The Bad Decisions Playlist (10 page)

“Dude, get up,” says Alex.

“No. I'm happy here,” I say, my eyes closed.

“You're gonna be dead there.”

“That will make me happier.”

“STFU,” says Devon. “I swear I'm going to placekick your nuts.”

My teeth are starting to rattle from the train. I hear Alex say something to Devon.

I've been friends with Alex since, what, seventh grade? He's easygoing. We both like weed and music and talking about girls. We hang. It's not a very complicated relationship.

“No!” says Devon. “He just wants attention! Let him get run over!”

Devon and I have a complicated relationship.

We're sort of like brothers. I stayed with him and his family several times when my mother had to sort things out in rehab, and also when I had to sort things out on my own. We touched winkies when we were six. We've had three fistfights. We lovehate each other. He knows me better than anyone, and vice versa. Periodically he'll inform me that he's sick of my crap, and we don't talk for weeks.

Alex is speaking now.
Something something
“he's pretty stoned.”

“Do it yourself. I'm tired of his drama,” says Devon.

There's a pause, and then I feel someone grabbing my ankles and lifting them off the ground. I open my eyes. It's Alex.
Thud.
My head drops off the rail as he starts dragging me off the tracks.

“Ow.”

The stones and gravel grind underneath me. I reach up and grab at the rail, holding on.

“Austin, stop being an idiot,” says Alex. “I can see the train.”

“I'm fine.”

“Idiot.”

More pulling. I hold fast.

“Dude, you're pissing me off,” says Alex. “The train's coming!”

I can feel it through my hands, but you don't have to be touching the rail​—​you can hear it for real, and I turn my head to the right, and yes, there it is, maybe twenty seconds off, the whistle blowing. At that moment I seriously think, I could. I could just lie here. Because who cares?

“Austin!” yells Alex, the roar of the train growing louder. “Get up! Devon, a little help here?”

I hear Devon swearing and the sound of what I'm guessing is a half-full beer can hurled in anger at a tree trunk. Then the whistle blotting it out, blowing even louder, the noise deafening.

“Pick him up! Pull him!”

I hold fast.

“What are you friggin' laughing at, Austin!” screams Devon. He gives a mighty yank, and the rail above my head is torn from my grip and they drag me violently across the rail bed and over the other rail,
scratch grind clunk thud
, down the embankment and into the grass as the train thunders by, Devon leaning over into my face to scream more angry insults at me that are inaudible. Then he disappears from my view. Then reappears to give me the finger with both hands. I can't hear him, but it's hard to misread someone's lips when they're screaming, “I'm sick of your crap!” See?

Then he exits the frame again. I observe the featureless blue sky, listening to the noise of the train dying away in the distance.

I prop myself up on my elbows. Devon is nowhere to be seen. Alex is lifting his bicycle up, preparing to leave.

“Thanks,” I say to him. “You guys are the best.”

Alex glances at me, shakes his head, and starts wheeling his bike down the long dirt path that will eventually take him to the street.

“Thanks!” I say again. Then, “You guys are really great!” and “Thank you!” and “Thanks, Alex!” None of which he responds to as he recedes into the shade of the woods.

Add one more item to the list of my accomplishments for these past few days: Wore out the very last of my friends' patience.

∗  ∗  ∗

I lie there some more. Time passes. The sky maintains its blueness. I listen to grasshoppers. My brain starts to meander its way back from Fuzzy-Wuzzy World toward a more normal state, whatever that is for me.

I get up and look around. Neither Devon nor Alex has returned to tell me that it's all good and we're still friends. I go to pee against a tree, evidence suggesting that it's the same tree Devon targeted with his Beer Can of Anger. I'm midstream, drawing decorations, when I get a text. Alison.

Meet me at the lake. I'm alone.

Well, as long as I'm on a streak of really bad decisions . . .

∗  ∗  ∗

“Austin! Austin, over here!”

Alison, calling to me as I approach from the parking lot, waving both hands above her head as she hops up and down like a game show contestant who has just won a washer-dryer. She's at the outer periphery of the crowd gathered at the Lake Harriet band shell, standing with Kate and Patty and Marcy, all in cutoff jeans and bikini tops. A few of the dudes near them turn to see who the ridiculously hot girl is shouting and waving to.
That guy? Really?
I have the urge to tell them I agree.

“I'm so glad you came!” she says when I get close, and then I get the big hug again. More hugs from the other cheerleaders; inquiries about my general health and well-being. Onstage, the band is sound-checking and tuning up, amps squawking and sending feedback into the summer afternoon.

“Let me see your head!” says Alison, and so I lean forward to show her and the other girls the wound, and I earn the requisite
awww
s and
OhMyGod
s and feel a bit sleazy for exploiting the opportunity to check out all the boobage I'm being presented with. Then I forgive myself and decide I should just do my best to enjoy the situation.

“Here, I'll kiss it,” says Alison, and she plants a kiss on the Band-Aid while the other girls trade mischievous smiles, like we're doing something daring and naughty. “Better?” she asks.

“Not sure. Maybe I need one right here,” I say, and point to my lips. Giggles from the other girls.

“Okay,” says Alison, and she does it, she kisses me on the lips​—​a real kiss too, one that lingers softly for a moment longer than I expect. She steps back and looks at me, smiling, triumphant. Enjoying being bad. Enjoying playing with her toy. Her toy is sort of enjoying it too. Gleeful shock from the other girls.

“Better?” she says.

“Better. I have some other ideas . . .”

“I bet you do,” she says, and then the band starts into a passable cover of a Bob Marley song.

The girls dance and sing along, Alison sometimes linking her arm with mine or giving me hip checks. I cast furtive, nervous glances around for bulky hockey players. We pass several songs like this, chatting briefly between songs, Alison poking me in the ribs with her finger if I'm not paying enough attention to her, and once biting me on the ear. It's boner inducing.

“Why are you doing this?” I shout over the music.

“I like you!”

“You have a large boyfriend!”

“We broke up again!”

I'm doing some internal forecasting of how that breakup might affect Todd's mood, and hence my continued well-being, when the band finishes up. The general female consensus is that more music is desired, and they're a hard crew to say no to, so we all end up sitting on the grassy hill that overlooks the band shell and the lake, and I play some songs on the ukulele, singing whatever the girls request.

After a bit, Alison grabs my arm and says, “Let's go get ice cream,” and the two of us walk down the hill and stand in the concession line.

As we shuffle along toward the order window we talk. Or not really talk. Banter. She says something flirty or suggestive, and I say something that I hope is clever, and so on back and forth, her hand sometimes resting on my shoulder like she needs to support herself because she's laughing JUST SO HARD at my brilliance. And let's face it, it's intoxicating and really erotic, because
damn.
Look at her. My head is spinning.

It's also . . . boring.

I'm deadly bored. I'm simultaneously fighting two urges: an almost overwhelming one to hump her leg, and another to just keel over, fast asleep. She might as well be speaking R2-D2 language to me right now. That would be about as meaningful.

What is wrong with me? She's any straight boy's fantasy, and instead​—​goddammit​—​I'm thinking about Josephine. Her intelligence, her quiet confidence, the way she seems to know exactly who she is. Thinking about those eyes.

I'm wishing I could just swap out Alison for Josephine right now, even though that conversation would be a big tangled bundle of spikes and thorns.

We get to the window and we order and Alison flirts with the guy and he gives her a cone for free. That's what life is like for girls like Alison: one free ice cream after another.

We stand just apart from the concession stand, Alison chattering.

“Austin, are you even paying attention?” she says, giving me a little backhand whack in the stomach.

“What? Yes!” I say.

“What was I talking about?”

“You were holding forth about David Foster Wallace,” I say. “It was mesmerizing!”

“You are such a jerk!” says Alison, but it's all in the same flirty-silly voice, and she laughs and hangs on to my arm.

“No, what were you saying? About the party?”

“I said, are you going to that party at . . .” and her voice once again fades to R2-D2 blerps and blorps in my mind and then to total silence.

“Austin?” she says. “Austin, you really aren't listening at all, are you? What are you looking at?”

“I'm really sorry,” I say. “I gotta go.”

I hear her calling after me, and I turn once to wave and mouth
Sorry,
and I keep going, walking toward the parking lot, toward where Shane Tyler is leaning against the rear bumper of his blue vintage Range Rover, hands in his pockets, waiting for me.

I wonder if you hear me / if you're still near me /

or were you ever really there /

or just a trick of the light in the air

It takes me what feels like an hour to walk across the parking lot. I'm not sure where to put my gaze as I go, so I look at the ever-changing patch of black asphalt just ahead of my feet as I stride, glancing up at Shane now and then to make sure I'm on course, pausing to let cars pass in front of me.

I stop a few yards away from him, the distance you use when you don't know someone so well and you're not quite sure how either of you feels about the interaction you're about to have. He's examining me, that same cautious, slightly apprehensive expression on his face as when he was standing on my front porch, mixed with a hint of something else. Amusement, maybe. The look of someone laughing at himself. Sad-amused. Bitter-amused.

Neither of us says anything for a moment. Then he leans a bit to the side, looks past me, straightens up again. “She looks like a big scoop of fun, and three big scoops of trouble,” he says.

“Yeah, I think you're probably right about the trouble,” I say.

He nods, smiles. Again the melancholy amusement.

Then, “I followed you,” he says. “Saw you leaving your house and I followed you.” I had gone home briefly after my visit to Whitmore's to fetch the ukulele and change my clothes, which had railroad tar on them.

“I felt real bad about what happened at the studio,” he says. I can hear the southern in his voice, stronger than my mom's accent. “Stuff is just . . .” He waves a hand, annoyed. “Anyway, I was up all night thinking about it. I didn't know how to find you other than going to your house, and I saw you riding off on your bike, and I followed you.”

I nod. More mutual examination.

“I'm Shane,” he says, finally, sticking out his hand.

“I know who you are.”

I don't move. His hand is still extended, one beat, two, and then he looks down at it like he's noticing it for the first time. Then he lets it drop to his side.

He takes a breath, sighs it out. He looks at me some more. “Amy couldn't remember it, so I don't know your name,” he says.

I don't know why I pause as long as I do before answering. Like something is hanging in the balance. Even as I'm opening my mouth to speak, I'm not sure what I'm going to say.

It turns out to be “I'm Austin. My name's Austin.”

Then I stick out my hand to him. He pushes himself off the truck and takes the step forward to shake my hand, his grip firm.

“Austin. Great name. Nice to meet you, Austin.”

“You too.”

He releases my hand and we stand there.

“You have a really nice voice,” he says. “I heard you earlier, singing to the girls up there. I didn't want to intru​—”

“Are you my dad?”

He blinks at me, taken aback.

“Sorry,” I say.

“No, it's​—”

“But are you? Are you my dad?”

He rubs his head, pulls at an ear.

“Honestly?” he says. “I don't know. KD is your mom, right?”