Authors: Laura Goode
Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Social Issues, #Homosexuality, #Humorous Stories, #Adolescence
Sister Mischief
Chapter One:
Spoonbridge and Cherry
Chapter Six:
Girl Rappers in Minneapolis
Chapter Seven:
Wicked Delicious
Chapter Eight:
The Goats, or Who Is Esme?
Chapter Eleven:
Mixed Histories, or Don’t Call Me That
Chapter Twelve:
Give Yourself Away
Chapter Thirteen:
She Can’t Get Down
Chapter Fourteen:
B-Girls Will Be Girls
Chapter Fifteen:
Doorbells and Corners
Chapter Sixteen:
Hellzapoppin’ Hip-Hop for Heteros and Homos
Epilogue:
Live at Holyhill: The Sister Mischief EP
I guess I’m here because I wanted to be sure.
Breaking news: it’s Friday night. The Holyhill Fighting Loons won the first game of the fall against Rosemount a few hours ago, not that I could see much of it from the meadow behind the concession stand, where a few of us straggled together after halftime to pass around a few beers, not really enough to get everyone drunk.
“Do you feel anything?” I lean over to Marcy.
“Shut up,” she says, then finishes her Leinenkugel, crushes the can in her hand, and goes back to making out with this wrestler who looks kind of like a hammerhead shark.
“She’s not driving, right?” Tess grimaces at Marcy, who’s peeled the polyester jacket off her marching band uniform and is wearing just the green trousers and her ubiquitous men’s undershirt. Marcy’s rank lieutenant of the Holyhill High School drumline. She makes all the freshmen call her Captain.
“Eh.” I reach for another swig from someone. “She’s not actually drunk. And also probably not going anywhere for a while.”
“I can hear you,” Marcy growls, coming up for air.
I hear another beer crack open behind me. Charlie Knutsen is shyly offering me a can. Speaking frankly, Charlie’s wanted to punk my junk since sixth grade, when he caught a glimpse of me in my training bra as the girls’ locker room door was closing. Now we’re juniors. He’s patient — I’ll give him that.
I take it. “Thanks.”
“No sweat. There was more in Anders’s car.”
“Does he know you took it?” Charlie shakes his head, smirking.
Over in the parking lot, most of the football team has arrived and is pumping one of the predictable Biggie songs —“Juicy” or “Big Poppa”— and dancing like morons.
“Jesus,” I mutter to Charlie. “Check out the white man’s overbite parade over there.” He cringes.
“Uh-oh,” he says. “Mary Ashley’s trying to booty-dance again. This can’t end well.”
Sure enough, I look back at the crowd around someone’s bass-thumping Chevy pickup, and Mary Ashley Baumgarten, super-Lutheran teen queen of Holy Hell and Tess’s ex-BFF, is jerking her skinny flat ass around to the beat.
“Tessie.” I jerk my head toward MashBaum and take another sip as I watch the scene unfold. The guys are clearly drunker than Mary Ashley realizes, and her feeble dancing attempts slow as they get bolder in grinding on her. Mary Ashley is obviously starting to freak out. Suddenly, Ryan Hoffstadt, who’s pretty much your standard-issue ass-hat, crashes face-forward into Mary Ashley’s B-cups and kind of deliberately dumps Captain Morgan and Coke all over her white sweater. Mary Ashley lets out a feral scream, shoving Ryan into the Chevy.
“Aw, jeepers.” Tess takes off after Mary Ashley, followed by Anders.
“Let’s bounce,” Marcy says, getting up, pitching her beer can into the Dumpster fifteen feet away, and summoning Shark-Neck. “MashBaum’ll totally call the cops on them, and next thing we know, her dad’ll be campaigning for the state senate on an anti-tailgating platform. You drive.” With a wave, she disappears into the Shark’s car. I’m stranded; Marcy drives me everywhere.
“No, that’s okay — don’t worry about me,” I call after her. “Dick.”
In a matter of seconds, it’s just me and Charlie Knutsen.
“Fuck,” I say.
“What?” he asks.
“They were my ride,” I tell him.
“Oh. Well. I mean.” Charlie clears his throat like a douche. “I could give you a ride. If you wanted.”
Maybe Charlie Knutsen’s all right, I think, taking a sip, and a few more sips. Maybe then I’d know for sure. God knows this night isn’t going anywhere else.
“Sure,” I say. “Thanks.”
This parking lot, another one, is a vigil of streetlights, too bright, making us conspicuous. My head is shoved against the window of Charlie’s Camry’s backseat, the manual window handle jutting into the back of my neck, and I can see two dogs copulating in the shadows on the other side of the empty lot. The thing about Holyhill (I’m partial to Holy Hell) is that the night I’m having, if I play it right, could be big shit on Monday morning. Some people grow up places where things happen, where you get discovered in diners or whisked off to far-flung cities with glamorous frienemies, but here I guess we don’t have the weather for it or something.
Despite the fact that I’m regarding the whole situation as an experiment, I can say that, regardless of the chain of events leading up to it, Chuckles is pretty psyched to be crammed in the back of this Camry with me. He’s worked his hands under my shirt, groping my stomach, and is steadily moving north as he sucks on my neck.
“Give me a hickey and I’ll end you,” I growl, wrenching his leechy mouth off my neck with a pop.
“Sorry.” He actually looks sorry. “Sorry, Esme. Did it hurt?”
“I mean, it didn’t
hurt,
but it wasn’t exactly awesome. I don’t know. Try something else,” I order him. He obediently begins a tentative nibble along the ridge of my earlobe. Slightly better — I guess.
I wonder if Dad’s already eaten the leftover bacon from this morning. I begin to get sick of Kings of Leon on the iPod plugged into the car’s cigarette lighter. I look out the window.
1
Out of nowhere, a woman in a lilac terrycloth tracksuit runs screaming toward the still-coupling dogs. She’s got the crazy in her eyes as she pulls the unwilling retriever off with some difficulty. I guffaw. Terrycloth’s head snaps up. Shit, the front windows are open. The painfully camel-toed figure in question is Darlene Grinnell, Tess’s mom, and one half of the doggie couple is Stinker, Tess’s puggle. Catching full view of what’s going on, she turns to us with an accusatory finger, but no sound comes out of her mouth; it just opens and closes like a guppy’s.
