Sex & Violence (12 page)

“It’s Midsummer! What do you expect!” Kelly hollered.

“You know how I feel about that,” Baker said, settling beside me in her lawn chair. She looked a little drunk herself, but nowhere near as drunk as I felt. And unlike me, Baker looked good. I wore a shitty T-shirt and shorts, with the same hoodie I always put on when it got cold and buggy at night, while Baker, dusted with the glitter she’d been decorating with all day, wore this tight shirt that was covered in stars and a little denim skirt that made me wonder how she could sit down without her ass falling through the straps of the lawn chair. Her legs were very long and tan, and I wished she wasn’t sitting by me. And that she didn’t have a boyfriend. It made me want to inch my chair away from her, how good she smelled and how cute she was and how her hair tickled my elbow in the breeze.

The conversation turned to Jesse and Tan Redhead. Baker was lecturing them because Tan Redhead had asked out Jesse, who was younger, and Baker wasn’t having it because she said guys should do the asking out, not girls. Jesse sat there silent and looking thankful to be stoned.

“Wait,” I said. “Why does he have to ask again? What’s the problem with her doing it?”

“If you’re a girl, you shouldn’t have to chase people,” Baker said. “Women have enough problems in life, without having to add that to their burdens. Men benefit from the whole patriarchal construct. They get paid a dollar to my seventy cents. So they can nut up and do the asking out.”

“Jesse’s so shy,” Tan Redhead said. “He wouldn’t ever approach me. Because I’m
older
.”

“It shouldn’t matter,” Baker said, holding up the fairy punch pitcher to Tan Redhead, who shook her head, saying she had to work in the morning.

I wanted to argue with Baker, but I was too high to form a sentence. Then she got up and went into the Tonneson’s cabin, kind of huffy, like we were all ignorant sexist pricks or whatever.

“She’s just pissed about Jim,” Kelly said. “He’s such a dick about Midsummer.”

“She should dump his ass,” Tan Redhead bitched.

“Why?” Jesse said.

“Well, why not?” Tan Redhead said. “When people are assholes, you don’t reward them by being their girlfriend.”

“Maybe she likes him,” Jesse continued. “He
is
the quarterback.”

“You’re just saying that because he’s Jim Sweet,” Tan Redhead further bitched to Jesse. “And he’s the quarterback and you’re a year younger and think he’s
god.”

“I don’t think he’s
god
,” Jesse corrected. “I just recognize that Jim Sweet outweighs me in every possible sense. Weight, muscle mass, coolness, sports records, number of chicks he’s done it with …” Everyone laughed and Jesse continued. “The fact that he doesn’t drive his dead grandmother’s Buick …”

Tan Redhead yelled something about saving money for a better car instead of spending it all on weed, finishing with, “If you did that, then you’d be as cool as Jim Sweet.”

“Wait,” I said, finally able to be coherent. “His name is Jim Sweet? JIM SWEET?
Really
? That’s his whole name? Someone named a baby
Jim Fucking Sweet
?”

Jesse and I started laughing and the cut on my mouth ripped open again, and Tan Redhead freaked out, but I just wiped the blood on my shorts and kept laughing. Kelly rolled her eyes at us like she was disgusted by our immaturity and Tom smiled, but he wasn’t stoned, so I knew he didn’t get it.

But I didn’t care, because I was laughing and Jesse was laughing and I was having fun even though my father was slow dancing with Mrs. Tonneson. I could hear loons crying in the distance, and it was beautiful.

***

I was all cotton-mouthed and had to piss, so I went into the Tonneson’s cabin to gulp some water and nod at the adults who were drinking wine in the kitchen while eating cupcakes.

But the Tonneson’s bathroom was occupied, so I went out toward the compost bin/pot patch and unzipped to piss. Which turned out to be a terrible choice, because I could hear people whispering—it was faint, given my left ear was still fucked—a girl’s voice saying,
Someone’s coming, would you stop it, already?

Which made me freeze. Had I just walked in on Everything But featuring Tom and Kelly?

Then Jim Sweet—JIM SWEET!—emerged from the other side of the pallet fence, pushing past me in the dark. I zipped quickly but then—surprise! Next came Conley, the strap of her tank top fallen over, her blonde hair a mess. Her eyes went wide when she saw me, and she staggered back.

“It’s not what you think,” she snapped.

So I turned and ran out of there, faster than I had in weeks, back to my dock, where I proceeded to hock up a bunch of spit and bleed some more from my mouth and laugh and cry and who the fuck knows what else. Then I collapsed against the wood dock and watched the sky spin full of stars.

Happy Birthday to Me.

Dear Collette,

Have you ever stayed up all night at a party? I’d never done that
until my eighteenth birthday.

This year, after Jesse and Tom tossed me into the lake and we
all went swimming out to the diving platform, Baker gave me a
towel and Kelly taught me this card game called Presidents and
Assholes, which I couldn’t figure out, so I kept losing and drinking
more. Then Baker made me do shots with her, which involved me
barfing off the Tonneson’s dock while she patted my back and hollered, “Time to rally, Evan!” After Kelly and Tom slipped off to
do Everything But* behind the compost bin, Tan Redhead drove us
into town at three in the morning, and we ate pancakes at Denny’s.

Probably the best pancakes I’ve ever eaten. Baker smoked a joint
with Jesse and me after that by the Dumpster behind Denny’s.

Then we almost got busted when one of the Denny’s line cooks came
out for a smoke break, but luckily it was none other than Layne
Beauchant, my supervisor from Cub Foods. Baker freaked and
clutched my arm until I shook hands with Layne and he laughed
and took a hit off Jesse’s joint and said he was surprised that I

“partied” because I didn’t seem like the type. He asked me what
the hell we had on our heads and then Jesse couldn’t stop laughing,
because we were wearing Midsummer fairy crowns, though some
of the tin foil was peeling off. I couldn’t begin to explain, so I asked
him how many damn jobs he had, and Layne said that having a
kid wasn’t cheap. On the way home Baker and I sat in the backseat,

smushed together a little, which made me nervous, but she was
talking loudly about how you should never go out with people that
have the same hair color because it’s obviously a genetic thing and
on and on, a whole layer of arguments and rules that outraged Tan
Redhead and that I couldn’t follow because pot makes me stupider,
not smarter. Plus I have black hair and Baker’s is brown, the same
color as her insanely named cheating boyfriend Jim Sweet, so her
policy was void when it came to us. (There is no “us,” of course,
because she is normal and I’m a lunatic. Anyway.)
Matched sets are a bad idea, Baker said. Tan Redhead said
that was bullshit; should she break up with Jesse if they were both
redheads? And that Tom and Kelly were both blond, but Kelly
dyed her hair, so what about that? To which Baker started talking
about innate traits and evolution and, finally, I just interrupted her by saying, “You have an assload of rules, you know that?”

Which made everyone laugh and then Baker pulled away from
where her leg was touching mine and got all snobby and said I
barely knew her. I apologized and said I was super baked. Then
Jesse put the radio on some Mexican station, which played a bunch
of music with flutes and guitars that was pretty relaxing, and by
the time we got back to Pearl Lake, the sun was coming up and I
was feeling good. Still a little high, but not sloshy like before. And
then we sat on Baker’s dock and she got us coffee and when she
gave me a cup, I felt like she had forgiven me for saying the rule
thing and the four of us watched the sun rise and it was fucking
beautiful.

I slept until three in the afternoon the next day. Then woke up
and wrote this.

Later, Evan

*Everything But Have Sex. Which means no penis/vagina
intercourse but all other options are okay. There are girls who do
this. It’s apparently a religious thing. I can’t decide if it’s genius or
evil. Tom thinks it’s evil, for the record.

Probably you shouldn’t make promises when you’re drunk. Or plan things, either. Because that’s how Baker and I ended up on Story Island a week later.

Tom had overheard us talking about it at Midsummer, how Baker wanted to go there because summer was wasting away, but she didn’t want to go alone, because what if she fell in a hole and died or something. Though my drunk ass told her I’d come with her, I pointed out that it wasn’t exactly stealthy to moor a boat to a No Trespassing sign by a protected bird habitat. But Tom reasoned that he could drop us off, go fishing, come back in a few hours, and no one would know. It was a fairly big island, after all.

So, after wading through the weedy water, helping each other up the boulders, pushing aside slippery scum and extending hands to each other until we reached the top, we were on Story Island. I wore shorts and an unstained T-shirt and running shoes and had loaded my backpack with food, water, and bug spray (and
Under the Waves
, because what if we got stuck there? That book was like my security blanket). Baker was beside me, her hair in two ponytails down her shoulders, with her own backpack full of who-knows-what, in a pair of very short shorts and tall rubber boots and her bikini top under a Marchant Falls Track T-shirt, which was a little see-through, but I was too distracted to check because of the fuckloads of bugs and the overgrown, mushy ground that made me wonder if Soren’s claim about quicksand wasn’t bullshit. E. Church Westmore hadn’t said anything about quicksand. I wished I’d looked it up beforehand, but Baker had come over earlier than I expected, banging on the door and chatting with my father as if they’d known each other forever.

“What’s your best track event?” I asked, as we headed into the brush. Though I was a little freaked, I decided I should go first, being the man and all.

“The 1500,” she said.

I thought to ask her time on that but didn’t want to one-up her with mine. Plus, what if hers was better? I was taller than her by a lot, but still. I hadn’t told her I ran track—had I? I didn’t think I had. Pot made it harder to talk for me than usual, but Baker could be pretty pushy with her questions.

“But my favorite’s the long jump,” she added.

Of course it is
, I thought. Imagining those ponytails flying behind her as she whooshed through the air and wondering why I’d agreed to do this. While Baker made me laugh, she also made me nervous, especially when she started in on her rules, which she was doing as we pushed through pricker bushes and clouds of gnats.

“People shouldn’t sleep with their significant others’

friends,” she said.

I guessed this was about to be a rant against Jim and Conley.

A discussion I wanted nothing to do with. “Oh, should there be a
rule
about that or something?” I said, all smarmy.

“Yes,” she said. “A clear one too. Because it’s terrible. Even if the whole secretive thing’s hot; it’s not worth it.”

She was completely wrong about that, but whatever. I wasn’t up for an argument.

“Yeah,” I said, swatting at a horsefly.

“Don’t sound so convinced, Evan!”

“Well, what do you want me to say?” I asked.

“Anything!” she yelled back. “It’s common courtesy to reply when someone speaks to you!”

Fucking unbelievable. Because I doubted she wanted to know my opinion on this. Which was that I never cared if girls I got down with had a boyfriend. I’d never even bothered to ask. It didn’t bother me in the slightest, who was fucking who, as long as I was involved in some of the fucking, really. It was pretty insane, how long I’d skated by without that kind of information mattering.

“All right,” I said, exhaling for a long time. “It’s probably not the best idea, getting down with your friend’s chick. But people get too crazy about sex stuff in the first place. I mean, it’s not like you’re getting married in high school. This isn’t Kentucky, right? Shit happens sometimes.”

“Wow, Evan,” she said. “That’s the most I’ve heard you say in one breath.”

“Well, you asked,” I said.

“Don’t be so touchy …” she said. “Oh my god, look!”

I pushed aside a twisted branch, and there in front of us was the biggest ruin of a house I had ever seen in my life.

As we walked around the Archardt House, Baker did all this oh-my-god!-ing. I couldn’t blame her. The place was amazing, beyond gothic. Slate black roof and dark brick and a round, pointy turret to one side and a sunken gate all around it. Windows everywhere, stained glass and ornately shaped, all reflecting back the wild green surrounding us.

“Can you believe this? Holy fuck!” she said. “An intact piece of history—here on a bird sanctuary! Aren’t you glad we did this?” Her eyes were wide and hopeful, a really pretty blue.

I was glad, yeah. But I was annoyed with her. And I couldn’t stop staring at her. Her boobs popping up under her T-shirt.

Those crazy-hot ponytails of hers that I just felt like grabbing.

I felt like an animal alone on this island with her. Plus I hadn’t taken a bath because my father and Brenda Trieste were out on our deck playing Parcheesi until three in the morning. With all the sweating I’d just done to get to the Archardt House, I probably reeked worse than ever.

Still, when Baker climbed over a pile of bricks by the broken main gate, I followed her. Maybe I was nutless, but I didn’t need to advertise it.