reminding her where they’d met.

His first suggestion: “We could go to this party.”

Her reply: “I’m not really into drinking.”

His next suggestion: “We could go for a drive.”

Her reply: “For sure.”

And so they end up with Jack-in-the-Box takeout, his car alone on the roof of an empty parking garage.

Anna isn’t as cute out of costume as he’d hoped – no more than a six, skinny, with half a butt – but she must like him in order to even be here. Plus, he’s never been out with a white-haired girl before.

They chomp their food and fill the time with chitchat about their respective schools, when what he really wants to do is kiss her.

He pounces right as she’s saying, “Hey, I saw a shooting star” so the last word gets swallowed by his eager mouth. She has chocolate shake on her chin, he has curly fry salt on his lips. So what.

Pressed against her. Hand on knee, then thigh. He wants her hand on his crotch. He wants her to give him the signal that they can climb in the back seat. Competing with his near-overwhelming horniness is a voice that doesn’t want his first time to be in his dad’s old car, but that voice is going to lose the argument.

She pulls back. “Can we slow down?”

“Don’t you want to… you know?”

“I think so. But not tonight. Not like this.”

He catches the shake cup before it lands on the upholstery. “Then why did you suggest parking up here?”

“So we could talk and stuff.”

“
Talk
? Wow, chicks love messing with guys.”

“I’m not messing with you, Cameron. I like you. You’re a nice guy.”

He retreats back to the steering wheel. “No, I’m not. Don’t call me that.”

“Sorry,” she says. He thinks she might be crying, but refuses to look over or acknowledge it at all – he’s had enough of that to last from now all the way through college. Perhaps even longer.

“I should’ve gone to the party,” he says.

Which is what he does, after dropping her off at the curb outside her apartment building.

Cameron will remember the following from his next stop:

Walking into Zane Johnston’s house.

The crowd mostly Preppies.

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers on the stereo.

The shouts of “Pizza Man!”

Some girl’s cleavage (but not her face) holding the tray of Dixie cups filled with blue Jell-O.

That the first one tasted good.

And the next.

The rest of it, when his eyes creak open the next morning, is an eclipse. Still in his clothes and one shoe. Atop his bedspread are a banana peel, his toothbrush, and two books –
Splinter of the Mind’s Eye
and
Salem’s Lot
. He has no clue how any of those items got there.

At least he didn’t dream last night.

He’s in the process of willing himself back into unconsciousness when his mom knocks on the door. “What happened to you?” she asks from the hall.

The $64,000 Question.

“What d’you mean?” he groans.

“Your car is parked halfway on the lawn. Please tell me you weren’t drinking and driving.”

“I wasn’t drinking and driving. I got food poisoning and I had to run inside.” Amazing how fast the lie comes.

“That explains the vomit on the walkway.”

“Right. Yeah. I’ll get that cleaned up.”

“Already done. I couldn’t leave that out there – what would the neighbors think?” Thankfully she isn’t a concerned parent at moments like this. “Well, you know where the Pepto is. I’m off to the clutter seminar with Jillian.”

“The what?”

“They talk about how to cut down on things you own. I may have too much.”

“Better not tell them you have to keep a rack of clothes in the garage since your closet’s full.”

“Maybe I’ll make a real New Year’s resolution, to focus only on the important stuff in life and ek cetera.”

He has peace and quiet again just as a slice of sunshine comes in under the curtain, onto half his face. He can’t make the effort to do anything about it.

Maybe he didn’t drive home last night. Maybe someone trustworthy… Nope.

When the sun wheels right and warms his whole face, he sits up. His head full of hot cement, his mouth sticky and terrible. Latin, Government, and math homework await him today.

The phone is right there, easy reach from the bed. He could call Anna. Try to salvage things. But he doesn’t want to salvage things.

He swipes at the curtain but only knocks the Red Baron Fokker model plane off the windowsill. It can stay down behind the headboard – it was never that good of glue job anyway.

He stands, only to find his pants down around his ankles.

He takes the British Spitfire off the bookshelf. The P-47D Razorback. F-16. DC-9. He stands on his chair, yanking down the planes that dangle from the ceiling. Reaching for the last one – the Cessna 180 sportplane – he loses his balance and lands half on his knees, half on his bed.

“Shit!”

Rather than move the chair and try again, he uses his Legolas bow to swat at it like a pinata, until the cheap bow breaks in half as the jet flies loose and crashes against the wall.

Down comes the case full of lead figurines; some spill out, like jumpers from a sinking ship. He leaves them to drown on the floor.

In his desk drawer, his old schoolwork – essays, reports, art, all get crammed into the wastebasket. The birthday advice letter –
Two aspirin before bed after a night of drinking
– gets crumpled into a ball.

No, he doesn’t want to salvage anything. He wants to burn it all down.

After the first dozen roses run out, with only five sent to girls before the remainder fall apart and have to be disposed of, Bryce turns to carnations. He’s heard his whole life it’s the thought that counts, so a pretty, nice-smelling carnation will be an equally effective message as those overpriced roses.

The day of his dad’s Super Bowl party, Bryce and Cam strategize in the basement. Hooting and hollering for the Oakland Raiders comes through loud and clear from upstairs. Bryce’s mom prepared food all day, then drove away five minutes before the guests arrived.

“Come on, Ref! Pull yer head outta yer ass!” someone bellows.

The pattern that’s developed is for the flower recipient to ignore Bryce, for him to only know she got his message when he overhears people in the halls or the snack bar line (or when they look his way and whisper).

In the basement, Cam helps assemble the next list of targets. Bryce says a name, such as: “Maggie Reynolds.”

And Cam says: “Boyfriend. That guy who fell off the skateboard and broke his arm. I think his name’s Ira.”

So Bryce moves on to another name, like: “Kelsey Andrews.”

“Mustache. If you care about that kind of thing.”

Bryce does care about that kind of thing, so he puts Kelsey down as a maybe. “Veronica Daskalos.”

“I heard she has crabs. You sure you want to keep doing this flower thing? People at school will – ”

“YES, I’m sure!” Bryce stabs himself in the finger with his pencil. Great, potential lead poisoning on top of everything else.

“Ok! Down, boy. I only meant, what’s your big hurry all of a sudden?”

“I… wanna go to prom this year. This is the last chance, right? I need a date in order for that to happen.”

“I guess.”

“So who’s the next name?”

After the Super Bowl is over and Cam has gone home to continue being a perfect student, Bryce sits at the drawing table and looks back through the pages of his sketchbooks, a forest worth of paper. Surely there’s some material in here he can use as a sample for his art school applications. Most of them are filled with a mishmash of pieces: superheroes; medieval weapons; three months’ worth of his daily “Family Circus” cartoon, starring his own family (with such troubles as little Claire losing her stuffed animal; his mom and dad trying to have some peaceful time in bed on Christmas morning).

Then his “real” art, from all the classes his mom had chauffeured him to over the years: charcoal drawings of flower vases and pieces of fruit; pastel landscapes; rough sketches of models (none of them nude, alas).

Between two pages is the first place certificate for the yearbook cover contest freshman year. He’d drawn Snoopy and Woodstock wearing school T-shirts under leather jackets, like Fonzie. At the ceremony in the school gymnasium, every eye on campus watched this miniature freshman step up to the microphone. Mrs. Lujan, the principal at the time, said, “Do you have any advice for aspiring artists who might enter next year?”

Bryce looked only at the floor for several agonizing seconds, waiting for her to tilt the mic down toward his mouth. Like Black Bolt, silent leader of the Inhumans, who could topple mountains with a single syllable, Bryce’s voice was about to be the most important one on the whole campus. This was his moment.

Finally, Mrs. Lujan repeated the question and he replied, “Um, not really.”

Moment over. No mountains toppled.

Polite applause, followed by a shout of “Yeah, Bryce!” When he looked up toward the voice, Dakota and some friends in the rafters stood and clapped over their heads; she put two fingers in her mouth and let rip a banshee whistle.

Maybe the moment to broach the art school idea to his parents would’ve been right after he won the contest, when it seemed like everyone was smiling non-stop and they took him out to Godfather’s Pizza to celebrate.

While there are a few pieces in the sketchbooks he wouldn’t mind attaching his name to, he clearly needs more to be considered a serious artist. He sharpens one of his fancy pencils and starts working. Gone is the doubt about whether or not he’s good enough to get into a school. There is no more time for doubt.

In Ricky’s bedroom, he’s finished loading his pipe with brand new weed when his mom comes in the front door.

“Fuck a duck.” He hands Claire the pipe and guides her into his closet. “I’ll get rid of her fast,” he says, shutting the door. She kneels under his coats. His mom’s voice in the bedroom now. Claire’s only seen her from a distance: short hair, broad shoulders.

“Guess what came in the mail today?”

“The giant check from Publisher’s Clearing House,” Ricky replies from the direction of his bed.

“Don’t be smart – it’s your report card. Now take those headphones off and listen, please. Did you know you have two
F
’s and two
D
’s?”

“Yes.”

“Are you bothered by this?”

“No.”

“Don’t just answer yes or no when someone’s trying to have a conversation with you. You’re a smart kid – four bad grades out of five classes is nothing to be proud of.”

“I didn’t say I’m proud.”

The smell of the pipe fills the warm closet, like sitting in a greenhouse.

“I don’t know if you still have this cockamamie New York notion or whether you’ve moved on to some new idea, but none of it will matter if you’re held back a year. Do you want to end up like your father, working in a gas station the rest of your life?”

From there, the volume gets louder. Claire’s heard Ricky yell before (usually at other drivers), but not like this. His mom matches him decibel for decibel. There’s a threat about him not being able to go to the KISS concert, and then something crashes.

“WILL YOU LEAVE?” he screams. Silence. He opens the closet so suddenly Claire jumps and almost spills the pipe. “Come on, we’re outta here.”

She steps over the smashed remains of his Walkman near the wall.

He drives fast, maybe expecting his mom to pursue him and continue the argument. Claire looks out the window without talking as they pass the deserted Putt-Putt mini golf. She wishes they’d smoked before leaving.

“I wish we could keep going,” Ricky finally says. “Couple thousand miles from here to New York, maybe thirty-two hours’ driving.”

She pictures it on the map. A new place. A chance to write their story from scratch. They could be whoever they want to.

“I can’t go right now anyway,” he says. “I promised my uncle I’d finish high school.”

He drives out to Tramway, to a castle of mountains under a purple and orange creampuff sky, pulls off the road onto a dirt crescent. Claire takes out her camera; Mr. Duran has been on them to look closer at nature instead of filling rolls of film with their friends’ mugging faces.

She and Ricky climb over the rocks at the mountain base. Those mountains that, when Claire was little, she was convinced would topple forward and flatten all the houses in their path. She takes pictures of a cactus. A beer bottle. A bluetail lizard skitters by and Ricky grabs for it, holding it up triumphantly by the tail.

“Don’t move!” Claire says as she adjusts her lens for a close-up. But before she can click, the tail breaks off and the lizard slaps to the ground before disappearing behind a rock.

“Where’s your uncle live?” she asks after they sit on a flat-topped boulder, the warmth coming through her jeans like being atop a running dryer. Ricky lights a cigarette. Sun glares off his mirror lenses.

“On a farm out by Truth or Consequences. When I was a kid he used to let me drive his tractor, ride his horses, all that stuff. That was before my mom ruined our family.”

“So why did you promise him you’d graduate?”

“Him and my dad never did, and their dad never did. He thinks that getting a diploma means I’m better than them.” He shields his eyes to watch a buzzard float high above them. Claire sights it with her camera but the glare makes the picture impossible. “Uncle Rob’s blind. They went swimming when they were kids and he got some shit in his eyes, like actual shit in the pool. He lost one eye right away and had to wear a patch in school. Now his other one’s gone bad too, can’t even see himself in a mirror anymore. I guess pools weren’t all safe back then.”

“That sucks.”

“My mom says my dad has some kinda guilt because he was in the same pool and nothing happened, that that’s why we stopped going to visit. But she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Anyways, I’m gonna drive out to the farm the day after graduation and let him hold the diploma.”

Another lizard, this one with tail intact, zooms by before Claire can aim. Ricky throws the cigarette butt over his shoulder.

Claire isn’t sure if she’s ever mentioned Dakota to Ricky before, but either way she tells him the story of the plane crash, pausing only to cover her face when the wind coats them with a wave of dust, a lone tumbleweed chasing behind.

“I keep hoping she’ll come walking up the street one day, like it was all a mix-up, some other girl who looked like her.”

“See what I’m saying? Look around at this messed up world and tell me you seriously think there’s a God in charge,” Ricky says. “And if there is, He must be a real asshole.” He shoots a middle finger toward the sky.

Claire watches the clouds merge over the sinking sun. Golden light pokes through like it would on a poster accompanied by a Bible verse.

“They say it’s all part of His plan,” she says.

“Use your brain, Claire. All those lemmings say that because they’re scared and they want someone else to be the boss of them. Why d’you think they invented Heaven? Anyone can die anytime and it doesn’t matter – your friend, my Uncle Rob, you, me.”

“What d’you think happens to us after that?”

“Nothing! That’s why you gotta have as much fun as you can. What if you got hit by a bus tomorrow?”

“Then why go to school even? Why not just do what you want all the time?”

“Now you’re getting it.”

They stare off at the horizon; Ricky smokes again. Sit still long enough out here and you can feel the turning of the earth.

Later, when he drops her off around the corner from home, a sad, limp Christmas tree lies next to the garbage can in front of the Batsons’.