The Gospel of Winter (7 page)

I hadn't said much since I'd gotten there and, after the weed, Sophie and Josie wrapped themselves up in private conversation. Mark played with the soda gun behind the bar,
so I turned on the TV. I stood a couple of feet away from the screen and flipped through the channels. There was something satisfying about watching people appear and disappear instantly on my command. A sullen and spooked John Walker Lindh stared into the pool house from the TV. It was a still photograph, the one all the news stations had been using since they'd caught him running through the tunnels of Tora Bora in December. Behind the smeared soot and the scraggly beard, his eyes glowed intensely white. A subtle smirk rose in the corners of his mouth. Everyone knew his story: He'd been caught with a bullet in his thigh, burrowing through the hills of Afghanistan like a mole, the wayward American fighting for the Taliban. He stared out like he was waiting for me to get the joke.

“Dude's fucking crazy,” Mark said from across the room. I turned around. “Not you, Donovan.” Mark laughed. “Fucking Lindh.”

“I don't know,” Josie said. “There's something so sad about him.”

“Well, turn it off,” Sophie whined. “He looks like a monster.”

“He's just scared,” Josie continued. “That's what I see.”

“Oh my God,” Sophie said, pointing behind me. “Now,
that
woman is crazy. How is she going to let her marriage with Michael Jordan end?”

“Does that mean Michael Jordan is single?” Josie asked, and both girls laughed. The news had jumped to another
story already. No time to linger or ask questions or analyze or develop. Move, move, move. On to the next suggestion.

“Turn that off, man,” Mark said, holding up the empty bowl. “Let's repack this.” I snapped off the TV and joined them at the bar.

“I think that Lindh guy thought he was doing the right thing, even if he wasn't,” I said.

“They should name a prison after him,” Mark said, sparking the bowl.

“That is
not
funny,” Josie said.

“Oh my God, enough about that guy.” Sophie pouted. “I hate it.”

Mark took a big hit, and when Sophie handed him the tube to exhale, he waved it away. He leaned over the bar to Sophie and looked her in the eye. She giggled and leaned forward. They kissed, and a little smoke slipped from between their open mouths. Sophie broke from the kiss and exhaled through the tube. “Why waste any of it?” Mark said, and slapped me a high five above the girls' heads. Sophie took a hit, and she and Josie followed. Josie exhaled a tiny stream through the tube. “Think that's hot?” Mark asked. I nodded while my heart raced.

Josie looked at me. “Have
you
ever recycled?” she asked. I had never smoked pot before that afternoon, but I hadn't admitted that, either. Alcohol and pills were so easy; they were in every house I'd ever been in. I was too
slow to answer Josie, though, and when she took a small puff, she pulled me to her lips. The smoke came into my mouth, followed by her tongue, which flickered gently, then slipped out. I held my breath and tried to smile, which was harder than I thought because the smoke burned more than the cigarettes I'd had, and worse, I thought my stomach was going to explode. How many times had I stared at the back of Josie's head and wondered what it was like to be close to someone so beautiful? But there was more. She was looking at me. My eyes began to burn, too. I froze, and my neck and shoulders tightened.
Get real.
What did Josie see? There were so many Aidans, stacked like Russian nesting dolls within me, who I never wanted her to meet or know. I exhaled through the tube and coughed.

“Nice one. When you cough, you get off,” Mark said. “And fuck it, by the way,” he added to Josie. “Dustin can suck it.”

“Dustin?” I asked, desperate to swing the spotlight somewhere else.

“Yeah, I guess I've been dating him for a couple of weeks,” Josie said.

“
Trust in Dustin
Dustin?” I asked. Sophie and Mark laughed.

“All right, that was lame, but he won, didn't he?” Josie was right, but Dustin had become the junior-class representative because the whole baseball team had done a shakedown to get votes for him.

“But he's not going to know about that,” Josie said. “Or any of this.” Then she smiled at me. “Got it?” I nodded. “Okay,” she said, pointing from me to Mark, “your turn.”

“No. That's cool,” I said, glancing at Mark. “I should just come back the way I came, right?”

Mark leaned back against the shelves behind the bar, with a wry half smile.

“No way,” Josie said. “This is a circle.”

“Yeah,” Sophie said. “Girls do it all the time. What's the matter with you boys?”

“Nothing,” I said.

Sophie and Josie protested and, still amused, Mark watched us bicker. A dull ache gripped me. I couldn't look at him again. My body felt like a machine. I could respond any way I was asked to. Don't ask me to start. Just kiss me and I'll kiss you back. A kiss was nothing—I knew that. A kiss was so simple. It was what followed that frightened me. I didn't want to move, but I wondered if I could end the debate right there by kissing Mark, and then we could all get back to feeling like we were getting away with something together. That's all I really wanted—for the circle to continue and for me to remain a part of it.

“You're acting a little uptight, man,” Mark finally said. The girls laughed.

“No, I'm not,” I said. I hesitated while they looked at me. “I think I'm stoned,” I continued. “Am I supposed to do something now?”

“Listen,” Mark said to the girls. “You all need to ease up. You're going about this the wrong way.”

He stepped forward, away from the shelves, and pointed to the bowl in my hands. “Hit that, dude. Before it goes out.” I did, and as I took the smoke down into my lungs, he reached across the bar and pulled me by the shirt collar toward him. He yanked me to his lips and popped open my mouth. The smoke rushed out of me. He huffed it in, pushed me back across the bar, pumped his fist, and exhaled through the tube into the air above us. His lips had been dry and firm, and I couldn't tell if he had wanted me to press back. I didn't know if I wanted to or not. Static buzzed through me, and I had no idea if he had it humming down in him as well. His face was cool and collected as if it were chiseled out of stone, and I felt like I was melting with sweat. Eyes were all over me, watching me, eyes in the room—eyes across town, floating closer, hovering like gigantic birds outside the windows, watching, waiting for the moment to crash through and strike.

“Like I said before”—Mark grinned—“why waste any of it? This is premium bud, dude. It's not every day we get the budalicious from the BC.” He put his hand back up in the air above the bar and I slapped it again, quickly and automatically and with a giddiness loopy with fear.

The girls hooted, and the room spun a little. “Budalicious,” I mumbled. “Yeah.”

Mark and the girls laughed. I hoped they couldn't tell
I was trembling. I was dizzy and damp with sweat, and I braced myself against the bar.
This is what I want
, I kept telling myself.
This is different
.
Keep it together
. If one little Aidan doll cracked, so would another, and I'd fall apart one shell at a time until they saw the tiny, terrible nugget at the heart of it all. I'd never thought of myself like that before, someone with a pit of darkness at the center of me. I didn't want to think about it. I slumped down onto a stool and forced out a loud
I-dare-you-to-doubt-me
laugh I stole directly from Father Greg.

“Are you totally stoned?” Sophie asked.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Good,” Mark said. “Relax into it, man. Welcome to the group.” We slapped hands again, and this time like we meant it.

Josie grabbed the bowl from me and lit it. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to lean in to her or not, and she knew it. She wagged her finger and grabbed the tube. She blew right at me through the shit-brown dryer sheets, and the smoke washed over my face. She walked behind the bar, next to Mark. “Tell you what?” she said to all of us. “I know my dad watches this stuff like a hawk, but we could pour out just a little vodka, then refill the bottle with some water. I bet he'd never have a clue.”

“I'm not having anything to drink,” Mark said. “I have to see my parents later. They want to have another
family night
, whatever the hell they think that is.”

“You just smoked a bowl,” Sophie said.

“That's different,” Mark said.

“Everything's different to you, Mark,” Josie said.

“I'll have some,” I said to Josie.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, and I won't spit it all over anybody this time either.”

Josie burst out laughing, and Sophie did too. I puffed my cheeks and made a big scene, and Sophie pretended to get showered with my spray. She laughed so hard, she started to cry.

We drank and the afternoon became hazier, punctuated by Josie's and Sophie's laughter. They barely had to exchange more than a few words for one to know what the other was saying, and it set them off again and again. It swept into me. I was still nervous and confused and not sure if they were making fun of me or not, but I began to feel like I could really be a part of this.

I tried not to look Mark in the eyes too much, but when we spoke together, he was completely calm, the same disaffected-smile-wearing Mark I always saw around school, but with less distance than usual—as if that smirk wasn't aimed at but instead included me. And later, when he decided it was time for him to start walking home, he asked if I wanted to join him.

“I'm supposed to see Dustin later, but maybe I'll skip it,” Josie said. “Skip your
family night
,” she said to Mark.
“We've got our own thing going on here. We're like a perfect square.”

“Nothing's ever perfect,” Mark said. “That's what my dad says. Thinking something's perfect is a sign of laziness. It's not working hard enough to find something better.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Sophie asked.

“Never settle. That's what,” Mark said. “I mean,
chill out
, right? Last time I said that in front of him, though—not even to him, just in front of him—he went on a fucking tirade.”

Josie and Sophie gave him a hug. I kissed Sophie on the cheek and leaned toward Josie. She held my arm. “You're coming to the New Year's party, right?” Sophie giggled behind her. It was strange how I suddenly felt like I knew what I was supposed to do, and I kissed her good-bye on the lips. She kissed me back and smiled.

Mark put his hand on my shoulder. “He'll come with me,” he told Josie. We turned to leave. “It'll be interesting,” he said to me quietly. “Dustin will be there.”

We left through the back door of the pool house, then cut along the low stone wall to a small wooded patch. Mark pulled a one-hitter from his pocket and we took turns with it. When we were finished, we continued along the wall and emerged onto the street on the hill behind Josie's house.

“Dude,” Mark said after a while. “It's nice to have another guy in the mix. It's always just me and the girls.”

“That's cool.”

He laughed. “No. No, I didn't mean it like that.” Then
he added, “I'm just saying that it's nice to have another guy around. The perfect square. I like that.”

“Suits me,” I said. “Obviously.”

He laughed again. “You're all right, Donovan. You're all right.” He shook his head, smiling, and I didn't know what else to say.

We walked along in silence. I was in a fog—still trying to figure out what had happened all afternoon and how the hell I'd become a part of it. We were cutting downhill, beside the back nine of Stonebrook Country Club. While a lot of the snow had melted around town, there were still drifts of it clustered in the sand bunkers spotted over the course. As clouds passed by overhead, the sun occasionally broke free, and bursts of light ignited and glistened on the hard crusts of the embankments.

At the bottom of the hill we curled around the other side of the country club and came to the short bridge that was just a ways up from the harbor. To get to our homes we had to go in opposite directions, but Mark didn't seem to be in a hurry anymore. “So, this party . . . ,” I finally said to him.

“It'll be cool, I guess. Kegger over at Feingold's. Everyone's going. It'd be too weird not to go,” he said. “I don't know. I'm going to this one, but I don't go to most of the parties. They can be lame. Everyone's there, but nobody is really talking to one another. Like none of it's real.” He waved his hand in the air in front of him. “I don't know. Sorry, man. I'm stoned.”

“No,” I said, “you're probably right. But maybe it's because everyone is too afraid.”

Mark looked at me. “Of what?”

“I don't know. Everything. Maybe everyone's just faking it because that's all there is.”

“So they can't get real?” Mark asked. “That's depressing.”

“Tell them to take their fucking faces off,” I said, but it felt weird now to say that so casually. “They can't, right?”

Mark gazed down into the river, and I did too. The chunks of ice and dead foliage floated from beneath the bridge and zigzagged out to the harbor. “But we can,” he said. “We are.”

I nodded but didn't say anything else. I was too locked away in myself. I had to be. I was afraid to speak anymore for fear of saying something I didn't want to. We were both quiet for a while. Mark put his hand on my shoulder again. “Dude,” he said. “I have to get going here. I'm totally late.” We cupped each other's hand and pressed shoulders into each other's chests the way I'd seen athletes do on television.