Play Me Backwards (7 page)

“No. She'll be in the Cave tomorrow,” he said.

“You think so?”

“She'll come for you. Trust me. I'm the fucking devil.”

He hung up, and I sat still for a minute.

I needed to get my head together, and I couldn't do it in a room like this. I had almost convinced myself that there was something wonderfully noble about living in self-imposed squalor, but when I got Anna's e-mail, I was suddenly sick of feeling disgusted all the time. I was sick of that gnawing feeling in my guts that wouldn't go away no matter how many times I told myself I already had my dream job. Once Valentine's Day was over, and it sunk in that Anna was never coming back, I could probably get back to being happy with myself and my life as a burned-out loser, but I figured I should take advantage of this moment of clarity. I resolved to start serving some detention hours, and decided to start trying to make my room halfway habitable right then.

Getting all the dishes and glasses and silverware that were under my bed down to the kitchen took three trips.

Once I had bagged up all the trash from my room, I decided to clean out my car some too. I could probably get five more miles to
the gallon if I got the junk out of it. I took a handful of plastic grocery bags from the bin in the garage out to the driveway and gathered up all the empty cans, sacks of fast-food junk, and shit like that out of the backseat. I peeled up the duct tape that was covering the stains and scrubbed them as well as I could. Then I started getting the crap out of the trunk—textbooks, dirty laundry, and a busted folding chair I'd found behind the Ice Cave and thought I could fix up. All the while the snow fell against my face and the night air stung my skin.

There was already a pile of trash bags on the curb, waiting for the garbagemen to come overnight. It was garbage night.

Valentine's Day, Garbage Night.

When I brought all the bags to the curb, the snow-covered pile of trash looked like a great white whale.

Lingering dread. That's what that gnawing, hungry feeling in my guts was. The kind of feeling you get when you quickly wad up your ATM receipt and throw it out before you can see for sure that the balance is negative. The feeling that if you actually checked your grades, you'd be failing a class or two.

The feeling that you left your headlights on, or your door unlocked.

It's the feeling that you left a burner going on the stove.

Or forgot to clear the browser history.

And the certain knowledge that no matter how well you think you've kept it under wraps, pretty soon someone will figure out that you're a terrible person who shouldn't be allowed out in public.

It's the fear that the next phone call you get will be the one telling your parents that you probably won't be graduating on time.

That the next letter you get will be a note from the school about a test you cheated on a couple of years ago.

That the next e-mail you get will be from the Recording Industry Association of America saying that you're going to be the next person they randomly pick to sue for downloading music illegally.

That the next knock on your door will be policemen asking you about a City of Des Moines van that someone bumped into in a parking lot a while ago.

It's the feeling that the world is going to figure out you've been playing a straight flush with only four cards all this time.

It's the feeling that you left a fingerprint behind someplace.

It was with me all the time. Honestly, sometimes I think it's with everyone all the time. Everyone has a few stains on their soul.

I'd learned to live with it, for the most part. In the back room of the Cave, it was even a point of pride to have this gnawing feeling of lingering dread in my guts. It was proof that I belonged.

It had gotten stronger and more painful when I first got Anna's e-mail. The fact that she wasn't coming back was actually a relief.

The thought of going out with Paige really didn't help it.

But the thought of telling her no made it even worse.

The last time I did anything to make a teacher—or anyone else—take much notice of me was in the first week of freshman year, when I had health class with Anna.

Our health teacher, Coach Humboldt, was a real jackass—one of those football coaches who get wrangled into teaching something else, since they're already on payroll, but don't know a thing about their subject. His whole method of teaching was to pass out Xeroxed magazine articles about health, which we'd take turns reading out loud while he sat at his desk.

All he ever did was add a comment or two; usually something about the evils of getting a divorce or being on welfare. I don't think he ever even read the articles himself, because if he ever did
any
reading himself, he would presumably know how to spell a little better. Coach Humboldt was not really spelling bee material; sometimes he'd pass something out that he'd written himself, and it was clear that he was one of those guys who didn't believe that one
single way to spell a word should be enough. His spelling errors were not just the kinds of mistakes where you leave out a silent
M
or put the
I
before the
E
when it's supposed to be the other way around. He was misspelling words that any second grader should have been able to handle, and doing so with a real streak of creativity. You might even say he turned poor spelling into a sort of outsider art.

The longest handout was his list of classroom rules, which he passed out the first day.

My favorite was rule number seven:

7. USE THE BATHROOM'S BEFOR SCHOOL, AFTER SCHOOL, DURING YOU'RE LUNCH, OR BETWEEN CLASSES. IF YOU NEED TO GO MORE TIMES THAN THAT, WEAR A DIPPER!

It was a totally unfair, mean-spirited rule, and Anna and I decided to give him some hell for it. We thought about telling him we had some sort of health issue, like a spastic bladder or something, or just explaining that with only four minutes between classes on a campus a quarter of a mile long, no one ever had time to get to a bathroom.

But we decided to pick on the spelling mistake instead.

On the second day of class she and I both wore ladles—dippers—on strings around our necks.

Halfway through class, Anna raised her hand and said, “Excuse me, Coach Humboldt. My dipper didn't work. Can I go get a mop?”

It would have been a better prank if we didn't have to spend several minutes explaining it to Coach Humboldt, who was not exactly
quick on the uptake. He sent Anna to the office for being a smart aleck, and I got to go along because I was wearing a dipper too.

Partners in crime.

When I got up the day after Valentine's Day and found that Paige had added me as a friend on various social media sites that I'd signed up for and never actually used, and sent a message through one that she would swing by the Cave that afternoon, just as Stan had foreseen, I could have almost used a dipper for real.

She arrived halfway through the afternoon shift, and neither Stan or I had said a word about our conversation from the night before. Not that we had much else to do; it was far too cold for most people to want any ice cream. A cold front had blown in at the end of the snowstorm, so the high temperature for the day was twelve.

But when Paige's SUV pulled into the parking lot, she stepped out of it wearing the same sort of short dress she'd had on the day before, only shorter, and with no coat. The sheer notion that she'd dressed up like that to look good for
me
made me feel like an asshole. I was flattered, in a way, but anyone who wants you to dress like that in twelve-degree weather is not really your friend.

Stan and I watched as she walked up to the door.

“I'll bet she's getting frostbite in some scandalous places,” said Stan.

“Most likely.”

“Lo, though your hands and ears freeze in the winter winds, I say rejoice, for Hell shall burn below to keep your feet warm.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Go to the back, will ya?” I asked.

“You don't want me to tell you what to tell her?”

“I'll handle this.”

“Say yes to her. Whatever she asks, say yes. Your Satanic master commands you.”

“Just go to the fucking back.”

Stan laughed and disappeared into the dark recesses of the break room.

The wind blew in from the parking lot and stung my cheeks as Paige stepped inside. I shuddered to think what parts of
her
it was stinging.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hi,” I said.

“I hoped you'd be working today,” she said. “Otherwise I'd feel pretty dumb dressed like this.”

“You're not even wearing a coat.”

She smirked. “Girls have to suffer to look good.”

“You must be freezing your ass off.”

“I'm freezing lots of parts off.”

She gave me a sort of pouty, suggestive look, and I just stood there for a second, looking stupid, until I thought to tell her we had a space heater in the back.

“Can we go back there?” she asked.

My knees were shaking, but I followed Stan's orders and told her yes.

For some reason, she didn't run screaming when I opened the back door and led her into the dim, fetid break room. She smiled and waved at Stan, who was stretched out on the couch, flipping through an issue of
Auto Trader
.

“Hey, guys,” he said. “You want the room?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Can you watch the front?”

“Yes,”
he said. He said it that way—like, italicized—to remind me that I was supposed to say “yes” to every question Paige asked. I nodded to show that I got it.

He crawled off the couch, and Paige and I sat down on it, even though I felt like I should spread some plastic over it first. Paige would never have sat on it with so much bare skin if she knew what went on there sometimes. But I didn't say anything. I didn't want to freak her out.

“So,” she said, “have you thought about it yet? About us?”

I took a deep breath. I had.

I didn't actively
dislike
Paige. I'd even had a pretty good time talking with her the night before while I drove her home. And I didn't have a crush on anyone
else
who lived nearby. Maybe a relationship with someone else
was
what I really needed in order to get over Anna. In fact, it had to be. I'd never move on if I didn't have something to move on
to.

Still, I had some reservations that Paige was the right person for the job.

“I don't know if I'm . . . like,
qualified
to go out with you,” I said. “You'd probably want to hide me from your friends, right? Keep the whole thing a secret?”

She shook her head. “The worst of them will just think you have good weed or something,” she said. “Or a giant dick. Haven't you ever seen a hot girl going out with a total douche bag?”

“I guess.”

I took a deep breath as she moved closer to me on the couch
and tried to decide whether or not to be offended that she'd sort of just compared me to a giant douche bag. I guess I looked freaked out, because she gave me a reassuring smile.

“You thought I was a ditzy cheerleader, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“And I guess I thought you were some geeky comic book guy.”

I nodded.

“So the thing is, we're not really as different as we thought,” she said. “And, anyway, those matchups always work in movies. Maybe they will in real life.”

She was making some good points. I
had
had a pretty good time talking to her in the car the night before. And I wasn't really in any position to go around turning girls down if they were actually willing to take a chance on me.

And having heard from Anna again, I was heading straight for a fall. Maybe Paige could catch me before I landed on my ass.

Besides, I was under orders.

“So, what do you think?” she asked.

I took a long look around the room and felt my knees shivering, but I remembered my Satantic master's command.

“Yes,” I said.

She smiled and moved in closer to me.

“Do you have much experience with girls?”

I was going to give her some detailed response, but I decided I was safer sticking to one-word responses.

“Yeah.”

“Like, ones that are in the same country as you?”

“Yes.”

“So you know what I want you to do right now?” she asked.

I frankly didn't, but I said yes again.

“So do it.”

She smiled and leaned in just enough that I got the message. I moved in and kissed her once, then moved back. Her lips were still cold and my knees were still shaking.

“You can do it more than once, you know,” she said. “Help me keep warm, okay?”

I did. I pulled her up against me and let her kiss my neck, even though it was ticklish as hell, and I wrapped my arms around her. Her dress was cut low in the back, and her bare skin was still cold. She kissed my neck softly and did something with her finger, like tracing the alphabet or something, on my thigh, slowly moving farther up towards my waist. She pressed her left breast into my shoulder.

I still felt weird about it, and like I maybe should have been saying no, but I can't say I wasn't enjoying it. It felt good. Really, really good.

And after a couple of minutes I stopped thinking about anything. I stopped telling myself it would at least help me get over Anna again if I went out with Paige. I stopped telling myself that I was just going along with it because I knew she'd feel terrible about herself if a guy like
me
turned her down when she was dressed like this. I stopped thinking I should say yes just because of Stan's orders. I just concentrated on kissing and got lost in the moment.

But then, just as I was getting comfortable, Dustin Eddlebeck came flittering into the back.