Cut Both Ways (17 page)

There's a line for the one bathroom, otherwise I'd go hide in there. Instead, I clear the shit off our table and bring it to the counter guy, who's left it by the register while he refills someone's coffee. People are talking to Angus and DeKalb and regular guy.
I go back to Brandy and Shania and they're all huddled together and talking and it doesn't look like I should butt in, so I look at my watch. 9:15. Then I pull out my phone. No texts. Because no shit: everyone I'd want to talk to is already here.

I turn toward the door. Rubber-ducky girl is standing by counter guy, and writing something with a black marker on his arm. Her number? Though I assumed she's still with Andrew. Maybe it's Jack Telios's address? Brandy gets in close with Shania and they're whispering and then Shania hugs her, and it's like another thing I can't look at.

Back at the stage, Angus is talking to the whistling woman with the book. The keyboard guy's carrying his stuff out; DeKalb's unplugging the amps and microphone. I go up to him, nodding at Angus, who's still talking to the book woman, and ask him what he needs.

“Take this amp.” He glances at Angus, who's still talking to the woman. He hasn't even taken his guitar off his body yet. “We got to get going.”

“You coming to Jack's?” I ask. We start to make our way out of the place. Brandy and Shania are laughing now, looking at us.

“Hell yeah,” he says. “My aunt's in town and we got church in the morning.”

“Church?”

“Yeah, we only go when she comes around,” he says. “She's a minister.”

“That makes no sense,” I tell him.

DeKalb stops, grabs my shoulder. Talks into my face like I'm an idiot. “I hate church. My aunt's
annoying. Told my parents I'm staying at Angus's house.”

“Your dad lets you go out there?”

“Oh, he thinks Angus is fucking golden. His old partner is the high-school cop at Oak Prairie, where Angus goes, so he thinks he has some kind of inside track. Any time I go out there, he's all fine with it.”

“Oh.” I'm surprised. I guess I just figured I'd know if DeKalb and Angus were hanging out.

“Fucking slow as hell, that kid,” DeKalb says, when we load his bass and the amp.

“You want to leave now?” I ask, glancing back at the coffee shop. I want to run away now. Drive away. Leave. I can't go back in there. I can't.

“Why you all huffy?” DeKalb says. “You get into it with Brandy or what?”

“No,” I say. “No. Just, you know. Sick of waiting.”

The zinging's back. Everything's off. This is what love does to you, then. It changes everything. Takes a house and turns it into a scrap heap. Makes a lullaby into a horror show.

Everything's different.

A pretty girl in tears.

A boy who never sings gets the whole room on its feet.

I made this.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

I HATE THAT
I get all freaked out about nothing. Because we all get to Jack's. Me and Brandy and Shania and Angus and DeKalb. Even the rubber-ducky chick and regular guy show up later, with the coffee-shop counter guy. There aren't many people besides us. Maybe ten or fifteen other people. Lots of girls Jack's been hanging out with.

So maybe, once we're all there, and I've called Garrett to tell him I'll be at my mom's tonight, I feel a little better. But the truth is, I'm not up for a big party. I just feel like going home. Going to my mom's. Or Garrett's. Even my dad's, because it's the closest. But I promised Garrett I wouldn't.

Around two in the morning, everyone's pretty fucked up. We're all in Jack's living room and kitchen, drinking a weird mix-match thing of everyone's booze in the fridge and it's just a jumble of cans: whatever anyone could steal from their parents, whatever leftovers they had from the last time they'd got someone to buy
for them. Angus is passing around his weed, all generous. And he's not saying much, and I catch him looking at me and Brandy a lot—her hand on my leg, her whispering in my ear, her drinking out of my cup—and it makes me tense. Nobody here knows him how I do.

It's a strange party; there's no music, just the sound of Shania and Jack playing video games. It's one of those old games they reworked so it's new, with better graphics, but they kept the old audio, so you hear all these corny sounds:
s-waannnng! bloooooop! ka-ching! pow!

I get up to take a piss and see Angus's head bob up, glance at me. I don't acknowledge him.

“Where are you going?” Brandy asks. “Can I come with?”

I tell her I'm going to pee and she leans back on the sofa.

Jack's house is fucking huge. The first bathroom I find, the door's locked and someone yells, “We're in here!” but not in a pissed-off way. Like they're doing something naughty and fun inside and want to brag.

I've only been to Jack's a couple of times but I remember there being a bathroom by the garage, and yes, I'm right. I'm not that drunk. Yet.

I unzip and piss. So much piss. It's like I didn't realize how hard I'd been holding it in until now. I feel like all my stress is coming out, in one big bubbly yellow stream. Ridiculous.

I wish Angus wasn't here. I wish Brandy would fall asleep. And I'm so tired.

I wander around Jack's house before going back to everyone
else. Jack's house is old on the outside, all brick and ivy. But the inside is all remodeled and new. Jack's dad is an architect; his mom some kind of city politician lady. Or a lawyer. Or both. Whatever; they make way too much money so it makes zero sense that Jack goes to Franklin.

I keep opening doors. Snooping. There's an exercise room with a wall of mirrors, yoga mats, weights, and a treadmill in front of a flat screen. Next room is another bathroom. Next room is a bedroom that doesn't look like anyone's bedroom. Though it's nice; a bookshelf full of books, a quilt on the bed that's antique, a flat screen on the wall. Next room, an office. I have to stop snooping. Next room not a room: a closet full of sheets and shampoo and shit.

Next room, a staircase going down. I go down and it's colder down there. That chalky Sheetrock smell that reminds me of my dad's house. The wall along the staircase is lined with shelves holding jars and cans: strawberry jam and soup and canned pears and tomatoes. Boxes of mashed potatoes and ramen noodles and spaghetti. A giant jar of popcorn kernels.

At the bottom of the stairs is one of those old moonshiney jugs, with the big cork and a blue stencil with
NO. 1
on it and a basket full of
Architectural Digest
magazines.

The basement is not as nice as the upstairs. There's nothing cool down there. Just a washing machine and dryer, and a little drying rack that's got bras and lady's stuff pinned up on it. A tool bench. A long freezer along the wall. An exercise bike.

It's not a great basement but it's normal. It's not full of shit. It's
not nice, like Angus's basement, where he sleeps, or my mother's basement, where Kinney and Taylor have this whole huge playroom that they barely ever use. It's just what you'd imagine a basement to be: behind the scenes, storage, nothing great.

I'm so tired.

I go back upstairs then. I need to drink some Coke or just get Brandy to come to bed or whatever. But when I get upstairs, it's like everyone's gone. Not everyone, but it's just Jack and Angus and Brandy, sitting on the couch. No one's playing video games but the same noises keep repeating, softly:
s-waannnng! bloooooop! ka-ching! pow!
Over that, Jack's put on some music, which is all spacey sounding and I'm suspicious that it's something he found in Sweden. But I'm not going to say anything; it's his house and he's not being a jerk to me.

I sit down by Brandy and she takes my hand and then whispers in my ear: “DeKalb and Shania.” Then she laughs a little. I look up and catch Angus watching us. Jack is telling a story about Sweden.

“So, then it was like, we all had to get off our bicycles and just walk them down the street, because the cop guy didn't want us to get hurt. He was barely a cop, when you think about it. He was more like Mrs. Demarest than like a cop.”

Mrs. Demarest is the guidance lady at Franklin. Her voice sounds like something you'd use to talk to a baby with a hangover: all cooing and soft and understanding.

Only Brandy and me laugh; Angus just smiles, having no idea what Mrs. Demarest's deal is.

Jack's story goes on and on and I think he's told me this. Maybe he told other people while I was nearby? It sounds familiar. An old sod barn, a wine cellar. Jack and these three girls, who are all cousins with this one guy, and they drink Russian vodka and eat pineapple from a can and watch the sun come up while the girls sing some song they learned in their Japanese-language class about a samurai fighting an evil merchant. Like a fairy tale from the future.

Brandy's impressed, though. Even if she thinks Jack dresses douchey, she's impressed by his story of life abroad. And maybe his house, too.

“I want to go to Argentina,” Brandy says. “We saw this movie in Spanish about it and it seems really cool. Like, they've got Italians there? Like a Little Italy? And they eat steak, like, constantly. They have cowboys; their version of cowboys, at least. And the tango? It's kind of crazy.”

Angus agrees. “I'd go there,” he says. “I'd go anywhere, really, though.”

“That's because you live in the suburbs,” Jack says, all snobby.

But Angus doesn't flinch. “True,” he says. He sparks up his pipe again and passes it out. Jack takes it; I wave it off, but Brandy takes it. I haven't ever seen her smoke pot, but she seems to know how to work a one-hitter all right.

“I don't think it matters where you go,” I say. “It's, like, just the scenery changes. You're still the same you.”

“Bullshit,” Jack says. “Going places makes you different. You see everything different. It's all about the angle of inquiry.”

Angus raises an eyebrow at that last thing, and I almost say something about how douchey he sounds, but then Brandy starts up.

“It's not bullshit,” she says. “Where you are matters. Like, Franklin? It matters. It's a shit school. The building's old and unloved. Awful. The teachers feel old and unloved and awful, too. And you guys? You don't even know.”

“That's because public schools aren't valued,” Jack says. I can feel him getting all riled; all political. Trying to tell Brandy what's what.

But Brandy keeps on.

“I lived with my mother until I was, like, five. We lived down in Winona, Minnesota? Middle-of-nowhere place. You guys don't even get it. She was crazy. She
is
crazy. And she would live, like, in these shitholes. Like, one room, full of garbage. No food. Or with her mother, my grandmother, who is the biggest, evilest cunt you've ever known.”

Well. Now Jack shuts up. Angus puts his one-hitter on the coffee table, softly.

“My mom didn't have a car, she didn't have a job, she didn't have shit. But she had me and she dragged me around and didn't know what to do with me. Everywhere we went was worse than the next place. I didn't go to daycare or preschool; I didn't know any other kids. I had this blanket and I had a crazy mother, who'd leave me alone with my blanket, and then she'd not come home and then I was with her bitchy mother, because my mother got caught stealing steaks from the grocery store. Steaks! Because she was going to sell them to her dealer or something? I mean, crazy, right?”

Angus nods. I just sit there, frozen. Jack is staring away from her.

“So, then my grandmother takes my blanket, that same night. The same night the cops come to my grandmother's and tell us my mom's detoxing in the psych ward and my grandmother slams the door on the face of the lady who wasn't a cop, but who was just trying to help us. And then she tells me to go to bed and I won't, because she's got my blanket, and I cry until she gives it to me and then I wake up in the morning and my blanket's gone. Because my bitch grandmother had set it on fire in her frying pan on the stove. She told me it was time to grow up and stop acting like a spoiled only-child brat. After that, I was screaming and screaming and screaming and she was slapping me to make it stop and I didn't stop and then she put me in my room, which was my mother's room, and I didn't come out, for anything. And then, like a few days later, my aunt Megan came to get me. And we moved from Winona to Minneapolis, just that night. And I had my own room and my nana was there, even if she was my dad's mother, and my dad's a loser too, and I got to go to kindergarten and everything was different. I got to be different, in a new place. And it was better. It
is
better. So. That's why I believe that. Why I want to go to Argentina.”

Nobody says anything. It was kind of a big speech. Then the probably Swedish music ends and we're all left with:
s-waannnng! bloooooop! ka-ching! pow!

Then Brandy leaves the room. Not all upset. She just stands up and walks out. Angus is staring at me.

Jack says, “So. What? Her aunt's awful, too? Because, like,
technically, if she still wants to go somewhere else, like Argentina, that would mean—”

“Shut it already, Jack,” I say.

Angus smirks, just for a second. Then Jack says, “You gonna leave her on her own, Will?”

I don't know what to say. I ask where everyone else went.

Jack ignores me. “She isn't one of those cutter girls, is she? That carve stuff into their arms when they get all depressed?”

“No,” I say. I've seen her naked. I would fucking know. I almost want to say this but I can't because of Angus. “Where'd that rubber-ducky girl go?” I ask.

“She's with the coffee-place guy,” Angus says.

“I thought she was with that other guy in the band,” I add. Slowly. Because I'm working on suppressing the strangling feelings.

“Andrew,” Angus says. I remember him talking about Andrew, that first night we kissed. Pussy-stupid Andrew. We stare at each other for minute, and I swear he's remembering that night too.

“They just kind of all left,” Angus adds. He keeps looking at me, like,
They all left and now it's just me and you and Jack and he'll leave and then it'll be me and you. I've waited everyone out. I'm patient. It'll only be me and you, even with your girlfriend in the same house.

I stand up. I know that's how it could go. I can see it, actually, going that way. I wish it could. Everything's easy with me and Angus. But only when we're alone.

“I'll be right back,” I say.

“Sure,” Jack says. Laughing. Angus doesn't say anything.

I grab my backpack in the front hall where I left it—that's where the condoms are—and I poke around, looking for where Brandy is, hoping I don't bump into Shania and DeKalb. I find her in the spare bedroom, the one that I snooped in earlier. She's in the bed, the little nightstand light turned on, her boots and bag on the floor. I set down the backpack, pull out a condom from the strip, and hang on to it.

When I zip up my backpack, she rolls over and looks at me.

I'm caught. I don't move for a minute, because it's not a look inviting me to anything. Finally, she closes her eyes.

Slowly, I take off my shoes, sit down on the bed, pull back the covers. She's wearing her shirt and just her panties. There's a picture of Jack by the table, which is sort of creepy. Jack, smiling, as a little kid, looking at both of us. I take off my glasses so he's blurry. Turn off the light so it's like he's finally gone. Just us.

I take off my jeans and hoodie. When I get in the bed, she sniffs like she's been crying again. I transfer the condom from my jeans to underneath the pillow, so the package doesn't crinkle.

I am nothing, then, but all this wanting. Drunk wanting. I know I shouldn't, but I can still feel her bare legs on mine and it flips the lid off every other memory of every other time until I have a boner.

I want everything but it all seems impossible. I want her to stop crying, I want to get his face—Angus, staring at me—out of my brain. I want to stop being in strange bedrooms all the time.

I'm so tired.

But I need to say something that'll make her feel better. I
breathe into her hair, which always smells nice. I slide a hand over her hip but don't push too close to her. I don't want her to feel my boner. I wish I didn't have it when she's obviously sad.

“I want to go home,” she says.

I freeze.

“I wish we hadn't come here,” she says.

I run my hands up her back, softly. She kind of leans toward me, like this is what she needs. She's still crying, though. Her spine shudders, which heaps on the guilty feelings. Kills my boner. Though I'm not guilty for what her mother and grandmother did, I'm still guilty. Could easily have been me that made her cry.