After Dakota (7 page)

Even if you don’t care about sports, you go to the homecoming game. Between the daily countdown on the announcements (“Get your tickets early, Thunderbirds!”) and the handmade banners in every hallway, it’s not like anyone doesn’t know it’s happening. The school colors – red and white – are painted on cars, painted on faces the day of the game. Random chants echo through the parking lot. The stands fill early as the sky bruises with black and blue storm clouds.

The opponent tonight is Del Norte High.

Even if you don’t care about sports, you go to this game.

Unless you’re Bryce and you have a church youth group event to attend. So Cameron and Geoff meet outside the main gate; Cameron parks across the street, to spare his car not only dents but any celebratory decorating.

Inside, past the parent ushers, the Peace Club sells snacks at a folding table. “Dude, you know this is gonna be good stuff,” Geoff says as he gets in line. Manning the table are Garrett Lucas, all sideburns and blond afro. And Dakota.

No, Rosemary.

“Cameron!”

“Hi,” he says, too enthusiastically. Then, hopefully calmer: “You joined Peace Club?”

That’s the extent of their conversation before she’s overwhelmed counting out money and baked goods. Geoff buys a brownie and two cookies.

The two boys find the senior section of the bleachers easily enough, but getting seated isn’t so easy. Inside each grade level, the cliques have segregated:

Jocks. Nerds. Madonnas. Punks. Preppies. Surf Preppies.

Not represented: Burnouts, Theatre Geeks (except for Geoff), and Hippies (except at the snack table).

What if you don’t belong to any of them? Too bad – there isn’t a clique called Regular People. Cameron and Geoff end up near the bottom, with Donny Montano and friends, floating between the two Preppie crowds (the main difference being the use of terms like “Hang Ten” and “Bogus”). The smell of pot wafts overhead; it’s not hard to guess which of the two groups is responsible.

Trevor Sargent shouts down at them, well ensconced in the Jock section. Cameron waves back, Geoff is busy hurriedly chowing down. Trevor’s just being friendly here; Cameron knows it isn’t an invitation to come up.

Hard to believe the baseball-playing stud, the guy who got some trophy last year, is the same Trevor who used to hang out with them. Hard to believe it’s the same Trevor who, one day on the school bus during seventh grade, tapped Cameron on the shoulder out of the blue and asked, “Do you know the weight of a silver dagger in D&D?” Like spies in an occupied country. Cameron has wondered a few times what about himself made Trevor assume he would know the answer to such a question.

Once Trevor found success in athletics, he chose the Jocks – and the popularity that comes along with them – over his ragtag band of friends. Who could blame him, really? Those guys are kings of campus, and even now the girls sitting around Trevor blur together into a big seven-eight-nine rated mass.

Meanwhile, down here sit Cameron and Geoff, his teeth painted chocolate. The occasional passerby mumbles, “‘Sup, pizza man.” Cameron wishes he could be up there with Trevor. He should’ve figured out some way, maybe come alone so he wouldn’t have this human anchor around his neck, keeping him down beneath the surface.

Cameron can’t see Rosemary anywhere.

“I should be high as a mother by halftime,” Geoff announces.

“They’re not gonna sell pot brownies with all these teachers around,” Donny says as players walk out to the center of the field for the coin toss.

The game begins. The boys know enough about football to know which direction the Thunderbirds should go. Beyond that, they clap and stand up when everyone else does. The cheerleaders do their routines in their skirts and turtlenecks, wearing enough blue eye shadow to serve as an aircraft landing strip. One advantage of sitting down at the bottom – maybe the only one – is being close enough to see nipples poking through uniforms in the chill air.

“Wow,” Geoff marvels. “Marion was flat as a board freshman year, but now her chest is in a different time zone than the rest of her.”

Rating cheerleaders is hard because they’re like multiple versions of the same person, living dolls delivered to schools straight off the assembly line. Arguing which one is hotter than the next is like arguing about which fast food restaurant has the best fries. If you were blindfolded, you couldn’t tell them apart.

The Thunderbirds keep going the wrong direction, the crowd gets restless, people yell. The clouds tighten up overhead.

At halftime,

HOME: 7

VISITORS: 17

The ROTC members in their creased uniforms make two lines in the middle of the field and hold up criss-crossed swords. The crowd stands while the homecoming king (Erik Carter, in a tuxedo) and queen (Hannah Arnold, dress and tiara) walk underneath, followed by all the court members no one cares about.

The marching band and drill team do their thing just as the first raindrops land.

The boys pull their jackets up over their heads. Up in the Jock section, two track runners do an Indian rain dance to cheers from all around.

“Those brownies were a ripoff,” Geoff announces.

The teams come back out, the crowds on both sides stomp the bleachers, the rain picks up force.
Boom-boom-boom. Boom-boom-boom
.

Cameron’s head and shoulders stay dry, while his jeans get so drenched they’re black. His socks squish when he moves his feet. Still no Rosemary – she must have made the smart move and sought cover.

HOME: 7

VISITORS: 20

The crowd restless now, booing.

Geoff shouts over the rain. “Do we really wanna stay for the rest of this nonsense?”

“It’s not that bad!” Cameron replies. He leans forward too far and water runs down his exposed butt crack.

“Bryce is missing out!” Donny says.

Geoff replies from under the second skin of his leather jacket, “Yeah, never thought I’d be jealous of Charlie Church and his prayer circle!”

Cameron wishes he could speed up time and end this nonsense. No one leaves Homecoming early, no matter how bad the score or the weather. Sitting here wet isn’t so bad.

The rain thick now, like watching the game through a curtain.

Geoff complains some more, but Cameron has bought a decent reputation through free pizza and tokens; maybe he isn’t up high on Mount Olympus, but he’s more than the nobody he used to be. He’s not going to sacrifice that hard work just to be dry. All that, and the girl that might still come back for him.

Any minute now the game will end – one flash of lightning and they’ll call it all off.

Boom-boom-boom. Boom-boom-boom
.

HOME: 7

VISITORS: 23

Any minute now.

5:30 a.m. Bryce opens his eyes to the alarm, the first Saturday morning of October, the first day of the annual Hot Air Balloon Fiesta. The plan is to drive with Cam out to the staging area, the vast dirt field where the balloons go from limp canvases to magnificent flying machines. Bryce hears footsteps through the ceiling, his dad pouring the fifth or tenth cup of coffee today.

5:32. It would be so nice to pull the comforter up and sleep onward. After that he could eat Pop Tarts, do some drawing, play games, maybe get his homework done early.

5:33. Or go see a movie.

5:35. Stop thinking about Dakota. Think of another girl. Any other girl.

5:36. Jasmin in science claims she’s a real Gypsy, but she has blond hair and blue eyes. Man, the way she ate that frozen banana at the snack bar…

5:38. Bryce used to like frozen bananas until the time he, Cam, and Geoff rode The Scrambler at Uncle Cliff’s. One of those rides that do only two things: spin and spin faster. Bryce thought he’d waited long enough after eating. Wrong. At least he managed to throw up over the side of the car – no easy feat while moving that fast. Then when they stopped, Cam threw up inside the car!

5:40. The boys stood side by side in a lineup like criminals, while a disgusted employee hosed off their shoes behind the bumper cars. Bryce had seen lots of senior girls at the park earlier that night and was petrified that they’d walk by and witness this.

5:41. Do amusement parks have a designated vomit-hoser on the payroll?

5:42. Jerome, who used to work the games at Cliff’s (and would give cute girls free stuffed animals even if they didn’t win), was paralyzed when a drunk driver ran a stop sign and hit his car. The drunk flew out of his own car and got his face mashed up on the asphalt.

5:43. If you were paralyzed you’d get a lot of sympathy but you couldn’t do much of anything. Disfigured you could still live your life but people would avoid you. Tough call.

5:44. Come on – get up, pee, get dressed.

5:45. The water heater shudders and groans to life in the corner.

5:47. When Bryce’s dad was a kid, the family had a bomb shelter in their backyard.

5:48. This basement is the closest thing to a bomb shelter now. Could Bryce, Claire, and their parents all hide down here and be safe? Would they die of starvation before it was safe to go outside? Would they turn to cannibalism? Bryce is the smallest of the family, so they’d want to eat him last.

5:49. Might as well use this room for a shelter, since there’s no female action going on in here.

5:50. Is being a teenager a test from God? If so, is everyone tested or just certain losers? Because some people seem to have a lot easier time than others.

5:53. What’s so bad about graduating high school and still being a virgin? Some kids at youth group have taken chastity vows. But maybe they aren’t horny all the time; maybe they don’t have to be prepared for the boner that could appear without warning at the sight of a female (live, on TV, in a magazine… Bryce’s groin doesn’t discriminate).

5:56. He could wait to have sex in college, but what if he meets a girl there who has experience and she finds out he has none? Word will get around and no foxy girls will want anything to do with him. His choices will be ugly ones no one else wants, or staying a virgin through college! Then he’ll have to marry a super religious chick who’s been saving herself for marriage. That can be Bryce’s story, too, that he’s been saving himself.

5:58. But what if everything blows up before then? Sure, they’ll all be in Heaven, but with his parents around all the time. Ugh.

5:59. Dakota. Not ok, not ok, not ok.

6:00.
I need a girlfriend
.

The sky is dotted with hot air balloons, Technicolor holes punched in the blue. Claire watches the skull and crossbones from Meredith’s bedroom window while Meredith talks about how she walks right behind Justin Vance to science every day. Their respective fingernails are freshly painted green; the room shimmers with the scent of polish.

Two frozen Ding Dongs sit on small white plates, earlier served by Meredith’s mom, Pat (who tells all the girls to address her that way). Pat used to do musical theater in college – she met Meredith’s dad in a production of
Oklahoma!
– and is always humming or singing, like out in the hall right now, except they’re all old songs nobody’s heard of.

Meredith lies on her bed, working on a poem for English class. She says lines aloud, then writes them in a notebook. “I dance to their music/I jive to their beat…”

Claire isn’t writing poetry in her English class; they’re diagramming sentences and working in a grammar book. She tosses Meredith’s pink Care Bear up over her head, catches it, tosses again. Next to the phone on the desk is a Pet Rock (Claire’s dad on that topic: “Why am I working so hard when I could be a millionaire just for thinking of a dumb idea?”)

“I feel like a marionette/With strings on my feet.”

Pat knocks on the door. She’s always tan, even in winter, her skin the color of caramel against her white tennis outfit. “Look what I got back from the framer.” She holds up Meredith’s eighth grade promotion certificate.

“Please don’t hang that up,” Meredith says with a roll of the eyes.

“Aren’t I allowed to be proud of my little girl? Will you not want me to hang your high school diploma either?”

“That’s a
diploma
. Middle school isn’t even a real graduation.”

“I bet Claire’s promotion is on display at her house,” Pat says.

It’s not. The students were handed their own certificates on the last day of school and Claire’s not sure she ever even gave hers to her mom.

Meredith shoves the last hunk of Ding Dong between her lips, chews hard, then says “Fine” through the chocolate sludge.

“Charming.” Pat takes the empty plates. “I hope you two aren’t going to stay in here all day on an afternoon like this.” On her way out the door she winks at Claire.

“I’m tired of being guided/I’m tired of being bossed. I must cut the strings…” Meredith flips onto her back, swipes her bare foot at the windsock that hangs from the ceiling. “Pat’s always asking about you, y’know.”

“Why?”

“I think it’s because of the Dakota thing. I listened when she was on the phone with your mom. They talked about if you’re depressed. Pat gave your mom the name of this guy, Dr. Crumpler. He’s, like, a shrink for kids. He comes to their drunk parties – I mean,
cocktail
parties.”

“He sounds old.”

“He’s pretty old. Like fifty maybe. So, are you depressed?”

“No! I’m so sure.”

“I’d be depressed if
you
died,” Meredith says. “I must cut the strings/Before everything’s lost.”

Pat’s voice through the door: “I’m going to play tennis, ladies. It’s such a nice day!”

Meredith shouts back, “Fine, we’re leaving!”

They ride their bikes to the arroyo, where the red and yellow state flag balloon passes overhead. It’s so close they can hear the whoosh of the flame. Claire gets her camera out of her purse and clicks a couple of shots; one of the men in the gondola waves down at them.

They follow it for several blocks through the next neighborhood, pedaling fast past the horseshoe driveways, trying to stay directly beneath it. Eventually, the girls run out of gas and stop their bikes at the edge of a field full of young soccer players who buzz around like orange and white ants. Claire takes one final picture.

“I wish we could ride in a balloon,” Meredith says, pink-faced.

“My mom would say no.” Claire imagines what they look like to the men in the balloon. What the world looks like. When you get as far up as some of the balloons, everything below would be like a miniature city, the kind in an electric train set. Plastic people waving and smiling next to plastic trees as the train snakes around and around.

What would it be like to crash in one of those?

“Let’s go to the mall,” Claire says.

“I’m not supposed to go that far without telling Pat.”

“She’s playing tennis, remember?” Claire starts pedaling. “C’mon, race you.”

At the mall food court, they go from Hot Dog on a Stick, with its pretty girls in colored stripes, to Orange Julius, where a line of blenders whirs in tandem. From there it’s Contempo Casuals, The Limited, and Dillard’s, where Meredith zig-zags among the jewelry counters, practically drooling. Claire likes jewelry too, but not enough to spend all day leaning on glass cases. The saleswoman watches them from under her beehive hairdo.

Claire sees the coat display the moment they enter Juniors. White, with fur around the collar and sleeves. She hands Meredith her Orange Julius cup and tries it on in front of the triple mirror.

“That is literally the nicest coat ever,” Meredith proclaims. “You look so pretty.”

It
is
the nicest coat ever. Claire’s glad she tried it on first; now she has dibs between the two of them.

Meredith looks at the dangling tag. “Real fox fur. Someone killed a fox to make that.”

“And he’s already killed so I might as well wear it.”

“Claire, it’s two hundred bucks!”

“I’ll ask for it for Christmas.” She and Bryce each get one gift from their parents, so they have to make it count. Not like Meredith, who gets a ton of stuff and even gets presents on
Easter.
And has her own phone in her room!

Meredith leans close to the center mirror to pop a zit on her forehead. Claire spins left and right like a fashion show model.

After the mall, the girls stop at the pharmacy, with the old man up at his high counter, counting pills into bottles. Grouchy and always wiling to harass kids, yelling at them to leave their backpacks outside of his cluttered, dusty empire. Inside, the usual routine: Meredith looks at the spinner rack of Harlequin romance novels, Claire pockets some candy, they walk out. They share a Hershey bar on the way home; while Meredith won’t steal anything herself, she’s more than happy to reap the rewards of someone else doing so. In her entire life, Claire has paid for something at the pharmacy maybe twice.

Yet they’ve never stolen from anywhere else, never even been tempted. It’s the old man’s fault for being so mean.

At home later, Claire’s dad stands on the back porch, trying to light the barbecue. “Hi, Clarabelle, see some balloons today?”

“Uh-huh. Where’s Mom?”

“Search me.” He jumps back when the flame bursts.

“I need to tell her what I want for Christmas.”

“Already decided in October?”

“It’s a coat.”

“It is?” He takes pieces of chicken off a plate, coats both sides with Pam cooking spray, lays them on the grill. “We’re having chicken tonight. That ok with you?”

“Sure.”

“Because if there’s something you’d rather have…”

“Chicken’s fine, Daddy.” She goes inside. A rainbow striped balloon floats out over the mountains.

* * *

The next morning, the Vanzants are back at church (“The Life God Blesses”) and Claire has a perfect view of them from the pew across the aisle. Mrs. Vanzant looks only at whatever she’s holding, first the hymn book, then the Bible. Mr. Vanzant sports a frown worthy of a cartoon character, so severe it looks like someone drew it on him.

Claire used to look across this same aisle to where Dakota sat with her parents. Those days when the two girls’ eyes met were the best; Dakota would mouth the song words extra dramatically toward Claire, or draw on the program: smiley faces, Tic-Tac-Toe grids.

Their own service going on under the surface of everyone else’s.

Other days, Dakota’s eyes stayed closed, or aimed toward Pastor Mark and the choir. Claire could stare for the entire hour – shouting
Look over here!
inside her head – and never be acknowledged.

Pastor Mark says from the front, “God blesses our life not because we deserve it, but because He is gracious and kind. As the New Testament puts it…”

Hands keep reaching forward from the pew behind the Vanzants, grabbing their shoulders, squeezing, withdrawing. When Claire leaves for her leisurely bathroom stroll, she wants to invite them to come so they can get away from all the attention. Sometimes people just want to be left alone.