Stick (6 page)

She was not like the other girls in eighth grade. Boys in eighth grade could be rough. But the girls could be viciously cruel. Maybe that was why Emily didn't have many girl friends.

The other girls were mean to Emily sometimes. They teased her for being stuck up and not playing the other girl games, or because her dad owned the little store by the pier; because she took care of cows. No other girls at school did those things.

And no girls at school ever talked to me.

I asked her one time why she was friends with me.

She just smiled and shrugged. “Who else would I be friends with?”

I didn't know who else.

I was afraid sometimes that Emily felt all alone.

Even if we never said it, I think we needed each other.

“Hi, Em,” I said with my mouth full.

“Hi.” I watched as she smeared soft margarine across the top of her one and only pancake. She said, “What  do you want to do today?”

“I don't know. What do
you
want to do?”

We would usually ask this back and forth at least twenty times.

Especially on Saturday mornings.

“How was the basketball game?” Emily asked it like she could see there was a story on my face under all that pancake syrup.

Mrs. Lohman put a glass of milk on the table next to my plate and sat down beside me. She fixed the collar on my shirt and I felt the back of her fingers on my neck.

“I swear, you              are getting so big,” she said. “Do you want some more?”

“No, thank you,” I said. I took a drink of milk and looked at Emily.

She was sitting on my left side. Like she always does.

“Me and Bosten got thrown out of the basketball game. Bosten got into a fight.”

Mrs. Lohman leaned around the table so she could look at my face. She'd known Bosten for just as many years as she knew me.

And Emily said, “With who?”

“He beat up Ricky Dostal in the boys' bathroom.”

Mrs. Lohman frowned, but Emily's father nodded, like it was fine with him that my brother messed up Ricky Dostal.

“Ricky Dostal had to have been asking for it,” he said. “What did he                       do                       this time?”

I thought about it for a second. I felt bad when I lied and said, “I don't know. I didn't see it.”

But I didn't want to tell them what Ricky Dostal did. I drew a circle with fork tines in the syrup that was left on my plate. “Ricky had to go to the hospital. To get stitches.”

I finished my milk. “And now Bosten's going to get in trouble at school on Monday, and he's already being punished at home.”

Emily put her fork down across her plate with a
clink!

“Want to do something?” I asked.

Mrs. Lohman let Emily know it was okay for her to leave. “I'll clear the dishes, sweetie.”

Then Emily said, “Sure. What do
you
  want to do?”

She smiled at me.

We both pushed our chairs back and stood.

And Mr. Lohman flipped the front page of the paper over, so I could see it. He laughed. “Just don't  

                  let the          aliens                               get you.”

There it was, on the front page of
The Kingston Register
: a grainy picture of our bomb.

The handpop flare.

It was so beautiful and frightening.

Below it, the headline asked:
UFO OR HOAX?

I leaned over the paper, and Mr. Lohman gave it a push around so it was right side up for me.

“That…” I looked straight at Mr. Lohman's eyes. “That is so cool! Do you think I could have that story, please, Mr. Lohman?”

He chuckled warmly. “Boys like  that         kind of          stuff, don't they?            Sure, Stick.         Take it.”

I began to carefully tear my way around the article, and Mrs. Lohman handed me some scissors from a kitchen drawer. I held the clipping in my hand and stared in awe at the photograph, thinking how Bosten was going to love this.

“You think that's really a                       spaceship?” Mr. Lohman asked.

I grinned.

“Yeah.”

I folded the paper twice and tucked it into the front pocket of my shirt.

*   *   *

It's a rare March day
in Washington when the sky is so clear and blue as it was on that Saturday morning. We went into the woods and followed the trail Emily walked every day to the school bus stop.

Here, at the north edge of the Lohmans' property, the trees were dark and smelled of dew.

“Okay, out with it,” she said.

“What?”

“Tell me what
really
happened with Ricky.”

“Oh.” I stopped. There was a big black slug as long as my middle finger on the narrow trail, right in front of my left foot. “He tried messing with me in the bathroom. He threw my hat in the piss drain. Bosten saw it, so he socked him. One time. Busted Ricky's face open and knocked him out cold.”

“
You
should have been the one who punched him,” Emily said.

I was embarrassed.

“I thought about it. I just couldn't.” I pointed at my zipper. “I was peeing.”

“Guys like him are never going to leave you alone if you don't fight back.”

I started walking again. “I'm pretty sure Ricky's going to leave me alone.”

“Sure.  If you say so.”

“Anyway, after the game me and Bosten and Paul Buckley went to Pilot Point, and we shot off a flare from the army. That's what that UFO picture is on the paper. We did it.”

“Nuh-uh,” she teased.

“It really was us,” I said. “Then Bosten and Paul lit off a green smoke bomb in the field by the pool at Wilson.”

“You guys are dumb,” she said.

“I know. They made me drive the car home.”

“Maybe next time, I'll go with you,” Emily decided.

We stopped where the creek cut across the trail. Sometimes, we'd come to this spot to catch tree frogs.

“Paul and Bosten do bad stuff,” I said. Then I whispered, as if someone might actually hear me confess it, “They smoke pot.”

“No wonder they make you drive. You don't smoke pot, do you?”

“No way. You should see how stupid they act when they get high.”

Emily moved ahead of me. She stepped from rock to rock and crossed to the other side of the creek.

“You know                   what               I want to try?” she asked.

“What?” I followed her across.

“Let's try riding       our cows.”

I laughed. “That sounds dumb.”

“Want to?”

“Okay.”

I followed her along the path toward the edge of their pasture.

“I want to ask you something, Em.”

“What?”

She turned and came back to my left side.

“Yesterday.” I swallowed the lump that was in my throat. “Why did you touch me?”

“I don't know.” She said it so casually. How could I not believe everything she said? “I just wanted to, I guess. Why?”

“No one ever touches me there. Except maybe Bosten when we wrestle and stuff. That's why.”

“Well, I'm sorry. I just wanted to see what it felt like. I won't do it again if it bothers you.”

“It's okay,” I said. “It's just … well, it's ugly.”

She shrugged. “I don't think so.  I think it's cool. Everyone else is so … the same. You know?”

Emily got closer to me. I'm not nervous around her, or embarrassed, ever, but it kind of scared me. I could feel my heart beating really hard, and the sound

bounced around

inside my head.

I didn't want that heartbeat sound to find its way out.

She said, “Watch my face if you don't believe me. Then you'll see.”

“See what?”

Then she reached up, lightly, slowly. It was like watching that missile drifting in the sky. She took Bosten's cap away from me and put her left hand flat on the side of my head. Emily's fingers curled softly into my little hair. I watched her eyes.

I believed I would see her repulsion.

But she was so soft and perfect.

She lowered her hand and said, “See?”

But I couldn't answer.

She trapped my heart inside my head.

Everything was changing.

Except that quiet half of my head.

*   *   *

We decided we were going to
ride those cows and play like we were jousting.

Cows don't listen very good.

Emily's cow ran toward the woods as soon as she got on it, and I had a hard time getting my cow to put up with me. I ended up flopped over its back, and when it started trotting, before I could straddle it, I was on my elbows and butt in the wet grass, watching it poop, eat, and run away from me, all at the same time.

“Stupid cow,” I said.

Emily laughed.

I watched her run across the field to where I was sitting.

The cows disappeared. I guess they didn't think jousting was so fun.

Neither did I, actually.

Emily pulled my hand so I could stand up. She was so much smaller than me, but for a girl, she was real strong.

These were our Saturdays.

We did nothing and everything at the same time.

We walked along the barbed wire toward the road that led down to the pier.

“Hey, Em.”

“What?”

“You take baths, right?”

“Why? Do I smell bad?”

“No. I mean, would you ever take a bath with someone else?”

“That's a weird thing to ask, Stick.”

I told her about what I saw in the
Penthouse
magazine.

“It looked kind of neat,” I said. “Would you ever take a bath with someone?”

“Yes. I think I would.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“Well, later, when my parents go for groceries, we can take a bath together at my house if you want. We shouldn't do it if they're home. They might get mad. You want to?”

“For real?”

“Sure.” She laughed. “It sounds like fun. It's just a bath, anyway. Why? Are you scared?”

I was scared. I never thought she would react like that, like it was completely no big deal at all for us to take a bath together. But that's how Emily was. She never read anything into anything.

Maybe that's why things like my ear didn't matter to her.

“Of course I'm not scared,” I said. “I drive cars and blow things up at night.”

I was really scared.

*   *   *

I left my shoes on the porch,
my jacket and Bosten's cap on the coat tree, and followed Emily upstairs. She stopped at the cupboard in the hallway and pulled out two big green towels.

“Do you like           bubbles           or no bubbles?” she asked.

I had to take a deep breath. I felt dizzy.

“Bubbles,” I squeaked.

She turned around and reached behind me. That was the door to the bathroom.

Emily said, “You                    wait out here. I'll tell you when to come in.”

“Okay.”

I stood there, leaning against the wall beside the door, listening to the sound

of the water

filling the tub.

My knees shook, and my stomach felt like a galloping horse. But for Emily, it was nothing. Just a bubble bath with a friend.

After what seemed like an hour, the water stopped.

“Okay.                                       You                                   can come in now.”

I'd been in that bathroom at least a hundred times, but never with Emily sitting there, naked in a bathtub full of bubbles and steaming water. The room was all white, lacquered walls, white cool tiles beneath my socks, sunlight streaming in through gauze drapes, just the slightest fog on the mirror, our towels laid out on the floor, and there was Emily, the bubbles frothing up to her chin, with her hair clipped up on top of her head. I think that was the first time I ever noticed her neck, how perfect it was.

If I tried to talk, I know I would have gagged.

It was like being in heaven.

Or in a magazine.

Then I noticed her clothes had been folded, so neatly with her panties on top, and left on the counter beside the sink.

“You can                          turn on the radio if you want,” she said.

My hand didn't work so good.

When the sound came on, the Kingston DJ was saying something about the UFO attack last night, and then he started laughing, playing “It Came Out of the Sky” by Creedence. I turned it down.

“Was that        
really
                 you guys?”

I nodded.

She asked, “Do you want me         to        close my eyes?”

I shook my head.

“It's really nice           and warm,” she said. She didn't look away.

I took off my shirt and undershirt. I tried to fold them, but that wasn't working out. I put them down next to Emily's clothes. I took a quick breath and slid my jeans off. I just left them on the floor. Then my socks. They looked like dead white bunnies next to my jeans.

Practically everyone I knew from eighth grade had seen me naked. Well, boys, I mean. It's just how it was since we all took showers together in a really big, open locker room, every day after gym class. I had friends besides Emily, and they'd all seen me naked. So I just told myself it was no big deal, and this was just another friend.

I tried to calm myself down, inhaled, and finally, I pulled down my underwear. I stepped my feet free of them and felt the coolness of the floor tiles under my naked toes. Then I just stood there, not really sure what I was supposed to do next.