No More Us for You (8 page)

Isabel covered her mouth. “Oh my God.”

“You fainted?” Vanessa asked.

“Yeah,” Snake said shyly.

“Hey, I fainted on a hike once.”

“All right.” Snake made a fist and held it in front of Vanessa. “Fist bump,” he said.

Vanessa tapped Snake's fist softly with her own and giggled.

“Anyway, someone hit the lights and there was Snake sprawled out on the floor. All of a sudden, there was a wet spot on the crotch of his jeans, getting bigger and bigger.”

“Aw, poor baby wet his diaper,” Vanessa teased.

Snake nodded sheepishly.

“Ms. Wagner kneeled at his side and all the students crowded around. Eventually Snake came to, like he was waking from a big nap.”

“I was so damn confused,” Snake said. “I didn't know
how the hell I ended up on the floor.”

“Then what happened?” Vanessa asked, sipping her drink.

“He sat back down on his chair and started to rub his noggin, like this.” I demonstrated, sliding my palm across my forehead. “Then Ms. Wagner asked me to walk him to the school nurse.”

“Poor you,” Vanessa said, caressing Snake's arm. She turned to me. “Weren't you scared when it happened?”

“Yeah,” I said. “But when he woke up, then it was funny as shit.”

“What a friend,” Snake said.

Vanessa rubbed Snake's arm again. “Are you wearing Huggies now?”

Everyone laughed but Isabel. She was looking out the car window, across the parking lot, her eyes frozen on some faraway object. I tried to figure out what it was that held her attention, but there was nothing out there but a row of houses sunk in darkness and a lone streetlamp's yellow halo.

“Wow, that's a great story,” Vanessa said. She turned
around in her seat. “Right, Isabel?”

She kept staring out the window.

“Is,” Vanessa said.

Still nothing.

“Is!”
Vanessa shouted.

I snapped out of my tunnel vision, my daydreaming, whatever you want to call it, and looked at Vanessa and Snake and Carlos, all of whom were looking at me.

“Sorry,” I said. “I was just thinking.”

“Obviously,” Vanessa said.

Carlos put his hand gently on my leg. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, I'm fine,” I said. “I zone out sometimes, that's all.” I took a big gulp from my drink and smiled.

It was happening more and more frequently—spacing
out. Anything could set me off. A struck match, a car horn, windblown trees, a stranger's cough. This time it was the image of Snake tipping over, the whack of his body as he hit the classroom floor. I started wondering what it would feel like to faint, what happens to the brain, if it's anything like death or if it's more like sleeping, a quick nap. And then I wondered what happens the instant you die—the exact moment—if it's like a light switch turned off and the room is suddenly dark, or was it the opposite, a million lights blazing. But wouldn't someone need their eyes to see that being dead was complete darkness or complete brightness, and wouldn't that be impossible, the person being dead and all, including the eyes, and is that why humans came up with the idea of the soul and heaven and religion, because an afterlife that consisted of nothing but nothing was too hard to visualize, too lonely to imagine?

This got me thinking of Gabriel, of the photos I took of him with my digital camera and clicked through on my computer the other day. Gabriel on the bleachers, Gabriel striking a pose in a sombrero, Gabriel in the swimming pool with the water up to his neck, hair slicked back, the
shadow of a palm tree behind him on a wall like a twelve-fingered hand reaching. A wave of guilt slammed into me and I began to kick myself for thinking I was ready to be with another guy. Maybe I needed a couple more weeks. A few more months. Another year. Maybe my heart would never be ready.

“Is!”
Vanessa shouted again, breaking my spell.

Carlos removed his hand from my leg, Vanessa turned back around in her seat, and Snake unscrewed the thermos and filled his cup once more.

“Shit, Carlos, I forgot to tell you,” Snake said. “Will wanted you to call him.”

Carlos leaned forward. “Did he say what it was about?”

“He didn't. Probably Suji.”

“Suji Kim?” I asked.

“You know her?”

“She's in my English class,” I said. “She hasn't been there for the past two days, though.”

Carlos leaned back in his seat and made a sound in his throat, a short hum. “When did you talk to him?”

“Just before I left to pick you up,” Snake said.

Carlos took out his cell phone and checked his messages. “This is probably him,” he said, and lowered his head, listening.

“You good back there?” Snake said. He shook the thermos and the booze sloshed inside of it.

“Yeah, I'm good,” I said, then took a sip from my cup. I heard some kids laughing in the parking lot behind me, the chime of a kicked bottle skittering across the blacktop. I looked over my shoulder and saw them heading toward the gymnasium, one boy already dancing, his hands pushing upward as if he were lifting a heavy box.

“You want to go inside?” Carlos asked me, slipping his phone back into his front pocket.

“Sure,” I said, even though I wasn't sure. The guilt was still swirling around me.

“I should warn you, Is,” Snake said. “Carlos looks like he's being stung by bees when he dances.”

“Dude, you should talk.” Carlos turned to me. “You know those dolls you see on dashboards with the springy necks?”

“You mean a bobble head?”

“Yeah, those things. Snake dances like a bobble head in a car going over potholes.”

Vanessa was in mid-sip and quickly covered her mouth to stop from spraying orange juice and vodka all over the windshield. Her shoulders quaked, she held her laughter inside her mouth with her drink. Finally she composed herself and gulped it all down. She laughed and coughed, fanning her face with her hand.
“Almost,”
she said, giggling. “That was
close
.”

“I laughed Pepsi out of my nose once when I was a kid,” Snake said.

“God, you're really turning me on,” Vanessa said, still chuckling. “Pepsi out of your nose, piss in your jeans. You're a
keeper
.”

Then we were all laughing. Even Snake.

“Let's go inside and tear up the dance floor,” Carlos said, already opening the door.

Snake whispered something to Vanessa, and Vanessa whispered something back. I finished my drink and set it down on the floor of the car.

“We'll meet you guys inside,” Snake said.

Carlos and I looked at each other. There was a pause there, a moment when we both weighed the idea of spending a few minutes alone. “Come on,” he said.

I put my hand on Vanessa's shoulder. “Don't be long.”

Vanessa covered my hand with hers and turned her head so I saw her profile in the console's glow, the powder blue line from forehead to chin. “We won't be,” she said.

I stepped out into the cool evening and straightened my sweater. The gymnasium was at the end of the parking lot and I could see kids inside the front entrance, their silhouettes, the wall flashing orange and yellow like they were standing around a bonfire.

Carlos blew into his cupped hands. “Chilly.”

“I've got my sweater,” I said, stating the obvious.

“It's nice.”

“Thanks.”

“I like the buttons.”

I held one of the pearly white beads and rolled it between my thumb and forefinger. “Me too,” I said.

We began walking across the parking lot. Whenever we decided to zigzag between cars, Carlos let me go first. I
thought it was really sweet, but then I thought maybe he wanted to check out my ass.

“Sorry about Snake,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“That comment he made about drinking so I'd have a chance.”

“Oh,” I said. “I thought that was kind of funny.”

“He likes to embarrass me. If we're in an elevator with other people, or in a line for a movie, he'll say really loud,
So, how's your rash doing?
or something like that.”

“I'd be afraid to go out with him in public,” I said.

“I guess I'm sort of used to it.”

We had to zigzag through a couple more cars and Carlos slowed down. “After you,” he said.

I smiled and walked ahead of him, hoping my sweater and dress didn't make my ass look too big.

We stepped onto the walkway that cut through the grass and straight to the gymnasium's front doors. The speakers thumped louder as we approached, the lights flashed brighter, white and pink now. I heard the chatter and laughter of students inside, their voices coming in and
out of the music's crashing waves.

Mr. Bissell and Ms. Lauden were seated behind a table just outside the entrance. There was a fat red roll of raffle tickets and a clipboard with a pencil tied to the metal clasp. Mr. Bissell picked up the pencil and made two quick lines on a sheet that was already crowded with marks.

“Here you go,” Ms. Lauden chimed, tearing off a couple raffle tickets and handing them to us. “We're giving away a gift bag at the end of the dance.”

“What's in the gift bag?” Carlos asked.

“It's a
surprise
.”

Mr. Bissell muttered something under his breath and Ms. Lauden elbowed him playfully.

When we stepped into the gymnasium we were slammed with the music and splashed with colored lights. The air was warm from the heat of other bodies as we shuffled past one of the throbbing speakers, my dress vibrating against my skin. The DJ stood on a platform with headphones and bobbed his head like a parrot. Carlos took my hand and together we maneuvered through the flailing crowd, the maze of dancing bodies. Once he found a good
spot, he turned around and said something that sounded like,
Take chances like this.

“What?”
I yelled.

“Snake dances like this,”
Carlos shouted, then he jerked his head forward and back, forward and back, his mouth slightly open. Good thing I wasn't drinking then or else I would've showered Carlos with orange juice and vodka.

“Oh my God, that's hilarious.”

“What?”

I bracketed my mouth with my hands.
“You're hilarious.”

Carlos smiled and then we started dancing for real. A disco ball twirled somewhere and pieces of light swam across our faces. Hearts were taped haphazardly along the gymnasium wall, twinkling with glitter. A girl bumped into me from behind and shouted,
“Sorry!”

When a red balloon bounced our way, I slapped at it and it bounced off Carlos's head. I covered my mouth with both hands.

“You did that on purpose!”
he hollered.

“I swear I didn't!”

“I'll remember that!”

“It's hot in here!”

“What?!”

I leaned in close to him, right by his neck.
“I said it's hot in here!”

“You want to step out for a while?”

I nodded and he took my hand again, my sweaty hand, and we slipped out of the crowd toward the gymnasium's back entrance. When Carlos opened the double doors, a heart that was cut from construction paper and folded in half fell like a heavy leaf at our feet. “Whoa, whoa,” a boy said, jamming his shoe in between the doors before it closed. He picked up the folded heart and placed it over the lock, then carefully closed the door so the heart poked out like an arrowtip.

“Sorry about that,” Carlos said.

“No worries,” the boy said. His pupils were dilated, his dark hair curly and big as a pom-pom. He ambled over to his friends leaning against a chain-link fence where
a girl dipped her face into a jacketed boy's lifted palm. She snorted loudly and tossed her head back as if a car had rear-ended her. She pinched her nose, rubbed it, then pinched it again.

I must've had a strange look on my face because Carlos asked me, “Want to go back inside?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Vanessa and Snake are probably looking for us.”

“They're probably still in the car.”

“You think?”

Carlos grabbed the folded heart and opened the door and slipped it back over the latch once we were inside. The DJ was now playing a ballad. Blue lights turned the gymnasium into a giant aquarium where kids slow-danced in the water, their indigo faces shiny with sweat. I saw a couple kiss in the sway of bodies and I thought of Gabriel, his face and how he died, his eyes and how he laughed, barely making a sound, like he was laughing behind thick glass. Maybe it was the booze, maybe because Carlos was holding my hand, but at that
moment I didn't feel sad at all, or guilty for
not
feeling sad. I scanned the room, the blue bodies turning slowly, looking for Vanessa and Snake.

“I don't see them,” I told Carlos.

“Snake doesn't slow-dance,” he said.

“Do you?” I asked him, but he didn't hear me. Or he did and pretended that he didn't.

Carlos led me to the front entrance and once again we were outside, standing before Mr. Bissell and Ms. Lauden. The pencil marks on the clipboard looked the same as when we'd entered.

“That was quick,” Ms. Lauden said.

“We're actually looking for our friends,” Carlos said. “Snake—I mean Jeffrey McKenzie.”

“And Vanessa Barcelos,” I added.

“Jeffrey is one of my students,” Mr. Bissell said. “First period.”

“Did he come inside after we did?”

“No, he didn't,” he said.

Ms. Lauden shrugged.

We turned away from the table and headed back to the car, following our footsteps, zigzagging the same way across the parking lot that we had come. A siren wailed in the distance.

“What if they're, you know…” Carlos said. He cleared his throat.

“I don't think they are,” I said.

“Well, I know how Snake is.”

“I know how Vanessa is, and she wouldn't do that with a guy she barely knows.”

“How long have you known Vanessa?”

“That doesn't matter,” I snapped.

Carlos chuckled. He had this I-know-all-the-answers look on his face.

I folded my arms, annoyed. Everything had been going so well up until that point.

“We'll see who's right,” he said.

But there was nothing to see. Where Snake's car should've been there was now an empty parking spot. Just two parallel lines painted on the ground, an empty red cup on its side like the ones we were drinking from. A
breeze pushed the cup and it rolled back and forth along the same arc. We looked around the parking lot as if they had just pulled away, as if we could chase them down and stop them from going to wherever they were going.