Sex & Violence (11 page)

“How’d you get that scar, dude?” Jim asked.

“Bike accident,” Baker said for me.

“Bullshit,” Jim said. “That looks like you got in a fucking knife fight, dude.”

Christ, I hated the way Jim said “dude.”

I shrugged, and said, “Yeah, so what if it was?”

“You told me it was a bike accident,” Baker said.

I shrugged. “I didn’t want you guys making a big deal about my cancer.”

“You have
cancer
?” Conley asked.

“The tumor was the size of a grapefruit,” I said. Christ.

Whatever weed this was, it was working.

“He’s just making shit up, Conley,” Baker said, catching on.

“My dad’s an oncologist,” Conley said. “Seriously, what kind of cancer was it?”

“I didn’t have cancer,” I said.

Baker kicked water at me. “Evan, god, just tell us what it was! You make it sound so mysterious. It’s probably something totally basic.”

Jim, shaking his head like he thought I was mental, started to roll another joint.

“I don’t want anymore,” Baker sighed, looking down at her toenails.

“Conley?” Jim asked, gesturing with the rolling papers.

“Sure,” she said. “Why not?”

“Cancer Boy?”

There was that same flare in my chest again. Why’d this football-playing shitheel get a girl like Baker—who was smart as hell and had an awesome rack and gave him a pass to be with other chicks on top of it? In no universe was this fair or sensible. But given the fact that I was terrible at thinking of good insults to say on the spot, and the weed was good, I just nodded. I’d passed the joint to Conley when Baker suddenly stood up, adjusted her bikini sort of roughly, and dove into the water, splashing Jim, and swimming back to shore without another word.

Dear Collette,

Since Dr. Penny doesn’t bother explaining to me the finer points
of psychology and just has me do this stupid letter-writing thing,
which makes me feel like a stalker and also miss you, if it’s possible
to miss you, since we didn’t even know each other that well, and the
thing I miss the most about you was watching you do the long jump.

And also your boobs. That second thing I would never say to you—or
anyone else—in a letter or in person. But this won’t get sent, so what
the hell, right?

Therefore, today’s bullshit topic: What have I learned from
someone else lately?

What I have learned from someone else lately is that you have
to remember your anniversary with your girlfriend or else your life
is miserable. I learned this from a guy named Tom, who I would call
a friend, since we hang out a lot, but a couple of the times were accidental, so maybe we’re just acquaintances. I don’t know the rules.

So, the anniversary part. This is the date from which a couple
has been together from some significant start point. This start point
depends on the girl. Like, she could decide it was the first time you
talked. Or the first time you kissed. Or the first time you hung out or
went on a date. Which Tom doesn’t have a clear memory of, or he’d
have remembered, I suppose.

(For us, would it have been the first time you talked to me? But
that was about Farrah. Which, by the way, I always wonder why they
didn’t take anything out on Farrah? Wasn’t it all about Farrah and

Tate, in the first place? Or was it about you and Patrick? Or would
it have been that first time when we skipped chapel? Maybe we don’t
rate an anniversary, because we were a secret. Not that big of a secret,
obviously, since someone must have seen us in the courtyard and told
Patrick and Tate. Sorry I even brought this up.)
Anyway. So Tom is hiding out in my room, and his girlfriend
Kelly actually comes over to my house. I don’t answer the door, since
Tom doesn’t want me to, because he says I’m a bad liar, which maybe
is a good thing to have someone notice about you? Again, I don’t know
anything about anything. I need a goddamn life handbook or something. Tom explains how Kelly gave him this scrapbook of pictures
and he’s done nothing. Not even one of those awful roses from the gas
station. Don’t feel bad that I never gave you anything, by the way.

I’ve never bought a girl anything. I’m kind of a dick on paper, as you
might have picked up. Which might be why Dr. Penny makes me
write this shit.

I wish I could say that there was a good resolution to this story,
except there wasn’t. Tom hung around my house and watched baseball
on TV and bitched about Kelly a lot, which is probably not the best
thing to do for your anniversary. He left pretty late and told me he’d
come by in the morning to go fishing. I hate fishing, but I’ve been
going with him, because though he is a crappy boyfriend, Tom is all
right. So that’s what I learned.

More later, Evan

On the day of the Tonneson’s Midsummer Party, Tom and I went fishing to escape the preparations and to avoid Kelly, who was still pissed that he’d forgotten their “anniversary.”

Tom showed me the scrapbook Kelly gave him, which I had trouble even holding, because it reeked like perfume, was full of pictures of them kissing, and was the pinkest thing I’d ever touched in my life. Not having a mother doesn’t expose you to many items in shades of pastels. Plus I wondered who the hell they made take all those pictures of them while they were kissing.

Midsummer was also my eighteenth birthday. My dad never did much for my birthday besides take me out to eat and give me some cash, so I was used to not making a big deal about it.

But while we’d been at Cub Foods buying stuff for Mrs. Tonneson, I’d kind of let it slip that it was my birthday to Tom, which I regretted, since the Midsummer Party looked like it was going to be excruciating enough with all the glitter and costuming and, unlike Baker’s barbecue, I had no way of avoiding it. Tom and I had been hanging out regularly due to his fight with Kelly over the anniversary, and there was no way I could duck out without him noticing. Which made me feel a little uncomfortable at first, because I wasn’t used to being actual friends with anyone.

“I wish I was eighteen,” Tom said, after we had been sitting in his boat for a while. “I’d take you to the dirty bookstore down on Shawton Street. But my birthday’s not for two weeks.”

Tom was grouchy, which wasn’t normal. He was usually pretty content in general, and fishing made him happier still.

He didn’t mind that I never brought my own reel, that I just sat there reading E. Church Westmore’s book and eating all Tom’s sunflower seeds while he listened to baseball games on his little radio. We were such a portrait of boyish goodness out on his boat fishing that I felt like we were in a TV movie on one of those wholesome family channels that shows reruns of
Little
House on the Prairie.

“You’ve lived all over the place, right, Evan?” Tom asked.

“Met a lot of chicks?”

“I guess,” I said.

“You ever go out with an Everything-But Girl?”

“A what?” I asked.

“See, Kelly’s got this pact with her big sister. A virgin-ity pact. Their mother got knocked up at like age sixteen or something. Had her sister and then Kelly real quick and never married the dad. I don’t even know if they have the same dad, actually. Anyway, then her mom found Jesus and that changed everything and now the older sister goes to some religious college in Missouri and has convinced Kelly that she can’t have sex until she’s married. They made this pact; they even have matching necklaces for it.”

“Necklaces? For not having sex? Seriously?”

He nodded and spit a bunch of sunflower seed shells over the side of the boat.

“Hey, man. Kelly’s great. But that’s sounds awful.”

“That’s where the Everything But comes in. Because …

there’s technicalities. So, maybe she won’t have regular sex. But that doesn’t stop her from blow jobs.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope,” he said. “But it’s like a trap. Like the free buffet at a casino. Everything’s open season, except that one key area.”

“So … Jesus doesn’t mind blow jobs?”

“I guess not.” Tom grinned a little, despite himself.

“What does Jesus think about oral on her? And … ?”

“He seems cool with all the rest of that too,” he said, his face getting red.

“I take back what I said before. That doesn’t sound too bad.”

“No, it’s worse. All I can think about is that one damn thing I’m not allowed to do. It’s ridiculous.”

It
was
ridiculous. Tom, with his baseball pennants and his pickup truck and his sunflower seeds, engaging in acts that were sexual crimes in some states. But I also wondered why he couldn’t write Kelly a dumb poem or buy her something that would make her feel better about the anniversary. I know I’d have done it for the remote possibility of a blow job. At least Dirtbag Evan would have. Who knew what the hell I’d do now.

Probably nothing. Probably hide in my bedroom and read about the mating habits of loons.

“Can’t you make her a CD?” I suggested. “Bring her flowers?”

“She hates all the music I like, and flowers aren’t
personal
enough,” he said. “I mean, unless I sent with them a long-ass letter about how great she was. And I can’t write for shit. Especially not
letters
. Who writes letters anymore?”

I put a big handful of seeds in my mouth and started chewing through them.

“You’re in luck, man,” I said. “This is truly your lucky day.”

***

Later that night, I was playing Frisbee with Tom and Stoner Guy (actual name, Jesse) when Kelly came over, all lovey acting. Tom had given her the letter I had written (recopied in his handwriting, of course, with a few roses from the gas station too), and she was holding it all and crying and acting so goopy that Tom hustled her away as if she was contagious. But then Jesse took me behind the compost bin and we smoked a joint together. He had lost his pipe and apologized for the joint, but I didn’t care. I told him about the pipes in my cabin, and we made plans to smoke the rest of his bag out of those another time.

“How old are you, Evan?”

“Eighteen,” I said. Hoping he didn’t know about my birthday.

“Damn,” he said. “I’m the only junior here. You going this fall to Marchant Falls?”

“No,” I said, not wanting to tell him that I was technically a junior too but planning to get a GED or homeschool myself online or anything else possible besides walking into some new hellhole again. “We’re just here for the summer.”

“Are my eyes red?” Jesse asked. “My girlfriend gets pissed when I smoke.”

“No, you’re okay,” I said, not wanting to get too close to him. Though Jesse seemed pretty harmless, I wasn’t used to this friend thing yet.

We walked back to the party, which I had been avoiding with the Frisbee, as there was actual dancing on the deck, which was decorated insanely with all this gauzy stuff and Christmas lights and little hanging lanterns. Plus my father was swinging around Brenda and Mrs. Tonneson and a bunch of other middle-aged ladies in a way that made me want to die. Everyone seemed pretty wasted and way too happy for adults, but this was fairly normal for the east side of Pearl Lake. Everyone out here seemed to drink and play cards and board games almost every night, and my father was one of the group as if he’d done it his whole life.

A bunch of kids were gathered around the fire pit, and Jesse and I sat down with them. Baker was there, with Improbably Tan Redhead, and Tom and Kelly were smashed together on a lounge chair, Kelly still oozing all over Tom. Baker poured Jesse and me some fairy punch from a pitcher, which she had spiked with rum. Kelly whined again for Cherry Lick—she didn’t like rum. I gulped a bunch, though—it was actually pretty good—because between Tom and Kelly and Jesse getting all touchy with the Tan Redhead, I didn’t know where to look.

“You’re not wearing your crowns!” Tan Redhead said.

“Jesse!”

“What did I tell you about that?” Baker scolded. Tan Redhead produced two boy-fairy crowns for us, which we put on obediently, as Baker had said earlier that people who acted too cool for costumes and theme parties were lame and lacked self-confidence.

“Where’s Conley?” Kelly asked.

“She went to Jim’s,” Tom said.

“But he’s in town tonight with Taber,” Baker said. “Jim hates the Midsummer Party.”

“How can you hate Midsummer?” Kelly screeched. “It’s so beautiful!”

I was feeling pretty sloshy right then, which was good, what with all these people and rules about crowns. Baker kept refilling my fairy punch cup, though, and I just slouched lower in my lawn chair until I didn’t have a clear view of my father twirling around Brenda Trieste, who was wearing this weird dress that looked made out of glitter-soaked rags. I looked at Jesse, who was adjusting his fairy crown like it itched and then Tan Redhead kissed him, and Baker said, “Jesus, enough with the public displays of affection!”