Dedication (14 page)

“And it’s
you
who is the love God…and it’s
you
who makes me—”

“Excuse me,”
Finkle interrupts my backup vocals. He gestures his cheese-dusted fingers at the Tupperware bowl on the table behind me, clumps of white powder flecking the patch of Michelle Walker’s living room carpet between us. Swigging my beer, I dance away from the side table of dwindling doodles, pretzels, and puffs and, in the low light of the piano lamp, Finkle angles his back from me and the other juniors so he and the Smartfood can have some privacy.

“OhmyGodthereyouare!” Laura slurs through a glassy smile. She weaves in from the kitchen and slides her hand into mine, her glimmering eyes trained on my face, her elation pulling me into her orbit. As the Soup Dragons moan from the speakers she leans her forehead until it’s brushing mine, the quartz crystal on the leather cord around her neck tapping my chest. “Ilovethissong!” Without dropping my hand she begins to dance, her hips, her arms in fluid motion, and through my own hops haze I’m struck by how beautiful she is, how beautiful Sam makes her. Tugging down the hem of her floral Lycra dress, she leans in, “Ithinklleftmyunderwearinthebasement.”

“So Michelle’s stepdad can find it and keep it like a blankie? So thoughtful of you to leave a parting gift.”

“I’mgenuinelyhorrified.” She sways, catching herself on the wobbly side table and nearly tipping Finkle’s girlfriend. He swipes the Tupperware bowl protectively into his arms and huffs off to plant himself between two couples on the couch.

“Okay, babe, you sit tight. I’ll find your
lingerie.
Where’s Sam? Remover of said underwear.”

“PackinguptheequipmentintoJake’svan.” She pauses. “Sam’sso-talented.”

I help her onto the piano bench. “Yes, your new boyfriend is the next Slash, only cleaner.”

“LoveyouKatie.” She gently holds the hair on both sides of my face.

“And someday you can search for my underwear.” I lower her hands into her lap.

“AndIwill. YouknowIwill.”

I swipe a fringed throw pillow off the couch and place it on her skirt. “Gotta keep your knees together.” She nods solemnly and I turn to push reluctantly into the smoky end-of-party melee with my elbows close to my chest. Dodging the lost and lonely wandering the edges, I weave closer to the core—the boring couples, the bickering couples, the macking couples—adolescent rural porn has nothing to recommend it.

At the back of the migraine-inducing checkerboard-patterned kitchen, strewn with overflowing garbage bags leaking tobacco-infused beer, I find the basement door and jog down the cork steps, passing our host midway.

Michelle points a perfect nail down to the darkened room behind her. “The door to the yard has
got
to stay open,” she says as if I have come here tonight with the express purpose of closing it.

“Okay,” I say.

“What?” She spins around, gripping the railing to keep from toppling in her mother’s stilettos.

“Gotcha, door open.”

“Someone was smoking pot while those guys were playing. It reeks.” Someone meaning you?

“Great party!” I cheer. Hey, seen Laura’s underwear?

“If that fucking door would stay open.” She teeters up to the kitchen, almost taking the last of my beer buzz with her. As I step off the bottom stair the room is so dim, lit only by her stepdad’s fish tank, that I narrowly miss knocking into a garbage bag of empty bottles. It pitches and threatens to spill its vile contents onto the carpet still matted from the band’s equipment. I shift it out of the path to the sliding door, which is, as instructed, open to the backyard, a warm May draft clearing a path through the sweaty air.

“Hey.” My eyes swing to Jake, looking up from where he’s crouched by the bar. He snaps his guitar case closed in the blue glow of the gurgling tank. “Wouldn’t touch that door.”

“That’s the word,” I say with disdain.

He shuffles the sheet music on the floor. “Why”—he clears his throat—“Why have you been such a bitch to me all year?”

My forehead furrows in disbelief. “You can’t be serious.”

He sits back on his heels, tapping the stack together on his thighs. “I am.”

“Uh, the Lock-In?” I remind him, sarcasm raising my eyebrows.

He looks down to the floor as the tank continues to burble, rubbing his knuckles absentmindedly along his jaw. “That was…yeah, that was bad.”

“Yeah.” I turn and start rifling the plaid couch…useless in the blue shadows. Switch on the light? Or not. Is he like a stain only visible under infrared? Would the fluorescent overhead make him disappear?

“My mom, uh…” He pauses as I dig my hands behind the cushions, feeling a concession stand’s worth of old popcorn. “When I got home her car was kind of rammed into the elm next to the garage.”

“Oh my God.” I twist to him, wiping the dusty salt from my palm.

“Yeah, the front was crumpled like a beer can.”

“Oh my God, I didn’t know. I’m so sorry, Jake. Is she okay?”

“She was passed out in the front hall, so yeah.” He laughs dryly. “She was fine.”

“Wow, I’m really sorry,” I say, meaning it. “You could’ve told me, you know, I wish you had.”

“I am.” His eyes return to me and he smiles that half-smile. “You’re the person I’m telling.” I am? “Nice dress.”

I run my hands down the front of the Betsey Johnson I found at Filene’s Basement—the rayon embodiment of over twenty hours spent watching the Haberman twins. “Thanks.” Nonchalantly. “Got it in Boston.”

“Cool. Whatcha lookin’ for?” He shoves the ream of music in his knapsack, his hair still damp to his forehead from playing.

“Your friend, Sam, seems to have divested Laura of her undergarments.”

“Divested.” He smiles to himself, slipping his guitar pick into the outside pocket. “That’s a new one.” I drop to the floor and push my arm under the couch, feeling the rayon lift up my thigh. Feeling him watch. “Having fun?” he asks.

I withdraw half a broken poker chip. “Oh, yeah, I haven’t let loose like this since the Easter egg hunt.”

He laughs. Really laughs. And the thing I always thought was a rubber band pulsates into a hormonal electrical twist, primed my whole life to charge at only this sound. “You guys were good,” I offer, probing under the La-Z-Boy. Really good. JenniferTwo screaming, “Take me, Jake,” good. “I especially liked the new song, the acoustic one.”

“Really?” He smiles. “Thanks, but I don’t know…” We seesaw as I stand back up and he lowers onto his heels to reach into his backpack and extract a dry T-shirt. He whips off the Dinosaur Jr. one he played in, tossing it to the carpet. “We’re working with a new amp, we fucked up the bridge on the third song, and Benjy’s drumming was kinda all over the place, but—”

OHMYGODWHERE’DYOUGETTHATBODYWHOARE YOU?

“Yeah,” I half-squeak to what I don’t know haven’t heard don’t care, the stab of lust leaving me feeling like my car just did a one-eighty on black ice. I step back, the base of the stairs grazing my ankle.

He pushes his head through the T-shirt, shaking out his hair. “Okay.”

Okay.

The breeze blows past me. I look at him, silent.

“Well, see ya around.” He picks up his guitar case and slides his backpack over his shoulder. But, instead of heading out the open door, he comes toward the stairs and as I watch him get closer I steel myself for him to pass out of my night, out of my weekend, out of my May. But he comes straight forward, slowing as he gets to me, bag over shoulder, guitar in hand, arriving, pulling in, the thrum of his engine perceptible to my skin.

He stops. His face mere inches, his hips, not even seconds, from mine.

“Hey,” he says again, simply, on the way to the stairs, on his way out.

“Hey.”

He doesn’t move. He’s just there. Inches. Seconds.

I reach out my fingertips and slip them under the hem of his shirt, finding his taut stomach. He shivers, his eyes fluttering closed and then opening to find me. I hold his gaze as I delicately rake my thumbs outward across the line of his jeans, feeling the pulse in the flesh beneath. A moan. Better than the laugh. Much better.

I step in, releasing his hips to run my fingers up into his hair, my thumbs along his cheekbones, and then we merge, his tongue on mine, tasting of beer and Parliaments and Jake. And the case falls, the backpack drops. We have never done this. Your skin, your hair, your touch, is new is new is new—we have always done this—always your skin your hair your touch.

“That song,” he says into my mouth, his hands pulling at the pearl buttons, poppoppop, his fingers finding my breasts.

“Yes?” I half-gasp.

“It’s called ‘Katie.’”

The never.

And the always.

And the never.

I slouch against my bed’s dust ruffle in front of the floor fan, the pink carpet pressing into my bare thighs as I trace the symmetrical dime-size bruises on my hipbones. My finger slides from the edge of my black eyelet bikini to circle the marks left by seven straight days of Jake’s grinding. Desire and confusion combust as I lay my hands over my stomach, leaning my head back onto the bedspread and focusing on the whir of the fan. The phone rings and I lunge for it.

“Hello?” I clutch the receiver.

“Hey. Oh my God, how hot is it for the beginning of June?” Laura asks. “I keep sweating off my eye shadow. Ew.”

“Hi,” I sigh, disappointment pouring through the receiver.

“He didn’t call.”

I shake my head at the fan, my hair whipping across my face.

“Katie?”

“Nope.” I pick at a blush yarn.

“It’s a party,” she tries to cajole me, “I’m sure he couldn’t call everyone he wants to come—”

“He called you!”

“He called
Sam,”
she corrects me.

I rip out a carpet loop, a chunk of adhesive clumped at its roots. “But he probably said, ‘Tell Laura she’s invited.’”

“He probably held the phone to his ass and farted.”

“Which Sam understood to mean—”

“We’re all invited. Fart invite’s all inclusive.”

“Laura.” I extend my legs. “I’m serious.”

“Katie!”
she yelps in frustration. “You guys have been fooling around all week!”

I look down at my Hester Prynne bruises. “Thank you.”

“You don’t talk at all?” she asks, disbelieving.

I shake the settled crystals of my ice tea. “There’s a lot of heys.”

“I
think you’re his girlfriend,” she says definitively.

“Fantastic. Could you also think I have a fourteen hundred PSAT?”

“Don’t
you
think you’re his girlfriend?”

“I don’t know!” I hear parental footsteps stop outside my door and lower my voice to a hush. “I think he’s writing songs about me, he’s grabbing me the minute the bell rings, and now he’s throwing a party at his lake house and I’m finding out about it from everyone who did
not
dry hump me all week!”

“This is ridiculous, it’s already four. Sam’s picking me up in five minutes; we’re coming by to get you.”

“No!” I flail, accidentally knocking over the fan, its plastic frame grinding into the carpet as it vibrates away from me.

“Why?” Laura moans.

I yank the plug from the wall by the wire. “What if I get there and he’s sitting with his real girlfriend?”

“And who would that be?” she asks flatly.

“I don’t know.” I right the machine, smoothing the deep pile beneath to stabilize it before setting it down. “Someone we don’t know about.”

“Okay,” she humors me. “So you get there and Jake is sitting with some girl his parents have been keeping caged in their barn since birth. Then what?”

“Then what if he sees me, rolls his eyes, and is, like, ‘What are
you
doing here?’”

“Whip out the bruises.”

I wipe my hands down my damp ribs. “Or worse, what if he doesn’t acknowledge me at all?”

“Still voting for the bruises.”

“But there must be some sort of ground rules and if I just show up when I haven’t been invited—”

“No one has been invited.
There are no engraved invitations. He mumbled something to a few people—”

“Kathryn.” Mom picks up the line.

“Off in a minute.”

“If you’re going to sit around all day, how about mowing the lawn?” she offers.

“Mom!”

“Just a suggestion.”
Click.

“I love how she says that,” I marvel, “Like, how about taking a spa?”

“Please just come? Come on, decide. I have to quick wash my face before Sam gets here. I’m all sweaty again.”

“Okay, my decision is…” My chest pounds.

“Katie, you come to this party with the rest of the eleventh grade. You toss your hair, you swish your black bikini, and screw him.”

I’m so shaky as Sam drives us down the dirt road that I just try to focus on my skin sticking and resticking to the vinyl seat to calm myself. When we get to where the cars are parked, all half-leaning into a ditch, Laura reaches back and squeezes my knee.