Reese was not amused. “I should write you up,” he said. “Or make you spend the night in the drunk tank. Unfortunately, Armie’s in there.”
“Uh-oh, Armie. No one to bail your butt out now.”
Reese studied me. He shook his head. My head was spinning like a circulating pump. “I’ll let it pass this time,” Reese said.
I believe we both knew why.
“You think you can make it home?”
“Oh yeah.” I cranked the key. Reese reached in and removed the key from the ignition. Guess that meant I’d be walking.
I staggered out of the truck. Halfway down the block, Reese sidled up beside me. I whirled on him. “I said I can make it.”
“I know you did. Consider this a police escort.” He grinned and winked.
That wink. I suddenly felt so sick I thought I might blow on Reese’s shiny patent leathers. If my head didn’t drill a fence post on the Led-betters’ front lawn first.
I woke up on my bedroom floor. The ceiling was a yellow vortex and my stomach heaved. I scrunched to my knees and stumbled to the john, just in time.
No telling how long I was in there, puking my guts out. Every time I stood, the room spun out and my legs crumpled. Finally, I managed to crawl back out the bathroom door — into a roadblock.
Darryl. He did an unexpected thing. He lifted me up by the armpits and shoved me against the wall. “You stupid shit,” he said in my face.
“You’ve been drinking.”
“Gold stars all ’round.”
He shoved me again, hard.
“Ow. Cut it out.”
Darryl screamed in my face, “You stupid shit! Don’t you start. Don’t you ever start. Do you hear me?”
No, I couldn’t hear him. My eardrums were ruptured. “Let me go.”
“If I ever catch you drinking again, I’ll kill you!” He released me and I slid down the wall into a heap at his feet. I tried to pull myself up by Darryl’s jeans, but he didn’t have any on. Just black bikini briefs. Ew. I wasn’t touching those. He kicked me off his leg.
I clawed the wall to stand. Made it.
Darryl clamped down on my shoulder and swiveled me around. It took a few years for my head to catch up. “You’re better than him,” he said. “Do you hear me?”
“No. Why don’t you come closer?
Scream it in my ear?
” I pushed him out of my face. Did my foot connect with his shin? I was being sucked into the vortex again. Falling, falling,
thud.
The nightmare. Same one I’d had for the last two years. No. It couldn’t be. I wasn’t asleep.
Or was I?
Sometime later I opened my eyes to find Darryl gone and me flat on my back in bed. Alive, at least, but barely.
“You won’t believe what he thought.” Xanadu’s voice reverberated in my empty skull. A brain used to reside there. What time was it? I squinted at the clock on the stove. Four-thirty. PM? Had I slept all day? I was disoriented. Sick. Was it Saturday? I should be at work.
“Mike, are you there?”
“Where?’”
“Get this. He thought you and I were together. Like a couple. Isn’t that hilarious?” She laughed. What? Who thought that? Someone other than me? “He’s coming by later tonight to work on our math. Don’t tell him
I took Geometry sophomore year. I am
so
glad I finally got up the courage to call him.”
Oh, me too, I thought. How could she sound so cheery? Sober? She’d called him. My stomach felt like it’d been reamed out by a backhoe.
“Last night was a blast, wasn’t it?” Xanadu said. “I haven’t been that wasted since.. .” Her voice trailed off. “You know. Did you get busted?”
A vague memory of Reese helping me home resurfaced. Darryl laying into me. No consequences. “No. Did you?”
“No. Aunt Faye and Uncle Lee’s bedroom is upstairs, so I’m sure they didn’t hear me come in at
three AM,
” she emphasized the time.
I’d never feel good again. My head was throbbing. My gut ached.
“Mike?”
“Yeah?”
She hesitated. “Nothing. We can talk later. I’ll call you after Bailey leaves tonight. If I can. Aunt Faye has this stupid rule about not calling people after nine. I mean, God. How Toto is that?”
“Toto,” I said.
She paused a moment. “Thanks,” she said. “For everything.” Then hung up.
What’d she mean, everything? Her voice suggested... Did something happen between us that I didn’t remember? No, I’d remember.
She called him.
Darryl slammed in the back door. He tossed the truck keys on the counter and looped a leg over his dinette chair. A cigarette dangled out the side of his mouth. Rubbing his hands together, he said, “What’s for dinner?”
I just looked at him. Then snatched up the keys.“Where do you think you’re going?”
“Stop screaming, will you?” Was he? I pressed a forearm to my forehead.
“You’re grounded.” Darryl stubbed out his cigarette in an old cereal bowl.
Right. “I’ve got to go to work.” I added to myself, If I still have a job.
“Nice present you left me in the truck.”
Ugh. The vomit. “Sorry. I’ll clean it out.”
“Already did.” Darryl got up to head for the fridge. “What time are you getting home?”
What was he now, my mother? Ours was such an exemplary role model. “Tiny called from the salon,” Darryl said. “One of her sinks is clogged and she wants you to come by and fix it. Somebody named the Redmans — who I never heard of, have you? — are redoing their plumbing and want you to come and give them an estimate on the job. You might’ve told me you were in the biz again.” He glugged from the milk jug.
“You might’ve asked.” Next to the phone he’d scribbled down “Tiny” and the number for the Redmans — who, no, I’d never heard of — on the back of a grocery bill. I’d call after work. I wasn’t very lucid at the moment. More to myself than him, I mumbled, “I didn’t know I
was
back in the biz.”
I lay on my bed, watching the digital numbers on my clock radio turn over. 9:01, 9:02. Xanadu wasn’t going to call. I willed time to stop. 9:05, 9:06. I could’ve called her, except Faye or Leland might ask who was calling at this hour. They’d think I didn’t have manners. Xanadu was right. Nine o’clock was early. The nine o’clock rule was Toto.
9:12. In one minute, I’d call her.What if Bailey was still there? I closed my eyes and blocked out all feeling.
I wouldn’t call. It was Toto, the nine o’clock rule. But it was part of me. I was the spawn of Toto.
He was turned around in his seat, his own seat, talking to Xanadu and laughing. I’d never heard Bailey laugh. He sounded like a hyena. Mrs. Stargell smiled at me. “Morning, Mike,” she chirruped.
I forced a cheery, “Morning.” Not very cheery. I headed for the dunce seat.
Everyone was talking and laughing. What was this, Happy Laughing Day?
I scraped the desk across the linoleum trying to sit. Sit. Stay. Roll over and play dead. Maybe I could inch over into the broom closet while Miz S reviewed the homework. Shut the door and disembowel.
Xanadu waved her arms in the air. What was she doing? She’d swiveled around toward me when Mrs. Stargell began to write an equation on the board. Xanadu drew back her arm and pitched a wad of paper my way. It arced high in the air and I snagged it.
A note. Folded into a wedge. It took a minute to figure out how to unfold the paper without ripping it. I smoothed the page open in my lap. “Sorry about not calling,” she’d written. Her handwriting was exquisite, like her. “B stayed until after ten. Then AF kicked him out.” She’d drawn a frowny face with a lolling tongue. “Ditch your next class. Let’s go somewhere and talk.”
I glanced up. She was waiting for my answer.
Oh yeah. Happy Laughing Day.
We climbed the fire escape to the roof — Jamie’s and my refuge when he needed to grab a smoke between classes, and I needed sky. I used to smoke. Let’s say I tried it a couple of times and found it held no appeal. Dad smoked. He didn’t want me to start. Occasionally, if I was bored, I’d bum a smoke off Jamie. Mostly I blew rings. I’d flick ash off the end of the butt, or practice holding a cigarette the way guys do to look cool.
There was a shady spot behind the aluminum ductwork over the gym. I directed Xanadu there. Dozens of fresh cigarette butts were stubbed out on the flashing. These couldn’t all be Jamie’s. Someone had discovered our sanctum. Big surprise.
Xanadu offered me a granola bar. “No thanks,” I said. I was too pumped, being alone with her in a private place. My power shake was churning up foam in my stomach.
“Bailey told me what happened to your dad,” she said.
“What?” I whirled on her. “What are you and Bailey doing talking about my dad?”
Xanadu cowered a little at my tone of voice. “Sorry. It just came up. I mean, you did. The subject of your dad. I’m sorry.” She looked at me; looked deep into my eyes.
Too deep. I had to turn away. Picking up a two-inch cigarette butt and studying it, wishing I had Dad’s lighter on me, I said, “Everybody dies. So what?” I flicked the butt down the shingles and watched it roll off the roof.
Xanadu placed a loose hand over my bent knee. “We don’t have to talk about it,” she said. “I just thought you’d want to.”
“I don’t.” I twisted my head to meet her eyes. Sad eyes. I’d had enough sad eyes to last me a lifetime. “It’s old news. It happened two years ago, okay?”
“Okay,” she said softly. She added, “Want to talk about your mom then?”
I scrabbled to my feet. “I thought we came here to talk about you. You and Bailey. He thought we were together, huh?” I leaned against the duct. “So you called him, huh?”
“Yeah.” She wrinkled her nose. “Can you believe that? The together part?”
I shook my head, wishing I could. Knowing I did.
“He’s so sweet. Polite too. Like he calls Uncle Lee
sir
. ‘Yes, sir. No, sir.’ My dad would shit his shorts if anyone I brought home ever called him sir.”
How many had she brought home? I’d call him sir. She could take me home.
Xanadu hugged her knees and smiled. “He asked me out. We’re going to the movies in Garden City on Friday. I don’t know why we have to wait a whole week.”
I checked out. She went on talking: Bailey this, Bailey that. I stood, mind wandering, watching her lips move, her eyes dance. I didn’t care what she talked about, what she said or didn’t say, I loved being here with her, sharing sky with her. I could stay up here forever.
When the bell rang, I was shocked to realize an hour had passed.
“Maybe I could bum a ride home with him every day,” she said, as my consciousness kicked in. “Is that against Toto rules?” She blinked up at me.
Could she hear my silent scream? “I better get back,” I said. “I need to work on this history project with Deb.” Deb wasn’t even in my class.
Xanadu extended a hand for me to pull her up. The heat of her hand, her touch, shot through me. Why him? Why not me? I’d take her home. I’d gladly submit to the extra laps around the bases for being late to practice.
She dusted off her rear. As we treaded back over the shingles to the fire ladder, she clenched my upper arm and tugged me to a stop. “I’m not the kind of person who suddenly drops her friends when she has a boyfriend. I hate girls who do that. And I promise not to blabber on and on ad nauseam about Bailey —” She squeezed her eyes shut. “God. I just did that for an hour, didn’t I?” Her head lolled back. “You have permission to slap me.”
Never. I’d never lay a hand on her. We poised at the edge of the roof, Xanadu staring off into the ball field, me staring at her. “I don’t have a lot going for me,” she said, “but I am a really good friend.”
“What do you mean, not a lot going?” She focused on me; our eyes held. She had the world. She had me. “You have everything,” I told her. “You’re...you’re great.”
She nudged my shoulder. “You’re biased.”
Yeah. She got that right.
She smiled into my eyes. That smile.
I swear, that smile was meant only for me. It wasn’t my imagination, and I was stone sober. I watched her descend, her shiny red hair reflecting in the sun. A sentence, a phrase, a word lodged in my brain. Boyfriend. She said boyfriend. She already thought of Bailey as her boyfriend.
T
he Redman ranch was south of town, halfway to Garden City. I booked it down there after practice, before work. It was a big job — replumbing a renovation — and I was psyched about the opportunity. I worked up an estimate on the spot, being generous with my labor costs, and submitted my bid. I ran by Tiny’s salon before heading for the Merc, but I couldn’t augur out her clog. The shampoo sink would need to be disassembled to get at it. I could do that tomorrow. In the meantime I’d gotten another call on a swamp cooler fan. Between plumbing and school and practice and work and working out, it was a crazy week.
I needed crazy. Needed to get my mind off them — the two of them — Xanadu and Bailey, together.
We had a doubleheader Thursday night in Sharon Springs. Jamie caught up with me after the lunchtime pep rally, in his uniform, rustling a pom-pom in my face. “Guess who’s taking me to the game tonight?” he said.
“Guess again,” I replied automatically.
“Not you. Xanadu.”
My stomach leaped. She was coming?
“Somehow she talked Aunt Petunia and Uncle Fester into borrowing the hearse. You want to ride down with us?”
“Coach wants us there half an hour early for a team meeting.” Which was a lie. I don’t know why I didn’t want to ride with them. Yes, I did. What if Bailey came? They might sit together in the car. And in the stands. I’d never be able to concentrate on my game if they were there. I could barely contain my nausea now whenever I saw him talking to her in class. In the hall. At lunch.
I had homeroom last hour so I asked Mr. Decatur if I couldn’t take off early for the game. I needed time to clear my head. Focus. Control. Also, I wanted to scope out the Sharon Springs team. This was their first year in the league and I heard they had this hotshot pitcher who was generating buzz with her early stats. Stats could be deceiving, but still. It never hurt to know the competition.
I hustled home. In the driveway Darryl’s legs stuck out from under a rusty GTO. He had his radio going full blast. Ma’s radio inside was blaring too. How could they stand the noise? The interference? I snitched the truck keys off the counter and took off.