Beyond Clueless (14 page)

That night Kirby was . . . being Kirby.

He was driving us—me, Xiang, and Oliver—to God-knows-where for God-knows-what reason. The original
plan was for
all
of us to hang out, Jimmy and Derek included, but then they dropped out at the last minute to go do boyfriend-y things.

And when Jimmy had called to announce that they were dropping out of the plans, I’d assumed that Kirby and Oliver would want to do their own thing.

“Oh, no,” Jimmy had said hurriedly. “You have to go. Derek
insists
that you go, or he’ll feel bad about ruining it for everyone else. He was crazy-adamant about it.”

“Well, then, come along!”

“Marty, come on. I need to spend time with Derek.”

No, you don’t, I wanted to say. You need to spend time with me! But Jimmy was doing the whole assistant-stage-manager thing, and he’d passed my little loyalty test about keeping Felix secret, so I couldn’t exactly argue with him about his commitment to our friendship.

“You wouldn’t want me to show up every time you meet up with
Felix
,” he said.

OK, that was another good point. (Although, technically speaking, that was exactly what was already happening.)

“And, anyway,” he continued, “Kirby and Oliver are really fun! I don’t see why I’m even having to convince you. You’ll have a great time.”

So this was going to be the first time Xiang and I were going out with
friends
of friends. Like, without Jimmy as a connection, it felt totally weird getting into a car with two older guys from a completely different part of the Cleveland area. OK, they weren’t
random
guys, as we had hung out a
couple times before. But, still. Thank goodness they were gay; otherwise it would have totally felt like a date.

So it didn’t ease any of the awkwardness that Kirby refused to tell us (Oliver, too!) where we were going; he just gave us explicit instructions to bring “sexy-hot” clothes. We feared he was taking us to a strip club or a sex shop or something. Xiang and I both slipped out of our parent-friendly sweats as soon as we got into the car. (My parents gave me a suspicious look as we left the house “to go to Jimmy’s”—they must have noticed the odd lumps in the sweats—but they didn’t say anything.) Kirby kept smirking and humming along to the dance radio station as we tried to coax the destination out of him. Eventually, we pulled into the parking lot of what looked to be a warehouse.

Xiang was the first to see the sign. “Bowling?
Hells
no.”

“Ah, ah, ah,” Kirby said, pulling into a spot. “
Disco
bowling. Don’t be talkin’ smack about Ohio’s favorite pastime. It’s a very enriching and enjoyable sport.”

He took the key out of the ignition and proceeded to put on mirrored aviator sunglasses. “Best to try to blend with the locals as much as we can,” he explained. Then he flashed a wicked smile. “Plus, my uncle owns this place, so I think we’ll be able to score some pitchers of beer.”

“And there we have it,” Oliver said, chuckling. “I knew there was something.”

“This is what I’m wearing this tiny skirt for? Why ‘sexy-hot’?” I asked, already dreading the looks I’d be getting from fat old men inside.

Kirby looked me up and down. “Darling, you should
always
look hot. More to the point, I need you ladies to look as old as possible. For the beer, and, um,
technically speaking
, I’m not supposed to be driving more than one passenger who is under twenty-one. Mum’s the word.”

I stuck my tongue out at him (mature, right?) and climbed out of the car. I self-consciously stretched down my tube skirt. I’d only bought the skirt to wear over skinny jeans—very Scandinavian chic!—but tonight I figured that, since my legs were miraculously bruise-less (and clean-shaven!), I’d let them roam free.

Inside, “Shake Your Groove Thing” was blasting, and the place was dark, lit only with the purplish glow of black lights. The bowling alley had clearly seen better days—the plastic veneer on all the benches and counters was flaking off—and the disco theme was only halfheartedly embraced. There was a mirror ball turning unsteadily in the middle of the room, and there was a sad wisp of fog sputtering out of a smoke machine in the corner.

“Wow, this is, uh, groovy,” Xiang mumbled.

We each got our bowling shoes (is it weird that I thought mine were really cute, even if they had been worn by thousands of people since the late ’90s?), and, true to his word, Kirby got us a couple of pitchers of beer.

“Aww, man, if only I had my driver’s license now, you wouldn’t have to stay sober tonight,” said Oliver, patting Kirby on the back.

“Don’t underestimate me, man,” Kirby said, pulling a
thermos out of his backpack. He poured half a pitcher into it. “There’s always the after-party at home.”

And, well, we had a blast. We really did. We split into two teams: me and Oliver against Xiang and Kirby. We sucked at the bowling, but it was fun to mock and psych out one another. Actually, Oliver wasn’t that bad—relatively speaking—so he coached me on getting the ball to roll
all the way down
the lane.

“You just gotta watch where you’re going, keep your eyes on the pins. That’s it.”

Or not so much. Another gutter ball.

Between bowls, Xiang and Kirby would huddle on their side and get really engrossed in a private conversation. At first I assumed they were just being competitive and talking about bowling, but when I passed closer by after totally missing the pins (yet again), I overheard a few things, and it was clear that they were talking about sex stuff. I was glad that Xiang and Kirby were hitting it off, but I couldn’t help but feel rebuffed. I mean, I was supposed to be her sex-talk friend, not Kirby! Especially now that I had locked lips with a boy myself!

But then the beer started setting in, and my annoyance began to fade. Honestly, I didn’t want to hear about Xiang and Parker’s future sex life, and Oliver was keeping me extremely entertained. I couldn’t stop laughing about how freaky he looked in the black light, all eye whites and teeth. (Nice teeth on that boy. Like a sugar-free gum commercial—like Felix.)

“Wait, hold on. I think you’re swinging it wrong.” Oliver came over and guided my arm from behind. “You’ve got to release the ball when you’re just about . . . there.”

I tried it on the next attempt—and I actually knocked down three pins!

(Hey, now. Be nice. It was my first time bowling.)

I screamed and launched myself onto Oliver, giving him a great big bear hug.

(OK, first time bowling
in years
. Two, to be exact.)

I gave Oliver a wet, exaggerated smooch on his cheek, which had the hilarious effect of making him turn bright red. Even when lit by black light.

The beer also totally helped in making us better bowlers (or so it seemed), so Kirby started demanding compensation points for his handicap of total sobriety. We gave them to him but then took them away when his last turn ended up in a strike.

“An outrage!” he claimed, but he and Xiang won anyway.

The loss was totally my fault.

Damn gutter balls.

When Xiang and I eventually got home, wayyyy late (she had managed to score permission to sleep over, an Exciting Development), we were acting much more drunk than our blood-alcohol levels would indicate. I’m sure my parents could hear us banging around and giggling madly, but thankfully they didn’t bother to investigate.

Just as we were both falling asleep, I turned to Xiang.

“Do you realize that I haven’t thought about Felix all
night?” (OK, that was a lie. But it wasn’t nearly as often as I had, say, earlier in the day.)

Xiang rubbed her eyes, smudging a last bit of eyeliner that she hadn’t gotten off in the bathroom. “Really?”

“Do you think that’s a good thing or a bad thing?”

She yawned. “Good thing. Shows you’re an independent woman.”

For moment, I gazed at the shadows on my ceiling cast by trees from outside. The thinnest parts, the branches, looked like tributaries of a dark river, draining into ever-wider courses.

I looked over to see Xiang typing into her cell. “Are you seriously texting Parker right now? Again? You can barely keep your eyes open.”

“No, I’m not, if you must know,” she said. “I’m texting Kirby.”

Kirby? Her new best friend Kirby? I knew it didn’t make any sense, but somehow I felt that it was deeply unfair that she was becoming all buddy-buddy with someone she knew 100 percent through me.

OK, even in my grumpy, somewhat drunken state, I knew I was being ridiculous. I mean, Xiang and I weren’t really besties (or were we?). And it’s not like I even knew Kirby all that well, so I couldn’t even really claim him as my friend.

But I couldn’t help feeling like I should be more included, you know, like, as some sort of finder’s fee?

Then I started wondering whether having a really intense best-friendship with Jimmy had screwed me up. Would I
ever be able to have friends like other people and not be all possessive and jealous? It seemed that the only way I knew how to be friends with someone was to completely merge identities.

“You and Kirby were sure chatty this evening,” I said, perversely stoking the embers of my annoyance.

“Yeah, he’s a funny guy. We were mostly talking about the different guys he’s dating online. Seattle’s being evasive, so Kirby is starting to write him off. But Omaha forgave him, so he’s back to being the favorite.”

“Sounds complicated.”

“Yeah,” she murmured groggily.

“Were you discussing Parker with him?”

“Yeah, a little,” she said, then yawned widely. “God, I’ve become such a horndog. Unlike you, I can’t
stop
thinking about my guy. I just wanna lick him aaall over.”

“Eww.”

Was that how I was supposed to be feeling about Felix right now? I mean, I enjoyed the kiss, but I definitely wasn’t wanting to—eww.

I felt queasy, and I don’t think it was the beer.

Maybe I was OK with Kirby taking on some areas of Xiang’s friendship, after all.

Xiang, meanwhile, was fast asleep.

O
n Monday morning I got an e-mail from Felix (finally!).

Hey—

Can’t wait to see you at rehearsal tomorrow.

F

How cute was that? I could just picture his dimpled smile as he typed it between classes. *sigh* And he sent it from his
personal
e-mail address, not his school one.

:)

Meanwhile, Jenny had e-mailed out the rehearsal schedule, which she had made on a spreadsheet program. She should work for the CIA, because trained code-breakers with PhDs and supercomputers wouldn’t be able to make heads or tails of it. OK, maybe it wasn’t that bad—and I’m sure it was hard to put together, since we each had our own dates when we couldn’t rehearse—but Xiang had to help me for a good ten minutes at lunch before I figured out that I would have only seven rehearsals with Felix.

Yup, you read that right:
seven
.

The first of which was tomorrow. The boys in the cast
had a few separate rehearsal days on weekends, probably because they had to travel more, and a lot of the music rehearsals split the cast into smaller groups to work with Mrs. Murray. Little Red Riding Hood basically only has one musical scene with the Wolf, and not really any with Cinderella’s Prince (except for full-cast scenes), so Felix and I were put into separate groups. Most of our “together” rehearsals would be in a few weeks, when we started doing our dress rehearsals.

Aaaaaargh!!!

Xiang was lucky: All her orchestra rehearsals would include Parker, obviously. And it looked like poor Jimmy and Oliver had to be at every rehearsal except the ones that were just about the music. (I couldn’t even imagine what horrible tasks Jenny had already begun dreaming up for them . . .) So I supposed
that
was one good thing about the schedule. Last night’s bowling with Oliver had been totally fun, and until the performances in mid-November, I’d have lots of time with both of my favorite gay boys.

But very little time with the boy I
most
wanted to have around. (Pout.)

“You know,” Xiang said, taking a drag from her cigarette, “you could see him
not
at rehearsal. Then you wouldn’t even have to sneak around. And it’s not like
your
parents are breathing down your neck, monitoring you all the time.”

I kicked absentmindedly at the brick wall behind Jerry Hall. Xiang had started smoking after lunch every day now. She’d found a spot just outside the rear entrance to the
theater where no one ever went, and she could pollute her lungs undetected by any teachers.

“I don’t think he’s gotten his driver’s license yet,” I said, “even though he is a junior. Maybe he’ll get it soon, like Oliver will? That would make everything soooo much simpler.”

“Assuming he also gets, or has access to, a car,” she reminded me, stubbing what little was left of her cigarette on the cracked concrete walkway.

Curses. “Well, his sister had a car, so maybe it’s an extra family car that he could also use?”

Xiang didn’t say anything.

For about half a minute, we watched a red-tailed hawk circle high above.