The Cake is a Lie (20 page)

I climbed out of the tent and headed
over to the stage, on a mission to mingle. I walked up on some
pig-faced girl standing by herself, wearing long striped rainbow
gloves and a pink bunny backpack.

“
Hey, what’s your name?
Where you from?” Just saying hi to her made me feel like the
humanitarian of the year.

“
My name’s Tripz, I’m from
Everett, you want one of my bracelets?” She held up a forearm
covered in beads.

“
No-one’s ever given me a
bracelet before, I’m honored. Are you rolling?”

“
Ya.”

“
Me too.” Through the crowd
I saw a guy giving light shows with glow sticks and ran towards
him.

“
Can I get a
show?”

“
Sure man, sit
down.”

“
What’s your name? Where are
you from? Are you rolling?”

“
My name’s Pupils, I’m from
Capitol Hill. Ya, I’m rolling balls.” The conversations never got
much farther than this, especially shouting over the blaring
baselines. But you could just feel the openness. Everyone’s guards
were down. This was real church.

Once Pupils finished with my light show
he put a Vick’s inhaler in his mouth. “Open your eyes,” he blew it
across my eyes creating a tingling orgasmic sensation on my
eyeballs.

“
Holy shit, that’s a
first.”

“
Did I pop your cherry?” I
nodded my head laughing.

That’s when she walked right in front
of me through the crowd. No way. I almost didn’t recognize her
without her white sweater and black skirt, but that tight ponytail
was unmistakable.

I jogged after her and pick her up from
behind, “Angela!” She was confused at first, but she figured it out
quickly.

“
Marco, right?”

I turned and addressed Angela’s curious
friends who had gathered around her protectively. I put my arm
around her shoulder for effect. “Earlier this very day, I watched
this girl give a perfect speech in front of a packed congregation
at one of Seattle’s most popular churches. That’s right, church.
And while she was speaking, I watched her thinking, look at this
perfect girl, she’s a pure saint, the perfect teenager.” Everyone
laughed.

“
I thought the same thing
about you. You’re a really good speaker.” Through her sweatshirt I
could feel the steep curve of her oblique, the strong pull of her
hand around my waist. I’d discovered another member of our secret
society–by far my biggest find. She had everyone fooled. I leaned
into her neck and snuck another smell of her sweet freesia
fragrance, then another.

“
Where are you
from?”

“
Madison Park. Are you
rolling?”

“
No,” I reached up to pat
down my hair that had become matted everywhere from
Vick’s.

“
Are you?”

“
No.” She answered
believably.

We stood there for a moment, watching a
few people in the crowd show off their complete inability to dance.
I took my arm off her.

“
Hey, my friends gotta go,”
She told me. “We gotta go.”

As the last bit of her disappeared into
the crowd the e did something to me and a part of my soul ripped
itself out to go with her. I took a step after her. People pushed
me by, walking off into the night.

Sadly, the moments when you’re peaking
on ecstasy and everything’s perfect end. Life goes on. Leaving you
tossing and twirling on the couch trying to make the yucky
grossness go away. Tortured by sublime memories of holding Angela.
Was it all synthetic? Feeling hella future-drugs sick. Spacey,
brain-dead, “cracked-out.” And all the weed in the world can’t make
it go away, only days of rest. After that night I decided e was
like Pandora’s Box, and going to heaven for two hours wasn’t worth
having to come back. I quit e forever.

Loren’s old-school Volvo skirted to a
halt in the senior parking lot. We’d just smoked a “chewy b-legit”
during lunch–two blunts rolled end-to-end with some morphine
sprinkled in. To smoke with Loren I had to push myself past any
sort of logical limit. He was on hella ADD medication, so all this
shit barely even phased him.

I was in shotgun, leaning down into my
thumb and index finger massaging my eyebrows. I was focusing on the
sensation in an attempt to maintain some connection to the world.
Rushes of weight hit me, twisting and turning me off-kilter,
telling me to lay my head down anywhere, on the stick shift. It was
a battle just keep my dwindling eyes open, like a diver squeezing
out every ounce of strength as he swims for the surface. I’d space
out and get lost in fantasies, always forgetting what I was
dreaming about, then laugh about not being able to remember. This
was the game, the art, what made me so much better. That I could
function with the great weight, the secret storm. I still
participated in class, too. I’d given presentations where I could
barely put together complete sentences. Family dinners spent
epically jumping from thought to thought last-second like a trapeze
artist. And I still got A’s. I was the perfect teenager, excelling
in both worlds. It was supposed to be impossible. As far as I knew,
only Mia and Morris could say the same thing. Three out of
1800.

“
You got Visine, cuddy?”
Loren asked me.

“
No.” It took all my effort
to just respond. Millen was in the backseat, one of Loren’s good
friends. Millen was shy and quiet, but he was good looking so all
the girls thought he was adorable. As Millen told it, he used to be
Luke vs. the rancor stressed out with bad social anxiety until he
started smoking weed. I mean, Millen would never have Loren’s
charisma, but it was easy to picture him being even more shy and
anxious than he already was.

“
This should be fun.” We got
out of the car.

“
We outro.” Throwing two
fingers into the air they headed off towards the portables. My eyes
must be so chinked out and red, I worried.

My Visine, cologne, and gum were in my
car on the other side of campus. It’ll be okay, I told myself, it’s
only the first day, I’ll just lay low. We don’t do anything on the
first day. Then a great thought occurred to me and excitedly I
reached into my backpack and pulled out my cd player, luckily my
“weed mix” cd was still in it. Alright Marco, it’s game time. Pull
it together, you got this.

I pushed open the big doors to one of
the main hallways. The first two people I saw were Benny and Devin
walking towards me. “Well what do we have here? Busted! Class is
that way.” I yelled accusingly down the hall while pointing them
back the other way. Playing hall monitor was one of Jonsen’s money
comedy bits for passing by old acquaintances awkwardly at school.
He used to do it to me.

“
Devin forgot his backpack
in my car.” Benny shouted back. “We’re just getting it real
quick.”

“
Yeaa sure. Don’t think I’m
not onto you. I know what’s really going on around here.” They
laughed half-heartedly as our paths crossed.

As the hallway became crowded with
hundreds of kids, my grip tightened on my backpack straps, but I
kept my head held high with a shining smirk on my face. The
mesmerizing beat bangin’ in my headphones pumped me up. “I take
sacks to the face, whenever I can, don’t need no crutch, I’m so
keyed up.”

Up ahead I saw Mark leaning back with
one foot against the wall, he was surveying the crowd. Another
senior was facing him, up in his ear seemingly about something
serious. I gave Mark a courteous flick of my head as his eyes
caught me. He took one look at me and started laughing loudly to
bring his friends’ attention to me, even bringing a fist over his
mouth.

“
You hella lit or what,
bro?” He asked, lifting his eyebrows at me twice. I smiled and
shook my head as I walked by.

I came across Wendy Acer and a group of
her AP friends huddled around a locker. Wendy was an uptight honors
student for life I used to ride the bus with.

I’d hunch over the back of her seat,
“Hey bus buddy. So how was your day? What did you learn? Who’s your
crush, Wendy? Of course you have a crush, everyone has a crush. Is
it Evan? Want me to say something to him for you? Hey Evan. Ya
Evan, over here. Wendy thinks you’re sexy.” I liked playfully
pushing overachievers out of their comfort zones.

I walked up and put my arm around
Wendy, leaning my weight on her shoulder. Her friend, who had been
gushing about something, froze at my interruption.

“
Keep going, that’s my
favorite story,” I said charmingly. No laughs. I looked around at
the oblong faces. Chins, hips, and noses that were too big or
small. Wendy had a light brown mustache that she probably didn’t
even know was there. But even her knitted sweater couldn’t hide the
secret perky mountains underneath. Sometimes I’d sit next to her on
the bus and she’d get so angry she’d press her legs up against the
wall and push me out with her back. But she always left the aisle
seat open.

Wendy slugged me in the stomach just
hard enough to where I could tell she 50% liked me. Her friends
were glaring at me nastily like they hated my guts. This isn’t
going well, I concluded. I aborted and backed away, laughing it off
right in their faces with a shrug. The bell rang, and, as everyone
scrambled to class, I dipped into the bathroom. I couldn’t be on
time to my next class, I had Science with Oakley this
year.

In the mirror I adjusted my windbreaker
so it was falling barely off my shoulders. The bright bathroom
lights exposed my new nemesis: acne. Every night I performed
surgery on my face and back. I went at them delicately with
needles, then harder. If that didn’t work I pinched the living crap
out of them. Then finished by dumping on creams and ointments. Last
night I went after a big one on my temple. Now it was a blotchy red
scab. The coat of brown-tinted acne cream I’d put on in the morning
was wearing off so I took out the tube from my backpack. Carefully,
I spread a thin layer over the scab. Then another. That’s too much,
I grumbled, I look like a painted idiot. I rinsed it off to start
over again. And again.

The process irritated it and made it
redder, turning it into a bigger blotchy thing. With an exhausted
sigh I gave up and stopped messing with it. I looked at the clock.
It had been five minutes since class started, I decided to wait
another five.

I tried to look at myself again,
ignoring my temple. In an inexplicable moment of honesty, badass
Jeff once told me I was one of the best looking guys he’d ever
seen. But how come the girls I liked never liked me back? Would
anyone notice my blotch? I will never truly know how good looking I
am, I philosophized. I giggled at the absurdity of this
realization. It didn’t matter anyways, it was all about
confidence.

The time came, and taking a deep
breath, I tried to block the blotch from my consciousness. Before
ducking out of the bathroom I ritualistically gave a quick nod to
the sky in thanks for being alive. Then I jaunted across the empty
courtyard to the science wing.

I opened the classroom door to dead
silence and 50 pairs of eyes pinned on me.

I made a big “O” with my lips
playfully, as if to say, “Uh oh, I’m sorry.” From the far left side
of the classroom I spotted Oakley waving at me. There was only one
seat left, in the middle row on the right side of the room. I
started squeezing through the aisles. I must smell like a chimney,
I cringed. The seat was between Rachel Ross and Andrew Tilly. The
teacher was giving a textbook overview, but I missed book
registration at the beginning of class so I was left sitting in
front of an embarrassingly empty desk. I looked over at Andrew. He
was a fat kid who I knew through rumor got in trouble constantly
with his mom for watching a lot of porn. Andrew looked back at me
with big fawning eyes. I turned to Rachel. Rachel was a short
sporty girl who ran sprints by herself afterschool on the field.
Her body was turned away from me shielding her book. Rachel had
disliked me and my obnoxious ways since grade school.

I went back to Andrew, “Hey, can I
share with you?”

“
Ya, man.” He lit up. I was
careful not to smile back. He was the type that would crack up at
my slightest giggle. He slide his book between us and I pretended
to stare at it.

“
It’s time to run through
our Bunsen burner demo so partner up.” The teacher
concluded.

“
Want to be my partner?”
Andrew asked me.

“
Oh man, I would but I’m
partners with Oakley.” As I got up a huge head rush hit me,
temporarily blinding me for 20 seconds. Whoa. I giggled to myself
as I felt my way along the desks and chairs out to the aisle. I
regained my vision to see Oakley waiting for me.

“
I saved you a seat for
forever but you never showed.”

“
My bad, Oakleyyy.” I drew
the ‘y’ out to add a touch of familiarity to her name. I usually
did something like this to her name when I saw her. To remind her
that I knew her back when she was an obnoxious hairy girl. She
always heard it.

As we walked to the workstations at the
back of the class I raced through a rolodex of things to ask her.
Was I late for anything important? That’s dumb, sounds like I’m
trying to sound cool. How were your first two classes? Boring.
How’s soccer? More crap. What party are you going to this weekend?
Too early in the week for that, save that for Thursday or Friday.
Why can’t I think up something funny?