Anywhere but Here (4 page)

If Hannah's not the brightest star in the sky, she makes up for it in pure hotness. Greg says one day she'll end up like her mother, who he describes as a mini-marshmallow in a lot of makeup. Doesn't matter. At this moment in time, Hannah's gorgeous. She's got long, dark hair and big brown eyes and quite possibly the most attractive lips I've ever seen. They're pouting at my camera.

I turn it off.

“I thought you were never going to show up, Cole,” she says. Did I mention Hannah's voice? She could have a part-time job performing phone sex. I'm not exaggerating.

“I heard you and Lauren broke up.” She wiggles into a spot between me and the arm of the couch.

“Yeah. We . . . uh . . .”

“You doing okay?” She has her fingers in my hair.

I nod.

She must be drunk because the next thing I know, she's kissing me. Not that I object. Hannah's lips are . . . dexterous. She
nibbles my top lip and pulls at my bottom lip and in between skirts her tongue along the edges of my mouth. She has one hand on my jaw, her thumb on my cheek, and tendrils of hair brushing my neck. My own hand is climbing a path from the back of her waistband underneath her shirt to her bra strap.

When she pulls my hand away, I think the fun's over for the evening. But it's just because she's seen the door to Dallas's dad's bedroom open. She tugs me inside and soon we're lying on the bed together creating our own version of
Porndemic
.

“Hang on a sec,” Hannah says, pulling away. She puts one of her iPod earphones in my ear. “So we can listen to the same song,” she whispers, snuggling against me.

Girl music. And Hannah's head is on my shoulder as if I've found myself a new girlfriend in thirty minutes flat.

“I've wanted to play this for you ever since I heard about your mom,” she says. “I didn't feel like I knew you well enough. The song's all about loss. And hope . . .”

Suddenly, I find my mojo draining away. Why am I in a bedroom listening to chick music? I mean, making out with Hannah was all right—quite good, actually—but it seems to have ended now and an unwelcome heaviness settles over me. This happens sometimes. And I hate it. I hate that I'm in bed with the sexiest girl in school and I'm staring at a stain on the ceiling instead of at her cleavage.

The stain looks like a chicken.

“You know, I made a roast chicken a while ago. With potatoes and everything.”

“Really? Cool.” She's scrolling through her playlist, trying to find another song she wants me to hear. Maybe she thinks this one's about us.

“Yeah. It was good. Then Mr. Gill said something in class a few days later about not sliding backward. I think he meant that we shouldn't forget to study, but to me it meant . . . what am I trying to prove?”

“Yeah.” She nods.

“I mean, what difference is a roast chicken going to make?”

“A roast chicken?”

“Exactly. Not going to change the world. Not going to change my life or my dad's life. It's not going to do anything. It's like pretending my mom's still around. From this point forward, there will be no re-creating the past. It's going to be all about trying new things.”

“I'm new,” Hannah says. She is, relatively. Her family moved to Webster last year, and her arrival caused a shift in the tectonic plates of the school social system. When the same girls have been in your class since kindergarten, the introduction of a new one is somewhat . . . seismic.

“You
are
new,” I agree, ignoring the way she's started kissing
my neck again. “Although, I don't need everything to be new. It's more that I need to distance myself. I'm surrounded by all these people who want things from me or need me to be around. They're like a dog pack.”

“The pack mentality,” Hannah murmurs. I'm surprised she's actually listening. “Mentality” seems like a big word for her. She taps a finger against her lips, as if considering my point. When she catches me watching, she moves her hand to her hair, riffling it over her shoulder.

“Sort of,” I say. “What I need is to detach, free myself to leave town next year. But apparently I have to create a film before I can do that . . .”

Hannah is taking her bra off.

“You know what I think?” she says. “Too much talking.”

Is it? I'm not sure I'm fit for anything else.

Then Hannah's breasts distract me from the chicken stain. She has my undivided attention until someone pounds on the door.

Dallas pokes his big Texan nose inside, complaining about not being able to find a bed at his own party. Hannah makes a grab for her shirt, and a few minutes later, we emerge into the crush of people. She leans against me. I'm not entirely sure if she's nuzzling my neck or if she's just having trouble staying upright.

That's when I hear, above Hannah's murmurs, a gasp that
makes my blood rush out of my crotch and back to my brain. Lauren is standing at the door to the living room.

Shit.
I haven't disengaged Hannah's lips yet, but she must realize I've turned into some sort of ice sculpture beside her. She pulls away, looks at my face, and then follows my gaze. We both stare at Lauren as if we've been caught at a crime scene.

“Shit.” I say it aloud this time, pulling myself from Hannah and tucking in my shirt as I crisscross the room to get to Lauren. She's turned to leave already—but not before I saw the look on her face.

I catch up to her on the back porch. She's standing with her arms wrapped tightly around herself.

“Sorry.” It seems like the best way to start.

“Yeah, you really looked sorry,” she says. Her voice is cold, but I know her well enough to see she's trying not to cry. I
am
actually sorry, though more sorry that she saw Hannah and me together than sorry that we were together. I'm guessing that Lauren won't appreciate the subtle distinction if I try to explain.

“Hannah's drunk. She started coming on to me. . . .”

“Sure, Cole. You had nothing to do with it. Right.”

“Hey, I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. But we're broken up.” I said I was sorry, right? “We were kissing. That's it. It didn't mean anything.”

Lauren wheels on me. “Maybe it didn't to you,” she says
sharply, jabbing her finger at my chest. “Because apparently you feel no emotion. To those of us who have feelings, those of us who thought that you and I meant something, that we were going somewhere, that we were going to be something together—then it's a little earth shattering.”

I run a hand through my hair. What I'd really like to do is jump over the porch railing and make a run for my truck.

“I'm sorry. Really.”

She glares.

“What else do you want me to say?”

“Figure it out.” Sarcasm drips from her words the way juice drips from a just-bitten pear. Then Lauren bashes past me in a move that's bound to leave a bruise on her shoulder, and she's gone. When I return to the kitchen a few minutes later, she's nowhere in sight. Probably crying to her friend Lex somewhere.

I stand there for a minute, feeling the heaviness pour back with a load of guilt on top. How exactly did my night go so wrong? A few minutes ago I was making out with a gorgeous girl, no strings attached. I should have climbed out the window of the bedroom afterward and avoided all this mess.

I weave my way back through the party, nodding when someone yells something that I can't hear over the music and shaking my head when Dallas waves a beer in my direction.
Hannah's disappeared. I find Greg flipping bottle caps at a guy wearing only boxer shorts. Lost a bet, apparently.

“I've got to head out,” I yell in Greg's ear. “You coming or staying?”

“Coming!” He snaps one more cap and hits the guy on the inner thigh. Grinning at the yelp he causes, Greg turns and barrels a path for us.

•  •  •

After the noise of the party, the cab of the truck seems perfectly, absolutely still. I sigh and lean against the steering wheel before I turn the key. The sky's clear, so clear the Milky Way shows up as a ghostly cloudlike wisp behind the stars.

Greg must be looking at it too. He says, “If I told you I'd seen little green men, would you believe me?”

“How much have you had to drink?”

“I'm not saying I
have
seen little green men. I'm just asking . . . if I told you I'd seen them, would you believe me?”

I pull my camera out of my pocket. This conversation begs to be recorded.

“If you were serious, completely serious, then I'd believe that
you
believed that you'd seen aliens,” I say.

“See, that's the problem, right there. You'd believe that I believed I'd seen them. That's not good enough.”

“It's not?”

“No. The group therapist at whatever asylum my parents sent me to would probably say that exact same thing. I'm thinking there has to be someone in the world who will believe me no matter what.”

I've had these conversations with Greg before. For a future mechanic, the guy can wax philosophical when he feels the urge. I reach over and slap a hand on his shoulder. “Bud, I'd believe you,” I promise.

“For sure?”

“Absolutely.”

We sit in silence for another minute until the door to Dallas's house opens and slams shut and a group of hollering yahoos heads in our direction. I start the engine and peel out.

“You think men on other planets have woman issues to deal with?” I ask as we head down the road.

Greg nods sagely. “Definitely. No escaping them, man. They don't get better, either. You should hear my mom and dad these days. It's nuclear meltdown waiting to happen.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. Radioactive.”

We drive back toward town with the windows rolled down and the stereo up, the bass trying to beat the confusion from my skull. By the time we're rolling down Canyon Street, I'm feeling
more relaxed. So relaxed, that I almost don't notice the man walking—weaving—down the sidewalk with the curvy blonde.

“Isn't that . . . ?” Greg bolts upright in the passenger seat and cranes his neck as we pass.

“What?”

“That was your dad! With a woman.” By the way he says “woman,” I can tell it's not the first word he was going to choose.

“If this is a test to see whether I'll believe you at all times, I won't.”

“This is not a test. That was your dad.”

“Weird.”

“Aren't you going to turn around? I think he was waving at you.”

Turning around is exactly the last thing I want to do. I have this feeling in the pit of my stomach that says if I turn around, I'm going to regret it. I may as well push the pedal to the floor, crash into the wall of Burger Barn, and hope for a better outcome.

I slow down and glance in the rearview mirror. A bad decision. They're a block behind us now, but Dad's definitely waving me down.

Swearing, I swing into the Burger Barn parking lot.

“Watch it!” Greg yells. “You just about hit the wall.”

“Yeah, yeah. Just about.”

After all my talk of detaching myself, my dad waves, and I immediately stop to see what he needs. I obviously suck at this. I need some of Greg's little green aliens to pop down and abduct me. They can drop me in a forest somewhere and I won't ever have to meet this blonde.

I make a U-turn and drive back to my dad, pulling over to the side of the road. Greg rolls down his window and Dad swings his elbow up to rest on the edge. He misses, staggers, and tries again, managing to prop himself. The woman stays on the sidewalk, giggling a little.

“What'd I tell ya?” Dad says to her. “I knew he seen us. He's a good kid.”

In a film, this shot would be a wide angle from down the street. Then the camera would slowly dolly toward us, the geometric lines of the sidewalk giving way to the shine of the streetlight on the truck hood and the shimmer of this woman in sequins.

Dad's “friend” is wearing a shiny black skirt that barely hides her crotch. A tiny tank top's stretched over a rather un-tiny body. My eyes plunge into her cleavage before I can tear them away. Which is gross. She's maybe not as old as my dad, but she's way too old to be showing that much cleavage. She has breast wrinkles. The camera would capture those.

Dad turns to me. “Whatcha say you give your old man and his friend a ride home?”

I can't answer him because I'm not sure exactly what will happen if I unclench my jaw. Either I'm going to throw up or I'm going to swear at him. What is he doing staggering down Canyon Street with this woman? What if there's a heaven up there and Mom is seeing all this? She'd probably die a second death.

First Lauren goes nuts and now this. I should have stayed home tonight.

Greg is looking back and forth between my dad and me as if he's a spectator at a tennis match. Suddenly, he grabs his baseball cap off the console. “I'm going to hike up the hill from here. Thanks for the ride, Cole. See ya, Mr. Owens.” Innocent dumb-boy-mechanic act.

“Get in,” I growl at my dad, still trying to talk without moving my teeth.

For them both to fit into the cab of the truck, my dad has to hike one butt cheek onto the center console, leaving the blonde
woman enough room to sit if she plants half of her fat ass on Dad's lap. Which she does willingly. I try to stare straight ahead so I don't vomit.

“I'm Sheri,” she says, extending a hand over Dad and toward me. I keep both hands clutching the wheel, my knuckles white.

“Oh, I suppose I shoulda officially introduced you.” Dad gives a fake guffaw, spewing beer breath at me. You'd think that after Dallas's party, I'd be immune to the smell, but apparently not.