After Dakota (25 page)

What Cameron Does On His Spring Break:

He has sex. In the morning, evening, afternoon. Rosemary pedals over on her ten speed, or he goes to pick her up, still never setting foot inside her house. Each time is like the first time only not the first time because they know what they’re doing. Or rather, he knows better what he’s doing – she seemed to be fine all along. Maybe he wasn’t her first. Probably he wasn’t her first. He will not ask about this, just focus on being with her in this intoxicating week of freedom. His box of condoms dwindles to emptiness (though one of them gets stretched inside-out and another snaps like a rubber band in mid-act).

Even when he’s doing something not at all related to sex – say, when he and Rosemary are standing with other club kids on a busy street corner, holding THERE IS NO WINNER IN A NUCLEAR WAR signs – he’s thinking about sex.

On the phone with his mom each night, he crosses his fingers that she won’t ask him to fly to Florida and help stand vigil at her mother’s bed. What good could he do anyway? She never does ask, just makes sure he’s eating enough and talks about the weather. He tells her about Berkeley and she starts crying.

He eats a lot of home-cooked food. Cameron has been over for meals at Bryce’s many times over the years, but never three times in one week. He is the focus of conversation every night, like Bryce’s mom is a reporter and he a fascinating subject.

Topics include his mom; his grandmother (and her house, car, etc); his dad; his college plans.

On this last one, he’s unsure how much to say so as not to create an awkward situation for Bryce. Cameron heard back from not only Berkeley but San Diego and University of Southern California, but to announce that would sound like bragging. Best just to tapdance and claim he’s still waiting.

Bryce’s dad doesn’t chime in much more than a word here and there until he asks one night, “Where do you see yourself in five years, Cameron?”

Five years from now means being twenty-three. Hopefully done with college. But what comes after that? A job? A house? A family? Is that what’s meant by The American Dream? His parents had followed that path and look where it took them.

He gets hit on. On an off day because of Rosemary’s headache, his mom’s friend Jillian stands on his front porch, holding a foil-covered plate. Jillian is a textbook case of excelling in one area of the Holy Trinity – while she’s got a pretty face, her highlight is the biggest chest Cameron’s ever seen live and up close. She kindly obliges his, and anyone else’s, ogling by always wearing tops that highlight her build. Like today, pink with a black bra strap showing.

Bees hum somewhere above them.

She says, “I promised Molly I wouldn’t let you starve,” and holds the plate out. “Shake ‘n Bake chicken.” She takes off her sunglasses, looks right in his eyes the whole time, and he is convinced – one hundred percent, not an ounce of doubt – that she wants to go to bed with him. Maybe she can sense he’s a real man now.

Dear Penthouse Forum, I never thought this could happen to me…

When she’s leaving she says, “If you need anything you know where to find me.” Holy shit, how much more obvious can she be? He watches her walk to her car, her butt cheeks tracing the infinity sign inside her shorts. If this had occurred a year ago – a month ago, even – he would’ve dashed inside, to his room, to the Vaseline. Now, he closes the door behind him and smiles at his own badass-ness.

He meets his new co-worker. Loo from Norway got fired (something about long distance phone calls), and now comes Victor. Short guy, Cameron’s age, left eye stuck in a squint. Bad vibes right away. Cameron proceeds with training like the pizza stud he is until, in a slow moment, he asks Victor where he goes to school. Victor smirks and Cameron realizes: Victor Sanchez, one of Zaplin’s gang. At school he covers his slicked-back hair with a CAT baseball cap. They’ve never had classes together – and never will unless one of them loses or gains 100 I.Q. points – but Cameron has been on the receiving end of Victor’s glares and taunts plenty of times.

And now look at the low man on the red-yellow-brown totem pole. Suddenly the routine training gets a lot more fun. There are easy ways and hard ways to do everything in the kitchen – the pizza conveyor belt that hasn’t been cleaned since Cameron got promoted, the frozen sausage pieces stuck together in clumps – and Victor will only learn one of those ways.

He makes a confession. In his bed on the last day of freedom. Late morning light and the hiss of sprinklers outside the window. Rosemary lifts her head, eyes closed, face mostly covered by wild strands of hair, and smiles at him. With that smile, forget it. Forget Raquel Welch in her cavewoman outfit on
The Muppet Show
, Tanya Roberts in
The Beastmaster
, even Heather Thomas on the wall above them.

This is the most beautiful creature he’s ever seen.

He gazes at her, his stomach full of marbles. Marbles filling higher, tighter, up his lungs, up his throat, until his cheeks will explode if he doesn’t let them free. He says, “I love you.”

She kisses his bicep. “You’re sweet.”

Following the sermon that Sunday (“The Truth About Easter”), the children have an egg hunt while the adults walk the outdoor labyrinth set up for the holiday. The courtyard is encircled by planters full of blooming yellow and white roses. When Bryce first heard about the labyrinth, he was chomping at the bit to get inside, but this one is only a pattern on the ground – you couldn’t even get lost in it. The line of walkers moves through silently on their spiritual journey without him.

Bryce sits at a picnic table back by the playground, waiting for one of the kids to find the blue egg behind the jungle gym. He remembers sitting at the kitchen table with Claire – the smell of vinegar, dyeing eggs – and wishes he’d suggested doing it this year.

Noel and Anna round the corner. “Hey, Bryce, did you walk the labyrinth?” Noel asks. “It’s amazing.”

“I see your friend’s not here,” Anna says.

“He had to work last night. Probably not even awake yet.”

“Where does he work?”

“Chuck E. Cheese.” Bryce can’t remember if Cam ever called her, and of course you never mention a current girlfriend and scare off a potential.

When Anna leaves with her parents, Noel sits across from him. Sun glints off her crucifix pendant. “I have to go back to school tomorrow. No more Spring Break.” She mimes wiping tears.

“Me too,” Bryce says. “At least when we get back it’s only like one month left of school.”

Noel describes the testing regiment her school undergoes, followed by a final two weeks that sound like nothing but parties and field trips.

“Wow, the only fun thing on our schedule is prom.”

“Ohmygosh, that sounds so fun. We don’t have any dances.”

“Dressing up, hanging out with people from school all night, everyone stepping on your feet? That sounds fun?”

“Not when you say it like that, Bryce. Going to a prom would be a dream for me.”

“That makes one of us.”

“Well, poop on you. What you need is a prom date who will change your attitude.”

“Yeah, ok. I’ll let you know if I find one.” Over on the playground, a girl in a white dress finds the blue egg and puts it in her basket. Bryce smiles a smile with nothing behind it.

That evening, Mrs. Swanson stands on Claire’s front porch, the fading sun making her ponytail the color of the Burnt Sienna crayon in the big box of sixty-four. Claire chews a spongy yellow Peep from her Easter basket.

“Claire, I’m going to ask you a question and I’d like an honest answer.”

Claire glances down the cul-de-sac, waiting for Ricky’s car to creep by, dreading or hoping (she’s not sure which) that it does. He’s called five times that she knows of since the drive the other night: three one-ring-and-hang-ups, two hangups when someone answered. She wasn’t ready to talk to him then; she’s no more ready now.

But Mrs. Swanson is doing the talking now: Donna’s class at private school had a lesson about honesty and keeping secrets. On the car ride home, Donna told her mom about Claire and a man in the bedroom. “My daughter likes to tell stories, but not this time.”

Claire has never thought of Ricky as a
man
before. She waits for Mrs. Swanson to ask the question with the honest answer.

“Is there anything you’d like to tell me?”

There are plenty of things, but from where Claire stands, every turn of this labyrinth is a dead end, every door has a tiger behind it. “Are you gonna tell my parents?”

“That’s not necessary. I simply can’t have my children in a situation like the one you created, so I won’t be able to ask you over anymore.”

At dinner, Claire moves the ham and scalloped potatoes around on her plate without eating more than a bite for show. After waiting long enough, but not faking illness (more trouble than it would be worth), she asks to be excused.

When Ricky gave her the plastic baggie of dried mushrooms, he said to start slow. The first time she put one in her mouth she’d expected the flavor of a pizza topping; instead it was like eating a piece of sponge dipped in soil. The taste wasn’t as important as what happened afterwards, though. Now she takes the baggie from her hiding place in the closet. Getting high at home isn’t a good idea – she should go to the arroyo or at least for a bike ride, but instead she reclines on her bed and eats two of them.

Tucked under her mattress, a safe spot since she started changing her own sheets last year, is an envelope bulging with all the poems from her locker. She had run there at the start of math one morning to get her homework and spotted Ricky pushing a paper through the slot in the door. She stayed hidden around the corner by the fire alarm. He’s still never confessed to being the writer and she’s still never busted him on it. Seven poems now, the story of their time together.

The mushrooms kick in and she floats away with the words.

When Cameron pulls up to the airport curb Sunday evening, crotch sore from these past days, he wonders if his mom will know her little boy isn’t a boy anymore, if all women share the instinct Jillian clearly has.

“Grams is resting comfortably,” Molly says after Cameron swings her suitcase into the trunk, “But they say she’s going to need full-time care. That means a special home of some kind and ek cetera.”

She doesn’t talk much at all beyond this, not even her usual M.O. of suggesting he slow down or inhaling sharply if he gets too close to the car in front. He misses it.

Cameron drives home toward the sunset, feeling a fabulous melancholy at the end of the greatest week of his young life.

Your parents are off at a retirement party for one of Dad’s old pilot buddies. Claire has a cold and is in bed, with the humidifier running.

You’re in your room, carefully drawing Garfield in a sketchbook and listening to Lou Reed’s long song about Waltzing Mathilda (you don’t know the actual title). The freshly painted, miniature Dwarf Cannon sits drying by the partly-open window.

You’re adding the final touch to your drawing – the black stripes down Garfield’s back – when Dakota comes in. She wears a DISCO SUCKS T-shirt, ripped-knee jeans, and her black sneakers with orange laces.

“What’s up?” she says as she sits on your bed, picks up your Rubik’s cube. You see all this in the windowpane. You’ve stopped drawing because the pencil shakes in your hand.

She inhales deeply. “You could get high just sitting in here.”

“I was painting,” you reply. No duh.

“What is that thing?”

“It’s, uh, a Dwarf Cannon. Y’know, for playing D&D. If you have dwarf characters they can use it to – ”

“Sounds fascinating.” She stands right over your shoulder. “Are you drawing dwarfs, too?” You can smell her gum and feel her hair against your ear. Thankfully your lap is under the desk, out of sight.

“No, it’s Garfield.”

She says, “Dude, that looks exactly like the one in the newspaper. A painter and a draw-er – you’re a real Renaissance man.”

You say, “Thanks.” You make a mental note to look up
Renaissance man
in the encyclopedia.

“You gonna enter the contest for the yearbook cover?”

“I don’t think I’m good enough.”

She makes a
psssh
sound. A bit of spittle hits your ear. “Bet you can do a better cover than anyone else at school. You should try.”

“I’ll think about it.”

She points to the inscription in the bottom corner of the page:
To Sherry
. You wish right then that you didn’t have the habit of signing your work before you start. “Who’s Sherry? Your girlfriend?”

“Sort of.”

“Ooh, Bryce has a girlfriend!” she says. “How long have you guys been going steady?”

“We’re not really.”

“Have you kissed yet?”

Why is she asking this? Why is she standing so close? You swallow. “No.”

“Come on, buddy, you gotta make the move. Don’t sit back and wait for life to happen – I saw that on a commercial once.”

“Ok.”

“I’m worried about you, Bryce.”

“Ok.”

“Turn around,” she says. You scoot your chair a 180 to face her. You hope she won’t look down at the tent inside your pants. “Next time you’re with her, you look her in the eyes and say, ‘I am going to kiss you now.’”

You look everywhere but in her eyes. The strand of hair over one cheek, the swell of her chest under the word DISCO.

“Trust me, girls love that.” Dakota kneels down in front of you. “Pretend I’m Sherry.”

Impossible.

You nod. You’ve never liked Juicy Fruit until this moment.

She says, “You lean in” as she tilts your head by the chin, her fingertips like ice and fire.

“Uh-huh.” Your syllables barely make it out.

“Then. You. Kiss. Her.”

You close your eyes.

She says, “Got that?”

You are a lightning strike victim, rooted to the spot. You can’t even nod.

She laughs. “Look at your face! Don’t worry, I wasn’t really gonna kiss you and give you my cooties.” Standing up, she adds, “I feel like a grilled cheese sandwich. Want one?”

Enough of your central nervous system functions that you can shake your head. She leaves the room.

“I love you,” you say after that, grasping for the meaning of the words. The meaning of everything. “I love you.”

When she goes home that night, after your dad peels bills off his money clip, she doesn’t say goodbye to you. When she comes over the next time, and the next and the next, you make sure to hang out in your room, so she’ll know where to find you. Ready for the knock on the door. But she never knocks.

Now, in bed, in the dark, Bryce doesn’t want to remember those waiting times. So he backs up to the almost-kiss and goes forward with his own version. Her lips, her tongue, her body.

When he awakens the next morning, he doesn’t have an explanation for his sudden desire to make a doctor’s appointment. He’ll have the lump checked out – he’s ready to hear the bad news made official, ready to share it with his family and the world.