I Love You, Beth Cooper (12 page)

Cammy traced a nail along Rich's throat. “It's just a love bite.” She puckered her lips next to Rich's ear.
“Moo moo moo moo moo,”
she cooed.

“Hey,” Rich said, “what if it was a mad cow?”

“She was pretty mad,” Treece agreed.

Cammy gasped dramatically. “You're going to turn into a werecow.” She glanced up, saw the full moon, and gasped again.

Rich turned to Denis, with need and regret.

“
Now
you want my expertise?”

“Yes. Please.”

“There hasn't been a confirmed case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy in the United States for four years,” Denis uploaded. “And even if this one did have mad cow disease, it can't be transmitted by biting, which cows can't do.”

Beth's cute nostrils flared in an unpretty way. “What's that smell?”

Rich said nothing.

Cammy directed Beth's attention to the backseat. “He pooped his shoes.”

Beth did not allow poop in her car. “Lose the shoes.”

“These are my best shoes!”

“Well, now they're shit.”

“I
paid
for these shoes!”

“They go,” Beth said, “with
you
in them, or not.”

Rich got out of the car. He shuffled to the side of the road, slipped off his shoes, and got back in the car. Treece and Cammy settled in around him.

“So!” bubbled Cammy, rubbing her palms together with camp perkiness. “And what have our head cheerleader and Tiny Einstein been up to?”

That didn't take her long, Denis noted. He didn't know she was saving
Dick Muncher and The Penis
for later.
What had they been up to?

Were they connecting, opening up, sharing, in preparation for making out, or were they merely dancing around one another with Denis doing the herky-jerkoff?

“We were just—”

“Storytime!” Beth announced.

TREECE CLAPPED.
She loved Storytime. Cammy smiled, too, in a slightly sinister way, Denis thought. Beth nestled her beer between crossed legs. She raised her hands, a call for silence. Her eyes widened. Her voice was soft but urgent.

“It was thirty-three years ago tonight…”

Treece began to sing,

Cammy backed her on drums,

This was quite a production. Denis felt privileged they would go through all this trouble for him.

“…on this very road,” Beth continued. “A VW bus was parked in this exact spot.”

Denis could see the bus. It bore a remarkable resemblance to the
Scooby Doo
Mystery Machine.

“It's a moonless night.”

Denis killed the moon.

“Inside, this hippie and his chick…”

Denis had always identified with Velma, but took on the Shaggy role. He cast Beth as the hippie chick who stuck flowers in rifles in his Anti-American History class (its official name was “The History of Patriotic Dissent: Boston Tea Party to Kent State” and was taught by Ms. Calumet-Hobey, who probably should have worn a brassiere in the seventies).

“…were smoking this humongous bong.”

His seventies bong knowledge being limited, Denis improvised something psychedelic with a bright yellow smiley face on the bowl.

“The chick starts to tell this story…”

Hippie Beth spoke but Treece's voice came out.

“So, it was, like, the fifties, man.”

Treece was the perfect hippie chick, but Denis was disconcerted at the sudden change in narrator.

Cammy and Beth sang,

This wasn't the first time the girls had told this story. Denis felt a little less special.

“And like, this, '57 T-Bird comes to a stop in this exact spot, dig?”

Denis questioned the use of
dig
but re-dressed his mental set. Big-finned coupe, sock-hop rock, and for some reason, the fifties were in black and white.

“And this dude, like, tells his lady he's out of gas…”

The biker jacket and ducktail looked good on Denis. Beth wore Chantilly lace and a ponytail all hanging down, with a light pink sweater and magenta poodle skirt. An ice cream soda with two straws sat between them in a historically inaccurate cup holder.

“…and then he tries to get groovy.”

Groovy
was entirely the wrong word; at any rate, Denis was way ahead of her. His greaser doppelgänger took bobbysoxer Beth into his distressed leather arms and—

“She's not copacetic with that, and, like, bags him and tells him to go get gas…”

“Wait,” Denis protested, “is this ‘Hook Man' or ‘Trippin' Hippies'? You're mixing up your urban legends.”

“Shut up,” Beth said sweetly.

Denis shut up. In the backseat, Cammy and Treece quietly secured their seat belts. Rich didn't notice; he was mesmerized. It was like drama club, only the girls were popular and didn't cry all the time.

“So the chick is totally alone in the car…”

Totally
an anachronism.

“…and she, like, turns on the radio to keep her company.”

Out of the radio came Cammy. “Hey all you cats and kitties,” she growled in a truly remarkable impression that large-print readers will recognize as Wolfman Jack. “News flash, baby: a deranged killer with a hook for a hand has escaped from the local mental hospital!”

This was awfully elaborate, Denis thought; it must be a skit they did at cheerleading camp or something. Rich, meanwhile, was upgrading his opinion of Cammy.

“Now here's the Surfaris, y'all!”

Treece mimicked the deranged falsetto perfectly:

Okay, now it was just weird. Never mind the Surfaris didn't come along until the sixties…

Denis looked over at Beth. She was sitting forward, her hands on the wheel; the engine idled quietly.

“Just then,” Beth picked up the narration, breaking the story-within-a-story structure, “there's a scratching at the door!”

Cammy did the scratching, quite effectively.

Didn't Beth turn off the car a few minutes before?

“The girl is so freaked out, she…”

Beth stepped on the gas.

THE CABRIOLET HAD EXCELLENT PICKUP.
It helped that they were going downhill at a fifty-degree angle. The car plunged into the toxic haunted fog.

And then Beth shut off the headlights.

Denis heard himself scream. His teeth were clenched so tightly the scream was reverberating in his sinus cavity and coming out his nostrils, he hy
pothesized, and then realized the scream was coming from the radio.

There had been a family argument over whether to include this song in Denis's Commencement Mix. His mother felt it was bleak and arbitrarily antiauthoritarian; his father argued that Pink Floyd kicked major ass. A stupid dispute, Denis thought; this was the perfect song to die to.

The girls all shrieked as the convertible swooped through the dale of the hill and began rocketing up the next one. Rich shrieked, too, but clutched the broken seat-belt strap to his chest as if, well, his life did depend on it.

Denis had automatically fastened his seat belt when he climbed into the front seat and had never unfastened it. He was now trying to remember whether this Cabriolet came equipped with passenger-side airbags.

“BETH!” Denis shouted. “WHAT…
MODEL YEAR
…IS
THIS CAR
?”

She turned, hair in her face, lashing her eyes and nose.

“TO THE FUTURE!” she screamed.

Denis looked to the immediate future. Fog crashed against the windshield, scrambling in skittish rivulets to the corners. Visibility was zero. They were going to crash into whatever might be in front of them; for example, another car full of idiots. They were on a Highway to Hell, or Heaven, or the Endless Abyss that Denis's head and heart kept arguing about.

As if in answer to his ambivalent prayer, the mist swept away as the car climbed out of the ground
cloud, and Denis saw they were headed straight for the moon. It loomed huge and yellow at the top of the hill, casting a cold shadowless light on the road before them. It was a small comfort that he would now be able to see what killed him.

Unlike most people his age, Denis did not feel the least bit immortal, and so did not enjoy impending death as much as the average teenager. Nor could he understand the appeal. He looked over at Beth. She had stopped singing. Her hair floated behind her. Her expression was neither happy nor sad. She blinked. A tear streamed sideways across her cheek. It was just the wind, Denis thought. After all, there were tears in his eyes, too.

BETH SWITCHED
the headlights back on as the Cabriolet crested the hill, conveniently illuminating the car parked directly in their path.

She swerved.

The front of the convertible sailed clear but the end fishtailed. It careered into the parked car, screeching along its side. Beth slammed the wheel right and the Cabriolet whipsawed completely around. It skidded backward for about a hundred feet before coming to a stop.

Beth killed the ignition. A high-pitched sound permeated the car. Denis's mouth was open slightly. He swallowed.

“Sorry. I was unaware I was…emitting that.”

Beth pressed a finger into her eyebrow. “Denis Cooverman, please stop apologizing for being you.” She turned to the backseat. “Anyone dead?”

Cammy was straightening her clothes and Treece was reapplying her lipstick. “Not yet,” Cammy reported.

Rich clung to the belt. “Never been more alive.” He tried to let go of the strap but could not.

Denis was palpating his abdomen for signs of internal bleeding when it occurred to him, “The airbags didn't go off.”

“I sold those years ago.”

“Isn't that illegal?”

“If it isn't, I got ripped off.”

A metallic groan redirected Denis's attention through the windshield. It came from the car they had just hit, a late-model black Prius.

“Oh…crap.”

The crumpled rear door of the Prius whined open and Denis's father backed out. He staggered, not because he was injured, but because his pants were around his ankles. Denis's mother emerged after him, scooting into her slacks.

“Hey,” Rich pointed out. “
Meet the Parents!
”

Denis exhaled deeply. “I had a lovely time this evening,” he addressed his friends, old and new. “But now I must die.”

He started to unbuckle his seat belt.

“You do not,” Beth said, restarting the car, “want to talk to your dad when he's not wearing pants.” She shifted into reverse and peeled out. The car's headlights disappeared into the mist as a thousand English schoolboys sang,

“KIDS!”

Mr. C zipped his pants. “Goddamn kids!”

Mrs. C rubbed the back of his neck. “Still wish our son was more ‘normal'?”

“Not if
that's
normal.”

Mr. C got in the driver's seat and pressed the POWER button. The car made a long unfriendly beep.

“How could we be
out of gas?”

VALLI WOOLLY LIVED
in Duxbury Woods, an un-wooded area that used to be part of Berkley Square before a developer tore down a bunch of $300,000 homes and put up a bunch of $1.4 million mini-estates in their place. Duxbury Woods out-fauxed all the other local English countrysides—Devonshire, Amberleigh, Manchester Green and even Canterbury Fields—with an authentic British duck pond that had to be constantly restocked with rare Aylesburys, on account of their being quite loud and delicious. The “private community” also adopted somebody's idea of Her Majesty's address system; Valli Woolly's house was located on Croydon-on-Duxbury, with no number, just a name: Heathbriar. Thus, a letter addressed to:

 

V
ALERIE
W
OOLLY

“H
EATHBRIAR
”
AT
C
ROYDON-ON-
D
UXBURY

A
RLINGTON
H
EIGHTS
, IL 60004

 

got thrown in the undeliverable bin with the rest of the irritating mail.

Beth circumnavigated the main Duxbury loop three times, prompting two 911 calls, before locating the Croydon tributary, marked only by a hand-painted rock. Heathbriar was easy to find from there, being the only tract mansion with all its lights on at 1 a.m. and a valet parking kiosk in front.

Heathbriar was neo-Georgian, meaning it had red brick on the front. It was otherwise a 6,000-square-foot conglomeration of awful architectural ideas throughout history executed in twenty-first-century Vulgarian; chief among the offenses was a wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling bay window that cantilevered out like a bodybuilder who spent way too much time on his abs. The steroidal terrarium was presently overpopulated with high school students.

“Shit my panties,” said Beth, dropping her keys close to the hand of a valet. She had never been to Valli's house, nor had anyone else in the car, nor had pretty much everybody already at the party. Valli was not much liked. This party wasn't designed to change that. It was designed to make all those people feel like poor morons.

“Weird,” Rich said. “In the movies, the rich bitch is always the popular one.”

“We're not in the movies,” Cammy informed him.

“
I'm
popular, and
my
dad's rich,” Treece said. “I mean, he has to hide it. From my mom. And that stupid cunt Cheryl. But he
has
to be rich. Some of his clients are
kingpins
. And
I'm
popular.”

No one said anything, making Treece suspicious. “What are you trying to say, Cammy?”

“I didn't say anything.”

“What are you trying to
not
say? That I'm not popular, or I'm not rich?”

DENIS STARED
at Valli Woolly's house with a Denis look on his face.

“Maybe I should just wait out here,” he said.

Cammy patted his head. “If she attacks, go for her throat. She'll be protecting the nose.”

“Cammy,”
Beth reprimanded. Her expression was hard to read. Her brow knitted and her lips curled up on one side and down of the other. “Denis Cooverman.”

Denis figured out what it was:
affectionate frustration
. The kind a girl might have for a piddling puppy or a goofy boyfriend, annoying but still lovable.

Beth's head drifted in and out; she placed the heel of her palm against Denis's shoulder blade and put some weight on it. “Would you like me to take you home, Denis Cooverman?”

Oh,
Denis refigured it out,
she's drunk.

“I can walk. It's only a mile.”

Beth jerked her hand away with a
whatever
flip. She pointed at Cammy and Treece, then pointed at Valli Woolly's house. “You know,” she said over her shoulder, “she's probably pulling a train by now. She won't even know you're there.” With that, she strutted up the walk, Cammy and Treece beside but also behind her. Her hips swayed in a wide irregular pattern. She stumbled, and Cammy caught her by the elbow. “Fucking bricks,” Beth said, and went inside.

Denis watched through the bay window as the crowd greeted the appearance of the Trinity with cowering and hushed exchanges. A pack of guys swarmed over the girls, absorbed them into the partying mass, and they were gone.

Rich put an arm around Denis's shoulder. “We walking?”

“As long as we're here. What the F—”

They approached the party.

“So,” Denis said, “Valli Woolly pulls trains.”

“Dude,” Rich said, “we went to the wrong high school.”

IT WAS LOUD.
The entertainment for the evening was a black MacBook operated by Zooey Bananafish, an exotic-looking sophomore who claimed to be half Thai and half Cherokee (She was half Thai and half something, at any rate). Zooey charged $300 to bring her laptop to parties and press i. She was charging Valli an additional $300 because she didn't like her, and because Valli was insisting on a playlist that perversely only included songs with
friend
in the title. Right now Mr. Woolly's $45,000 MAXX Series 2 speakers wept as they faithfully reproduced the microdynamics of a wirelessly streamed crappy
pirated mp3 of every twelve-year-old girl's favorite Queen song,

This would be followed by Mariah Carey's “Anytime You Need a Friend,” the Kelly Clarkson and Justin Guarini version of “That's What Friends Are For,” the Rembrandts' “I'll Be There for You (Theme from
Friends
),” that Vitamin C song that wouldn't go away, several other dollops of sugar pop, and then finally, before she kicked everybody out, Fall Out Boy's “Champagne for My Real Friends, Real Pain for My Sham Friends.”

Zooey wore softball-sized headphones, through which she was listening to Thelonious Monk.

IT WAS CROWDED.
Of the 513 graduates in the class of 2007, 509 of them were in this house. (Luke and Matthew Andreesen were both in prison, on unrelated charges; Heather Lally was in labor; and Josh Bernstein thought he was at Valli Woolly's but was still at home, toasted.) In addition, there were a hundred or so graduating seniors from Adlai Stevenson and John Hersey High Schools, a few dozen BGHS juniors and underclassmen, and a handful of female eighth-graders who, unfortunately for Mike Bogar, did not look like eighth-graders. All of them were yelling to be heard over the music, which Zooey had started at 90 dBs and was increasing by one decibel every ten minutes. In about an hour, the people nearest the MAXX 2s would start falling down.

AND EVERYBODY WAS TOUCHING.
Denis traced an epidemiological path from the foyer where he was, up the double-curved staircase teeming with intertwined limbs, and across the mammoth, two-story
front room that held a writhing, sweaty beast with two hundred heads.

“This is a good way to get impetigo,” Denis yelled to Rich.

“She invited
band
people,” Rich shouted back. “She invited
mathletes—but not us!
”

Valli Woolly invited no one. She had disinvited just enough people (“I have to keep it small”) for word to get around. She wanted everybody to be crashing, so that they would all feel unworthy and she could eject anyone at any time. She was that much of a bitch.

“Look,” Rich yelled, “an ice bison.”

From his disadvantage point, Denis could see only backs, shoulders and the occasional female head. He toed his way up the crowded staircase to get a better view. He wasn't interested in the ice bison.

The Woollys had spared no expense in lording their wealth over a bunch of teenagers. In front of the bay window was laid out a gratuitous buffet, offering top-dollar antipasti and crudités, chip, crackers and ethnic breads, along with dips, salsas and rémoulades that disconcertingly only came in BGHS school colors, orange and blue. Next to it was that ice bison, decorating a champagne fountain that had been spiked with green-apple-flavored vodka earlier in the evening by Scott Nigh. And adjacent to that was a pony keg, which was getting all the traffic.

“Your party was better,” Rich yelled, and disappeared into the crowd.

BETH WAS EASY TO SPOT.
Everybody in the room was oriented toward her, sort of orbiting her, radiating out in circles of diminishing popularity. Denis estimated he was in the Kuiper Belt, out there with Pluto, not even a planet anymore.

The innermost circle consisted of Treece and Cammy
and seven guys Denis recognized from various locker-room towel-snappings. In most direct competition for Beth appeared to be Dave Bastable, all-state tight end and nerd tripper, and Seth Johansson, soccer star and deer killer. Beth had apparently forgiven Seth his vehicular Bambicide, judging from the way she was laughing at every goddamn stupid face he made. Dave would not be so easily cockblocked, however; as Beth finished one glass of fortified champagne, Dave was ready with another. Seth said something pithy or at least short, punctuating it with a simian grin, and Beth laughed and laughed. Dave left to get more alcohol.

Reality had returned to its usual programming.

DENIS SIGHED
slowly and continuously until he was completely deflated. He felt not defeat, but release. He was philosophical: he had gotten more than he expected and, frankly, deserved. He had been straddled by Beth Cooper. He had spoken to her panties. He had been kissed on the cheek, patted on the head, talked to and laughed with. He had also been beaten with human bones, choked to near death, and crashed into his parents.

Denis had had two hours with Beth Cooper, and he should be simply grateful he had survived it.

With that epiphany all of Denis's systems went off high alert, his adrenals dropped to normal, and he at once felt exhausted, hungry and with a tremendous need to urinate.

He would pee, eat and sleep, in that order.

“Whup,” a body said as it fell on him from above, escorting him through the air the four feet to the floor.

Denis was on his back, probably broken, and the body was on top of him. It was a big body and it smelled like beer, but also cherry and flowers and
wintergreen. “Sor-ree,” the body said and reared its head, redistributing its significant weight to Denis's bloated groin. “You 'kay?”

The body belonged to a big girl who Denis recognized as someone from the murky middle of his class, not smart or dumb, popular or pariah, or any category he could use to recall her name. He had seen her in the library.
Jane? Emily? Charlotte?

“Hey,” the Big Girl said, “you're that dork who gave that creepy speech!”

“I'd like you to get off of me.”

“Please.”

“Please.”

“Woof!” the Big Girl barked and licked Denis's nose with a thick yeasty tongue, twirling the tip in one of his nostrils. She lumbered off him, pushing one hand, and the other, into his bladder to steady herself. By the time she was upright she had forgotten he was there and kicked him slightly in the kidney as she stumbled over him on her way to the pony keg.

Denis decided not to wait until the ambulance came and got up himself.

THE LAST BIG PARTY
Denis attended had a bouncy house, in which Debbie Bauman had given him a bloody nose that lasted for three days. He stopped going to parties after that, around the same time he stopped being invited to them.

And yet, as he poked and prodded his way through this party, he felt oddly at home. More precisely, he felt like he was back in the halls of BGHS during passing period; he was in a hurry and nobody else was going anywhere. Life after high school was identical to high school, evidently; the people were the same, if slightly better dressed, arranged in the identical dyads, triads and quartets, all holding red cups. That was different. Yet for all their legendary powers,
the red cups had done nothing to loosen the brackets of the teen taxonomy they had all lived inside since the sixth grade. No jock had his arm around any stoner, sharing a heretofore unknown common appreciation of
Hong Kong Fooey;
no hot chick was making over any mousy fat girl; no brainy nerd was heavily petting any popular cheerleader who had been won over by the depth and everlastingness of his love.

Denis chuckled at how naive he had been, up until three minutes ago, and was keenly reminded that laughter was not recommended on a full bladder. Feeling greater urinary urgency than he thought biologically possible, Denis squeezed past Eric Gallagan and Brett Pister, two future business administrators arguing over whether Valli's father made his money in commodities or derivatives (he owned fourteen KFCs), sidestepped Eric's twin sister Julia, who was talking to Alicia Mitchell about the relative merits of Alicia's ninety-two-year-old Nana just dying already, and frantically wriggled around an intransigent Goth brood, all of whom were mutely glowering and mentally dismembering every body at the party including each others'.

Denis finally saw an open door and, knowing he would pee in there whether it was a bathroom or not, dashed inside.

There was a toilet, which was nice if not strictly necessary. There was also, staring right at him, Valli Woolly.

SHE WAS EVERYWHERE.
There were photos of Valli Woolly on the walls, small cameos of her cluttering the sink, and, above the toilet tank, a large oil painting done by Nelson Shanks, who did Princess Diana's official portrait, according to the
Philadelphia
magazine article that was framed just below it.

Denis stood before the painting and tried to urinate.
He couldn't. Valli Woolly's eyes seemed to be following his penis. The pain, slightly past excruciating, only exacerbated the problem. His entire urogenital system was experiencing a fatal error; he would have to reboot. He closed his eyes and wiped away the image of Valli Woolly watching him pee. It was replaced by the image of Lady Di watching him pee.
This is just like that “Don't think about Pink Elephants” paradox,
Denis thought. And soon enough he was thinking of pink elephants and whizzing like one. It felt tremendous. It didn't sound right, though.