Althea and Oliver (12 page)

“A couple of months, maybe.”

“Two months in the hospital?” he asks. “No way.”

“If we can't get you some help, before this time next year you'll lose another two months anyway. Dr. Curls there”—she points to the TV—“is your best shot.”

“I don't care.” Oliver shakes his head.

“You say you don't care, until it happens again.”

“Maybe it won't happen again.”

“You believe that?”

“I have to. Otherwise I'm just waiting for the next time.”

Nicky stands abruptly, storming back out to the porch to collect their dishes. She scrapes his uneaten food onto her plate. What's left is enough for a full meal. He hates when she gets like this, her patience suddenly evaporating without warning.

“What?” he says, following her into the kitchen.

She dumps the dishes in the sink. “I'm glad you can be such a little Zen master about this. I'm glad you can still worry about things like Althea's hair color and who she might be sleeping with. I myself am a bit preoccupied these days. I am wired to think about nothing other than what's wrong with you. I am incapable of doing anything besides waiting for the next time you go off the air and I have to sit here for weeks, incapable of doing anything besides waiting for it to be over. So I don't care, Oliver, if you want to see more doctors or not. You'll see all the fucking doctors I want you to and yes, you'll go to a hospital in New York so that eventually we can both have the luxury of thinking about other things.”

“Yeah, I know, I'm supposed to be out of the way by next year so you can get on with your life. I apologize for the inconvenience. I don't want to mess up the schedule,” he says.

“Don't be spiteful,” she says.

“We have to make sure you get your chance to have all that fun you missed. I hope Sarah still knows where to get acid.”

All of Nicky's facial muscles freeze, but when she speaks, her voice is trembling. “I thought this was good news. I thought you'd be excited.”

“Because a doctor I've never met says I have a disease he can't cure? What's so exciting about that? How do you even know he's a doctor? He looks like a starting forward for Real Madrid,” Oliver shouts on his way out the door. “All he did was give it a name.”

• • •

Althea doesn't look surprised to see Oliver knocking on the basement window. She gestures for him to come in and he gestures for her to come out.

Bring your car keys,
he mouths, overenunciating so she'll understand.

She doesn't argue, doesn't ask why, just meets him in the driveway five minutes later and hands him a sweatshirt.

“What's this for?”

“In case you get cold. Where are we going?”

“We're running away.”

“Cool.”

If Oliver had to pick one spot as something approximating his proper place in the world, it would be the shotgun seat of Althea's car. As she threads their way out of the neighborhood and onto the highway, he feels he is right where he belongs. He hates driving, but he loves being a passenger, the whisking sound of the road beneath the tires and the blurry, intangible scenery that fades before it can even register. Like the rest of the world, the Camry is subject to the whims of their imaginations—it can be a pirate ship or a roller coaster or a subway train hurtling toward Coney Island—but tonight Althea makes it exactly what he needs it to be: a white noise machine. She says nothing as she drives, and there's nothing charged about her silence, nothing that implies she is waiting for him to start doing the talking. At night, with no traffic, her impatience behind the wheel vanishes, and it seems to him that she could drive like this forever as long as he were sitting to her right.

Althea pulls over at a rest stop, a stout brick building filled with restrooms and vending machines, with a few picnic tables on the side of the road. It's deserted except for them.

“How's this?” she says, as if it had been their destination all along.

“Perfect.”

He expects her just to turn the car around and go back, but instead she kills the engine and gets out, gesturing for him to follow. They lie on their backs on one of the tables. The sky has clouded over and there's nothing to see in the way of stars, but the air is fresh against his face and even the wooden planks of the table feel good, like they're straightening out a kink in his spine. They can't be more than thirty miles from home, but he can't remember the last time he's even been that far. It's still out here, the world beyond Wilmington. It hasn't vanished due to lack of interest on their part. He reaches across the table and takes her hand.

“Why did you dye your hair?” he asks.

“So people would finally be able to tell us apart.”

He laughs until she joins in. It's the exact right answer. They both know he isn't ready for a real one.

ALTHEA HAS AN IDEA.

“Hey, Ol, do you have more of those pills?” she asks.

“Which ones?”

“The round ones. Sort of linen-colored.”

Valerie and Minty Fresh prick up their ears like terriers.

“Pills? Yes, please.” Coby looks at Oliver expectantly.

Oliver shrugs and digs dutifully through his backpack to retrieve the small orange bottle. Their inability to provide Oliver with a proper treatment for KLS has not stopped the good doctors of North Carolina from prescribing him a plethora of amphetamines and stimulants. In high school, pills are a currency better than money, and Oliver generously shares his bounty, holding out a handful like candy, watching the others eagerly devour them as such. Althea washes hers down with the Southern Comfort Coby is toting around in an iced tea bottle.

Down at Lucky's, Minty Fresh and Valerie have put together a Halloween punk show to raise money for Bread and Roses. The flyer Althea designed has been taped to every telephone pole in Wilmington. Althea and Oliver have decided on post-assassination Jackie O and JFK, figuring there will be plenty of Goth kids who love wearing makeup dressed as Jack and Sally. At Goodwill, they picked out a pink suit for Althea and the perfect tie for Ol, promptly dousing both in fake blood. Her hair is tucked under a brown flip wig, and there is a bullet hole painted on his forehead. Val and Minty are dressed as the farmers from
American Gothic
, although his Mohawk is razor-thin, six inches high, and formidable. The parking lot is filled with kids masquerading as the obvious—zombies, skeletons—and yes, as suspected, the cast of
The Nightmare Before Christmas
is out in force. For a lot of the girls, it is the first year they've realized that Halloween costumes are a clever excuse to show up to a party half-naked. There are lots of Wonder Women in metallic tube tops and Betty Boops tottering around the parking lot in red minidresses and stiletto heels.

“Look at that shit,” Althea says, as a French maid in Doc Martens bends over to tie her shoelace, giving everyone a good look at her underwear. “She's flashing her fancy stuff all over the place. My father would have a heart attack.”

“You look positively upstanding in comparison,” says Valerie.

“I don't know about that,” Althea says, smoothing her blood-soaked skirt. “But at least my business is covered.”

It's another clear, warm night; stars are coming out in the navy blue sky, and a breeze blows through the parking lot. Bands are loading in their gear, and kids are handing out homemade stickers and flyers for upcoming shows; plans for after-parties out by Seagate and Silver Lake are passed between groups of friends along with flasks and packs of cigarettes. Leaning against Althea's car, they take turns drinking from Coby's bottle until it's empty, and he tosses it into the woods.

“What do y'all feel like doing after the show?” Minty asks.

“I don't know about you guys,” Oliver says, “but I feel like solving a mystery or something.”

Inside Lucky's, someone hits a chord on an electric guitar. The sound draws the parking lot dwellers inside. It's really Minty Fresh's show, and as they follow him in, people wave and call out his nickname. He gets onstage to introduce the first band, dragging Valerie up with him so the crowd can fully appreciate their costumes. He holds up a broom instead of a pitchfork, and the kids all cheer as he thanks them for supporting Bread and Roses.

“Holy shit,” Oliver shouts at Althea. “Do you realize that Minty Fresh has become, like, their leader?”

“Right?”

The first band is terrible but spirited. They call themselves the King Dorks. Every member is adorned with a pocket protector and a crown from Burger King, and they play for about twenty minutes. Each subsequent band is slightly more adept at their instruments, although for the most part the songs all sound the same—short, fast, deafeningly loud. There's no emcee or announcer between bands, just hurried chaos as one band rushes offstage while the next is setting up, nervously tuning their instruments while someone tries to uncoil a cable from around their legs.

When Minty's own band, Tartar Control, comes onstage, he doesn't rush through his mic check or sneak worried glances at the audience. A girl at the back of the club—definitely not Valerie, the voice is too shrill—yells “Minty Fresh!” with a buoyant whoop. He chuckles quietly without looking up from the set list he is toeing into place with his Converse, as if random girls scream out his ridiculous nickname all the time. The electric-blue Mohawk that looks so outsized bobbing down the hallways of their high school is perfectly at home onstage. The members of Tartar Control have not mastered their instruments, but their leader's new confidence gives their raw sound just enough polish to elevate them, slightly, above the rest of the mediocre musicians onstage tonight.

Minty doesn't play so much as he performs—wisely, he no longer employs a British accent, but he still has a hard time looking up from his guitar, so sometimes he just lets it hang around his neck like an afterthought, grabbing the mic stand and leaning toward the audience, or pointing a finger accusingly in their direction, or gesticulating the way he does when he's standing in front of his locker telling a story. The crowd surges toward the stage, reaching for him the way he's reaching for them.

It doesn't take long for the pill and the liquor to dovetail inside Althea, unbuttoning her diffidence like a blouse and casting it aside. She dances, wig shaking, arms held over her head, ricocheting off her friends, who form a tight circle around her. Toes crushed inside her thrift store heels, her calves ache as one song bleeds into the next, and for a while, seventeen years of the cringeworthy moments that plague her incessantly—a wrong answer she gave in math freshman year, the solution so obvious the whole class snickered; a school-yard retort falling flat by the handball courts; an unduly loud laugh brayed out a second too late; the doomed kiss under the sugar maple tree; and, of course, that afternoon in Oliver's bedroom, the awful secret she can't quite bring herself to regret—are silenced. Pressed against him now, dressed like his wife, she knows that tonight they look not like twins but like a couple, and if any night is for pretending, it's this one, so for a little while at least that's what she'll do, pretend that it's real and that she did no wrong, and so all these miserable snippets that repeat and repeat and repeat are blessedly, briefly silenced by the throbbing of the crowd and Althea's frenetic movements within it as Tartar Control arranges and rearranges the same three chords with a stalwart driving momentum.

And then it's over. Minty thanks the audience and the band starts packing up their equipment, coiling cables and breaking down the drum kit, the rattle of the cymbals a weak echo of the previous moment's din. The throng of people loosens around Althea, making her abruptly unsteady on her feet, her forearms goose-pimpling from the sudden drop in temperature. The house lights brighten and Lucky's starts to clear out, and somehow she has lost Oliver. Valerie brushes past, fighting against the flow of traffic, followed by a tiny girl with bleach-blonde hair and a septum ring, wearing a dress made from a faded Rainbow Brite pillowcase.

“Come on,” Val says as she passes. “We're going to find Minty in the back.”

Walking away, she holds one arm out behind her, its wrist covered in black rubber bracelets. Only when the pillowcase girl reaches for Val's hand does Althea realize it wasn't meant for her. The girls' fingers intertwine, tipped with matching glittery nail polish. They stay close as they maneuver through the remains of the crowd.

“Have you seen Oliver?” she shouts after Valerie, but she's already gone.

Coby taps her shoulder. Holding two fingers to his lips, he nods toward the door. Hesitating, she looks around the club one more time, trying to spot the only boy here who is wearing a tie.

As they walk toward her car, Coby lights two cigarettes and hands her one. Sweat runs in tendrils at the top of his forehead. He's not discernibly in costume, although he is unusually spiffy, dark hair freshly washed and parted down the middle, wearing a black button-down shirt and khakis. “What are you supposed to be?” she asks. “A date rapist?”

“I'm not supposed to be anything,” he says.

“Shouldn't you be chatting up one of these half-naked girls?”

He shrugs. “I've already slept with half of them.”

Althea watches the entrance, hoping to see their other friends getting ready to leave. Jason, ill-fated host, is sitting on the open tailgate of his pickup drinking a beer, surrounded by a group she vaguely recognizes from the party at his house. When Oliver finally emerges, she instinctively drops what's left of her cigarette, coughing out a last lungful of smoke. Just as he spots Althea and Coby over by her car, the French maid grabs his arm and starts talking.

“Who the fuck is that?” Althea says.

Coby tsks. “She's a pigeon.”

“A pigeon?”

“She's an extra,” he says. “Etcetera.”

“If she's etcetera, why is Ol talking to her?” she asks.

“Althea, you're the First Lady. She's the help. I wouldn't sweat it. I'd be more worried about Jason, if I were you.”

“What about Jason? That was ages ago. He doesn't know who was in that bathroom.”

“That's not what I heard.”

She can't look away from Oliver and the maid, noting with some satisfaction that he is eyeing the corner of the parking lot where they are waiting. Maybe she's deluding herself, but it seems like he's trying to edge his way out of the conversation. “What did you hear?”

“That it's hard to be discreet when you're jumping out a window. How do you think I know about it? It's not like you ever told me.”

“If Jason knows, he knows,” she says. “I don't see what he can do about it now.”

Finally Oliver breaks away and heads toward Althea's car.

Coby shakes his head and lights another cigarette. “It wears me out sometimes, watching you watching him. What's going to happen if this doesn't go your way?”

Her entire body can feel Oliver's approach, like he's a magnet and she's a collection of iron fillings that needs him to hold her together. Or maybe that's just the pills. What she doesn't tell Coby is that she suspects she has already lost. It's been months since that night under the tree, months since he's woken up, and still Althea and Oliver have never spoken of it, and—outwardly, at least—his wish for normalcy has more or less come true. They go to school. They take the SATs. They go to shows. They watch movies in her basement on rainy nights and listen to Garth's stories. They eat pizza in Oliver's living room with Nicky, drinking cream soda from old salsa jars and playing her records. Althea isn't stupid. She knows about Occam's razor. If Oliver wanted to kiss her again, he would do it. But here she is, dressed as Jackie O to his JFK, laying it all on the outside chance that he might sleep with her again, for real—just once would be enough—so that she might finally stop feeling like she had stolen something from him she could never give back.

Coby is still waiting for an answer.

“Anarchy,” she says.

He tucks his pack of cigarettes into the pocket of her suit jacket. “Maybe you'd better hang on to these,” he says, just as Oliver arrives.

“I think we should get going,” Oliver says. “I don't like the look Jason was giving me over there.”

“What about Minty and Val?” asks Althea.

Jason separates from his friends and begins crossing the asphalt toward them.

“Let's just go,” Oliver says. “We can catch up with them later.”

“I don't know what you think he's going to do in front of all these people,” she says, searching for her keys.

Coby glances at Jason, walking unhurriedly in their direction. “I heard he was pissed. His dad really nailed his ass to the wall.”

“How Dickensian.” Jabbing her key at the handle of the door, she sways on her feet.

“Forget it, Carter. I'm driving.” Oliver relieves her of the keys.

“But I hate the way you drive.”

“So do I.” Reaching down to open the door, he stops. “The fuck? Al, did you see this?”

As Jason finishes his languid stroll across the parking lot, Althea sees the key scratches down the length of her car, deep, intentional gashes in the silver paint, beginning above the front wheel well and running across both doors, trailing off under the trunk. Tracing one of the scratches with her finger, she follows the gouge to its conclusion, reeling at this deliberate act of retribution, looking up to find herself faced with the boy who doled it out.

“Jesus. That's so fucked up. Who would do something like that?” Jason's hands are stuffed in the pockets of his jeans, his curly blond hair sticking out from under his John Deere trucker's hat. He has a face as round and broad as a dinner plate.

Clearly Jason has come to taunt her, but he's erred in doing so. If he's already exacted his revenge, then there's nothing more to fear. Instead of finding Althea contrite, as he clearly hoped, he's just made her angry. An engine revs inside her.

“Who would come out here while you were dancing and willfully destroy your property?” Jason continues. Under his arms, sweat rings brighten an otherwise faded orange shirt. His friends are watching from the bed of his truck.

“It's an excellent question,” she says, taking a step toward him.

“Althea, get in the car,” Oliver says.

The warning is meant for Jason, but it sails over his head. She takes another step.

Jason dangles his car keys from one finger and smiles. “Why would anybody want to key your fucking car?”

Stepping between them, Oliver tries to keep Jason and Althea apart. Coby is standing off to the side with a weirdly focused expression on his face. Inside Althea the engine revs again, and she is so, so ready to hit the gas.