The Cake is a Lie (4 page)

When I got to the apartment, one of
Jonsen’s ghetto-ass sisters answered the door and I ran past her
into the arms of Jonsen. We both started crying, we professed our
love for each other.

There was no T.V. in the apartment and
his dad wasn’t there. We played around with a soccer ball he’d been
juggling. His sister’s bitchy voice rang through the house. She
could hit that special note of meanness that made 10-year-olds
cower. His brother was on a cell phone with some friend, talking in
heavy slang about some fight he got in.

“
Dog, I got dude’s
sweatshirt over his cabeza and just ‘boom boom,’ game over,
knumsayin?”

Jonsen’s brother was always getting
kicked out of school. Condoms were lying on the apartment floor,
piles of clothes were in every room. The Palmer smell was
everywhere, the canned fruit. I felt very out of place. I didn’t
like it at all.

Summer, 1999

Jonsen had been staying at his g-ma’s
lately. We’d been building a tree house in her back yard over the
summer. After an amazing day of kind of working on the project,
mainly imagining it, Jonsen asked me to spend the night. He even
begged his dad to order us pizza and rent us a movie. I was nervous
about trying to sleep away from home, I had trouble sleeping and
going to sleep was the most dreaded part of my day. But caught up
in the excitement I decided to go for it and called my mom to
convince her to let me spend the night.

“
Don’t worry, mom, his
grandma is much more responsible than his parents. Yes, you can
talk to her.”

Jonsen’s oldest sister, Alicia, and her
friend had been hanging around with us all day. They were in middle
school. Alicia wanted to rent “Dude, Where’s my Car?” I protested,
but Jonsen betrayed me and sided with them so I was outvoted. I
could hear my brother’s voice, “That movie is for idiots.” We
started watching the movie and then Alicia left to go to bed.
Jonsen and his sister’s friend were sitting next to each other on
his futon while I was sitting on a sleeping bag on the floor. They
were sitting pretty close to each other. Close enough to make me
lose my appetite. I picked up a piece of pizza, but just holding it
in my hand was revolting. The movie might as well have been
background noise to the real show. Now they were lying down next to
each other, Jonsen was the big spoon. They were still pretending to
be watching the movie. Jonsen pulled a blanket over them, he
started kissing the back of her neck while touching her front. She
was doing her best to conceal his hands. Everyone was trying to be
as quiet as possible. My stomach twisted in knots. The smell of
Jonsen’s cologne began making me sick. I tried to keep focusing on
the movie, but every time Ashton Kutcher laughed I cringed with
nausea. The movie became a fun house nightmare. Soon Jonsen was on
top of her, his body moving up and down.

This is the worst I’ve ever felt, my
panicked thoughts raced as the blanket gyrated, what’s wrong with
me? Is this jealousy? Definitely not of her, she’s nothing
special–other than the fact she’s in middle school. No, I’m just
jealous of Jonsen, that he’s Jonsen. That he’s having sex, the
greatest achievement ever. I mean he gets all the girls, but maybe,
just maybe I could’ve had sex before him. Then maybe he’d know what
it was like. It was all a race, and Jonsen had won.

Soon I couldn’t take it anymore and
left. I went down to the basement. I watched infomercials all night
in my own personal hell. I replayed the same angry thoughts over
and over. How dare he do this to me…Only twenty two thousand
seconds until morning.

He came down for me at some point,
apologizing for making me feel uncomfortable, telling me I could
come back now.

“
I’m fine, don’t worry, I
just can’t sleep,” I told him.

For a year after that night I just
avoided sleepovers all together, afraid of not being able to sleep,
afraid of that feeling. For all of the big sleepovers I would stay
until 10ish and then make some elaborate lie as to why I couldn’t
spend the night. “I gotta go guys my mom has to go to the
hospital.” And my mom would go along with it. She and my step dad,
Allan, would pick me up.

In 5
^th
grade, Duncan Anderson threw
the greatest Halloween party I’d ever been to. Duncan was in my
class through grade school. We were far from best friends, but all
the guys in our grade got along and we all played together during
recess (Well, Jonsen didn’t play during recess, he stayed inside,
knitting and playing cards with Mari and the rest of the girls).
Duncan was shy and quiet the first few years I knew him. He wore a
lot of tie dye t-shirts, had a rat tail, and was chubby like me.
Then, in one month, he had a big growth spurt and grew as tall as
Jonsen. I was so jealous. His new height also brought out his
confidence and soon, seemingly out of nowhere, he was hosting our
class’ first boy-girl party.

We were far from mystical times, but
Halloween was definitely still magical. It was that Northwest-fall
smell in the air. Also, being hopped up on a ton of candy was pure
magic at eleven.

There was an enchanted threshold that
night at Duncan’s party, too. A long stair case descending from the
grown-ups who were having their own party upstairs, down into the
dark basement full of unsupervised preteens.

Everyone was there: Kat,
Loren, Jonsen, plenty of 6
^th
graders. There was a strobe
light and a disco ball, legitimately making it by far the biggest
budgeted party I’d ever been to. Everyone greeted me with
excitement.

“
Marco’s here.” Loren and
Jonsen yelled.

People were dancing and singing. “Come
on Barbie let’s go party ah-ah-ah-ya.” I tried to dance and jump
around a little bit. It turned into me sort of hoping across the
floor a few times. I don’t know what my parents were teaching me,
but they should have been teaching me to dance.

After the dancing died down we played
the granddaddy of all spin the bottle games. I even pecked Kat, it
was a miracle.

One of the boys in our
class, Brian, brought his 7
^th
grade step-sister, Addy. Addy
had a reputation and she was living up to it, tongue kissing
everyone.

Addy and a
6
^th
grader Jessica were sitting on Duncan’s couch. I confidently
threw my body between them and squeezed in. Then I put my arms
around both of them like a pimp.

“
Sup ladies, how you doing
tonight.” They cracked up laughing. This was one of my funniest
bits. Then Jessica and Addy both started whispering and giggling
around me.

“
Marco, Addy thinks you have
an incredible butt,” Jessica blurted before being overwhelmed by
dying laughter. I blushed.

“
On a scale of 1 to 10, your
butt is a 10,” Addy finished for her. It was my first great
compliment (adults don’t count). From then on, before I showered, I
looked at my chubby body and thought about my classmates making me
take off my shirt so they could compare who was the fattest kid in
the class. Then I would turn around and look at my butt and get so
overcome with joy, it was a 10.

Allan and my mom picked me up from
Duncan’s party around ten. They went upstairs first and mingled
with the other adults for a bit before taking me home. My mom was
starting to quickly catch onto the whole operation. On the drive
home she was going on about her suspicion that we might have been
unsupervised downstairs.

I heard Duncan’s dad tell her upstairs,
“They’re just kids, we pop down every once in a while.”

My mom was also certain that all the
parents were drunk.

“
I think a lot of those
parents might have drinking problems,” She told Allan. God bless
those parents’ souls, every last one of them. I thought. That was
the best night of my life. I’m the shit and I have so many friends.
Duncan’s parents are so cool. And as for Duncan, well we had to be
best friends now, that was just that.

Duncan and I ran over to Jonsen’s house
to wake him up. Jonsen’s room was a mountain of clothes. You
couldn’t even see the bed. We jumped on him and got him up. He was
groggy as we pushed him out the door and started walking towards
the beach.

“
ZOOOM.” A boy on a motor
scooter blew past us. We watched him zip down the road then slow
down and turn back towards us.

Jonsen surprisingly ran out into the
road after him, yelling, “Pacey. What up.”

I knew that name. Pacey
Baker had a rep. He was a year older than us and in
7
^th
grade. He got suspended last year from Richmond Beach’s local
elementary school for making out with Samantha Sayers in the
hallway. In plain sight of everyone. They must have known they were
going to get in trouble. Pacey was a myth.

I had no clue how Jonsen knew him, but
Jonsen knew everyone. Pacey and Jonsen walked back to us and Jonsen
introduced everyone. I felt embarrassed for Jonsen having to
introduce me. Duncan was tall and good looking, for all Pacey knew
he was the shit.

I studied Pacey meticulously. He wasn’t
as tall as Jonsen and Duncan, but he was stockily built with broad
shoulders. His chubby square face was unique and extremely likable,
but his eyebrows were cocked all the way up, just itching for the
first chance to put someone down. I was now officially in a state
of awe.

“
What can you get it up to
Pacey? 25?” Jonsen asked.

“
Are you kidding? I’ve hit
35 before.”

“
Cool scooter.” I finally
burst out.

“
Uh, ok.” Willy punished me
by not even looking at me. I decided not to say anything
else.

Jonsen and Pacey continued talking
about the scooter, how tight it was. While they talked, we walked a
few blocks alongside Pacey over to his house, some of his friends
were meeting him there. We were kind of hanging out with Pacey
Baker! I studied the way Pacey walked. I’d overheard my classmate
Jessica say Pacey walked with a gangster limp, but I didn’t see
anything. He walked kind of slowly, I observed.

His house was actually an apartment
complex and when we got there two giants and one kid were waiting
in the parking lot with their own motor scooters. Pacey reluctantly
introduced everyone, his friends were Mark (giant), Chris (giant)
and Morris (kid). Morris’ first name was Chris too, but they’d
smartly nicknamed him Morris to avoid confusion. Plus, last name
nicknames were very in, Loren called people by their last names all
the time.

I’d heard about Mark and Chris. They
were a year older. Kids from their elementary school dropped their
names in stories to sound cool, although they’d never done anything
as infamous as Pacey.

Mark and Chris were monstrously tall.
They ruled over me. Mark’s brown bangs hung evenly across his
handsome face. But he had a mammoth gap between his front teeth
that he was forced to wear with pride. There was nothing
traditionally handsome about Chris, he had chubby Santa Clause
cheeks and a square forehead. Chris scared the shit out of me. That
one didn’t have anything to lose. Their third companion, Morris,
was barely taller than me. He was a skinny, blond baby. The most
popular kids always came with a pre-puberty sidekick, for what we
lacked in size we made up with quick wit. Life’s naturally balanced
that way.

As Pacey opened his apartment door,
Chris clamped his big arms down on Morris’ shoulders and shouted,
“Let’s throw Morris in Pacey’s pool.”

Mark echoed this sentiment chanting,
“Morris in the pool. Morris in the pool.” Morris squirmed to get
away but the ogres hoisted him straight up into the air and placed
him onto their shoulders. He eventually gave in–it was easier not
to resist. As a #2 myself, I felt Morris’ pain, what bullies. I was
so grateful Jonsen didn’t treat me like that.

Pacey laughed. Jonsen, I and
Duncan watched silently.
Pontius
Pilates.

As they carried him into the house,
Morris started pleading and screeching in a last ditch attempt,
“Come on, guys, please. Seriously please. Don’t do this. Remember,
I bought you guys those burgers yesterday.”

Mark stopped, halting the procession
“You know, Chris, he’s right... Morris did put up fifteen on those
burgers.” Chris set him down and Morris scrambled back out the door
a few feet away to a safe distance.

“
Well, you get off this time
Morris.” They all laughed, Morris laughed the loudest.
I tried not to look directly at them, to make
eye-contact, I was petrified at this point. Guy-friends notoriously
picked on each other but that was by far the worst I’d ever seen. I
picked up the vibe that they treated him like that on a regular
basis. Like he was their personal play toy. What power. If that was
how they treat their friends…

We hung outside Pacey’s for a bit.
Duncan asked to ride Mark’s motor scooter, and Mark reluctantly
said “aight.” Duncan began riding the thing in little circles
around the apartment parking lot. Duncan was finishing up his
little joy ride when he went over a speed bump and accidently
kicked off one of the tubes running into the engine. You clumsy
buffoon, you bumbling idiot, I shouted in my head.