Dreamland (7 page)

“You got change for a ten?” he said suddenly, holding up a bill folded between two fingers.

“Uh, no,” I said. “I don't think so.”

He smiled, then looked me up and down. Suddenly I knew I looked idiotic in my cheerleading uniform, not to mention the sequined top: I felt bright and tacky enough to explode. “Nice outfit,” he said. I couldn't tell if he was joking.

“Oh,” I said, looking down. “Yeah, well.”

He glanced at the bandage on my upper arm, then asked, “What happened to you there?”

“Caitlin!” I heard Kelly shout. “Where are you?”

“I'm coming,” I called back, then said to him, “I fell off a pyramid earlier tonight.”

“Ouch,” he said, and before I could even move he reached out and touched my bandage, running a finger across it. Then he looked up at me and said, “You okay?”

“I ... I don't know,” I said. This was strangely true at that moment.

“Caitlin, we're going to miss the whole party—” I heard Rina saying suddenly behind me, her voice growing louder as she impatiently rounded the corner, her cheerleading sneakers squeaking against the pavement. I turned around and she stopped suddenly, staring.

“I'm coming,” I said quickly. I glanced back at the strange guy in front of me and he was smiling, his green eyes almost glittering.

“Okay,” she said just as fast, and I heard her backing away around the corner.

“I should go,” I said, but it was like someone else was talking. My head felt fuzzy and strange, and I wondered if maybe I
had
whacked it on the way down.

“Sure,” he said nodding. “See ya around, Caitlin.” And he raised his chin, backing up, keeping his eyes on me.

I stood there, my breath clouding out around my face, as a police car raced by on the road facing us, the siren screaming.

“Wait,” I said, and he stopped. His hands were in his pockets. “You didn't tell me your name.”

“Rogerson,” he said, and then he turned his back and walked away, leaving me to stand there and watch him go.

When I came back around the corner Rina and Kelly were both right there waiting for me, identical in their letter jackets, stomping their feet to keep warm. I walked straight to the car and climbed into the backseat while they tumbled in behind me, already asking questions.

“Who was that?” Rina said. The smell of Lysol, pungent, was hanging all around us in a big cloud. “I
know
he doesn't go to Jackson. I would remember him.”

“I didn't even get to look at him,” Kelly complained.

“Too bad for you. He is
hot,”
Rina told her, and there was that smile again, sly and clever.

“His name's Rogerson,” I said. Just saying it felt weird, like I suddenly knew him or something.

“Rogerson,” Rina repeated, trying it out. “That's sexy.”

“You think
everything's
sexy,” Kelly said in a flat voice. To me she added, “Do you have my quarters?”

I was surprised to find that I did: They were clutched in my hand. She held out her palm and I dropped them into it, one by one. She said, “I guess I'll just skip the vacuum.”

“Please do,” Rina said, settling into her seat and crossing her legs. She flipped down the vanity mirror and checked her face. “We're late as it is.”

Kelly started the engine and pulled around the vacuum station, rolling down her window. As we cut through one of the bays to turn back to the road, we passed him again, standing by his car, hosing it down, the water steaming in the cold. I took it all in again: the curly dreadlocked hair, the bright printed shirt, the cord around his neck. Here I was, on the way to a party where, if everything went according to Rina's well-laid plans, I could go home with Mike Evans's letter jacket, all mine. But now, something was different.

“Is that him?” Kelly asked, whispering. We were all staring as we passed him, slowly, like tourists at a wildlife park watching elephants from the safety of their station wagon. He lifted his head, seeing us, and looked right back, still hosing off his car.

“Yep,” Rina said. “Isn't he something?”

“He looks like a drug dealer,” Kelly said. She was kind of uptight, the mother of the cheerleading squad. Any man not wearing a letter jacket was
dangerous,
in her opinion.

“He's got that wild look,” Rina said in a low voice.

“Yes, he does,” Kelly agreed, like it was a bad thing. Then she said, “Does it still smell back there, Caitlin?”

Rogerson was still watching us, as if the sight of a carful of girls ogling him did not faze him in the least. I wanted to think he was only looking at me, but I couldn't be sure.

“No,” I answered her softly, as we rounded the bays and pulled onto the road. Then I turned in my seat and watched this Rogerson disappear, car length by car length, out of sight.

 

“Looks like we didn't miss much,” Rina said as we came into the party. Most of the football team was in the dining room, bouncing quarters off what looked like an antique table. In the living room Melissa Cooper, school slut, was already making out with Donald Teller, who'd thrown the winning pass that night. Everyone was looking at me, patting me on the back as I passed, and making jokes about my fall. I felt prickly and strange, and each hand that touched me seemed heavy and hot against my skin.

“Chad!” I heard Kelly yell from behind me, and then she was off like a shot down the hallway to the kitchen. Chad was sitting on the floor, up against the refrigerator, a beer clutched in his hands. He looked like he was asleep. She knelt down beside him and made sure he was breathing, then pulled him to his feet. Kelly was what I later learned was called
co-dependent.

“There's Mike,” Rina whispered, poking me in the side. I looked over to the dining room, where Mike was sitting and watching us. He waved, smiling, in his letter jacket. Mike was a nice guy but very, very
bland.
Like a big saltine cracker.

“Come on,” Rina said, taking my hand and pulling me behind her into the dining room, where Bill Skerrit was at the head of the table.

“There you are!” he said, and she immediately sat down in his lap and took a swig of his beer, while his hands moved easily around her waist.

“Give me that quarter,” she called out, wriggling in his lap. Mike, on the end, slid it across to her.

“That's my girl,” Bill said.

“Caitlin,” Rina said in a low voice, and when I looked at her she cocked her head very obviously toward Mike. “Go on.”

And so I did, working my way around the table, squeezing past chairs and bodies to sit in the chair next to him.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hi.” He smiled and lay his hand loosely along the back of my chair. This was all arranged. I had learned there was no room for chaos theory or chance in the carefully choreographed world of jock love.

I sat there with Mike, but I still felt strange. Like every inch of me was alert, on guard, ready for what might happen next.

By the time Rogerson appeared in the open doorway of the dining room it was like I'd been waiting for him, wasn't even really surprised to see him standing there in the next room, hands in his pockets. I had this crazy thought that he'd come for me.

“Hey, Bill,” one of the running backs, Jeremy Light, called out. “Someone here to see you.”

Bill Skerrit turned around, with Rina still in his lap. “Oh, hey, man. Hold on.”

We were all looking at Rogerson. And as he scanned the room, all of Jackson High's best and brightest, he saw me.

“Who is that?” Mike Evans asked me, and without even really realizing it, I pulled out from under his arm, one quick movement, costing him all the progress he'd slowly attained in the last thirty minutes.

“I don't know,” I said. “Excuse me.” And I stood up and squeezed back around the table, then pushed my way into the kitchen. It was littered with beer cans and empty Bud twelve-packs. There was a small, scared-looking dog on a blue blanket in the corner who looked up, distressed, upon seeing me.

I walked across the kitchen toward the bathroom, and as I passed the hallway that led to the front door I saw Bill Skerrit, quarterback, handing a few folded bills over to Rogerson, who handed him something back in return. Then they just stood there, by the door, talking, before Bill turned back to the dining room. Rogerson put the money in his pocket and turned to the door, pushing it open.

“Caitlin?” I looked at the door to the dining room and saw Mike Evans standing there, beer in hand. “What's wrong?”

“Nothing,” I said quickly, and as I spoke Rogerson turned back from the open door, seeing me. “I was, um, cold.”

“Cold?” Mike looked around the room, as if he might see something to corroborate this, like icicles or penguins.

“Yeah,” I said. I glanced back at Rogerson. “The door's open.”

“Oh.” We faced off across the shiny tiled floor as the tiny dog made a squeaking noise and lay back down, closing its eyes. “Well,” Mike said, “you can have this.”

And with that, he slid off his letter jacket, holding it out to me like an offering. And I stood there, frozen. From the open front door, Rogerson was watching me.

I looked over at him. “Hey,” he mouthed soundlessly, smiling that wicked smile again. “Come on.”

Mike was still holding the jacket out to me, and now he started to come closer. This was a Big Deal. It meant we were together, that I was his girl, and would lead to Homecoming Dances and proms and a hundred Saturday nights, a big class ring on a chain around my neck. I knew this. I'd seen Cass do it all before.

“Here,” he said, holding the jacket up so that I could slide right in. He shook it a little bit, encouraging me, and then said, “Go ahead.”

I glanced back at Rogerson. He lifted his chin at me, smiling. It was a gesture I would associate with him for the rest of my life. And I saw myself, then, setting out across uncharted territory, places Cass had never been or seen or even heard of. My world was suddenly wide and limitless, as vast as the sky and stars I'd been dazzled by earlier, and it all started there with the door he was holding open for me.

“I'm sorry,” I said to Mike Evans and his jacket as I walked down the hallway to where Rogerson was standing, ready to help me along as I stepped past him and into the night.

As I walked down the front walk with Rogerson, across the yard to his car, I had no idea what I was doing. I knew that back inside the house Rina was probably mad at me for thwarting her plans, and Mike Evans had most likely already put his jacket back on and reported to everyone that in my fall I'd whacked my head and was now, clearly, insane.

“So,” Rogerson said to me. He seemed to be laughing at me, or so I thought, and suddenly I felt completely idiotic. He leaned against his car and said, “What now?”

I stood there in the cold, in my little skirt, my hair pulled back in matching school-color barrettes. And I thought of Rina, the only woman I knew who always told men exactly what she wanted.

So I tossed my head the way she did and said, “Give me a ride home?”

“Okay,” he said. And he got in the car and unlocked my door. He didn't know who I was. He didn't know about Cass or anything about my entire life up to that very second. I could have been anybody, and it made everything possible.

“Where we going?” he asked me as he started the car. As he reached to shift into reverse, his hand brushed against my knee and, instead of pulling away, I moved closer.

“Lakeview,” I said, and he nodded, reaching forward to turn up the stereo. We didn't talk the whole way there.

He parked a ways down from my house and cut the engine, then turned and looked at me.

“So,” he said evenly. “You regret that yet?”

“Regret what?” I said.

“Leaving back there,” he said. “Looked like somebody had plans for you.”

I thought of Mike Evans, holding out his jacket, and the blandness of his face, plain plain plain.

“He had plans,” I said. “But they weren't really about me.”

He nodded, looking down to run his finger along the bottom arc of the steering wheel. “I knew you were trouble,” he said in a low voice. “Could tell just by looking at you.”

“Me?” I said. “Look who's talking.”

He raised his eyebrows. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“Oh, you know,” I said. “You've got that whole thing going ... the car, the hair.”

“The hair?” he said, reaching up to touch one dreadlock. “What about it?”

“Oh, come on,” I said. “You know.”

He shook his head, smiling. “Whatever,” he said. “Whatever you say.”

I got the feeling he was waiting for me to leave: Of course he was. I was just some dinky cheerleader, entertaining for a minute or two, but now he was ready to move on to other things. But I didn't want to leave, just yet. It was like being in a long, dark corridor and having someone crack a door, just for a second, and let a slant of light peek through. For one instant, I could have been anyone else.

But now, sitting in front of my neighbor's house, with all the landmarks—fire hydrants, streetlights, sidewalk pavement I'd played a million hopscotch games across—I was quickly becoming just me again, plain and simple.

He was leaning back in his seat, eyes on the dim green glow of the dashboard. Waiting, I knew, for me to leave. I had my hand on the door handle, ready to slip out, when he said, “Caitlin?”

I turned to look back at him: his green eyes, wild hair, so foreign and strange, a million miles from Mike Evans and the defensive line. And I could understand why Cass had rolled around the bed, so giddy and stupid, saying good night a hundred different ways just to keep that voice there, one more second.