All the Major Constellations (15 page)

With a frown on his face he reached the joyful David and Becky. “Hey,” Andrew said.

“Oh, hi,” David said, standing up straight and gazing at Andrew with wide eyes. Andrew noted with irritation that David had picked up on his bad mood and responded to it immediately, like a cringing dog.
We always hate the ones we hurt the most,
Andrew thought. Where had he heard that before? He felt dizzy again and sat down.

“You okay?” David asked, sitting next to him and leaning against him slightly.

“Everyone keeps asking me that,” Andrew said more to himself than to David. “Maybe I'm not okay.”

“Maybe,” David said, shrugging. Then he looked at Andrew with an expression of such nonchalance that it made Andrew laugh. Becky flopped in between them and put her head on Andrew's knee.

“We should start heading down,” John said. His voice sounded strangely harsh in the distance. John stood on the edge of a cliff with his back to the sun. His arms were crossed over his chest, and the wind blew his long hair out in front of him. He was lit from behind by golden-orange light. Andrew thought that John looked comically epic. A born-again surfer-dude warrior on the cover of a fantasy book. Andrew laughed some more. A note of hysteria tinged his voice. Becky took her head off his knee, and the ever-sensitive David squirmed around and looked confused.

“David!” Seth called.

“Better hop to,” Andrew said, reeling onto his back and laughing even harder.

David ran off in the direction of his brother. Andrew stared at the sky and took some deep breaths, trying to calm down. He closed his eyes and heard footsteps. An image of Sara floated before him. She was lying in her hospital bed, back to normal, wide-awake, fully dressed, with a suggestive smile on her lips. She sat up and said,
Come on, Andrew, let's go!

A shadow passed before his closed eyelids.

“We do a prayer circle before we go down,” John said.

“You can't be too careful,” Andrew said, laughing.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Andrew said. He jumped up and grinned.

John was frowning and looking at Andrew with concern.

“Let's go, man,” Andrew said as he swung his arm around John's shoulders in a drunken fashion. With his other hand, Andrew patted John on the chest and said, “You okay, buddy?”

“I'm fine,” John said.

Together they walked toward the group of people forming a loose and uneven circle at the top of the mountain. John seemed startled by Andrew's sudden physical aggression. The intimacy that John usually initiated seemed now to have been passed on to Andrew.

“This won't do,” Andrew said as his arm slid from John's shoulders and then grasped one of his hands. “C'mon, everybody, close ranks.” John's hand, at first warm and dry, began to sweat profusely. The group glanced at one another and then formed a circle by holding hands.

“John?” Laura said.

John opened his mouth when Andrew said suddenly, “How about I give it a go?” He laughed by himself for a few moments. Andrew felt hysterical and almost out of control but also sort of pleased with himself and unconcerned about anyone else. An uncomfortable silence ensued while he recovered.

“I think that would be nice,” John said.

“Yes, it would be,” Matt said firmly.

“I think . . .” Karen began in a snotty tone of voice.

“Sweetheart, the men have spoken,” Andrew said. He walked over to Karen and gently cupped her angry face in the palm of his hand. She stared back.

“How dare you . . .” she began.

“I think you have my book,” Andrew said so softly that only he and Karen, and perhaps Laura who was standing next to them and looking at Andrew with her static unreadable expression, could hear.

“This is
yours
?” Karen said as she pulled the Bible from her pocket
.

Andrew leaned in even closer to Karen so that he was whispering in her ear. “My boyfriend gave it to me,” he said.

Karen jumped and handed him the book.

“What is wrong with you?” Seth said as he grasped Andrew's arm and yanked him away from his sister.

“The spirit's got ahold of me,” Andrew said. “No hard feelings, right, Karen?”

“No,” Karen said. “No hard feelings at all. We'd better get started.” She glanced at her watch and Andrew noticed, without a shred of guilt, that her hands were clenched and her face was red.

“Okay, everyone, let's just chill,” John said, although he spoke with less certainty in his voice than was usual for him.

Andrew opened the book and read Psalm 6 out loud, laughing
occasionally throughout, while the group lowered their heads.

“‘I am worn out from groaning; all night long I flood my bed with weeping and drench my couch with tears,'” Andrew read. Then he chuckled.

John said, “Amen,” and everyone else said “Amen,” including Andrew, whose giddiness was stoked rather than calmed by the solemn prayer circle.

“David?” Andrew said.

“Yeah?” David said, opening his eyes and looking excited.

“Race you down the mountain?” Andrew said.

“Okay!”

Then Andrew, David, and Becky took off down the trail amid unheeded cries urging them to slow down and be careful.

• • •

They reached the bottom of the mountain well before any of the others. Becky trotted behind them, panting and wagging her tail madly. There was a craggy old water fountain at the foot of the trail from which they drank. Andrew rummaged around in his trunk for a suitable container for Becky to drink out of. He found an old Styrofoam coffee cup that he rinsed and filled with water. Becky drank while the two boys lay on the ground and panted.

“That was a pretty good Psalm that you read back there,” David said.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. My favorite.”

“You're lying.”

“Am not.”

“Are too.”

They heard the footsteps of the others approaching. Karen reached them first. Andrew noted that she was sweaty and breathing hard. Her cut-offs were now sitting very low on her hips and her hair was disheveled.

“Did you run after us?” Andrew asked innocently.

Karen did not respond. She drank from the fountain and handed David the keys to Matt's car.

“Get in,” she said.

David leaped up, said a quick good-bye to Andrew and Becky, and then crawled into the backseat of Matt's van. Andrew thought he could hear David singing to himself.

Andrew remained stretched out on the ground with his arms under his head. He smiled at Karen, who gazed down at him, her hands on her hips like a superhero.

“You need a cape,” Andrew said, and then he giggled and turned over on his side, rollicking and chuckling.

The others came out of the trail in quick succession. He could feel their eyes on him, but he didn't care. He heard them confer about driving arrangements. Bits of their whispers reached his ears.

“Someone should go with him. He's freaking out.”

“He's Laura's friend.”

“He's all of our friend.”
Definitely Matt's voice
.

Andrew stood up and put Becky in the backseat of the car. She stretched out her body and closed her eyes. As he walked over to the group, their whispers quieted. Laura smiled at him, but he shifted his eyes away from her and grabbed Karen's wrist.

“Karen will go with me,” he said.

“I don't think—” Seth began, but Karen interrupted.

“No, it's fine. We have to talk anyway,” she said.

“You do?” John and Seth said together.

“Andrew—” Matt said.

“Chill out, bro,” Andrew said.

Andrew led her back to his car and opened the passenger side door for her. As she got in and buckled up, he winked at her. She frowned. He walked around the front of his car and glanced casually at Laura, who looked both hurt and confused.
Now we're getting somewhere,
he thought.

AFTER FIVE MINUTES OF COMPLETE silence, Karen said, “That's John's book.”

“Mine now.”

“His name is written on the inside.”

“It's not his name. It's actually a precious old collectible. It belonged to John the Baptist, not John the born-again surfer dude.”

“We're not born-again. And that's a mean way to talk about someone who cares about you.”

“Oh, he cares about me, all right.”

Karen crossed her arms and glared at the road. “What are you saying?” she asked.

Andrew seemed to awake from a dream. Cold sweat ran down his arms. What
was
he saying? “Nothing, Karen,” he said.

“Nothing what?”

“Nothing. As in, I'm not saying anything.” Andrew tried to laugh, but all the mirth in his body was spent. “I'm worn out from laughing,” he said.

“What?”

He glanced in the rearview mirror and didn't see any of the others behind him. He felt nervous, jittery. He decided to get off the interstate, take Route 2 back to town. Maybe the pretty drive would calm him down. He heard Karen shift around and open the window.

“Shortcut,” he murmured.

“Whatever,” Karen said. “Listen, Matt likes you a lot. So does Laura,” she said.

“Oh yeah?”

“I think you're up to something.”

“I think
you're
up to something.”

“Like what?”

“You first.”

“Like, messing around with what we've got. Like, not taking it seriously.”

“So what? Convert me. That's your job, isn't it? Or would it help if I were half starved and from a third-world country and—”

“Fuck you.”

“Tough words, Sister Karen.”

“And John's struggling. Leave him alone.”

“Struggling with what?” Andrew said, feeling reckless again.
Karen didn't answer him. “And speaking of struggling, tell Goatee to lay off David,” Andrew said.

“David is none of your business,” Karen said.

“He acts like he's seven. Does he even have any friends?” Andrew was practically yelling at this girl he barely knew.

“Do you?”

“What?”

“Oh, please! Why are you hanging out with us? Why are you messing around with John's head? Why did you pull me into this car?”

“Because you wanted to come!”

“What? What did you say?” Karen screeched.

Andrew swerved to the side of the road and stopped the car. He met her angry gaze and said, “Because this is fun.”

And then Karen was unbuckling her seat belt and in his arms. She pressed her lips on his, and her tongue was like a wild animal in his mouth. She was in his lap and working her hips against him. She groaned and dug her nails into his neck. He hesitated for a fraction of a second before tearing at the buttons on her shirt. Her skin tasted like pine needles and sunshine, sap and blue sky and the flashing brilliance of a thousand stars. She reached her hand down and unzipped his pants and grabbed at him, hard, and her touch was so frenzied that it was almost painful. He seized the lever to lower the back of his seat, and together they jerked down. Then somehow her shorts were off and then her underwear was off. She was so warm, like a fever. She
rocked her body on him and muttered over and over something that sounded like
help me
or
save me
or
take me
. He felt himself climaxing and dissolving and biting her in his ecstasy and her saying
ouch
and him saying
sorry
and her struggling against him and gasping and all of it happening all at once.

They lay still and panted.

Andrew ran his fingers through Karen's silky brown hair. She looked up. Their eyes met. She looked as dumbfounded as he felt. From the backseat, Becky snorted.

Karen flopped back into the passenger seat. They both fumbled with their clothes. Andrew started the car, and they drove without speaking. His heart was thumping so hard, he could feel it in his throat, his mouth, his eyes.

“Are you . . .” He groped for the right words.

“Am I what?”

“Are you okay? I mean, is everything okay?”

“I'm fine.”

They said nothing more. Andrew glanced at her a few times, but she stared out the window so that he couldn't see her face.

When they reached the outskirts of town, he cleared his throat.

“Did . . . Where am I going?” he asked.

“What?” Karen seemed to come out of a trance.

“Church or home or—”

“Church,” she said.

“Okay,” he said.

After a few minutes he pulled up behind a long line of cars waiting to park. Karen got out of the car and walked briskly toward her church's enormous double doors and the smiling faces of the men who held them open.

“ANDREW? IS THAT YOU?” Marcia said.

“Who else could it be?”

“I don't know. Are you all right?”

“I just need to talk.”

“I'm back at the hospital at ten—”

“Is everything okay with Sara?”

“Basically. What's up with you?” she said.

Andrew paced around his kitchen. He'd checked the whole house before he called Marcia: there was definitely no one home. Still, he was nervous. He took a deep breath.

“So I went on this sunrise hike with the Christian kids and then I outed John to this really bitchy Christian girl and then I had sex with her.”

There was a long pause. Then Marcia said, “To shut her up?”

“Don't start.”

“How do you know John is gay?”

“I don't even know if he's actually gay. I mean, they're all kind of affectionate, you know, touchy-feely. I didn't even know that I thought that about him until I suggested it to Karen,” he said.

“Really?” Marcia said.

Andrew paused. “Yes. No. I don't know.” What did he know? How long had he suspected John was gay?
Was
John gay?

Marcia cleared her throat and said, “So, you told Karen the bitch—”

“Shit.”

“What is it?”

“I guess I shouldn't call her that,” he said.

“She did make you a man, after all.”

Andrew grunted.

“Was it her first time too?”

“I really, really,
really
doubt it.”

“That's telling us something.”

Andrew grabbed some crackers and stuffed them into his mouth. He was famished. Marcia continued talking. She seemed to be enjoying herself. He could tell, even over the phone.

“She's deeply religious. These kids don't believe in sex before marriage. But clearly she had it with you, and she's had it before which means . . . which means—”

“What does it mean?”

“Which means she's probably pretty conflicted herself.”

“Oh,” he said.

“Like John.”

“Oh.”

“Conflicted.”

“I get it!” he said through a mouthful of cracker.

“Do you? John's kind of an alpha male, right? Handsome. One of the ringleaders?”

“Um . . .” Had he said that about John? He remembered that he'd told Marcia all about these kids a while ago. Did he say John was
handsome
? Or had he implied it somehow? But Marcia didn't wait for him to answer. She rattled on.

“Karen's in love with John. She knows that he's gay and has a thing for you. You're a surrogate John, so to speak.”

Andrew sunk back on a kitchen stool. “Give me a break,” he said. And then he groaned and closed his eyes. He massaged his lids. “My eyes hurt.”

“Too much sun.”

“What about Laura?” he asked.

“Oh my god, Andrew. You want to know if you can salvage the Laura pursuit despite the fact that you had sex with her friend this very morning?” Marcia laughed and said, “Tell me more. Tell me everything.”

Andrew spent the next ten minutes piecing together his bizarre and exciting morning. He left out the part about him kissing Laura's earlobe and their having briefly held hands. He wanted to keep that private, even from Marcia.

“Poor David,” Marcia said when Andrew had finished.

“Yeah.”

“Poor John.”

“That too,” Andrew said. He rubbed a kink in his thigh and recalled how he had flung his arm around John's broad shoulders and briefly clung to the back of his neck. What had come over him? John had trembled. Andrew was ashamed at having treated him in such a cavalier way, and then disgusted at John's response, and then ashamed of feeling disgusted. But then again, maybe John wasn't gay.

“Is Karen pretty?” Marcia said.

“She's okay. She's got nice legs.”

“Nice legs?”

“She has nice legs and skin.”

“Lovely. But not like Laura?”

“No one is like Laura,” he said.

“Sara is like Laura.”

“What?”

“And Laura and Karen are close?” Marcia said.

“Yeah. Always whispering and talking.”

“So Laura probably knows that Karen has sex.”

“Shit!” Andrew said. “Karen wouldn't tell her though, right?”

“Karen doesn't have to. Laura may have guessed. She's probably seen her friend like this before—worked up, angry, emotional. And then some guy gets her alone.”

“She came on to me. I didn't take advantage of her,” Andrew said.

“Speaking of which, did you use protection?”

“I didn't even know it was happening until it was happening.”

“That sounds pretty born-again.”

“They're not born-again!”

“So the two girls are close, Laura's prettier than Karen, Karen probably knows you're gaga for Laura because she's used to every straight guy within a ten-mile radius being in love with Laura—”

Andrew felt uncomfortable. Like maybe Marcia was talking about herself and Sara. Marcia was cute and shy; Sara was sexy and confident. Guys were always after Sara. How had that affected their friendship? How had it affected Marcia and how she thought about herself? And why hadn't he ever considered these things before? He was about to say something stupid to Marcia about how cute she was, but she was happily occupied psychoanalyzing people she didn't know.

“So, there's this dynamic between them, this push-pull of competition. Karen never feels as if she measures up. So she compensates by sleeping with the guy who can't get Laura.”

“I thought you said she slept with me because she's in love with John,” Andrew said.

“That too, I think.”

Andrew stood up. “David is going to catch hell for hanging out with me so much. And then I totally fucked things up for John. Those dorks are like his family, and I don't think he has family and— Fuck!” With a violent gesture he swept his arm across the counter, spilling the newspaper and box of crackers.

“Listen. You think you're this—this demonic force, excuse the pun, that's wreaking havoc on this group. But they were already screwed up to begin with, okay? Just like everybody else.”

Andrew thought for a moment. It made sense. Unable to help himself, he said, “What about Laura?”

“Drew, I have to go.”

“What's happening?”

“She's having a new central line put in.”

“The main IV thing?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“I meant to call you. She's been spiking fevers. They don't know why. They figure if they replace all the lines that might help. Sometimes those can introduce infection.”

“That sounds bad.”

“Dr. Bavin seems confident that this will help.”

“Oh. Good.” He shuffled around, played with the phone cord, unsure of what to say next.

“I heard about Brian,” she said.

“Fuck him,” Andrew said.

“Are you okay?”

“With that? It's fucked-up, but it has nothing to do with me!”

“All right, all right, don't yell.”

“Sorry.”

“It's okay. I really should go.”

“Talk soon?”

“Yup.”

Andrew wandered into the living room and flopped onto the couch. He felt both better and worse after talking to Marcia. He had thought that losing his virginity would be pure elation, and in a way it was, but he also felt empty. There was a sort of distance between himself and his body. It had all happened so fast. And Karen had been so . . . furious. It was sexy; the memory of it was sexy, and just thinking about her angry, pointy face made him excited again. Her legs gripping him, her tongue in his mouth, the warmth of her, the smell and taste of her. Something musky and piney and dark and sweet. Did all women smell like that when they were excited? Or was it particular to Karen? He remembered her shocked perplexity when they had finished. And then that empty nauseated feeling returned, like the feeling of being excited and
not
getting satisfaction.

He groaned and put his head in his hands. Surely, he'd just exploded his relationships with his new friends. With Laura.