The Great American Whatever (18 page)

Already, the floodlights are making me dizzy.

P
ittsburgh routinely falls into the top-ten list of places you should live. Fun fact: I haven't visited many places, but Pittsburgh is my favorite city regardless. It's in my blood. I've never been west of Ohio, but someday I want to go to Chicago, maybe. I hear it's like a big Pittsburgh with better pizza, and the lake there is like a small ocean without sharks, which sounds perfect.

“It's, like, so nice up here,” some girl says, leaning over the railing on the upper deck of this overcrowded riverboat. And it is nice. I just wish Amir would find me before I'm forced to make small talk with some rando.

At least the captain of the boat tonight has us going at a full clip, which feels like
some
thing. Every time we go beneath a bridge, the captain idles the engine and everyone on the boat lets out a giant cheer, and our voices multiply like bats flapping around in a cave.

I pull out my new phone and debate text options to Amir:

“
On the roof with an amir-size hole in my conversation
”

Just: “
On roof . . .
”

and

“
If u find me and bring me a drink I will act responsible!!
”

The last option makes me smile, and as I'm typing it out, I feel hot beer breath on my face, and look up, and let out a tiny shout, and then I go: “Hey.”

“Happy,” Amir says, with this weird little break in the sentiment, “birthday.” He looks really good. “Thanks for getting down here tonight! Was it a hassle?”

“No. Easiest thing ever.”

Someone brings Amir a drink and he says thanks, but when she turns away, he pours half of it over the side of the ship.

“Uh.” I laugh. “Why are you doing that?”

“People give you so much crap if you don't get shit-faced,” he says. “So I just keep pouring half of it out. I feel responsible for everyone's safety tonight.”

He hiccups. He is, actually, a tiny bit drunk. Did everyone arrive at the boat pre-liquored? Is that a thing?

“Did I make a total jagoff of myself last night?” I say. I'm looking at Amir's cup and rather than coveting it, my stomach is playing pinball.

“Naw. You were sweet,” he says. Great. “Sweet” is how you describe a toddler. He goes to touch my hair, but the boat hits a wake and he stumbles a little, and so to cover for the awkward moment, I change the camera angle on our conversation.

“Ooh, there goes the Incline,” I say, pointing behind Amir.

We have this really cool train that climbs the side of the mountain in Pittsburgh, up to this restaurant called Le Mont, which means “the mountain” in French, and it's fancy (you have to wear a sports coat), and Geoff's parents treated me and Annabeth to dinner there once and we didn't know what to do with all those forks.

“Aw, man, I'm gonna miss Pittsburgh.” Close-up, back to Amir.

“Well, how long is your writing program thing?”

Amir puts his hand on my waist and it feels wonderful.

“Do you remember what I said last night, after we bowled, about my, um, going away?”

Oh, boy. I could fake this, but my timing is off. In my mind, I was going to stand here and reenact a whole funny Le Mont montage—about how Annabeth and I used the forks to brush our hair, like Ariel in
The Little Mermaid
—and so I'm caught too off guard to lie.

“Only kind of,” I say.

Amir sits us down on an ancient bench whose wood gives almost as much as a pool floaty would.
The Good Ship Lollipop
is like half an iceberg away from disaster.

“Uh, so I'm not sure I'm coming back to Pitt in the fall,” Amir says.

Yeah, I definitely don't remember him saying that, because I'm standing up again, and chugging my 7UP down, fast, and I'm not liking this one bit.

“Where are you going, then, instead?” I say. I put my foot up on the bench, like I'm posing for a Dockers ad. Idiot.

“I got into this pre-MBA business program back at U.T.,” he says, running his fingers around the rim of his red plastic cup. “It's a good opportunity. I mean, it would shut my parents up, at least. They sort of threatened not to keep paying for Pitt, so.”

“Do you
want
to go into business?” I say.

“No, but I'm feeling a little driftless in Pittsburgh, and a
lot
of my friends are in the program at U.T. By the way, I like your cologne. CK One?”

You have me
, I want to say. I know we are good for each other. “You mean
aimless
,” I say, and he gets up and places his hand on my knee and goes: “What?” And I say: “
Driftless
is not a word,” and Amir chuckles and says, “I don't understand how you're not a good student! You're smarter than me.”

“Than
I am
,” I say, and we laugh, but I'm not really laughing. I'm panic-flirting, convincing him with little sonic eye-rays to stay here. To stay in Pittsburgh and teach me things and keep telling me I'm smart, I'm smart, I'm smart, until I believe it enough to get out of bed even on days when I have nowhere to go and nobody to collaborate with.

The song of the summer comes on over a jerry-rigged speaker system. Amir skids his hand over my buzz cut and it makes me shiver. I want to ask him what he sees in me.
Why are you even hanging with me at all?
I'd like to say—but somehow the letters switch themselves around, the little rascals, and all I manage to get out is: “Was this boat expensive to rent, or what?”

He makes an offended face, but I stand my ground. “I mean, it's not cheap,” he goes, “but it's fine. It's no biggie.”

“Okay,” I say, pulling my knee away from his hand and feeling antsy. “It just seems like a really big thing to be doing. To, like, rent a boat to give yourself a going-away party when you haven't even been in my hometown a full year.”

“Wow, all right. I mean: I made good friends. I wanted to send everyone off in a big way.”

“Could you say the first and last names of everyone who's on this boat right now?” I know he can't. I know it.

Amir fake-laughs and puts his drink down on the bench.

“
You
threw up on my shoe last night, mister,” he says. I look down. He's got these bright cream-colored Adidas on, and indeed: There is a tan stain across the toe and bleeding into the shoelaces, like the fallout from a dropped casserole.

“Whoa, I'm so sorry,” I say.

“It's okay.”

I guess Amir is a good starter guy. Throw up on him, try out some theories, say goodbye. Except I don't want to even wave goodbye.

“Have you ever dated somebody as young as me?” I say, and Amir goes: “Oh, are we
dating
?” and I go, “Oh, no, I mean, I didn't mean that, I just meant: theoretically.”

He goes: “No. All of my boyfriends have been a
lot
older,” and I'm thinking
All?
when he adds: “And if I dated anyone younger than you”—as he takes my 7UP and puts it on the bench—“I'd have to get paid babysitting money.” I instinctively lunge for the cup, and when I come back up with it, Amir takes my chin, with this wonderful kind of too much force, and brings my lips to his.

This isn't how I wrote our first kiss. And yet.

His tongue is inside my mouth, and it is simultaneously bigger and wetter and also more delicious than anything I've ever eaten. I can
taste
him, I mean, and our teeth bump, and I'm not sure if I'm doing it wrong, but when he laughs, I know it's not a mean laugh.

“A little less tongue,” he slurs, which was precisely the note I was going to give to him. When we go at it again, I'm giving him, like, no tongue, and he pulls away and goes, “The hottest thing about
you
is you don't know how hot you even
are
yet.” He pulls my waist in to his, and the song cuts out, and somebody goes,
“Look!”

A riot of fireworks launch into the night sky, lighting up Amir's glasses in confetti-green bursts. It's not the Fourth of July, because my birthday is in June and goddammit, it's still my birthday, and for one brief, odd moment, I consider whether Amir ordered fireworks for me or maybe for himself.

Burst. Burst. Burst. The sky is trying to break apart. We both look up.

“Did you, wait, like,
arrange
these for my birthday?” I ask. The Hot Metal Bridge, which we're idling under, looks rusted to oblivion. Like it could collapse on us. And so suddenly I want to get away, out from underneath this dare.

“
Win,
” Amir goes.

“Yeah?”

“I said no, I don't know why fireworks are going off. Maybe for some sports thing?”

But nothing's playing tonight. If a game were playing tonight, the T would have been littered with more angry people just like that guy I don't want to be.

Now the night clouds are red, and now they're purple, and now they're yellow, and yet the giant kaleidoscope sky feels smaller, somehow, than Amir's tongue in my mouth, which is happening again—smaller than the fact that his mustache zone is scratchy enough to be making my lip burn.

“Can I say something risky?” Amir says, pulling away and hiding a hiccup, and I go, “Anything,” quick and quiet, and he goes, “I think we need to get you laid tonight.”

And now the sky is yellow, yellow, white, white, white, the finale, bombs bursting in air like something not quite patriotic but rather peculiarly crass. My choir trip to Charleston coincided with some national holiday, and when we landed at the Pittsburgh International Airport, it was nighttime, and as we descended through the clouds, we saw about twenty different displays of fireworks happening across all the flat regions and towns that dot Pittsburgh's edges. I was the only person on the plane from Charleston that night who wasn't in awe of the fireworks but rather was thinking: 1) I hope we don't get
hit
by a stray firework; and 2) If I survive this plane ride, I need to remember this imagery so that someday I can use this scene in a screenplay.

“So I guess that's a
no
,” Amir says, “about getting you laid.”

He throws his head back to “drink” from his red cup, but I know he finished it more than ten minutes ago. I know because I saw him chug the rest of it. I am distracted by seeing
everything
, and so instead of telling him that getting laid tonight sounds negotiable, possible, probable even—the most unique seventeenth birthday present a guy could want—I'm suddenly watching Carly, who's woozily trying to keep her cool as she approaches Amir from behind.

“'Meer,”
she says, salty like he's been ignoring her all night. “The captain-dude-guy wants to know if you want to head back now, or in ten minutes.”

Amir swings around. “What are you talking about? I rented this thing for like a whole nother hour.”

Carly juts her pointer finger into his shoulder. Beer sloshes against the sides of her cup, like when you cannonball into a hot tub. “Don't shoot the
mesh
-enger,” she says, her inebriated sentences turning all-vowel before our very eyes.

The engine below revs back up. The boat begins a creaky turn back toward those weird floodlights at shore. Amir looks at me and goes, “Stay here,” and then gets close and whispers, “
and cut Carly off
,” and when he's gone to the lower deck, my arms get pin-prickled with wet river air. In the hazy firecracker smoke, Carly almost looks like Geoff.

“Hey,” I go, “do you know why your brother is pissed at me?”

“For
get
him,” Carly goes. “Let's talk about Quinn and
Amiiir
, huh?”

As if he and I have formed a law firm.

“How is Amir even
affording
all of this?”

“Oh, baby,” Carly says, adjusting a bra strap and smacking her gum. “His dad is like megabucks.”

“Oh, no shit?”

“Yup. I
basically
set you up with a prince.”

“Wait, literally?”

Carly scrunches her eyebrows and shouts, to top the rainbow-colored rockets above: “No, Q. Not
literally
-literally.”

“Oh.”

“Anyway, even princes are human. He had his heart broken this year.” (beat) “Be gentle with him.”

I lean in. “
Actually
, Carly?” I say, making her play my older sister in a surprise moment of stunt casting: “I think Amir wants to have s-e-x tonight.”

Literally I spell it out. If I say the actual word, I'll be one inch closer to it, and it intimidates me.

“Wait, this is
amazing
,” Carly says, dancing in a little circle, which seems to dip her even deeper into the well of drunk. “That is, like, an
opportunity
, Quinn!” Loud. Too loud. “Amir is, like,
experienced.
”

I try to blink away the most recent firecracker. “Well, we'll see.”

“Don't ‘we'll see' me, kiddo. Is he not the hottest? Did
I
not set you up with the hottest?”

“He's hot, yeah.”

“The hottest. Don't let me down, Quinn.”

Wow, I was actually kind of hoping she'd back me up here; tell me to wait until I feel ready. How do guys even
have
sex together? I mean, I've seen the videos, but how does it not, like,
hurt
? Sorry, serious question.

I lean my hip against the railing, right into my bruise from the bowling alley table. “Carly, you brokering my virginity is kind of freaking me out, to be honest.”

“Quinny, I just want you to
live
a little.”