The Gospel of Winter (14 page)

“I guess I should go find my boyfriend,” Josie said. She'd gotten half a pack of cigarettes from a girl who was now throwing up in the backyard behind a bush, and she and I stood on the step below the open door and shared one.

“He should be looking for you,” I said.

“Oh my God.” Sophie laughed. “The thing is, Josie, Aidan's right.”

“You know what?” Mark said. “Fuck Dustin, all right?”

Josie sighed. “Please don't say that.”

“No.” Mark stepped down to her and held her by the arm. “I'm serious. Fuck him.”

Josie smiled and tipped her head to the side. It was the side I never saw in English class, the underside, the track from the chin to the base of the throat.
Why,
I wondered,
are our most vulnerable spots also the most seductive?
I looked up into the sky, wanting to be made to feel small enough that my memories would be insignificant against the vastness around me. I searched for stars through the light pollution. Mark kept talking.

“Look,” he said, “we're all right here. We're having a great time without him. So are you.”

From inside the house, people shouted that it was almost time. The television was turned up, and the music turned off. More and more people crowded into the large back room with the TV. I reached over to Josie. “I'm starting over this year,” I said. “It's all my mother talks about, but I see her point, I think.” She shivered, and I put my arm
around her. “Let's all go in,” I said. “It's freezing out here.”

The room off the porch was jammed with people cheering at the television, yelling back at the crowds that flashed in Times Square. Little jolts from the Adderall still buzzed through me, and I felt confident holding Josie's hand as we walked. She withdrew it as we entered the room, and Mark put his arm over my shoulder instead. Sophie squeezed between us, and we lifted her again so she soared over the bodies. She pumped her arms and rallied the crowd, and I wondered if this was how everyone else felt most of the time and why, although I was a part of it now, hollering at the television with everyone else, I still felt a hole widening within me. I shouted “Three minutes!” with everyone else, and yet that hole was like the tunnel left behind by something burrowing within me. I could picture that thing inside me, a small beast chomping and gnawing its way from my stomach up to my heart. I didn't want to think about Father Greg. I didn't want him anywhere near me. I only wanted crowds and cheers and Josie, Sophie, Mark, and me in a knot of linked arms, but he was inside me, his whisper,
I know you, I'm here for you, Aidan. I'm here
. It was like there were two Aidans at the party: the one stomping and shouting and chanting “New Year, New Year, New Year!” and the one standing quietly in the darkness, listening to Father Greg, being told how the secret makes it meaningful.

Bottles of beer and wine and champagne went around the room. Cups sloshed and banged together prematurely.
There was too much noise, and it took me a few seconds to realize that Mark was shouting at me. “Where the hell is Feingold?” he repeated, and I tried to scan the crowd, but Sophie wavered on our shoulders. We shifted our balance and kept her propped up as people began the countdown. As the ball dropped on television I thought of Mother down in the city, the same energetic recklessness doing a dervish spin through everyone at her party, the same hope and resolution repeating in her as was repeating in me:
Please please please, everybody, see the cheer. Nobody notice anything else.

When the ball dropped and the room exploded, Sophie leapt off our shoulders and showered the crowd with the contents of her cup. She kissed Mark with an open mouth, and then she kissed me the same way. I was jealous of her freedom and her liberty to celebrate, as if sadness was an illness she was immune to. Josie watched us. I leaned close to her, but she turned her cheek. She pulled away, flipped her hair to the side, looked around the room, and then turned back to me and kissed me on the lips. She laughed nervously and looked at Mark. He pushed toward her and she accepted his kiss too. Mark glanced at me when he pulled back. He put his arm around my neck and said, “Donovan, you are all right, man.”

“Kowolski,” I said, mimicking his voice, “you're all right too. Seriously,” I added. I pulled him into a hug. My hand reached a little high and I got the base of his neck as I brought him in close. He was damp with sweat.

For a second or two we hesitated awkwardly. Then he broke free. “This is the world we live in, man!” he shouted. “It's totally fucked. All the wrong people are in charge. Welcome to 2002. We're Generation Fucked—everyone's fucking us.”

“Especially the ones who say they have our best interests in mind,” I said.

“Yeah,” Mark agreed. He lost some of the ironic joy in his face. “Yeah. They are.”

“At least we have what we have,” I said.

“What's that?” Mark asked.

I pulled Josie into the conversation by looping my arm through hers. “At least we have this. Us, I mean. Something.”

Josie raised her cup and tapped it against mine. “Here's to us. All of us. Where's Sophie?” We drank and looked around for her. She pressed back through the crowd with two glowing bands wrapped around her wrists.

“This is the best party!” she screamed as she ducked forward and surfaced between other people's limbs. She had lost her cup but gained a bottle of wine. She poured too much into my cup as the stereo kicked back on with a funk song that got everyone dancing.

I passed Mark my cup, but he waved it off. “Have you seen Feingold anywhere?” he asked. The rest of us were bopping up and down, but I saw the look on his face and stopped.

“Let's go find him,” I said.

He led the way as we weaved through the room and out to the front, where there were other people dancing too. We asked around, but nobody seemed to have seen him, although it occurred to me that few of the people we asked even knew who he was. Fewer and fewer of the people at the party looked familiar to me. I stuck my head out the front door and surveyed the porch. Feingold wasn't there. Mark walked upstairs, and we followed him. A couple was making out at the top and didn't stop as we passed. In the hall, Riggs leaned against the wall beside the closed door to the bathroom. His eyes were open but droopy, and he didn't notice us. His lips were parted, and he nodded as if he was being pushed around by a weak breeze. At the far end of the hall, a door was ajar, and I had a sinking feeling as Mark charged toward it.

Dustin and two other guys from the CDA baseball team circled the bed with their crimped and fraying ball caps pointed down at a naked Feingold spread-eagled across the beige comforter. He was tattooed in permanent marker—
FAGGOTS FALL FIRST
was scrawled up his arms and legs, and a series of cheap doodles of shit and piss were drawn on his stomach. Toothpaste streaked his hair. The bed was soaked around his waist and beneath his legs, and his crotch was painted with stripes of lipstick. The tube was jammed in his belly button. Dustin, laughing, pointed a camera toward his friends, Nick and Andre, who hovered over Feingold. Nick held a Bic razor poised over Feingold's
eyebrow, and Andre gave a thumbs-up and held a marker in his other hand. They both smiled for the shot, and Dustin snapped it as we entered. He turned to us, and when he saw Josie he lifted his cap and wiped the thin blond hair back on his head. The boyish giddiness in his face dropped immediately into guilt. He turned back to his buddies. Nick was about to begin with the razor. “Hey, hold it!” Dustin yelled.

It happened quickly. Mark sprinted toward Nick. He pushed Nick away from the bed, into the dresser, but as he looked down onto Feingold's closed eyes, he was pulled back by Andre and pinned with his arms behind him. Sophie and Josie yelled at them. Nick got up in Mark's face. “Take it easy,” Nick said. “We're just fucking around. It's his own fault. He passed out. He passed out first.” On the other side of the bed, Dustin tried to comfort Josie, but she shook her head and backed away.

“What the fuck?” Sophie said.

Mark wrestled to free himself but couldn't. Locked in Andre's arms, he cursed the three of them. Nick yelled back at Mark, and I finally made a move, but Dustin caught me by the arm and pulled me back too.

“Calm down,” Dustin said to all of us. “It's not a big deal.”

“Why would you do this to somebody?” Josie asked him.

“Assholes,” Mark said.

Nick squeezed tighter. “Shut the fuck up.”

“Everybody, calm down!” Dustin shouted. “We're just having a little fun.”

“Fun?” Josie repeated. “Don't you dare touch me,” she said to him as he stepped closer to her.

“Oh, come on.” Dustin sighed. “What the fuck?”

“No. What the fuck?” Mark said, nodding at Feingold. “You get off on this?”

“I will fucking deck you if you don't shut up,” Nick told him. “What's the matter? You and Aidan coming to jerk Feiny off or something? Is that why you're here, looking for him? I know what you are. I know what you like.”

“You wish you knew something important,” Mark said. “You wish.”

“Shut up, faggot,” Nick said. He punched him in the stomach.

“That's enough!” Dustin shouted at Nick. He eased his grip on me as he yelled. I broke free. “Calm down,” Dustin told the room again, but I didn't need his direction. I didn't think I was going to throw punches and knock anybody out. I'd never been in a fistfight before, but it didn't matter. I could still do something.

I went after Nick, but he pushed me to the side, and I fell toward the bed. He punched Mark in the stomach again, and I found my footing quickly and charged him. Nick turned, swung at me, and hit the side of my face hard. He grabbed me as I fell and hit me in the head again. I stumbled toward Mark, but with his arms pinned back he couldn't
catch me. I rolled off his shoulder and fell to the floor. The girls screamed, and I lost sense of where I was or what was happening for a few moments.

When I came to, I was on my back. Dustin had Nick pinned up against the wall. My head throbbed, and Josie and Sophie were yelling at Andre. Mark was free again, and he stooped down to me on the floor, pulled me to the bed, and propped me up against it. To my right, Feingold's fingers dangled in my peripheral vision, but I couldn't see much to my left. I couldn't open my eye any wider. There were more people in the room now, and though the chatter built to a louder and louder buzz, the room was calmer than it had been before. I looked up at Nick. I smiled. It stung, but I held it. Blood dripped off my chin to my lap.

Josie and Sophie crouched down in front of me and asked if I was okay. I smiled again. “Cover Feingold,” I said. Mark leapt up immediately, and Sophie helped him.

Josie touched my face and shook her head. She stood. “What the hell is wrong with you?” she asked Dustin. He let go of Nick and turned around.

Nick stepped around him and pointed across the bed to Mark. “I'll still floor you too.”

“No one's flooring anybody,” Dustin said.

“Fuck you,” Nick said. “Change your tune the minute your girlfriend walks into the room. We were just talking about that guy.”

“Seriously,” Dustin said. “Shut up.” Andre grabbed Nick
by the shoulder and dragged him to the door. They pushed their way through the crowd to the hall. “Let's find some place to talk,” Dustin said to Josie when they were gone.

“I'm not talking to you,” she told him.

He reached for her, and she batted his hand away. “Hey, come on,” he said. “It's not what it looks like. You have to understand.”

I tried to stand, to get between the two of them, but I was weak and dizzy, and he'd already stepped around me. He pursued her halfway around the room, begging her to take it easy. When I finally got to my feet and saw my swollen eye and bloody mouth in a mirror, I knew it wouldn't heal quickly, but I wondered if it was still worth it. Two guys and a girl started tending to Feingold. I coughed. A girl I didn't know came forward with a damp cloth from the bathroom and pressed it gently to my face. She was shorter than me and had a hairdo like a sponge. I wanted to lean down into it and fall asleep, but I still rocked with Adderall and adrenaline, and my pulse nearly kept pace with the thoughts exploding in my mind.

Josie suddenly had me by the arm. “Do you want to get out of here?”

“Nobody has to leave,” Dustin said in the background.

“You should,” the sponge told him.

“I'm not going anywhere. Everybody is fine. Let's just get back down to the party.”

“Look around you,” I said. “Nobody's fine.” He made
a move toward me, but Mark grabbed his arm. Two other guys charged Dustin and held him back too.

Sophie walked up to him and pointed her finger in his face. “You are who your friends are,” she told him.

Then she stepped over to me. With my arms draped over Josie and Sophie, I shuffled to the door. They called to Mark, and the four of us squeezed down the now-crowded hall to the stairs. He spoke to a few other guys from the swim team and sent them back to look after Feingold. Then we found our coats and a bag of frozen peas for my busted face and made our way out to the front porch, where, with a little indulgent flourish, I milked the injury and bummed a couple of cigarettes for the road. Everyone was eager to share.

Back in the car, Josie and Sophie kept saying I should go home, but I didn't want to. When they finally consented, Mark said he could take us to the beach where he had done lifeguard training the past summer, and I reminded them that the party didn't have to end. I was still loaded with liquor and pharmaceuticals. “Maybe we could watch the sunrise,” I suggested. “I've never seen the sunrise, and we live right on the damn ocean. It'd be a hell of a way to start the year.” I popped a Vicodin, leaned back in the front seat, and let them discuss it.