Sex & Violence (8 page)

The house was quiet and the sun was starting to go down and I realized that I would have nothing to do except wait until it was time to get in bed. That and the motherless children and the poor bastard named Barrett abandoning his house because he lost his wife and everything else gave me this feeling I thought of as being Almost-Weepy. Which had been happening to me since I was eleven when my mom died. Almost-Weepy was where you felt bad enough but just a little too dry to actually weep. Though Almost-Weepy was probably better than being Actual-Weepy.

There was a knock on the door. More of a banging, actually, and I jumped up. Was this another thing about life on the east side—people demanding shit of me at all hours?

It was Baker Trieste. She looked frantic and apologetic and her hair was all over her shoulders and I could see through her thin white shirt that she wore a striped bikini top as her bra and I felt thankful for that, because I hadn’t noticed how nice her rack was the night before, which gave me something else to think about besides being Almost-Weepy. She was also holding a red gas can, which said she actually needed something real, not just to be social endlessly or something.

“Evan,” she said. “I’m so glad you’re home. I need to ask you a huge favor.”

My father chose this moment to wander out of his bedroom then, looking like he’d slept in his Dockers and T-shirt.

“Oh, hello,” he said to Baker, running his hand over his bald head, as if to freshen up. “I’m afraid I missed your barbecue. Did Evan here go?”

“No, actually, he didn’t,” she said, tipping her head and looking a little peeved at me.

“Sorry,” I said.

“I’m here to ask you a favor, Mr. Carter,” Baker said, in this responsible, student-council-vice-president voice. “My friends ran out of gas, and they’re out in the middle of the lake strand-ed on their pontoon. And Keir hasn’t got our boat off the lift yet. I was wondering if Evan could take me out there with my gas can.”

“Of course Evan would love to help you out.” My father nicked the boat keys off the hook and tossed them to me, and I was so surprised I didn’t catch them. Smooth. Baker bent over and picked them up.

“We’ll be right back, Mr. Carter,” she said. “And some of the kids are getting together a few cabins down to watch movies tonight too. Can Evan come?”

My father grinned, like Baker had just offered him a million dollars and not a big fat lie making Jim’s party sound like the polar opposite of the keg-stand pukefest I’m sure it would be.

“Of course!” he said. “Of course, Evan can go!”

I wanted to kill him, but fifteen minutes later, Baker and I were in my boat, approaching Story Island, the sun setting orange all around us. The island was almost frightening now, as the sunlight intensified how dense and overgrown it was. There was no dock access and along with the cattails, there were now lily pad-like things and fresh green reeds shooting up around the boulders, complicating everything with their little clots of bugs snarling around in the fading light.

I was thinking Story Island was more of a penal colony than a vacation home getaway, when Baker explained to me that though the party was out at Jim’s, Jim and Skinny Blonde Chick Conley and Titanic Taber had gone out on Taber’s pontoon for some reason. Conley called Baker from the pontoon, freaking that they were out of gas.

“Conley always has to fucking pre-party,” Baker said.

I hated it when people used the word “party” as a verb, but I didn’t mention this to Baker, because she sounded pretty mad.

Also, I was wondering what exactly a “pontoon” was. It sounded like Minnesota slang for “vagina.”

“They’re around here somewhere,” Baker said. “Conley said they were near Story Island.”

We slowed and circled the island until we saw them, and I realized that “pontoon” didn’t refer to girl bits but one of those flat-bottomed boats, a floating platform on which the youth of Pearl Lake thought it wise to “pre-party.” As we neared the pontoon, I silently wished Baker would just chuck the gas can at them so I could peel off and get back to my life reading
Under
the Waves
and avoiding all these fucking people, but then Taber and Conley waved at us.

“Anchor us here,” Baker said. “I’ll moor us to that No Trespassing sign.”

That seemed like a terrible idea, but I did what she said.

My boat slid next to the pontoon, and Taber’s huge blond self stood up and reached over for the gas can. I thought that would be it, but then Conley screamed, “Jim’s on the island!

He’s out of his mind!”

We looked over, and sure enough, we could see someone sitting on the scum-covered rocks. Jim. Shirltless, wearing big Oakley sunglasses and track pants and those athletic sandals with the knobby soles that I cannot stand.

“What the fuck is he doing?” Baker asked, looking at the rings of boulders that I knew Barrett Archardt had used to bol-ster the shoreline of his island and protect it from erosion. But I didn’t mention this trivia to her. She sounded very angry.

“I’ll go get him, Baker,” Taber said. “Just let me finish the gas thing.”

“No, I need to talk to him,” Baker said. And she jumped out and waded toward the rocks through a bunch of dead cattails.

“Tell him if he gets busted, I’m going to kill him,” Conley yelled at Baker, who didn’t turn around. “This was all his idea.”

Baker continued grimly up the rocks. I just sat there silently watching her like a dipshit. What else was I going to do?

Talk sports with Taber?

“Baker! Baby! You’re here! Your hair is sparkling!” Jim shouted.

He kissed her then and babbled a bunch of other crap I couldn’t hear. I considered my options. Start up the motor and leave? Jump overboard and swim home? But then I couldn’t resist eavesdropping on her yelling at him. Stuff like, “You’re having people over tonight?” and “Your ears are totally infected? Why the hell did you pierce them, anyway?”

Jim tried to paw her some more, but she wasn’t having it.

We all watched as she bitched at him to climb down and slosh through the water. Then, horrifyingly, she led him to my boat.

“Who the fuck’s this dude?” Jim said. He sounded all breezy and entitled, like he wasn’t soaking wet and wearing track pants, and his girlfriend wasn’t holding his stupid little athletic sandals for him.

“It’s Evan,” she said. “You met him last night!”

“Good to meet you, dude.” Jim smiled. With his freaky bleached teeth, he looked like a drunk toothpaste commercial.

Baker was buckling his life jacket for him like he was an infant, when suddenly he pitched his head over the side and barfed. A big gnarly awful barf with all these terrible choking noises. Finally, he took off his sunglasses and sat up, wiping his mouth.

Baker said, “Jesus, Jim! What the hell? And what’s with your eyes? You’re pupils are fucking huge!”

Jim put his cheesy sunglasses back on, and then I figured it out.

Jim waved Baker away from him while Conley and Taber watched from the pontoon rail.

“I told you, it’s normal, Con,” Jim yelled to Conley. “I’m surprised you haven’t yakked yours up yet.”

“I don’t want to barf!” Conley screamed. “I hate barfing!”

“Don’t barf on my pontoon.” Taber’s huge body dwarfed Conley’s skinny one in concern. Conley shushed him. Baker unmoored us from the sign while I pulled up the anchor, and then she yelled to Conley and Taber that we’d meet them at Jim’s.

We docked, and Jim staggered toward his cabin, which was dark but humming with party noise. Baker watched him go but didn’t move. I sat there for a minute, wondering what her deal was, until she said, “Just head back to your house, Evan. I’m sorry. He’s just … I don’t know. He’s gone a little overboard; he’s been repressed for so long.”

She didn’t have to tell me twice. I got us out of there, and a minute later, she was mooring the boat to my dock.

“You better keep an eye on him,” I said as we walked down the dock. “Mushrooms make you do some weird shit.”

“What?”

It had been so obvious to me that I couldn’t believe she didn’t know, but I guess she
was
a fairly normal girl. Drinking is one thing, but doing drugs still is a big deal for some people, especially for Virginal Student Council types.

“Well, it could be acid,” I said. “But usually you puke up the ’shrooms at some point. Plus his eyes. That’s what made me think of it.”

She stopped. The lights were off in our cabin; had my father gone back to bed?

“Is that why he went all nuts climbing up Story Island?”

“Maybe he thought it would look cool. Natural surroundings are much easier to take sometimes.”

“Conley must have done them too. I don’t think Taber did, though, do you? Since he was the one driving the pontoon.”

I didn’t know how anyone could say the word “pontoon”

without laughing, especially so serious about it like she was.

“I can’t believe they did this,” she said, walking toward her cabin, her legs dripping water. She was shivering now, and the sun was all the way down. “Without even telling me. My fucking boyfriend tripping while wearing track pants.
Track pants!

He looks like he’s in the Russian mafia. I don’t believe in wearing track pants unless you are in an actual athletic situation, just so you know. And Taber goes along with it, like a damn dog! And me, too … Fuck! Why the hell did I wear white?” She had tripped on a branch and stumbled. Her shirt had gotten all stained and wet.

So I could see your bikini through your shirt
, I thought, being a complete dirtbag. I smiled then too, proud that I didn’t own one single pair of track pants. And I had run track, even. But the cut on the corner of my mouth cracked and started bleeding and without thinking I lifted up my T-shirt to dab the blood.

“Hey, are you okay?” she asked. “Evan?”

I turned away from her, then, toward my cabin. But she rushed beside me.

“Evan? What happened?”

She tipped her head to one side, staring at the scab on my nose. My elf ears too. God. I wished I could wear a fucking ski mask in public.

“Were you in a fight or something?” she asked.

“I wiped out on my bike,” I lied.

“Bicycle or motorcycle?”

“Bicycle,” I said. Though I didn’t own a bicycle. Couldn’t remember when I’d last ridden one, either.

She didn’t look like she believed me, but she said, “My mom’s boyfriend makes this salve that’ll help that cut. I’ll give you some if you want.”

I shrugged. “It’ll be fine if I don’t smile.”

I remembered, again, clearly as if it were on a video screen in front of us, the feeling of Tate’s fist when it broke my nose.

That nasty crunch sound so loud in my brain that I wondered if Baker could hear it too. That same sound kept me awake at night.

“Don’t be a dork,” she said. “Not smiling is fucking horrible.” She poked me in the shoulder, like I was being a brat.

But then she smiled and I could see she didn’t think I was really a dork but just sort of funny, and even though she was griping about how she looked, she was super pretty again to me. I felt kind of drunk and dumb for some reason.

“It’s okay,” I said.

“Why are natural surroundings easier to take when you do mushrooms?” Back to her own concerns. Good. I didn’t need her asking me any more questions about all my broken parts.

I explained about my one and only mushroom trip, in San Diego with Mandy and the movie theater bathroom.

“But isn’t that dangerous? An old creepy island? And the sun going down?”

“Well, there’s that house out there,” I said. “My uncle went in it once.”

“The Archardt House?” she asked, and I wondered crazily if she’d read
Under the Waves
too. Maybe it was required reading in Marchant Falls public schools?

“It was a long time ago,” I said. “Maybe it’s not there anymore.”

“I thought that was just an urban myth,” she said. “Though I read that Barrett Archardt owned the island, before it turned into a bird sanctuary.”

Then she looked kind of embarrassed. Like she’d said something dumb.

“Where did you read about it?” I asked. Maybe, like bibles in hotels, every Pearl Lake cabin came with a complimentary copy of
Under the Waves
.

“I kind of … oh, don’t laugh,” she said.

“What?”

“I work at the Kent County Historical Society,” she said.

“I file things and work with the curator. Last summer I did an electronic conversion of letters from the Archardts. And I read them too. I’m kind of a history nerd.”

Then my father opened the front door.

“Evan? Baker? Everything okay with your friends?”

Instantly, Baker slipped from her history nerd mode back into her chirpy student council mode. “Yeah, it’s all taken care of, Mr. Carter!” she said, all cheerful. “Thank you so much for letting Evan take me out there.”

“You going to the party now, Evan?”

I looked at Baker, and she looked like she wanted me to come, so I just lied. Told her I would. My dad looked pleased and slipped back inside.

“I need to shower and change my shirt quick,” I said.

“Me too.” She laughed at how dirty she was. Desperate to get away from her, I told her I’d meet her at Jim’s and then went into the house. Where my dad was putting on his shoes and smoothing his non-hair.

“I’m going over to the Tonneson’s to play some poker,” he said.

“Cool,” I said. My father would probably kill them all in poker, since he could count cards and do all sorts of unfair calculations. I never played poker with him for this reason.

“I kind of overdid it last night, so I won’t be late,” he said.

“But you go and enjoy yourself.”

“All right.”

“They seem like nice kids, don’t they?”

“Yeah, they’re nice,” I said, kicking off my flip-flops. I took off my shirt, which was bloody and gross, and my father flinched away from me, as if seeing my scar hurt him—the exact effect I was hoping for.

“I’m gonna just hop in the shower,” I said.

“Sounds good.” His eyes widened, like he couldn’t believe Dr. Penny had already fixed my shower aversion. Acting as natural as I could, I went into the bathroom and turned on the shower. I watched a big black spider silently struggle as it washed down the drain, and then I sat on the toilet and watched the steam billow around the shower curtain for I don’t know how long. I sat there until I couldn’t stand how much energy I was wasting, and when I came out, my father was gone.