After Dakota Part 11

Bryce lies in bed, ears still ringing from the party, left hand in its default resting position inside his underwear. He keeps picturing the near-collision. The way the others laughed, not even caring how close they came. Maybe not even knowing. You kids think you're immortal.

A lump. On his left t.e.s.t.i.c.l.e.

He's never noticed that before, and he's had a lot of chances to notice. Like a pencil eraser grew there overnight. There was something in Health cla.s.s last year about lumps on b.a.l.l.s. If Phoebe Weatherfield hadn't sat in front of him, he might've paid more attention.

He checks the right ball: all clear. Back to the left. Maybe it's the angle he's at; he shifts, but the lump remains.

Somewhere in his closet is a folder full of old school handouts. He'll look for it in the morning. Just go to sleep now. It can wait.

Two minutes later, he's kneeling in the closet, tearing through random boxes and folders.

He finds a drawing of their former English teacher, Mrs. Webster, with her b.u.t.t blown up to the proportions of two balloons in her pants. Bryce had done the drawing while Cam filled in the word balloons (all verbatim quotes): I don't get paid enough to deal with stupid people.

If I have to stop because of you, you're out of here.

These keys around my neck mean I am an authority figure.

It was signed F.T.E. They planned to sneak into her room during her prep period and hang it up out of her reach, until Cam decided to become every teacher's favorite student. You know it's bad when you have them asking you if they can write your college recommendations.

Keep digging. Ah hah, the Health folder. Common Venereal Diseases is the first ditto. No, none of these have lumps.

Next ditto: Cancers Among the Young. Testicular cancer afflicts men under 25. Presents as a lump on the t.e.s.t.i.c.l.e.

Wait, cancer?

Holy. No, he can't have cancer. Teenagers don't get cancer. It must be something else like a monster pimple. But can b.a.l.l.s get pimples on them?

He turns on his desk lamp and tries to measure the lump with a ruler, but can't get a good angle.

It's not cancer.

Shadows arc across the ceiling. A daddy longlegs hangs in the corner. His science and Spanish textbooks on his desk, homework for tomorrow.

Next to the books, his wallet with the two condoms inside. What a joke that turned out to be.

"It's not cancer," he says aloud.

Would you rather know the when or the how?

38.

Claire's been going to lunch with Ricky and his friends most days. He always saves her a spot next to him at whatever restaurant. She always gets to sit shotgun if he drives; if he doesn't she's with him in the back. Maybe he's being polite. Maybe more.

After school, the group (or some combination of them) stops at Circle K because Ricky wants to stay away from home as long as possible. He works part time at his dad's gas station, and always has a roll of money bulging in his pocket. At Circle K they drink sodas and smoke in the parking lot. Claire doesn't like how cigarettes make her feel past a couple of puffs when the pleasant jitters are replaced by an upset stomach so she keeps the smoke in her mouth and blows it out the way she's seen in movies.

Someone is usually signing a parent's name on someone else's test or attendance contract.

"Screw that noise," Ricky says one day when Claire mentions needing to get home and do homework. She seems to be the only one of the group who ever has any.

"School is like one of those labor camps," Stringy Hair says.

"A gulag." Ricky finishes his soda, tosses the cup onto the ground. "I cannot f.u.c.king wait to be done with this f.u.c.king place. Just gotta pa.s.s my cla.s.ses and I get my exit ticket." His eyes hidden behind mirrors.

"Then what?" Claire asks.

"Then I'm outta here and never looking back. New York city."

"Cool. What college there?" Claire hates asking questions because she sounds like her mom.

Ricky laughs. "I'm done with school for good. All the other lemmings can stress out about getting into college." He taps the Marlboro pack against his palm. "So many things you can do in New York and no one cares about a degree."

From inside the car, CAT asks, "Lemming's a fish, right?"

"How is it a fish, dumbs.h.i.t? They walk on the beach."

"But they swim."

Ricky says to Claire, "In New York they have these things called bike messengers. You get paid to ride around delivering mail."

Stringy Hair asks, "What if it's raining or snowing?"

"I dunno. I don't have the job, do I? Point is, anything's better than this."

Neither Claire nor the other two can argue with that.

One day she, Ricky, and Buzzed Head go to a park, where Ricky pulls out a little black pipe in the shape of a skull. They sit in a circle around the corner from the playground, where no one will see them. All Claire knows about marijuana is what she learned from the Nancy Reagan drug film they watched in middle school. One time she'd been gardening for Steve and Bo and pulled out some weeds that made them so mad. Dakota said it was a pot plant. Claire looked in the encyclopedia and, sure enough, the picture looked just like what she'd pulled out of the ground.

Now here she sits, like a character on an Afterschool Special, being introduced to the evils of drugs.

The boys clench their faces and suck the skull, then Ricky holds it toward her. Smoke worms out from the top. Claire takes it and copies them; her lungs explode in pain. She coughs, coughs, coughs until she thinks her eyeb.a.l.l.s might pop out onto the gra.s.s. Around the corner, two kids go up and down on the teeter-totter.

"First time?" Buzzed Head asks.

Claire nods because she can't speak, wipes the tears off her face with her sleeve.

"Don't suck so hard," Ricky says.

Then the smoke hits her, really hits her, and it's like sinking into warm water. Life slips out of focus. She watches the kids up, down, up, down and could happily do so all day.

Nothing matters. Bliss.

Claire goes home afterwards and eats Cinnamon Life cereal by the handful, then two popsicles. She hears Bryce coming up from the bas.e.m.e.nt and runs up to her room, convinced he'll be able to smell it on her and call their mom.

She opens her locker at school the next day to find a folded piece of paper, apparently slipped in through the slot.

Dear Claire, I awaken to find you are not by my side My dreams give the pleasure that you have denied Your beauty continuously haunts me by night By day your the angel who brings the world light No signature. She looks around to see if the author might be watching, but it's the same parade of faces as every day. The only guys that have ever talked to her at school are the ones who have to do so in cla.s.s. And Ricky's group. She can't imagine any of them writing a poem, though.

Meredith is already at the arroyo, sitting on the tree stump. "Notice anything different?" she asks, smiling. No more braces her teeth are the color of paper.

Claire takes the camera from her backpack. "I have to get a picture of this historical occasion." Meredith poses with a hand behind her head and her chin up, like a movie star. Claire checks the F stop, then clicks away, saying to show your teeth when Meredith does a pouty face.

"Remember my marionette poem?" Meredith says. "My teacher wants me to submit it to the school magazine, but I don't know."

"You should do it and use a fake name."

"Oh, totally! I could be something sophisticated, like Penelope."

"Or Joan Jett!"

"I wish Pat had named me Joan Jett. That's literally the greatest name of all time." They start on the path toward home. "You'll be happy to know I'm inviting Justin to my birthday party."

It actually takes Claire a moment to remember Justin's last name. Vance. Justin Vance.

"Aren't you psyched?"

"Whatever," Claire says. "It's your party." She hands over the folded paper.

"Oh. My. G.o.d. Who wrote this?"

Claire shrugs. "Someone stuck it in my locker."

"'My dreams give the pleasure that you have denied'? You know what he's talking about, right?" Meredith hands it back. "That's awesome if it's someone hot."

"I've been eating lunch with these senior guys."

"For reals?"

Claire talks about Ricky's gang, the car trips, the cigarettes. She leaves out the pot.

"That's so cool," Meredith says. "The seniors at Sandia are all totally stuck up around freshmen."

A few feet off their path lie the remains of a brown rabbit, its front legs splayed open like scissors. A globe of flies hovers over its wet guts.

"A coyote or something," Claire replies. She gets the camera back out.

"Grody! Why do you want a picture of that?" Meredith asks with a hand over her mouth.

"Cuz no one else in my cla.s.s will have one. Maybe we should take a foot for good luck." The girls stand in the sun, daring each other to actually touch it, before they give up and walk home.

39.

Back at school the week after the party, Rosemary pa.s.ses Cameron a note in cla.s.s, a sheet of binder paper folded in eighths: Thanks for the other night. Sorry the police came.

He studies the note all through science, while Mr. Turner lectures in his lab coat. In every photo of Turner, going back his twenty years at this school, he's wearing the coat. There has been speculation about whether he ever takes it off, even to sleep or to have s.e.x with his wife.

Cameron shows the note to Bryce at the snack bar, before Geoff arrives. "Does she mean she's sorry the party got broken up?" he asks. "Or is she sorry we didn't get to hang out more?"

"And what exactly is she thanking you for, exactly?" Bryce replies.

They explore the possibilities further, a.n.a.lyzing her sentence structure and word choice, each playing devil's advocate for the other's point. Did she already have a colored pen out, or did she choose it just for this? Did she write the note right before pa.s.sing it, or compose it earlier, knowing she would see him?

Bryce goes along with the discussion, but his heart doesn't seem to be in it normally he relishes a chance to pry into Cameron's love life. He picks at his nachos, the bright orange cheese sauce polka-dotted with green jalapenos.

From the next table, the sun glints off Eddie Levy's bald spot (which he claims is the result of a nervous hair-pulling habit, not genetics). He used to wear baseball caps but stopped bothering last year when he accepted the fact that everyone knows.

Geoff sits down without food. "Check this out, b.i.t.c.hes" he says, pulling from his pocket a thick needle in a suede holder.

"Are you taking Home Ec?" Bryce asks.

"Har, har. This baby came in the mail yesterday." When neither of his audience members reacts, he goes on, "Some mugger jumps you, you jam it in his eye. Game over." He mimes jabbing a needle into Bryce's eye. "Stealth attack, always ready."

Lunch ends before Cameron reaches any conclusions.

During fifth period he sits at Ms. Langdon's desk in the counseling office and reviews for the Latin quiz next period. Why did he sign up for Latin II? Serves him right for trying to be different from everyone else who takes Spanish or French, for thinking in terms of what will look good to colleges. The hunched Mrs. Cronin often makes jokes about being late for school because of how slow her chariot is; Cameron isn't the only one in cla.s.s who thinks she might be old enough to have an actual chariot.

Ms. Langdon leans in over his shoulder, her turquoise pendant swinging like a hypnotist's watch. She smells like roses. "I couldn't figure that stuff out if you offered me a million bucks," she says before sending him out with three call slips.

After dropping in on a social studies and computer room, his final stop is a math cla.s.s. There sits Rosemary, brow furrowed, chewing her pencil. She's working with another student on something and doesn't look up. Cameron tries to stand cool while Coach Danvers who looks out of place away from the gym, wearing a whistle around his neck in a real cla.s.sroom limps over to check the call slip.

Rosemary still hasn't looked up. Cameron stands there longer, trying to remember if he ever saw Dakota chew a pencil, until it's not plausible to do so anymore.

When he awakens from his dream of a smoke-filled plane cabin, he decides he'll definitely ask out Rosemary. Definitely-maybe. He'll hold off on a one hundred percent commitment until morning, given his long history of bad ideas originated in the late hours (cooking a Mother's Day breakfast; trying out for the track team; Mallory h.e.l.lman).

The morning comes and it still feels like a good idea.

The school's boiler is down, meaning no heat anywhere on campus, meaning everyone sits through their cla.s.ses in jackets and hats. Ms. D talks about cost-benefit a.n.a.lysis while wearing an unfortunately puffy outfit, which hides her foxiness and makes her look inflatable. As the boys leave first period, Cameron tells Bryce his Rosemary plan, to which Geoff says from behind, "The British chick? I hear they're all stuck up over there." Neither Cameron nor Bryce asks where he heard that.

When he gets to English, Cameron's chest hammers non-stop for 45 minutes, to the point where he fears others might be able to see it even through his coat, like a wolf in a cartoon whose heart rubber-bands in and out. Mrs. Gordon calls on him to read a poem aloud but his mouth is so dry he stumbles through it, rallying in time for the last five lines: "'My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'

Nothing besides remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away."