After Dakota Part 30

"Dressing up, hanging out with people from school all night, everyone stepping on your feet? That sounds fun?"

"Not when you say it like that, Bryce. Going to a prom would be a dream for me."

"That makes one of us."

"Well, p.o.o.p on you. What you need is a prom date who will change your att.i.tude."

"Yeah, ok. I'll let you know if I find one." Over on the playground, a girl in a white dress finds the blue egg and puts it in her basket. Bryce smiles a smile with nothing behind it.

90.

That evening, Mrs. Swanson stands on Claire's front porch, the fading sun making her ponytail the color of the Burnt Sienna crayon in the big box of sixty-four. Claire chews a spongy yellow Peep from her Easter basket.

"Claire, I'm going to ask you a question and I'd like an honest answer."

Claire glances down the cul-de-sac, waiting for Ricky's car to creep by, dreading or hoping (she's not sure which) that it does. He's called five times that she knows of since the drive the other night: three one-ring-and-hang-ups, two hangups when someone answered. She wasn't ready to talk to him then; she's no more ready now.

But Mrs. Swanson is doing the talking now: Donna's cla.s.s at private school had a lesson about honesty and keeping secrets. On the car ride home, Donna told her mom about Claire and a man in the bedroom. "My daughter likes to tell stories, but not this time."

Claire has never thought of Ricky as a man before. She waits for Mrs. Swanson to ask the question with the honest answer.

"Is there anything you'd like to tell me?"

There are plenty of things, but from where Claire stands, every turn of this labyrinth is a dead end, every door has a tiger behind it. "Are you gonna tell my parents?"

"That's not necessary. I simply can't have my children in a situation like the one you created, so I won't be able to ask you over anymore."

At dinner, Claire moves the ham and scalloped potatoes around on her plate without eating more than a bite for show. After waiting long enough, but not faking illness (more trouble than it would be worth), she asks to be excused.

When Ricky gave her the plastic baggie of dried mushrooms, he said to start slow. The first time she put one in her mouth she'd expected the flavor of a pizza topping; instead it was like eating a piece of sponge dipped in soil. The taste wasn't as important as what happened afterwards, though. Now she takes the baggie from her hiding place in the closet. Getting high at home isn't a good idea she should go to the arroyo or at least for a bike ride, but instead she reclines on her bed and eats two of them.

Tucked under her mattress, a safe spot since she started changing her own sheets last year, is an envelope bulging with all the poems from her locker. She had run there at the start of math one morning to get her homework and spotted Ricky pushing a paper through the slot in the door. She stayed hidden around the corner by the fire alarm. He's still never confessed to being the writer and she's still never busted him on it. Seven poems now, the story of their time together.

The mushrooms kick in and she floats away with the words.

91.

When Cameron pulls up to the airport curb Sunday evening, crotch sore from these past days, he wonders if his mom will know her little boy isn't a boy anymore, if all women share the instinct Jillian clearly has.

"Grams is resting comfortably," Molly says after Cameron swings her suitcase into the trunk, "But they say she's going to need full-time care. That means a special home of some kind and ek cetera."

She doesn't talk much at all beyond this, not even her usual M.O. of suggesting he slow down or inhaling sharply if he gets too close to the car in front. He misses it.

Cameron drives home toward the sunset, feeling a fabulous melancholy at the end of the greatest week of his young life.

92.

Your parents are off at a retirement party for one of Dad's old pilot buddies. Claire has a cold and is in bed, with the humidifier running.

You're in your room, carefully drawing Garfield in a sketchbook and listening to Lou Reed's long song about Waltzing Mathilda (you don't know the actual t.i.tle). The freshly painted, miniature Dwarf Cannon sits drying by the partly-open window.

You're adding the final touch to your drawing the black stripes down Garfield's back when Dakota comes in. She wears a DISCO SUCKS T-shirt, ripped-knee jeans, and her black sneakers with orange laces.

"What's up?" she says as she sits on your bed, picks up your Rubik's cube. You see all this in the windowpane. You've stopped drawing because the pencil shakes in your hand.

She inhales deeply. "You could get high just sitting in here."

"I was painting," you reply. No duh.

"What is that thing?"

"It's, uh, a Dwarf Cannon. Y'know, for playing D&D. If you have dwarf characters they can use it to "

"Sounds fascinating." She stands right over your shoulder. "Are you drawing dwarfs, too?" You can smell her gum and feel her hair against your ear. Thankfully your lap is under the desk, out of sight.

"No, it's Garfield."

She says, "Dude, that looks exactly like the one in the newspaper. A painter and a draw-er you're a real Renaissance man."

You say, "Thanks." You make a mental note to look up Renaissance man in the encyclopedia.

"You gonna enter the contest for the yearbook cover?"

"I don't think I'm good enough."

She makes a psssh sound. A bit of spittle hits your ear. "Bet you can do a better cover than anyone else at school. You should try."

"I'll think about it."

She points to the inscription in the bottom corner of the page: To Sherry. You wish right then that you didn't have the habit of signing your work before you start. "Who's Sherry? Your girlfriend?"

"Sort of."

"Ooh, Bryce has a girlfriend!" she says. "How long have you guys been going steady?"

"We're not really."

"Have you kissed yet?"

Why is she asking this? Why is she standing so close? You swallow. "No."

"Come on, buddy, you gotta make the move. Don't sit back and wait for life to happen I saw that on a commercial once."

"Ok."

"I'm worried about you, Bryce."

"Ok."

"Turn around," she says. You scoot your chair a 180 to face her. You hope she won't look down at the tent inside your pants. "Next time you're with her, you look her in the eyes and say, 'I am going to kiss you now.'"

You look everywhere but in her eyes. The strand of hair over one cheek, the swell of her chest under the word DISCO.

"Trust me, girls love that." Dakota kneels down in front of you. "Pretend I'm Sherry."

Impossible.

You nod. You've never liked Juicy Fruit until this moment.

She says, "You lean in" as she tilts your head by the chin, her fingertips like ice and fire.

"Uh-huh." Your syllables barely make it out.

"Then. You. Kiss. Her."

You close your eyes.

She says, "Got that?"

You are a lightning strike victim, rooted to the spot. You can't even nod.

She laughs. "Look at your face! Don't worry, I wasn't really gonna kiss you and give you my cooties." Standing up, she adds, "I feel like a grilled cheese sandwich. Want one?"

Enough of your central nervous system functions that you can shake your head. She leaves the room.

"I love you," you say after that, grasping for the meaning of the words. The meaning of everything. "I love you."

When she goes home that night, after your dad peels bills off his money clip, she doesn't say goodbye to you. When she comes over the next time, and the next and the next, you make sure to hang out in your room, so she'll know where to find you. Ready for the knock on the door. But she never knocks.

Now, in bed, in the dark, Bryce doesn't want to remember those waiting times. So he backs up to the almost-kiss and goes forward with his own version. Her lips, her tongue, her body.

When he awakens the next morning, he doesn't have an explanation for his sudden desire to make a doctor's appointment. He'll have the lump checked out he's ready to hear the bad news made official, ready to share it with his family and the world.

93.

"Did you hear the Russians are boycotting the Olympics?" Bryce asks Claire on the way to school.

"So what?"

This would've been the day to fake another illness or better yet, to get a real one. Otherwise she's eventually going to have to face Ricky. She'd pay all the money in her bank account $433 as of last month for the school year to be declared finished immediately.

"Have you taken that coat off since Christmas?" Bryce asks, trying a new conversational tactic.

She looks over at him, her miniature brother like a kid driving one of those coin-operated cars that tilt back and forth outside the grocery store. This is all so stupid, she can't help but laugh.

Bryce shakes his head and turns up the radio for the German song about 99 balloons.

Claire skips the makeup in the bathroom, instead going directly to the locker hall. She loads up her backpack, but when she unzips her jacket the zipper jams halfway. She tries jerking it up and down but succeeds only in jamming it tighter, turning it into a straitjacket. The first bell rings. She can't go to cla.s.s looking like a spaz who doesn't know how to dress herself, she can't get the coat off, she can't stay at her locker and be busted by a hall monitor.

She's trying to fix the coat and breathe and can't do either of them. She bangs her head against the locker. Her calm-down list is Nancy Drew: The Hidden Staircase, The Mystery at Lilac Inn, The Clue of the Broken Locket, The Haunted The tardy bell rings.

That illness seems like the best idea of all time.

She walks toward English, then toward the parking lot, head swiveling a 360 the whole time. An alarm screams and Claire freezes, but it's not for her it's the disaster drill again, third one this year.

She runs.

It's too hot and home is too far away. She's out of breath by the time she pa.s.ses Circle K, and wants to ditch her backpack on the sidewalk. The coat seems to be constricting tighter with each step. Up the alley, up the next cul-de-sac, and to hers before she slows to a walk past the REAGAN/BUSH '84 lawn sign at the Swansons'.

At home she battles with the coat until she can slip it up over her sweaty head. Claire turns her radio up loud, loud enough to hear in the shower, peels off the rest of her clothes and gets in. The water runs ice cold and feels so good.

She pads into the kitchen with her plaid pajamas on. She eats a handful of Honeycombs, a Pop Tart, puts a Hot Pocket in the microwave but doesn't want it by the time the timer dings. Above the oven is the cabinet where her dad's liquor has been relegated; Claire climbs up on the counter to reach his bottle of Johnny Walker. How many times has her mom reached for this or one just like it, like a slave, whenever his gla.s.s runs empty?

This life is ridiculous.

The brown liquor is so nasty that most of it dribbles down her chin as she drinks from the bottle. The next sip isn't so bad. She drinks and drinks some more.

What a great day so far why can't they all be like this?

Half the bottle and two pills later, mouth sticky and head swimming, Claire stares at herself in the bathroom mirror. Pajamas, wet hair going every direction, those d.a.m.n freckles.

Claire Eleanor Rollins of Albuquerque, New Mexico.

"Al-buh-ker-kee," she says to her reflection. What a funny word.