The Aqua Net Diaries (32 page)

Sometime around four-thirty a.m., Jennie, Joey, Diane, Laura, Hether, and I went upstairs to Jennie's room and curled up on the floor or the bed or the chair, wherever we could find a place. Hill was already there, sleeping off the pot. One by one we dropped off—Joey and I lasted the longest.

“We've graduated,” he said. His voice sounded far away in the dark.

“Finally,” I said.

“I'm drunk,” he said.

“And young,” I said.

“And twenty,” he said.

“And could never die.”

We drifted off into sleep. It was our first day as adults and we were very tired.

Like seniors down through the years, we face the future with a feeling of uncertainty. Though we were big shots this year, we are now preparing to face a freshman year as greenies in college, a period of being a novice in some job, or even time to be spent struggling to find work or start a family. Many of us have grown up together, physically, emotionally, socially, and intellectually, and now we separate to go our individual ways. The question on just about every senior's mind, whether he wants to admit it or not, is: “
Is
there life after high school?”

Joey and Jennifer

I had a dream that you looked up Tom Dehner and he was as big as a house, and you married Teresa, and I lost all the hair on the top of my head (if you can believe I, Queen Big Hair, could ever go bald). Well, best friend I've ever had, it's hard to believe it all started in a geometry class taught by a man named Bernie Foos. We've had the best friendship of anyone I know and have ever known. I have a good feeling that we'll always be best friends, no matter how far away from Richmond we get.

—Jennifer to Joey, on the last day of senior year

Seven days after graduation, my mother and I moved to North Carolina. To my friends, who knew nothing of my parents' separation, it was just one more summer trip to
the South for me and my family, my dad staying behind as he often did, to keep working at Earlham. From North Carolina, I wrote them letters to tell them what had happened.

But in August I came back to Richmond for the last party before college, and stayed with my dad in our old house, which now had a for-sale sign in the front yard. Dean Waldemar hosted the party way out in the country in New Paris, Ohio, on a farm with a pond for swimming and a barn for dancing. It was one of those nights when everyone was there—not just the cool kids, but the hoods and the geeks and the normal kids and Tommy Wissel, who seemed to fit in wherever he damn well pleased, and us. The barriers were down, for just a night, and we weren't categories or labels but what we were: a bunch of kids from the same big school in the same small town. For some of us, we'd already reached our peak, and for the rest of us, everything was just beginning.

Joey and Laura and I each wrote about the party afterward, exchanging our versions with one another, because what happened there felt pivotal and important in some way, and we felt a strange sense of urgency to capture it all on paper so that we would always be able to remember.

Upon Remembering and Saying Farewell

August 6, 1986

By Jennifer McJunkin

The Beginning of an Evening

There is music coming from the barn and the sound of laughter and yelling as people spill out under the broad Indiana sky. The exact same songs that have played at every high school party I've ever been to are playing now.

Laura and I walk carefully because the ground is uneven and the moon keeps disappearing through the trees. Laura is chain-smoking and drinking Peach Schnapps. Every time she loses her footing, she swears in Italian. Sheila Loeber walks by and hugs me and then hugs her and Laura drops her cigarette. She swears again and squats down to look for it. I get down on my knees in my red and white sundress, helping Laura in her search.

Tom Mangas appears. “Hey, Tom,” I shout, but he tells me he is upset and would rather talk later.

The first people we see are Roger Tye and Danny Dickman and Travis Cummins, with his hair cut short. Travis keeps saying things like, “I'm a trained killer. The Marines put me through this program and taught me how.”

I stand there, grinning stupidly, wondering what I'm supposed to say to something like this, and finally end up saying, “Really? I wondered what you'd been up to!”

The Evening Is Full of (Blond) Men

Roger Tye is standing a few feet away with a very platinum Alex Delaney, and I haven't seen him in a long time, ever since he left for college the summer before my senior year. I choose an opportune moment when Alex is bending down doing something so Roger sees me first.

“Roger,” I say, waving my vodka bottle. “I've been in North Carolina for two months, and you haven't written me once.”

Before he can answer, Alex has stood up and grabbed my arm and is staring openmouthed. He smiles and we hug. “Jen!” (I had wondered what it was he used to call me.) “You look
wonderful
!” His forehead creases in concern. “But I heard about your parents. How are you really?”

I laugh and don't answer and tell him I like his hair. He calls me “Gorgeous,” and I change my mind and remember that this was what he had called me when we were together. John Dehner is somewhere around and it is his car I lean upon. Alex tells me so and I remember narrowly the time he and I went shopping at Loehr's and John gave me a Coke and I was so thrilled I couldn't finish it.

Alex and I can't talk fast enough and Danny Dickman is back and I am leaning on his shoulder. His arm is around my waist and Alex is staring at it. Someone—Roger, I think—tells me Jennie and Hill have arrived and I can't understand him and he points and there they are, so I run and hug (1) Jennie and (2) Hill. I am happy to see them because they are smiling and my friends and I have only five girlfriends
anyway, and that isn't much. They want to know if I'm okay, what with my parents splitting up, they had no idea, why hadn't I told them what was going on, how was I handling it, etc., and I am so sick of people talking to me about this and wanting to know how I'm doing.

Ronnie Stier, Larry Peterson, and Ned Mitchell, wearing a Reebok shirt, sit at a picnic table watching Ricky Grimes and Tommy Wissel roll joints. When “Tom Sawyer” by Rush comes on, Ned Mitchell says, as always, “Neil Peart is the best drummer in music today.” No one ever argues with him, but he always feels the need to say it.

Joey appears, begs Ricky for a cigarette, gets one, pledges his eternal gratitude, and proceeds to puff away in Cliff Lester's face. Cliff wants to know again why I went to junior year Homecoming with Curt Atkisson instead of him. He begins to lecture Joey, and Joey begins to smoke two cigarettes at once so that Cliff will leave. As soon as he does, Joey scoots down to talk to Ronnie, Larry, and Ned, who are talking about college and virginity. Ronnie crushes a Coors can against his forehead.

Ross walks by—a great, hulking shadow in the distance—and yells at Joey: “You nearly killed yourself driving like that last night, asshole.” Joey blows smoke in his direction.

Deanna Haskett and Tamela Vance are talking. “I don't want to be some housewife or something when I grow up,” Deanna says. “Me neither,” says Tamela. “If I do, I will kill myself.”

Rip appears and Joey tells her he wants his red tie back, the one he lost at her house after Snowball. She calls him an alcoholic and announces that it is over between her and Tom Dehner. “Where is he?” I ask, and then someone
points and there he is in the distance surrounded by Sean Mayberry and the other black football players, the ones who always swarm around him like those fish that stick to a shark.

Suddenly someone appears out of the dark. He is with one of those old men who is always hanging around—one of those guys who graduated from RHS five or ten years ago but still comes to parties. It takes a minute, but suddenly it hits me: Dean Waldemar. He is a god. Especially now. College has even improved him. His hair is very blond and damp and tousled and he wears a sweatshirt and shorts. He still has that lean swimmer's body—broad shoulders, narrow waist, flat stomach, tan legs with little gold hairs up and down the calves. And his eyes are large and beautiful and dark and bloodshot and his smile is wonderfully crooked as he says, “Jennifer.”

There is a twist in my stomach as I think about all that might have been between us, if Tim Bullen hadn't spread lies and rumors just because I'd turned him down, and if Dean hadn't listened, and if he had asked me out like I heard he always wanted to. He would have been my first real love, I knew. He would have been worth any amount of heartbreak. We would probably have still been together.

I say, “Dean Waldemar, do you know I came nine hours to go to your party?”

He whispers in my ear, “I'm coming back for you in a minute.”

He is momentarily gone, and I return to the evergrowing group around John Dehner's car. Alex is watching me, studying my face. I love everyone and suddenly need to lean against something or sit down—not from alcohol, but from Dean. Danny helps me onto the hood of John's
car. I lean my hand on Danny's shoulder because my dress is slippery and I keep sliding off. He is so sturdy and nice, such a good, steady friend, and Alex wants to know again when I got here, and how I am really, and I keep smiling, taking a sip of Danny's beer, and tell Alex how much I really like his hair.

The End of an Evening

When Phil Collins's “In the Air Tonight” starts, we all sing along. It is this song, more than any other, that makes me think of RHS, of corn and barns and moonlight and wide open skies. We all climb up on the tops of picnic tables and dance, and when the drums kick in, every single person holds air drumsticks and plays along.

Sometime much later, Joey and I are standing alone waiting for Laura when we see Tom Dehner, without his baseball hat, coming straight for us. He is wearing a blue DePauw sweatshirt and he is alone, which is strange because never in our lives have we known him to be by himself.

“Have you seen Rip?” he says to us.

“She was looking for you earlier,” Joey says, “but I think it's too late. I think she left.”

“I hope not,” he says, then hesitates. He stands there and he looks uncertain, as if he doesn't know which way to go.

“Will you miss me, Tom?” I ask. I don't know why I say it. After three years, after we formed a history team for him and a speech team and wrote a play just for him, we barely know each other.

He pauses and then says, “Yes. I'll miss you very much.”

Then he is gone. Joey and I stand there watching him disappear into the night—nothing more than a sincere, regular human being, after all we have built him up to be.

And the life is gone from the August 6 party.

Afterward, Joey drives Laura and me to his house, where we sit on his back deck beneath the stars—which, for once, aren't too bright or too many or too far or too close—and hold hands and cry. We don't want to leave the deck or one another. We start laughing till we can't breathe. We are best friends outside in the night on August 6 no matter what—no matter where we go, no matter what happens, no matter who we meet, no matter where life takes us.

After a long time, we leave Laura at her house, which is empty except for her, and Joey drives me home. We know that it is our last evening together for a long time to come, and there is a sorrow in that, but a richness, too. We know that there will never be a final evening to our friendship—how can there be? The air is damp, the moon is up, the tank is full, the hour is still (somewhat) young, the curfews are late, and the summer is not yet over.

We decide to drive around a bit, just for old times, before he takes me home. We pass down a backcountry road. The headlights of Joey's car—actually his mom's car—are the only speck of light for miles. Then Joey turns off all the car lights and the music and we head down a long corridor walled by corn on either side. We roll the windows down, and everything is quiet and still and dark except for the blue tint of the clock on the dashboard.