The Vast Fields of Ordinary (31 page)

Lucy belched hugely and then slapped me on the back. A smaller one came up through my body, the little brother of whatever Lucy had just let out. Thomas let out a lost-boy howl and the insanity of the fact that my kitchen was crammed full of people I didn’t know filled me with the rawest sort of happiness, the kind that comes to life in your chest and gives off sparks. I wondered if everyone felt like this all the time, if I was the last one to arrive at this ecstatic destination.

The kids swimming in my pool were wearing their tightywhiteys or nothing at all. My Ultimate Vas Deferens Playlist was blaring from every speaker in the house with everything from
Introducing . . . the Vas Deferens!
to
Emotional Aviary Death Watch
heartily represented. Lucy and I were in my backyard watching two Asian girls have a break-dancing competition when one of the sophomores who worked at Food World came up to me and put his hand out for a high five.

“Great party, Hamilton,” he said.

I put my hand out stupidly and let him slap it.

“Look at you,” Lucy said after he walked away. “Mr. Popular.”

It was then that I saw them. Jessica Montana and Judy Lockhart. They’d just stepped onto the back porch along with four of their friends. They were looking around, their faces registering a nervousness I’d never seen on them before.

“Is that that bitch from Bert’s party?” Lucy asked. She raised her glass. “Hi, ladies!”

It took a moment for them to realize we were talking to them. Judy gave us a strained smile and wiggled her fingers in a pathetic and somewhat snotty hello. I waved back, surprised by the fact that I was sorta happy to see them there. As much as I wanted to pretend that there was nothing outside of this summer, there was, and whether or not I wanted to admit it, this was sort of my last bash. In some ways, it wouldn’t have been complete without them.

“Who invited them?” Lucy asked.

“Not me,” I said. “But it’s cool. Whatevs.”

“Are you okay? Feeling good about things?”

I nodded. At first it was more to convince myself that things were fine, but then I realized that things really were okay. I was happy, and the most beautiful part of it was that it didn’t seem dependent on anyone. My happiness didn’t feel tethered to Alex or Lucy or anybody else. It was mine, independent of everything else.

“Let’s go inside and check on the band,” I said.

Dingo and Alex had turned my mother’s meditation room into the band’s green room. The speakers in this room were turned off, as were the lights. Everyone was sitting on my mother’s Balance Pillows. A shirtless Dingo was strumming an acoustic guitar while Thomas and Louis watched. Thomas was running his fingers over a new tattoo that ran across his abdomen: the word
Iowa
in a florid cursive font. There were two dark-haired girls passing a cigarette back and forth and giggling from behind their curtains of hair. Someone had lit my mother’s candles, and the walls were a production of overlapping silhouettes. Dingo was singing a song about killing his stuffed animals. I made a mental note to burn sage in this room before my mother came home.

“Alex told me he’s writing a concept album about the toys of his youth,” I whispered to Lucy.

“Sounds completely cutting edge,” she said. “In a masturbatory man-child sort of way. How can you kill toys? Toys aren’t alive.”

“I think Dingo probably had a very different childhood than most people.”

“Can you keep it down please?” one of the dark-haired girls said. She was trying to sound authoritative, but her friend burst out laughing and then she did too. “We’re trying to listen to this
amazing
song.”

“It’s fine, ladies,” Dingo said, still strumming. “This is Dade’s pad. He can do what he wants. Plus, my music is meant to exist in the hallways of life, and in the hallways of life, there is always distraction.”

“I like the way this room feels,” one of the girls said. “I feel like there’s a portal in here somewhere.”

“I’m heading downstairs to check things out,” I said to Lucy.

“I’ll stay up here and hold down the crazy,” she said.

I left them there and went downstairs. The house was full of people. It lacked the anarchic vibe of Jessica’s party earlier in the summer. There were no freshmen dancing on top of the coffee table, no frat boys howling like banshees when a big-breasted girl walked by. There were people chilling out everywhere, nodding along to the music. Out by the pool a group of thirty people were watching Jay juggle some oranges that he’d found in the refrigerator. I stood watching from the back porch. I wondered where Alex was, where he’d disappeared to.

And then I saw him. He was standing in the back of the crowd with Fessica. He was taller than she was and he had to bend down a bit to talk to her. At one point he was smiling and pointing over everyone’s heads at Jay and his act. Fessica was smiling too, clutching a bottle of beer and looking a little less tragic than usual. After an eternity of ponytails she’d finally let her hair down, and it made me think she was making steps away from the place she’d been for so long. Alex noticed me and excused himself. Fessica looked over and saw me and waved. I smiled and waved back. Alex sauntered up toward the porch. His swagger, his boyish gait. Another thing I adored about him.

“You don’t look stressed,” he said.

“I’m not. It’s a miracle.”

“I figured you’d be a mess,” he said.

“I did too. And I’m not even stoned. Shocker.”

“Total shocker,” he said.

He moved in and kissed me. He did this thing where he softly bit my lower lip, and there was always a split second where I thought he wasn’t going to let go, where I truly thought he was going to bite my lip off out of some primal desire to quite literally devour me. I put my hands on his chest and I swear to God I could feel things moving around inside him. I decided it was his affection for me, a shimmering blue circuit of light that made his entire body give off some invisible force that rendered me completely powerless, a light and force that also lived in me.

Time got rubbery. One minute it was eleven o’clock, the next it was almost two in the morning. The Vas Deferens playlist ended and Lucy put on some German synth pop. Two spike-haired boys moved the kitchen table into the garage and began break-dancing in the space where it used to be, leaving black scuff marks on the linoleum. I was too drunk to care. I told myself that I’d make Jay and Alex help me scrub that up the next morning. A crowd of people gathered around the break-dancing boys. People were clapping their hands and cheering. The house was singing in German. Somewhere I heard glass break. Someone yelled, “Party foul!” and everyone laughed like they’d never heard anyone say that before.

“Party foul!” I yelled, eight seconds too late.

A girl to my left looked over at me and let out a laugh.

“You okay, man? Havin’ a good time?”

I looked over at her, gave my sagging eyelids a minute to open. Was she the girl from Bert’s party who’d told Alex and me that we were the cutest couple she’d ever seen?

“Sucks that Dingo and the band got too messed up to play,” she said.

“Um, yeah,” I said, not knowing exactly what she was talking about. Had there been some announcement I’d missed? “Do you like Johnny Morgan?”

“The actor?” she said.

“Yes. The actor. The very famous movie actor. I’m in love with him. I believe that someday I will marry him. I believe it enough to make it happen. It will happen.”

The girl burst out laughing and threw her arm around my neck. “Dade, dude, you are
toasted
.”

“How do you know my name?”

My words felt like heavy things that just kept falling out of my mouth.

“I’m Sandra. We met earlier. Remember? We talked about the Vas Deferens show I saw in Colorado with my cousin Roxy, who knew the drummer because—”

I walked away as she spoke. Stumbled is more like it. I needed to leave, needed to lie down. Where was Alex? Jay? Lucy? I should stay awake. This was my house. I had to keep things in order. Why had I gotten so drunk to begin with? If my parents could see me from Europe, they would ground me for the rest of my life. On my way up to my room. I passed a guy with blue hair wearing a T-shirt with Jenny Moore’s face on it. Across the image was the word
found
in big red letters.

I went into my darkened room and fell face-first onto my bed. Purple Christmas lights blinked all around me. What was a purple Christmas for? Who has a purple Christmas? I told myself that I was just going to close my eyes for a minute. I was just going to take a little nap. I would stick my big toe into the pool of sleep and that would be enough. Then I’d get up and go downstairs and make coffee, wake the hell up, become a new man.

I have a fuzzy memory of Lucy kneeling by my bed and asking if I was okay. I made a noise in my throat. She asked me if I was okay again. I think I said Alex’s name. Actually, I think I said Alexander Hamilton.