The Bad Decisions Playlist (17 page)

When we finish, we end up back on the sofa and can hardly look at each other. A few more people sing songs, a big rousing finish with “All You Need Is Love.” I can barely hear any of it. Everyone is standing and hugging and shaking hands, and I feel a light touch on my shoulder and it's Josephine, pulling her hand back hurriedly.

“I should go,” she says.

“Right Yes. Of course. Uh, let me figure out what we should do,” I stammer.

“Why don't you take the truck,” says Shane. “Bring it back to me whenever.”

Amy does a quick field-sobriety test, consisting of her grabbing both my ears and saying, “Breathe on me.”

I breathe on her.

“Have you been drinking?”

“No! Not a drop!”

She lets go of one ear but starts twisting the other.

“Austin, I will beat your ass if you're lying to me.”

“Not a drop! Ow! Let go!”

“Okay, then.” She leans in close and whispers, “I like her a lot. Go.”

On the ride to Josephine's it's a whole new variety of wordless awkward. Like by singing that song together we'd somehow gone way too far, experienced something far too intimate. More intimate somehow than, well, being
intimate.

Two frozen centuries into the ride, she finally says, “So . . . tell me about Shane,” and I'm grateful to have a way to fill up a few miles and minutes. I tell her everything that has happened since he first showed up on the doorstep, everything I know about him, about my mom lying to me all this time since I was a kid.

“Austin, that's incredible.”

“Yeah. Of course, it's possible that he's not really my dad.”

She's quiet.

“No,” she says, “he's your dad.”

More silence.

We get to her house and I park.

“Well . . .”

“Yeah, well . . .”

“That was really fun.”

“Yeah.”

“Thanks for inviting me.”

“Yeah, sure, of course. Thanks for coming.”

The radio is on, so at least the silence isn't silent.

“You want to hang out again sometime?” I say.

“Sure, yeah.”

“What are you doing tomorrow?”

She laughs softly. “Can't tomorrow. Phone calls. Raising funds.”

“Right.”

Well.

Well.

It's time for her to go.

The song on the radio is ending.

She has to go.

She's not moving.

The song ends. The song “Heirloom” by Sufjan Stevens starts, and I'm about to say,
I never liked this song,
but suddenly it's the most beautiful thing ever, and it's like the song is showing me the way, the song is saying,
Now, the moment is
now, don't wait,
and it's like Josephine and I both know and we turn to each other and we're kissing.

We're kissing and her lips are soft and my hands are on her face and I can feel her warm hands on me and I'm thunderstruck, I'm trembling, and we kiss more and kiss more, my eyes closed, the heat of her body, her breath, the smell of her hair, the feeling of floating in a sea of stars.

Then suddenly she stops. She stops and pulls back, a hand on my chest. She pulls back and pushes away and looks at me, then wait she's turning to open the car door and wait she's climbing out and closing the door and wait she's walking up the path toward her house​—​“Wait,” I say​—​and her walk goes faster and turns into a run and then she's at the front door​—​“Wait!”​—​and the door opens​—​“Josephine, wait!”​—​and she's inside and the door closes and she's gone.

I believe in things I cannot see /

I believe in you and me / I believe /

I believe that we'll be together

“Where is he?!”

“Whuh?”

“WHERE IS HE?!”

Really bad way to wake up: My mother shaking me violently by the shoulders and screaming in my face.

“What? What's happening? What's going on?”

“Where. Is. He?”

The various components of my consciousness that go off and do their own thing when I'm asleep are still struggling to return to headquarters so that my brain can function.

“Mom, whuzzuh . . . What's going on? Where is who?”

“Don't give me that crap! Where is Shane!”

“Shane? He's not here! What are you talking about!”

“Why is his goddamn car here?!”

Oh, crap. The car. Right. I drove home from Josephine's, dazed, three-fourths baffled, one quarter love-dopey, and parked in front of the house, figuring I would wake up before dawn and drive it to math class and then to work before my mom was the wiser. Fail.

“I said, why is his goddamn car here?!”

Lesson number one: Don't plan tactics when you're baffled and/or love-dopey.

“What time is it?” I say, then look over at the alarm clock​—​“Oh, crap!”​—​and leap out of bed and rush out of the room and down the hall, my mom in hot pursuit.

“What the hell is going on here!”

“Mom, shut the door! I'm peeing!”

“Why is his car here?!”

“Mom, I
will
pee on you!”

Really shocking statement from my mom about what she, in turn, will do to me.

“Jesus, Mom!”

“I'm serious! Where is he?”

“He's not here! I just have his car!”

“Have you been hanging out with him? You
have
been hanging out with him! I'm going to​—”

Truly harrowing, scrotum-puckering description of the traumatic punishment that awaits Shane.

“Mom!”

“What the hell happened yesterday! Where were you last night? What have you been doing!”

What was I doing last night? Did all that really happen? It can't have. It's impossible. It was a dream. I made it up.

“I'm talking to you!”

“Mom!”

It goes on like this for the next several minutes as I yank my clothes on​—​“Answer me!” “I'm trying to put my pants on!”​—​and head downstairs​—​“Where are you going!” “Breakfast!”​—​and pour myself some cereal and shovel it into my mouth while standing at the counter, my mom at my elbow, harrying me.

Mom (pulling cereal bowl away; milk and cornflakes slopping on the linoleum): “Look at me when I'm talking to you! How come you have his truck?!”

Me (pointing to mouth stuffed with cereal): “Mmmm! Rmmph mmph mmmm!”

Then I grab the box of cereal and scoot out the door​—​“I gotta get to class and then work! It's in the contract!”​—​and hop into the truck, my mom banging on the window.

“We are gonna talk, mister!”

“I love you!”

“You tell him he's dead!”

“I love you bye!”

SCRREEECH!

I Fast & Furious it backwards out of the driveway and accelerate away before my mom can leap on the hood, punch through the windshield, and pull my heart out of my rib cage.

∗  ∗  ∗

Last night when I got home, I texted Josephine:

Is everything okay?

It was the only text I sent. I'd like to say it was self-control, but what really happened is that the music came flooding in and I fell asleep while I was waiting for a reply. Now I'm late to math class, but the anxiety is growing so intense that I have to pull over to send another text:

All ok?

I wait on the side of the road, hoping she'll get back to me. Minutes pass. She doesn't. I swear and put the truck in gear.

Math class is special agony because I desperately want to check my phone, but there're only seven of us in the class, all known troublemakers, and Mr. Westphal's gaze never wavers.

Class ends. No communication. I arrive at the office park we're mowing today, everyone else already out there fighting the good fight against grass. No texts.

I pull a mower off Kent's trailer of fun and get to work.

My back-and-forth progress across the lawn is herky-jerky, my forward motion interrupted every thirty seconds when I check my phone. I know I shouldn't do it, but I can't resist: I start sending more texts:

Are you angry?

All okay?

Can we pls talk?

I see Kent in the distance, observing me, and so I start forcing myself to wait until the turnaround point at the end of each row to check for responses, but a good acre goes by with nothing, and then another acre, my misery growing with every swath of freshly mown turf.

What has happened is clear: Josephine, having realized she'd lost her goddamn mind, fell asleep last night midscream and woke up this morning to finish screaming, and now she can't shower enough to rid herself of the repulsive memory of my touch, completely Lady Macbething it, probably brushing her teeth with obsessive ferocity at this very moment as she tries to scrub away my kisses.

I replay over and over again the moment she pulled away from me, her expression worse with each iteration, a scene shot ten different ways: Confused. No. Scared. No. Angry. No. Furious. No. Barely contained nausea-inducing revulsion.

“She hates me!” I shout, a squirrel in a nearby tree watching in consternation. “Hates me!” I repeat to the squirrel.
Oh, dear,
thinks the squirrel, or whatever it is squirrels think, then evidently decides it would be wiser to put several more trees between him and the screaming human.

More mowing, the sun rising higher, the temperature and my despair climbing with it.

My phone buzzes.
YES!

Yank it out, fumble and bobble it, nearly dropping it under the mower.

NO! IT'S JUST MY MOM!

i expect you here for dinner you have lots of explaining to do

mom ok ok it's all fine don't worry

I mow angry. I mow bereft. I mow with denial. I mow with four of the five stages of mourning, skipping the acceptance part. During the lunch break, I seat myself on a bench away from the others to eat my boloney sandwich, which tastes of a very complicated mix of emotions that add up to WHY GOD WHY DO YOU HATE ME WHY WON'T SHE CALL. I cling to my phone, stare at it, issuing high-level, threat-of-death orders to myself not to send another text,
no no no, do not, will not, won't, no way, I'd rather die than okjustthisone:

Please respond.

Three minutes later, she does. And I wish she hadn't.

Austin​—​I'm sorry. The party was really fun, and thank you for inviting me, but I feel like I made a really bad mistake last night and need space. Sorry.

It's like a physical blow, a kick to the stomach. I'm sitting on the bench, gasping for breath, my hand shaking as I read and reread the text. Then I realize that Kent is standing in front of me, hands on hips, grinning his coach grin.

“What's wrong with you?” he asks. “You have girlfriend trouble or something?”

It's only about five minutes later, when I'm driving away too fast in Shane's truck, that I say, “I
quit.
”

∗  ∗  ∗

Ed the engineer is coming down the hall from the audio-monitoring room as I approach.

“Hey, kid,” he says.

“Hey. Where you going?”

“Out to smoke. And probably drink.”

“Oh. Shane here?”

“Yep. That's why I want to go drink.”

“What happened?”

“What happened? Nothing happened. That's the problem. You don't by some chance have a band with you, do you?”

“What?”

“Nothing. I'm gonna go smoke.”

I enter the control room and let my eyes adjust to the dim light. “Shane?” I say. He's not there. I look through the window and don't see anyone in the actual recording area. I stand there for a minute, perplexed, wondering if he somehow managed to sneak out another way. I'm about to leave but then decide to check out the recording room.

It's a much larger space than I'd expected, maybe half the size of a football field, the exact dimensions hard to make out because of the subdued lighting and the black audio insulation that covers the walls and ceiling. It takes me a moment to realize that Shane is lying on his back in the middle of the floor, eyes closed.

“Shane?” I say.

He opens his eyes, turns his head to confirm it's me, returns his head to its previous position, and closes his eyes once more.

“Hey,” he says. “You bring the truck back?”

“Yeah.”

“Thanks.”

“Sure.”

“Fun party last night, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Glad you could make it.”

“Yeah, thanks for inviting me.”

“Josephine have a good time?”

“Yes. Or no. I think. I'm not sure.”

“Sounds complicated.”

“A bit.”

“That happens sometimes.”

“Right.”

I'm still leaning through the doorway, holding the heavy insulated door half open, wondering if I'm supposed to enter the room or excuse myself and leave.