No More Us for You (7 page)

On Valentine's Day, between third and fourth period, I was walking with Vanessa down the hallway along with the herd of other students, the din of their small talk and gossip and insults. There was a large banner taped above the lockers that reminded everyone about the school dance that evening. The letters shimmered with glitter, hearts cut from pink construction paper glued to the corners. Two cherubs hovered on each side of the banner, their bows loaded with arrows. Vanessa pointed at the sign. “So are we going or what?”

“Did you go to school dances at Wilson?” I asked Vanessa.

“Yeah.”

“Were they lame?”

“No, not really.”

“Ours are really lame,” I said.

A girl strained at her locker until it shuddered open. A boy dropped some papers and another boy laughed. Mr. Bissell, my geometry teacher from last year, walked past and someone said, “Look at that square!” Mr. Bissell whipped his head around and frowned at everyone.

“Come on, it'll be fun,” Vanessa pleaded. “You, me, and Heidi.”

“Heidi will
definitely
not want to go.”

“If I can convince her, will you go?”

I turned to Vanessa. “There's no way Heidi will want to go. She hates dances more than I do.”

“But what if I can convince her?”

I said nothing. A boy rushing down the hall twisted his body and threaded between Vanessa and me. “Samantha, wait!” he shouted.

I could feel Vanessa's eyes on me. “Well?”

“Okay,”
I said, caving. “But don't get your hopes up.”

Right when we reached the corner where the hallways intersected, this boy collided into Vanessa and she nearly dropped her books. He quickly jerked his arms out and cradled them in case they tumbled.
“Whoa,”
he said. “You got 'em?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Vanessa said.

“I'm sorry. I should've signaled.”

Then I noticed the boy that this boy was walking with. It was Carlos, the museum guard.

“Isabel,” he said, smiling.

“Hey,” I said.

Vanessa straightened her books in her arms like a loose deck of cards. “Hi, Carlos.” She gestured with her head at the boy who'd bumped into her. “This guy your friend?”

“Yep. This is Snake,” he said.

Snake raised his hand up to his shoulder. “Yo,” he said.

“Are you guys going to the dance tonight?” Carlos asked.

“I'm not sure,” Vanessa said, looking in my direction.
“
Someone
told me they're lame.”

“They're not if you have a few in the parking lot.” Snake made a hang loose sign and put his thumb to his lips, then raised his pinkie toward the ceiling.

“Oh, you're a bad boy, aren't you?” Vanessa said coyly.

Snake grinned. “So I've been told,” he said, leaning against the wall, his eyes leveled at her.

I turned to Carlos. “Thanks for the licorice the other day.”

He smiled. “You're welcome.”

“It's all this guy eats,” Snake said. “It's like his pacifier or something.”

Carlos socked Snake on the arm.

“It's true, dude.”

“You guys want to know why we call Snake ‘Snake'?” Carlos asked us.

“Sure,” Vanessa said.

“In health ed. last semester—”

Snake grabbed on to Carlos and tried to cover his mouth. “Shut your piehole,” he said.

Carlos wiggled free.
“Chill.”

“Aw, come on, let's hear it,” Vanessa pleaded.

Snake shook his head sheepishly.

“When he's not around, I'll tell you,” Carlos told Vanessa.

“Man, that's messed up,” Snake said.

“I want to know too,” I said, but what I really meant was,
I want you to talk to me too, Carlos.
I was surprised to find myself thinking like that about a guy.

“So you guys want to go to the dance or what?” he asked. Carlos turned to me, then Vanessa, then back to me.

“Sure, why not,” I said. I turned to Vanessa and she had this oh-my-look-how-quickly-you've-changed-your-mind look on her face.

“Cool, we'll see you guys tonight then,” Snake said, but he was just looking at Vanessa, his left hand flat against the wall, as if he were stopping it from falling down on us.

 

Soon as I got home from school I went to my room and played the latest Death Cab for Cutie CD for the hundredth time. I opened the closet and went through all my
clothes, sliding the hangers across the bar one by one and pulling down outfits that I possibly might wear. Skirts, tops, jeans, sweaters, a couple dresses. I dumped them all on my bed and through a process of elimination I decided on a rose-colored dress and a black button-up sweater, both relatively new.

There was a knock at my door and I turned down the volume on my stereo.

“Come in,” I said.

My mom opened the door. She was holding her coffee mug, the happy-face one with the pinwheeling eyes. “You're going somewhere?” she asked, blowing into her steaming cup.

“There's a dance at Millikan,” I said.

“On a school night?”

“I won't be home late.”

She took a sip and brought her mug down. “How late is not late?”

“Eleven?”

“Ten,” she said sternly.

I clicked my tongue and frowned.

“Izzy, I thought you didn't like school dances.”

I shoved my hands in my pockets and lifted my shoulders. “This guy asked me.”

My mom's eyebrows went up. “Oh yeah? Who?”

“Just some guy. He works at the museum with Vanessa.”

“I'm happy for you,” she said. “I know how rough this past year has been.”

“It has,” I said.

There was a long pause, both of us thinking of Gabriel but neither of us wanting to say his name out loud.

“So, am I going to meet this guy tonight or what?” she asked.

I shook my head. “I'm driving with Vanessa. We're meeting up with him and his friend at the dance.”

She leaned against the doorframe. “You know, when I was your age, the boys would always pick up the girls.”

“Things have changed since the sixties,” I told her.

My mom put her hand on her waist. “Excuse me?” she said in this high-pitched voice.

“What?”

“The
sixties
?”

I shrugged.

“Try the seventies, young lady,” she said. “Nineteen seventy-eight, as a matter of fact.”

“Oh,” I said. “Sorry.”

She blew into her cup. “You're lucky you're my daughter,” she muttered.

“Why're you drinking coffee now?” I asked.

“It's green tea, actually. My stomach hasn't been feeling right.” My mom placed her palm on her belly.

“Stomachache?”

“Yeah, I think so,” she said. “I like that sweater.”

I lifted the black sweater up from my bed and held it under my chin. “Me too,” I said. I bit my lower lip. “How about ten-thirty?”

My mom took another sip of her tea.

“Please.”

She brought her mug down. “Okay, but I want you
inside
the house at ten-thirty. If it's ten-thirty-one, you're grounded for a month.”

“I won't be late,” I said. “I promise.”

My mom turned away from the doorframe and headed down the hallway. “The sixties,” she said over her shoulder. “I should ground you anyway for
that
.”

I closed my bedroom door. My cell rang and I looked at the digital display. It was Vanessa.

“Hey,” I said. “I was just about to call you.”

“Did you ask Heidi if she wanted to go?”

I was silent. After we had bumped into Carlos and Snake in the hallway, I told Vanessa that I'd call Heidi and ask if she wanted to join us. Truth is, I only wanted it to be us four. I figured Heidi would've just been an eye-rolling fifth wheel.

“You didn't ask her, did you?” Vanessa said.

“Nuh-uh.”

“Is,”
she practically screamed into my ear.

“I'm telling you, Heidi
hates
school dances,” I said. “She'd rather stay home and fantasize about guys than actually talk to one.”

“Shouldn't you at least ask her? I mean, won't she be pissed if she found out that we went without her?”

I bit on my thumbnail. “She might.”

“I don't want Heidi to hate me.” Vanessa lowered her voice. “Sometimes I feel like she wishes it was just the two of you.”

“That's not true,” I said, although I got the same vibe. The way Heidi would slowly turn her back on Vanessa, how easily she'd dismiss one of her suggestions or ask a question while Vanessa was telling a story. Last week, when Vanessa was telling us about the day she fainted on a hiking trip, Heidi asked me,
Would you do Curtis Bradfield?
I scrunched up my forehead and shook my head no and turned my attention back to Vanessa, who had this perplexed look on her face.
Go on
, I'd told her, my hand on her arm.

“Well, I still think one of us should ask her,” Vanessa said. “And by one of us, I mean you.”

“The thing is, Vanessa,
they
asked
us
,” I said. “Didn't they?”

She was quiet for a while, thinking. “Yeah, but still…”

“She won't find out,” I said. “Even if she does, she'll be more mad at me than you.”

“That's comforting.”

I heard Roland in the backyard yell, “Gotcha!” I went to the window and peered through the curtains just as he was stepping out of the flower beds, his right fist in the air as if he were holding an imaginary sword.

“Besides, it'll be more fun with just the two of us,” I said.

“You mean four,” Vanessa added.

“There you go!”

Vanessa chuckled. I loved her laugh.

“I'll come pick you up at eight,” I told her.

After I got off the phone I turned up the volume on my stereo and placed my outfit back inside the closet, on the far left of the rail. I sat on the ground and went through my pile of shoes, setting aside a pair of black heels. In my periphery I saw my bedroom door slowly crack open. “Mom,” I said, more like a question. Roland's fist appeared just above the carpet and before I could figure out what was going on, a lizard as long as my forearm was inside my room. I screamed. Roland slammed the door. The lizard tilted its head, its beady black eyes looking right
at me. I scooted away from the door, toward my dresser, the stereo booming over my head. Over the music, I could hear my brother giggling behind the door, and I thought,
I'm going to smack him.
The lizard scampered along the wall, its short, scaly legs high-stepping on the carpet as it slipped underneath my bed, hiding like a secret in the shadow of the mattress. And then I had another thought:
Heidi's going to find out.

It had been exactly one week since Mira and I had split up, and I felt surprisingly good. There was no tightness in my throat when I thought about her, no wallowing or spasm in the heart.
It takes half the amount of time that you were with that person,
I kept thinking. But I felt healed already like a shaman had swatted my chest a couple times with palm leaves and chanted some indiscernible words. And this was before Snake opened the first thermos and poured me a plastic cupful of cranberry juice spiked with vodka. Actually, it was more like
vodka spiked with cranberry juice.

I gulped from my cup and shuddered. It felt as though a hot wind crashed through me before whooshing off somewhere else. “Damn,” I said. “That shit's
potent
.”

Snake tipped his cup back and swallowed. He wagged his head violently and made a sound with his lips loosened like a popped tire flapping around a car rim.
“Yowza,”
he said.

From where we stood in the school parking lot we could see the open double doors of the gymnasium, colors vibrating inside as if fireworks were exploding on the parquet floor. A one-two beat thumped within the high walls and I imagined the gym had a heart.

Snake craned his neck and surveyed the parking lot from one end to the other. “Man, where are the hoochie mamas?”

“They'll be here,” I said. “Just chill.”

“Why didn't you tell me about Vanessa before?”

I leaned against Snake's car. “Tell you what?”

“That you work with this hot chick at the museum.”

I took a sip and wiped my mouth with the back of my
hand. “I didn't think she was your type.”

“Hell yeah, she is,” he said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“How the hell am I supposed to know what's your type?”

“I know
yours
.”

“Oh yeah? What's mine?” I asked.

Snake grinned. “Male.”

I finished my cup and held it toward Snake for a refill. “I can't wait to tell Vanessa how you got your nickname.”

Snake unscrewed the thermos and poured me another drink. “Go for it, I don't care.” He topped off his cup before screwing the cap back on, then set the thermos inside his car through the open window on the driver's side. “Just leave out the part about me pissing on myself.”

“Are you kidding me?” I said. “That's the best part.”

Headlights lit up the pavement behind Snake's car and we hid our cups behind our legs. A black Pontiac slowly rolled our way, balls of light from the lampposts glided over the curved hood like a school of electrical fish. The driver was a brown-skinned boy with a shaved head, his
elbow jutting out the window. He stopped the car right behind Snake's and waved us over with two fingers.

“What does he want?” Snake asked.

“How should I know,” I said.

The boy revved his engine and stared us down. Shadows filled his eye sockets and made it look as if he were wearing sunglasses.

I put my cup down. “Screw it,” I said, and walked over to the car.

The boy had sleepy eyes and a patch of hair the size of a postage stamp below his bottom lip. Once I crouched down I noticed the girl smoking in the passenger seat, her hair black and straight. The end of her cigarette glowed inside the car's dark interior like a red firefly, hovering from her mouth to her lap and back to her mouth. What I had mistaken for a mole on the corner of the boy's eye was actually a green tattoo of a teardrop. Another tattoo coiled up his neck from under his white T, the word
Angel
in a script font that reminded me of Richard Spurgeon's neon sign. “Got any weed?” the boy finally said.

“Nah, man,” I replied.

“You want some?”

“I'm all right.”

He flicked his head toward Snake. “What about your homie?”

The girl clicked her tongue. It sounded like the rasp of the wheel on a lighter. “Let's go, Rico,” she said, irritated.

He quickly turned to her, his jaw muscle twitching. “What did I tell you?” he said. There was another tattoo that ran down the nape of his neck, another word, this one in Old English script. I could only make out the first two letters:
CL
. The rest were tucked underneath his shirt, and I wondered what the word might be.
CLOAK, CLOUD, CLOCK, CLAMOR
…

The girl took a drag from her cigarette and the tip burned brighter.

Rico turned back to me, his face rigid. “Go ask your homie.”

I stood up and walked back to Snake, casually, even though my legs wanted to run.

“He wants to know if you want any weed,” I said when I was standing beside him.

Snake shook his head. “Nuh-uh.”

“You need to tell him.”

“Why?”

“Just tell him,”
I hissed.

Snake lifted his hand and leaned to one side like a student in the back row with a question.
“No weed for me,”
he hollered.

I dropped my face into my palm. The car skidded off behind me, the engine roared down the parking lot. We watched the black Pontiac pull into traffic and fly down the street. A car horn blared in the distance.

“That was dumb of me,” Snake said.

“No shit.”

“I wasn't thinking.”

“He's in a gang, too.”

“For real?”

I picked up my cup from where I had left it and took a big swallow. I imagined the boy coming back in another car, one filled with other boys. I imagined the silver eye of a gun barrel staring from the backseat.

The gymnasium's heart kept beating across the parking
lot, the inside blushing crimson, blue, lime, the outlines of students pulsing the same colors. I looked at Snake. He was biting the inside of his cheek, working the soft flesh.

“Don't worry about it,” I said.

Snake took another gulp and smacked his lips, exhaling loudly. “I think I put in too much vodka,” he said, steering the conversation from one incompetent act to another.

“Yes, you did.” I held my cup by the rim with my fingertips and swirled my drink around.

“I'm not a bartender,” he said.

“Maybe you should go to bartending school,” I told him.

“Dude, there's no such thing as bartending school.”

“You want to bet?”

Snake lowered his cup. “You're shitting me.”

“You know Jonathan Meeks?”

“That tall dude?”

I nodded. “His brother's in bartending school.”

“Man, I should do
that
. Bartenders are always getting laid.” Snake took a swig and looked into his cup as if there
were a goldfish swimming in it. “Soon as I get out of this shithole, that's what I'm doing.”

Again the ground behind Snake's car lit up with headlights. We moved our cups behind our legs once more and tried to look normal, not like two teenagers getting hammered in the parking lot.

A car horn chirped, and we both turned around quickly. It was Isabel, wavy-haired and green-eyed Isabel.

Vanessa leaned out from the passenger seat and shouted, “What're you guys doing?”

Snake and I lifted our cups as if we were making a toast.

Isabel smiled and shook her head slowly. “We'll be back.” She hit the gas and rolled off to find parking, sparks of light sliding along the car's frame.

“She's hella cute,” I told Snake.

“So's Vanessa.”

“I think she digs me.”

“Vanessa?”

“No, dipshit. Isabel.”

“Yeah, I think she does,” Snake said. “But Vanessa's
got a better booty.” He palmed an imaginary ass in front of him and moved his hips suggestively.

I finished my drink and watched Isabel's car glide down the parking lot and turn around. “There was something between us when we met,” I said.

“Between you and Vanessa?”

I flicked Snake on the side of his head and my finger thumped against his skull.
“Isabel,”
I corrected him.

“Shit, man, I thought you were talking about Vanessa again,” Snake said. “I know you work both at the museum with you.”

“What?” I said, laughing. “Did you hear what you just said?”

Snake blinked.

“You said,
You work both at the museum with you
.”

“I did?”

Even though we were standing just outside a lamppost's circle of light, there was enough illumination for me to see that Snake's eyes were now glassy.

“Are you drunk already?” I asked him.

“I'm cool,” he said.

“Sure you are,” I said. “You lightweight.”

“Bitch, what are you talking about? I can drink more than you.” Then, as if to prove his point, Snake lifted his cup to his lips and tipped his head back, finishing his drink in one quick motion. “Just like water,” he said.

Isabel and Vanessa walked toward us through the parking lot, chatting quietly. Isabel wore a dark red dress with a black sweater. Her hair drifted behind her.

“Hey, guys,” Vanessa said.

“Hello, ladies,” Snake said. “Would any of you care for a drink?”

“You look nice,” I told Isabel.

“Thanks,” she said. “You too.” She crossed her arms, then uncrossed them. She did this thing with her mouth, a quick smile that pushed her cheeks out like a chipmunk's.

“What're you guys drinking?” Vanessa asked.

Snake reached through the driver's-side window and pulled out the thermos and a plastic cup. “Cranberry and vodka.”

“Isn't that a Sea-Breeze?” Vanessa asked.

“More like a Sea-Hurricane,” I said.

Snake handed Vanessa the cup and she raised it to her nose and whiffed. She took a sip and made a sour face. “Oh
God,
” she said. “How could you
drink
that?”

“Easy,” Snake bragged.

“Do you have anything else?”

“I've got another thermos with OJ and vodka.”

A car rolled toward us and we hid our cups. It was Mr. Ziolkowski, folded inside his Jetta. He was hunched over the steering wheel, his forehead inches from the windshield. He gazed in our direction and waved.

“We should probably drink in your car,” I told Snake. “Play it safe.”

“Good idea,” Isabel said.

Snake climbed behind the wheel and leaned over to open the passenger-side door for Vanessa. I let Isabel into the backseat first before I scooted next to her. She smelled like vanilla and flowers, her hair or skin, I couldn't tell which.

Snake put his key into the ignition and turned it halfway so the console lit up blue. A song filled the car with a thick bass and lazy drumbeat, a woman's voice
threading through the rhythm. Snake eased the volume down and uncapped the thermos. “Screwdriver, anyone?” he asked.

Vanessa held her cup out and Snake filled it. She brought her drink to her lips tentatively and sipped. “Much better,” she said.

Snake filled another cup and passed it to Isabel. “There you go,” he said. “Drink that so Carlos has a chance.”

Isabel did that chipmunk smile again—a nervous twitch, my guess.

I reached over the seat and thumped Snake on the skull as hard as I could.

“Ow!”
he exclaimed.
“Man.”

“You deserved that,” Vanessa said.

Snake looked at her. “Babe, that hurts.”

Vanessa cocked her head to one side and raised her eyebrows. “Babe? You're already calling me babe?” She jabbed her finger at Snake's waist.

“Don't,” he said, dropping his elbow and backing off. “I'm ticklish.”

She poked him again.

“So you guys want to know how Snake got his nickname or what?” I asked.

“Yes,”
Isabel and Vanessa said in unison, excited.

“Don't tell them the part I told you not to tell,” Snake reminded me.

“You mean when you pissed in your pants? That part?” I said.

Vanessa nearly choked on her drink.

“Oh, this is going to be
good
,” Isabel said.

“Screw it. Tell 'em everything.” Snake waved his hand around like a magician after performing a trick.

“This happened last year, in Ms. Wagner's health class,” I began. “Me and Snake sat next to each other in the back.”

“What's your real name, by the way?” Vanessa asked.

“Jeffrey,” Snake said.

I reached over with my cup and motioned for Snake to fill it. “So anyway, Ms. Wagner was showing us this video on snakebites, about what steps to take if you're ever bitten by a poisonous snake. The dramatizations were so lame.”

Snake unscrewed the thermos. “They were
really
lame.
Remember the park ranger with the knee-high socks?”

“Don't interrupt,” Vanessa said, poking. “Go on, Carlos.”

“It was pretty hysterical. I mean, they had this guy hobbling back to his campsite, wincing. Then he showed his friend his leg and the snakebite looked so phony, like someone made two dots with a red felt pen.” I took a sip from my cup. “Me and Snake were laughing, everyone's laughing, and Ms. Wagner was getting mad, shushing us. Then the video switched to these color photographs of untreated snakebites.”

“It was gnarly,” Snake said.

“They showed these hands that were all swollen and black. The fingers looked like burnt sausages.”

Vanessa twisted up her face.
“Gross.”

“One of the photos was of this dude's leg, his calf,” I continued. “It was fat and purple and all shiny like an eggplant. Then they showed the same leg split open during surgery and we got to see what the poison had done to the muscle. Really nasty stuff.”

“It sounds like it,” Isabel said.

I took another sip. “In the corner of my eye I see Snake lean my way, like he wants to whisper something to me. Next thing I know—
Wham!
—he's on the floor.”