The River (13 page)

16

Mom wanted to take me to the ER to check out the lump on my forehead and see if I was concussed or needed stitches. Tomás thought it was a good idea, too. I didn’t want to drive an hour to the closest hospital then wait another two for some resident to send me home with an Advil and a pat on the head. I touched the Jakarta wrapper in my pocket. I was so tired. I just wanted to crawl under strata of quilts and dog hair and sleep.

Luckily Ranger Dave was in the Astro Lounge. I might not have been a bear cub and so was outside his area of expertise, but his CPR was current and we all trusted him to referee. He came upstairs, poked me a bit, asked if I’d lost consciousness, and when I said no, told Mom and Dad not to worry, that head wounds always bled a lot, which neither of my parents found particularly comforting.

“You might not be a forehead model for a while but you’ll be okay,” Ranger Dave said to me with a wink.

Dad forced a laugh and Mom poured herself a glass of merlot.

The next day I woke up tender and swollen. I thought about skipping school and going back to the patch of briars where I’d found the Jakartas, but I couldn’t make myself, because thinking about it broke me in two.

So for the next three days I stayed on the track and bleachers, chopped herbs, and read to Esperanza. I hoped that if I kept to where I was supposed to be, eventually I wouldn’t feel so jagged. It didn’t work.

And then it was Saturday.

The first real hint I got that Gretchen’s party would be so crashingly bad was the beer Jell-O.

It went something like this: Dad drove Tomás and me to Gretchen’s that night. He wouldn’t let us walk even though and it was less than a mile and Tomás was a hulking menace of a guy with evil-looking facial hair. “It’s not that I don’t trust you—I don’t trust other drivers. It’s a dark road,” Dad said, overenunciating as though he were delivering a closing argument to a hostile jury.

When we pulled into Gretchen’s drive, Dad questioned me. “Got your mace?”

“Check.” It was clipped to my purse.

“How ’bout your cell?”

“Check.” My new phone was on a special pouch on my belt. We’d finally agreed that my first one had been ripped off (not lost) and Dad had another one overnighted to us. I kind of liked accessorizing with tech. It made me feel important, like Batman.

“Call when you need picking up, all right? And Ronnie: Try not to go outside. Another thing: If you have to make out with someone, make out with someone large. Like Tomás here.”

“Dad!”

Tomás slunk down in his seat. He was balancing a tray of appetizers on his lap and they threatened to topple.

“All right, then,” Dad said. “Have fun!” Tomás and I got out of the car, Tomás carrying the blue corn tortilla chips and guasacaca, a dip with layers of guacamole, corn, black beans, repeat. Like a bean dip volcano only with cilantro, which, if you asked me, Mom was now using way too much of.

I thought Tomás and I were done with Dad’s particular brand of humiliation, but as he was backing out, he rolled down the driver’s side window and lobbed a fresh insult at us.

“You two look so cute together!”

At that point I didn’t see how the evening could get worse.

Gretchen’s house was the beige rambler with bright magenta trim. It was the one funky place in the neighborhood. No amount of pressure washing and beauty bark could disguise the fact that the porch was slouching. The foundation was rotting out from under them. And no surprise—the ground underneath all of us was sludgy mush. The only thing holding most places upright was ice, but that was melting. You got the feeling that, when the thaw came, Gretchen’s house and a dozen more like it would just run off into the sea.

We walked up the front drive, our ears assaulted by the throbbing bass of the White Stripes. We knocked on Gretchen’s front door but there was no answer, so we let ourselves in.

I went down the hall past the art deco prints of harlequins (“Cinzano ’74!”) to her bedroom. The door was closed so I rapped on it. “Gretch? Tomás and I are here. We’ll set up. Take your time.”

The rattling noise came not from her bedroom but from the bathroom next to it. There was a clatter like something falling to the floor, then a hushed “shit” from a voice a lot lower than Gretchen’s. Then Gretchen’s voice shushing him and giggling.

“Gretchen?” I called. “Are you okay in there?”

“Yeah!” she said loudly. “Be right out!”

I stood at the closed bathroom door for a few more minutes, trying to figure out who was in there with her. Who deserved my funky friend? I couldn’t picture her and her purple-tipped hair with a baseball cap guy.

At last I gave up eavesdropping and went to help Tomás set up. She’d come out sooner or later. I’d examine her new man then.

The dining room was a small space between the kitchen and the back patio. The table was glass and chrome. Not chichi, but clean. In the center was a clear bowl with royal blue marbles in the bottom, like a fake aquarium. It was very Zen-like. All that was missing was an orchid or bamboo plant—something spindly and contemplative.

Tomás had removed the centerpiece and was spreading a cloth over the tabletop. I went into the kitchen and pulled the plastic wrap off the chips and dip. As I did, I saw the chore list tacked to the fridge. It read:

Gretchen. I want you to:

— Make an olive rosemary loaf

— Clean your bathroom

— Feed the cat.

Already half in party mode, I decided: something has to be done about this. There were many things in my life that I had no control over, but for one night I could fix Gretchen’s list. So I tore it up. Then I found Gretchen’s mother’s Post-it notes and created a new list:

Gretchen, I want you to:

— Make the beer Jell-O

— Vacuum the cat

— Pick your nose thoroughly

(not the half-assed job you usually do.

I mean it. Get parts of your cerebellum.)

I put it on the fridge and forgot about it because there were dirty dishes in the sink and I was determined to help.

I should probably mention that Gretchen had these little rebellions. To begin with, her room was out of bounds from her Mom’s nitpicking. The dirty clothes on her floor had more layers than the guasacaca. Second, she never strayed from the list
ever
. If there was a heap of dirty dishes in the sink, but no item on the list that said “wash dishes,” Gretchen would let them pile up and attract flies, which was apparently what had happened tonight. There were pans crusty with spaghetti sauce and salad dressing and caked-on flour. Scouring them was going to give me upper-body definition.

I was still washing Gretchen’s dishes when the bathroom door finally opened, and Keith came staggering down the hallway.

Even though I hadn’t had anything to eat or drink yet, my stomach felt like I’d just slammed a volcano of bean dip and chased it with cheap tequila. Keith? In the bathroom with Gretchen? Giggling? Maybe it was… no. There was no way I could make that into something innocent. I had to face it: they had hooked up.

I leaned over the sink and bit my lip. They didn’t even like each other. How could they do this?
To me?
Gretchen knew how I felt. Even
Keith
knew how I felt, and neither of them cared.

Keith turned up the music and started slam-dancing around the living room. I tried to look at him without his catching me at it. He was wearing his army jacket and reeked of clove cigarettes. Just how bad are you? I thought.

He mowed into Tomás only half on accident. Tomás pushed him off with extra oomph.

“Sorry,
Dumbass
,” Keith said.

“That’s Tom-
ás
,” Tomás said.

I turned my back to them and focused on a piece of crusty something that wouldn’t come off this cast-iron skillet.
Keep moving
, I told myself.
As long as you keep moving it isn’t real
.

Tap tap tap
. Keith was trying to get my attention.

“Hey,” I said. I was feeling much colder toward him than I had an hour ago.

He belched in my face. “You know what? You’re really pretty.”

That was all he said. He walked off and opened the back door to Gretchen’s deck. Then, with Tomás and me both watching, he unzipped his pants and peed into Gretchen’s mom’s juniper bushes.

He zipped up, came back in, took a blue corn chip from the platter, and dipped it in the guasacaca. “Dude,” Tomás said. “At least wash your hands first.”

What was going on? Was he into me after all? Then what was he doing with Gretchen in the bathroom just now? I was so busy wondering that I didn’t notice Gretchen herself had come into the kitchen, retrieved the newly cleaned cast-iron pan from where it was drying on a rack, and was heating water over the stove. Her hands were busy, almost flailing. One of them was cooking and the other one scratching everywhere—her arms, her legs, but mostly that spot on her scalp that she’d been digging at all week.

I won’t ask what they were doing in the bathroom. It’s her business. Let it go.

“What’s up, Gretch?”

She opened the fridge, twisted off the cap of a Moose Drool Ale, and took a deep swig. “Gotta stick to the list,” she said. And she dumped the rest of her beer into the pan with the water and a packet of unflavored gelatin. “The CorningWare’s in the left-hand cupboard,” she said.