Destroy All Cars (10 page)

We pick our way along the trail that circles the pond. It's more grown over than I remember. I guess nobody is coming here anymore.

About halfway around is the bonfire spot. There's a clearing, with a log where people sit and an ashy burn pit surrounded by rocks. A half-melted plastic six-pack ring is sticking out of it, and there's some beer cans around, quite a few beer cans.

“Why do people always get drunk in places like this?” Sadie asks me. “And light fires?”

“That's what people do,” I say. “They start chemical reactions.”

Sadie stops and stares at the pond. It looks different from this side. It's awfully small as bodies of water go. And it smells. I wonder if it's even worth saving. I don't say that, though.

“Do you remember when we came here?” Sadie says.

“We came here a couple times.”

“Yeah, we did.”

I step closer to her. I suddenly want to do something. I'm not sure what. Comfort her? Put my arm around her?

Before I can do either, she turns away. She walks to the edge of the pond and looks out.

I pick up another stick and throw it in the water.

We head back. I remember that if you go all the way around, you hit a patch of black muck that
really
smells. So we return the way we came. We reach the road and walk toward the car in silence. I help her under the metal gate. But at the moment when we split up, to go to the different car doors, she stops. I almost walk into her.

“Do you mind if we hang out for one second?” she says. “I want to look at everything.”

“Okay.”

She looks. I look, too. We're standing in front of her dad's car. We're about two feet from each other.

“The moon is nice,” I say.

“Think how many people have come here over the years,” she says. “Think how many people had their first kiss here.”

“We didn't,” I say.

“I'm not talking about us.”

“We had our first kiss in your driveway,” I say. “I was on my bike.”

“Why are you bringing that up?”

“No reason.”

“You've seemed kinda weird all night.”

“So?” I say. “I am weird.”

Sadie stares at a stand of tall evergreen trees to our right. “I just want to look around. I want to feel this place. I want to know what I'm fighting for.”

“Do you think it will make any difference?” I say. “If the people bought it, they can drain it. They've drained all the other ponds.”

“So you want to give up? Why did you bother getting all those signatures?”

“Why do you think?” I say.

She stares at me in the dark. Then turns away.

I pick up a rock and throw it at the gate. I hit the metal bar on the first try, a lucky shot. It makes a ringing metallic sound.

“I don't even know what difference it's gonna make,” I say. “We're all gonna fry anyway.”

“You know, I've really missed your pessimistic worldview,” says Sadie. “I miss that wonderful sense of doom you bring to things.”

This statement sparks something in me. I watch her face in the dark. I want to kiss her. The sensation starts like an itch, like a tiny urge, and then blossoms into this incredible need that I can barely contain. I take a step toward her. I'm going to do it.

But then I decide not to, and I pick up another rock.

“Realists are never happy…,” I say, throwing it.

“Is that what you are, a realist?”

“I think so.”

“Then what am I?”

“You're…,” I say. “You're more of a…”

But I can't finish the sentence. I face her. I don't want to talk anymore. I want to be in that place again, that place of her.

“I'm more of a—?” she says, but her voice has dropped to a whisper. She doesn't want to talk either. The talking is over. This is the crucial moment. It's now or never.

I go for the kiss. I step toward her, grip her shoulder, aim my mouth at hers.

I press my lips against hers.

She lets me do this. She lets me kiss her, and I do. But when I try to coax her mouth open, she won't. And she isn't going to put her arms around me either. She isn't going to do anything.

That's not good.

I stop. I open my eyes.

She pulls herself away from me. “What,
on earth,
are you doing?” she says in the darkness.

“Nothing. I just—”

“You just kissed me!”

“I thought you—”

“What are you doing!?”

“I didn't mean—”

“Do you still
like
me?” she asks, point blank.

“I…I don't know.”

“You don't
know?”

“I do, I guess. I must,” I hear myself say.

She stands there staring at me. Then she touches her lips with her fingertips, as if to check that they're still there.

It's dark enough that we can't really see each other's facial expressions, which is probably for the best.

James Hoff

Junior AP English

Mr. Cogweiller

ASSIGNMENT:
describe a group or organization you have been a part of

Being a teen is an exciting time for a young person. It is the first stage of your life when you're associated with a decade. You start off as a “baby.” Then you're a “child.” Then you graduate onto the conveyor belt of decades. First it's your “teens.” Then it's your “twenties.” Then your “thirties,” your “forties,” your “fifties,” and so on until you die.

People who actually are teens think of the word as old-fashioned, a bit cheesy, but they are still attracted to things labeled “teen.” This is because they are curious about what other people think “teens” are supposed to be like and what they're supposed to do. They are not quite sure what a “teen” is, even though they technically are one.

Despite the cheese factor, the word “teen” does help young people find each other. Certain channels on TV are for “teens.” At the bookstore, there is a “Teen” section. At one vacation spot I know, there is a place called “the TeenZone” where they have French fries and video games and booths to hang out in. Teens like
to “hang out.” They also like hoodies and lip gloss and Skittles. Teen girls like shopping and TV shows about other teen girls having lavish sweet sixteen parties. Teen boys like blowing stuff up.

Teens, being younger, are envied by adults. Teens have longer to live. They can goof around more. They don't have as many cares and worries. Also, they are cooler than adults. And better looking. They are better dancers.

But teens are also easily confused. They don't understand the world. They have strong chemicals going through them that give them acne and make them sexually frustrated. Teen boys masturbate frequently. They can't help it. You can pretty much grab any teen boy and accuse him of being a “masturbator” and you will be right.

Do teen girls masturbate? No one knows.

Teens are at the beginning of life. For this reason, one of their main characteristics is their inexperience. Teens spend most of their time learning to do things: how to study, how to hold a job, how to not get caught masturbating. But since the teen is so inexperienced, problems arise and the teen is not prepared.

Also, certain things that are inherently flawed appear to the teen to be perfect. For instance, drinking. The teen drinks multiple beers, plays air guitar, hangs his ass out the window of his friend's car but then is shocked when he wakes up with a hangover and angry parents.

Or driving. The teen borrows Mom's car, drives fast, plays European Race Car Driver, but then is shocked when the car ends up in the ditch.

Or love. The teen falls in love, wanders the streets in ecstasy, and then is shocked when that love falters for no apparent reason. When this happens, the teen thinks he can fix it. The teen does not know that some things cannot be fixed. This leads the teen to try impossible things.

For this reason, let us have some sympathy for the teen. He wants to do good, but he doesn't know how. He wants to love, but something always goes wrong. He wants to fix the relationship because he loves the girl. The girl loves him. And yet something is broken. The teen digs down into the relationship to find that broken thing, to find it and fix it. But that thing is unfindable. The teen must face the horrible truth: The world is not going to give him what he wants. Even things that appear right in front of him, that seem easily graspable, even these things are, in reality, just outside his reach.

The End

Slinking around school today. Hiding in the library. I don't know what I'm afraid of exactly. Sadie's not going to tell anyone what happened at the pond. It's still so embarrassing, though. I'm afraid to show my face…

Gabe is being a good friend, walking with me in and out of the parking lot. He's got his license, so that's good. Not that I enjoy riding around in the Ford Expedition, which he now drives to school. I guess it's easier to criticize a Ford Expedition when you don't need it to avoid the ex-girlfriend you tried to kiss in a moment of reckless stupidity.

Gabe has refrained from saying “I told you so” about Sadie. But he did tell me so.

He's also been getting on me about my dad's car offer. Needless to say, he thinks I should take it.

“Dude, your parents are offering you a car, and college. That's two awesome things for nothing!”

“But I hate cars.”

“Dude, get a hybrid,” said Gabe. “Get a Prius. Get a freakin' electric go-cart if you have to. Take the deal!”

One thought I had: I could call Sadie and apologize. That would appear very mature, very civilized.

Or I could just go throw myself off a bridge, like a real seventeen-year-old.

Or I could just grow a new humiliation zit on my chin, which is apparently what my pores have decided to do.

Bored and girl-less, Gabe and I drive around. It's Saturday night and we've got nothing to do. We go to Fred Meyer's. We sit in the car and listen to the radio and watch people in the parking lot.

Then Gabe gets a call. It's Renee. There's a party somewhere. Gabe is very excited about this. He still likes Renee. I don't think that's ever going to happen but I keep quiet. We start up the monster engine and off we go.

So we get there and the party is at this senior girl's house we don't know. We go in and it's kind of crowded and we find Renee and some other people downstairs, playing foosball. It's pretty much a jock/prep crowd. I do my best to hang, for Gabe's sake.

Then Stephanie appears. Stephanie, from Disco Bowling. I haven't seen her in a while. She looks good, though. She's wearing dark eye makeup and a cute skirt. I think,
Maybe I could go out with her.
She's attractive. She's a girl. She thought I was vain, I seem to remember. Well, that will give us something to talk about.

“Hey,” I say, handing her a Coke someone just handed me.

“Thank god,” she says, putting down the Bud Light she was carrying and taking the Coke. “I hate Bud Light.”

“Me, too.”

“Why do they even have it here? We're in high school. Can't we drink normal beer, like normal high school students?”

“Maybe Bud Light is normal beer.”

We stand there and watch people play foosball. Stephanie might be a little drunk. “So what's up with you these days?” she asks me.

“I'm looking for a new girlfriend,” I answer. “Gabe is making me.”

“Did you have an old girlfriend?”

“I did. Sadie Kinnell.”

“Sadie Kinnell?” she says, surprised. “I know her. She's always doing things to save the world.”

“That's the one.”

Stephanie sips her Coke. We look at each other. Stephanie has quite a bit of eye mascara on. She's definitely drunk.

I
feel
drunk. And I feel like talking. So I do. “I tried to get back with her,” I say. “I tried to kiss her. I just sorta went for it. I thought she would be into it. But she wasn't.”

“Guys always do that,” says Stephanie, waving at someone. “They always go for the kiss at the wrong moment. Or they don't go for it at all.”

“Yeah…”

“Why did you guys break up, anyways?”

“I'm too depressing,” I say. “My brain. It's full of darkness.”

“Oh.”

“I think about what you said sometimes,” I tell her. “The thing about shyness being a form of vanity.”

“Oh yeah. I remember that.” She drinks more Coke.

“I think you might be right about that,” I say.

“Of course I am.”

“So what should I do? How can I make myself more likeable?”

“You could dress normal. Didn't you used to cut up your clothing? That's too weird. You can't do stuff like that.”

“Yeah, but what about my brain?”

“What about it?” she says. “Drink more. Or get some meds or whatever.” She looks at the Coke can I gave her. “This doesn't have any alcohol in it.”

“No,” I say.

She spots a passing senior with a Heineken. “Hey, cutie,” she says, grabbing his arm. “Where did you get that?”

He points to a downstairs refrigerator. “Thank you!” she says. To me: “You want one?”

“Nah, I'm good,” I say. She disappears in the direction of the refrigerator and I turn back toward the foosball game. Everyone's shouting and jumping around as the little ball bounces around. They look like monkeys in a zoo.

I stand there and pretend to watch. I think about Jill Kantor. That was a funny editorial she wrote. I wonder what she does on Friday nights. I wonder what sort of books she reads.

It's been five days since I tried to kiss Sadie at the pond. I haven't seen her since. Then this morning, in the cafeteria, we finally ran into each other. I gave her my most humble, apologetic smile. She didn't accept it. Her eyes bounced right off me and she kept on walking.