After Dakota (22 page)

Bryce’s eighteenth (and final?) birthday dinner at the Japanese Kitchen is nice enough – other than his continuing failure with chopsticks – capped off by a cup of ice cream with a candle, and a birthday song by the waiters than involves a lot of clapping and yelling. The real celebration, the part to which he’s been counting down the days, comes after that, when he and Cam drive downtown.

Bryce’s first question upon Cam getting into the Dodge, the same first question as every day now: “Gotten laid yet?”

And the same answer: “You’ll be the third to know.”

Cam has Saturday night off both from work and from his new girlfriend just for this. Geoff had his birthday before any of them, which he celebrated by getting a Japanese letter tattooed on his arm. Tonight he’s not available because he’s working backstage at the school play, the musical
Anything Goes
(or, as he refers to it, “Everything Blows.”)

“Two tickets, please,” Cam says to the man at the theater window, like it’s a regular theater. Maybe the rules are different here.

Above them on the marquee:

XXX

ADULTS ONLY

The man sets down a paperback book, looks up at them through thick glasses. “Show me some ID, gents.” They slide their driver’s licenses through the window slot with pride.

A huge ass.

It takes Bryce a moment to realize what’s filling the movie screen, for the image to go from a fleshy canvas to something recognizable. A woman screams over the speakers. The boys stand at the back, eyes adjusting to the darkness. The theater is sparsely populated; single heads dot the landscape with a wide berth of seats between each of them. Cam and Bryce don’t want to the be the only “couple” in the place, so they find a row as far back as they can and sit with one seat separating them.

Bryce has seen clips before, brief, tantalizing images in magazines and at Trevor’s house on the adult channels (which occasionally come in for a few minutes). Once they got the sounds of sex on TV but only a rolling field of static for imagery; they still sat mesmerized for half an hour. Now there’s no static, no worry about the channel cutting out, no worry about a parent walking in. This is the real world: women who want it and aren’t afraid to say so, men ready to give it to them.

They watch
Summer Camp Girls
(which bears little resemblance to any camp Bryce has ever attended) and
Sexcalibur
. Some of the other heads in the audience leave and new ones appear. One head a few rows directly in front of them goes down horizontally and never comes back up, like the guy fell asleep or died.

After the movies they stop at 7-11 and browse the porno magazines behind the counter. The half-awake clerk hands over two copies –
Penthouse
and
Oui
– and the birthday boys are on their way.

They open the magazines in the car before even driving away from the store. “‘Dear Penthouse Forum
,
’” Cam reads, “‘I never thought this could happen to me…’” The story: the guy’s car broke down in front of a farm, he went to the door to ask for help and who should answer but the big-chested daughter, alone and horny while her parents were away. Cam and Bryce shift uncomfortably as their bodies threaten to betray them. If Bryce is the unluckiest son of a bitch in the universe, whoever wrote that letter is the opposite.

Bryce flips through his
Oui
in bed that night, racing through each page, image overload. Beautiful parts and beautiful faces stare back. Monique. Yaffa. Irina.

His fingers touching these pictures. His eyes.

Yes, you’d be a perfect girlfriend. So would you. I can have you all? Yes, please.

Yes. Yes. Yes
.

He feels that the lump is still there but it doesn’t matter right now.

Best birthday ever.

Rosemary stands in front of Mrs. Gordon’s classroom for her poem presentation. She’s been too nervous to even practice in front of Cameron.

Before falling asleep at night, in the shower, driving to school, while bored in class: these are times Cameron spends building imaginary worlds, population: the two of them. The first thing he needs to work on is convincing her to stay in the U.S. after graduation. She’d have to attend community college since she hasn’t applied anywhere here. Not a problem – he’ll go to UNM until they can transfer somewhere out of state. Together, of course.

The next option is him going to school in England. This will show her how dedicated he is – not many guys would be willing to do that. Unless British schools have some bias against Americans, like you have to wait until literally no English person wants to get in before they’ll consider you.

Which leads to the compromise of him going to school on the East Coast. He doesn’t know how long the flight is from, say, Duke University to London, but a lot shorter than from the West Coast. Maybe only a couple hours. They could fly every weekend, or every other, show each other their cities. He’ll need to save a shitload of money for all that airfare.

A more quickly achievable, local goal is to be an official
couple
. His friends know about them – Geoff makes comments about someone being pussy whipped anytime Cameron spends a lunchtime in Mr. Hagen’s room for the Peace Club meeting – but it would be better if word got around campus. Cameron dating someone in Katrina Kingsley’s circle would be a big deal.

“I wish you’d let me meet your parents,” Cameron said to her at Putt-Putt mini golf, as she tried to hit the ball past the blades of a spinning windmill.

“No, you don’t.”

He knew when he heard it not to ask again.

Look at her. Hair clipped, feet crossed. He could listen to her read the phone book in that accent. The accent’s even cute during those late night calls, when her voice shakes with frustration recounting the latest political argument at home (the labor unions or sucking up to Reagan or a dozen others).

Applause. He watches his future wife walk toward him and sit down. Whoa. Yes, he just thought that. Future. Wife. He will do anything to make her happy. He will follow her anywhere. His past relationships suddenly seem like nothing. Less than nothing. The certainty settles on him like cement drying.

Dan McAllister goes up next to butcher a poem by Yeats. Cameron vaguely registers Mrs. Gordon making him take off his baseball cap before starting, but otherwise isn’t paying attention at all.

Claire finishes putting on her makeup in the school bathroom, then punches the two pills from their plastic shell and swallows them with a palmful of water. Maybe they’re from Ricky’s house, maybe they’re ones she stole from the pharmacy’s cold & allergy section. Claire likes this feeling, the way events seem to happen around her rather than to her, like she’s not really present. Like she could almost sink through the skin of the world.

In English, before the effects kick in, the class takes one of the ridiculous vocabulary quizzes Claire has aced all year.

Zephyr
. Noun. A gentle breeze.

Indigenous
. Adjective.

Sammy at the next desk chomps on her nails between answers, as if any of this is difficult. Claire realizes she hasn’t kept her own nails up – look at the shredded blue paint left over from who knows when.

Mr. Knight has worn a Hawaiian shirt to Algebra every day this year so far. Claire doesn’t even notice them anymore, except for today when the colors swirl and bleed together like he’s dressed in a living painting.

In P.E., the class divides into two lines facing each other on the grass, then proceeds to kick soccer balls back and forth for the next thirty minutes. Claire remembers something about soccer trophies but can’t pin it down. Kick…kick…kick, watch the black and white spin across the green.

Isabel is absent in Social Studies, or maybe Claire has crossed into a reality where Isabel doesn’t exist. The thought of this makes her smile the whole period, not much aware of whatever else transpires.

Mr. Hagen asks her to stay behind after class. “I miss the Claire from first semester,” he says from his podium when they’re alone. “The one I could count on to participate every day, to always have her hand up.”

“Maybe I don’t have much to say anymore,” she says.

“I hope you haven’t let certain people intimidate you in here.”

She shakes her head. She should be treasuring this moment of aloneness with him, when he doesn’t have to act like a teacher.

“Anytime you need to talk, I’m here. Ok?”

She nods.

“About anything.”

She keeps nodding. All she wants to do is get to safety.

On the way back from Taco Bell at lunch, Claire takes two more pills, then a hit of pot when the guys pass the pipe around. Because why not.

Mr. Duran sends partners out to take photos of something, showing the use of something. Claire and a girl named Rebecca, her hair nicely French braided but her face covered in juicy zits, walk over by the athletic field. A P.E. class plays kickball on the far diamond, the thump of feet against the rubber maroon ball carrying through the stillness.

“I see you driving to lunch with Ricky and his friends,” Rebecca says as she measures the light.

“Uh-huh.”

“My friend used to go out with Scott.”

At the moment, Claire’s not entirely sure which one Scott even is.

In the middle of frog dissection in Bio, the word
cloaca
sends Claire into a paroxysm of laughter, to the point where Doctor Baca asks her to excuse herself until she can act like a civilized student. She steps outside in her goggles and gloves, leaving her lab partner Mary Ann alone.

The bell rings after sixth period. Amazing how fast that day went by. She hates to think about the chunk of the school year she wasted before opening her eyes.

Claire isn’t sure if today is the day of the week Meredith can meet at the arroyo; the others are taken up by receiving tutoring, giving tutoring, piano, and now tennis lessons. But there she is, staring intently at a hill of red fire ants. “I wish we had a magnifying glass to burn them,” Meredith says.

“Yeah,” Claire says, just to say something. Are the ants aware of the two godlike beings above them?

Meredith glances up. “Look at you.”

“What?”

“You’re like totally pale, Morticia.” She sings the
duh-duh-duh-DUH
of the
Addams Family
theme song, snapping her fingers.

“Maybe I’m getting sick.”

“Can you please cough on me? I need an excuse to stay in bed all day and do nothing.” Meredith jumps back and forth among the multiple narratives of her life: possibly trying out for the school play to get extra credit in Drama, her tennis teacher’s ankle tattoo, Justin Vance growing his hair out like Shaggy.

When it’s Claire’s turn to talk, she only shrugs and kicks at a tumbleweed. This Meredith – who gave the lecture about shoplifting – certainly wouldn’t understand anything Claire could tell her.

Insanity.

There’s no other word for this. Bryce should turn around and go to the snack bar for lunch. Walking through Ms. Dickinson’s door, doing what he’s planning to do, is a suicide mission.

But Luke Skywalker didn’t turn around when he saw the Death Star.

Don Quixote didn’t turn around.

Ms. D sits alone in her classroom, eating Ritz crackers, reading a book called
The Magus
.

Bryce says “Can I talk to you?” and she jumps out of her chair.

“Oh, Bryce, you scared me half to death!”

He realizes how creepy he must look, so he compensates by laughing to show her it’s all cool. Only then he can’t stop laughing. Or sweating. “You don’t eat with the other teachers?”

“All they do is complain about their classes. It gets boring after awhile.” She sets her book face down, crinkling the spine. “How’s second semester going?”

“Fine.” He’s not here to talk about second semester. He’s here to ask her out. His arguments are ready for her arguments: he’s too young (eighteen is old enough to be drafted into the Army); he’s her student (not anymore); he’s
a
student (not for much longer). If this works, he won’t be known as the flower guy; he’ll be known as the guy who went out with the hottest teacher of all time.

Bryce stands by his old desk, but then thinks that might remind her he was in the class once, so he moves to Cam’s old desk. “So, I was wondering.”

Why the pause? Do it.
Do it!

Right then Mr. Bloom walks in. His hair slicked straight back. His tie loosened just so. “Hey, Sarah, brought you a treat.” He shows a pink can of Tab from behind his back.

“Oh my gosh, you’re the best,” Ms. D says.

He goes on, “I have to call Anthony’s parents today. I should save us all a lot of trouble and just tell ‘em is that their kid is dumb as a bag of rocks and will be lucky to have a career at McDonald’s.” He looks at Bryce as if only now noticing a third person in the room. “Sorry, were you two having a conference?”

She pops the top off the Tab. “No, Bryce and I were chatting about… What were we chatting about, Bryce?”

“I came by to, uh, say I miss your class.”

“Aw, thanks, sweetie.”

Bryce stops in the bathroom after making a semi-graceful exit. What had he been thinking? She wouldn’t say yes. Mr. Bloom is obviously her type. Bryce could play the cancer card, but then she’d look at it like going out with a Make-A- Wish kid.

He doesn’t notice the overflowing urinal next to him until his shoes are soaked.

The school’s boiler, once again with a mind of its own, kicks on the hot air at the end of lunch; combined with close-quartered sweat glands, each classroom takes on the atmosphere of a tropical rain forest. So it is that Mr. Buckland’s sixth period class finds themselves released to the outside in order to read and take notes on Albert Camus’s
The Stranger
.

Bryce sits down at one of the picnic tables with the best intentions, but the recently re-emerged sun and the bangs and clangs from auto shop conspire to keep him from focusing. Instead his pen goes to work on its own.

“Looking good,” Mr. B says.

Bryce squints up at his silhouette. “Sorry. I’m reading. Really.” Even though the entirety of a notebook page is covered with a drawing of Iron Man battling Smaug the dragon.

Mr. B reaches for the notebook. “May I?” Bryce hands it over, ashamed, ready for the talk about wise use of class time. Mr. B flips through the pages, where English notes share space with superheroes and mythical warriors. If he recognizes the faces of certain female students, he doesn’t comment. “When you’re a famous artist, I can brag that you were once my student,” he says.

“That may be a while.”

Three boys – Bryce can only tell the gender from this distance – walk slowly along the fence, carrying garbage bags for campus cleanup duty.

Mr. B hands back the notebook. “It’s nice to have a passion in life, Bryce. Talent helps, too.”

“I don’t think I’m gonna be able to follow my passion too far.”

“I have a business degree from the University of Oregon.” Mr. B taps his long pinkie nail on the table. “It had so little to do with what I wanted from life, I wonder if I could have done better things with those four years.”

“I applied to ten different colleges and I don’t wanna go to any of them. I hope I get rejected.”

Mr. B says, “Hoping for rejection is something one doesn’t hear very often on a high school campus. Did you tell your parents before they spent all that application money?”

“They wouldn’t understand.”

“Ah, now
that
is something one hears often on a high school campus.” Mr. B straightens up. “‘The Master observes the world but trusts his inner vision. He allows things to come and go. His heart is as open as the sky.’”

If Bryce could wave a magic wand and have Mr. B as a dad, or uncle, or older brother…

“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to make sure all of your classmates are at least pretending to be productive.” He’s gone several steps in the direction of the Smokers’ Tree when he calls out, “Oh, and Bryce? Nice job capturing Tara’s likeness in that drawing.”