Two Parties, One Tux, and a Very Short Film about The Grapes of Wrath (23 page)

“It's always about the complaining parent; why aren't you protecting your students?” Hannah asks in a voice that is almost a scream. She and Louis are on a roll. Revolution is in the air.

“Look at this young man. This boy. This student.” Louis gestures toward me across the office. “How can you sacrifice poor little Mitchell Wells for a few more bucks in the annual fund? Yes, he's a virgin, but we don't sacrifice virgins anymore. And now he's dating an actual female, not even a bad-looking one, and yes, we are stunned and
wonder what she sees in this skinny blaspheming pornographer who hasn't had a date in his skinny little life, but now he has a chance and you, Mr. Sorrelson, are going to ruin that for him. Where is your compassion?”

“Free Mitchell Wells!” screams Hannah, banging her fist on the desk.

“I think we are about done here,” Sorrelson says, glaring at Hannah, then Louis. “Mr. Wells, this board will make its recommendation to Dr. VandeNeer within the week. Then it will be up to the headmaster, I mean our CEO, to decide what disciplinary actions should be taken.”

“Told you we were wasting our time,” Hannah growls once more as she stands on her chair to climb out of the office.

“I think that went well,” Louis tells me as we walk to lunch. “Sometimes we get into really nasty arguments.”

Inquisition to inquisition

I am once again carless, since Carrie has a minimum of seven things planned for this evening and there is no way she can get a ride to any of them, but Danielle's suggestion that I just ride home with her after school prevents what would otherwise be a justifiable case of sororicide. David's car passes us on our way up to the parking lot. Carrie and M.C. are both riding in the backseat and my place is empty. None of them look our way and I pretend I don't notice.

Danielle's mother meets us at the door. She is gorgeous. Stop-and-stare-on-the-street gorgeous. There is no way she is my mom's age. She must have had Danielle when she was six. I've never had a thing about anyone's mother. Older is just old. But Danielle's mother—“Call me Paige,” she insists—makes me unbearably uncomfortable. She is casual elegance in gray pants and a white blouse cut low enough to show much more cleavage than I'm used to seeing. I've never complained about revealing clothing, I'm seventeen, but sometimes even I could admit that too much boob display looks cheap and tacky. Not
this
boob display. Maybe it's the shirt.
Expensive
boob display. Her face is wrinkle-free and she isn't wearing makeup. She looks healthy and confident, and if I'm thinking my girlfriend's mother is sexy, is there something wrong with me?

“Hi. I'm Mitchell,” I say.

“I know,” she says, laughing. “Come in. Reverend Walker will be home in just a few minutes. Would you like something to drink?”

Can I ask for hard alcohol? I think I might need it.

I glance over at Danielle, who, to my relief, looks very much like a seventeen-year-old girl. A seventeen-year-old girl, in this case, who is really annoyed and embarrassed by her parents. She grabs my hand and drags me downstairs to the living room. “We're downstairs,” she calls to her mother, as if she couldn't see that. At the bottom of the stairs, out of sight, she kisses me.

“We're studying,” she yells back upstairs. That might be more convincing if we hadn't left our backpacks upstairs in the hallway.

It's more like an hour and a half before the reverend comes home and we are called upstairs for dinner. There is something a little tense about talking to someone's parents right after you've been mauling their daughter on the downstairs couch. Do they know? Do they suspect? The reverend is a little chubby around the middle but he carries it with authority and moves with a smooth motion that is almost graceful. He has thinning white hair that he wears closely cropped, and his large smile seems genuine.

The table is set. There are wineglasses, cloth napkins, china. “We eat like this every night,” Danielle says, sighing. “My parents think dinner is always a big deal.”

Dinner is delicious. It's just a roast chicken, potatoes, and vegetables, but they are cooked perfectly, the meat juicy, the vegetables steamed but not mushy. At first I'm afraid to help myself because the food is so beautifully displayed on the serving platters, but everyone is dishing it out onto plates like it's no big deal. If this is normal for the Walkers, I will never be able to invite Danielle to eat at my house.

I so don't want to like these two adults. Danielle certainly doesn't appear to. She answers their questions
sullenly, but they keep up a light banter despite her. Reverend Walker is a natural storyteller, spinning out small anecdotes into very funny, long stories. There's cake for dessert. Everyone helps clear the table. It is all going so well. Then the reverend corners me in the kitchen.

“You know, Mitch,” he says confidentially, “I run a large church. Lots of opinions, all kinds of people. Now, I don't know you yet, Mitch, but you seem like a polite young man. If Danielle wants you to take her to this dance, I've got no problem. But we keep a tight leash on our little girl. She doesn't like it, but it's who we are. We call that good parenting.

“Now, Danielle's a little mad at me because her mother and I felt the need to let the school know what we thought about your film project. It was nothing personal, you realize, but we feel a responsibility to speak for our faith community. Young people, they think everything's okay. They don't always understand the big picture, the perspective, that those of us with less hair can sometimes see. There are rules—rules right there in the book, and we just can't say, ‘Nah, don't want to bother with them.' It's all or nuthin' and I'm still an ‘all' person. You take all this talk about homosexuals.” He breaks the word into pieces—
ho-mo-sex-shuls
—and I can hear his preaching voice rising. “I've got nothing against them. We love our neighbors and if our daughter turned out to be a lez-bee-ann, would I still love her? Of course I would. But here's
the bigger picture. It's not about love, it's about pro-mo-scew-a-tee. About values. About fam-ee-lee.”

“Dad, would you please leave Mitchell alone?”

“We're just talking, honey.”

“It's a school night. We have homework to do.”

For the first time in my life, I can't wait to write my English paper.

A short ugly scene late at night in my driveway

It is near midnight when Danielle drives me home. We don't talk much. Given how she drives, I am careful not to distract her. Instead I watch her face as it's illuminated by the streetlights we pass, which create a slow strobe-like effect. I can't tell whether she can feel me looking at her. As she pulls into the driveway, the headlights settle on a person standing where there shouldn't be anyone. David is standing in my driveway. There are at least three things wrong with this picture:

1) It is close to midnight. No one, not even me, knew I would be out this late. How long has he been standing in my driveway? Has he been standing the whole time?

2) David knew I was with Danielle. He knew I didn't have a car. If nothing else, he could have
counted. Two cars, I'm not home, I didn't drive. Was he waiting for both of us?

3) Where is David's car?

All of this passes through my brain as I sit next to Danielle, staring at the person who is supposed to be my best friend. Danielle looks at me for an answer, but I don't know how to respond. Finally, I get out of the car, but Danielle doesn't follow me. She also doesn't turn off the engine.

“Hi,” is all I can think to say.

“Good morning,” David answers. He is not slurring his words, but he's definitely drunk.

“What's going on?”

“Oh, not much. How was your date?”

“We were studying.”

“Uh-huh. Learn much?”

“Are you trying to be a jerk?”

David steadies himself and looks at me, but I can't make out his expression. The mixture of darkness and bright headlights makes his glasses glow, but the lower half of his face is a shadow.

“I came to see how your English paper's coming. I didn't want you to forget about it.”

“You show up drunk in my driveway at midnight to save my English grade?”

“I felt responsible.”

“Where is your car?”

David points somewhere to his left. “That way. I didn't want Ty and Liz to wake up.” This is new. I don't think David has ever referred to my parents by their first names. He leans toward me and whispers, “Ty thinks I'm gay.”

“You
are
gay.”

“Shhh.” He motions toward the car. “Has she told everybody yet?”

“I haven't told her.”

“Truth?”

“Truth.”

“Why not?”

“You told me not to.”

“Why do you do everything I tell you to do?”

Neither of us has moved since we got out of the car. We are standing a good six feet away from each other. The space between us is a wall of light. If you had asked me yesterday, I would have told you that I know everything about David Bryant, that there was nothing he could do that would surprise me. But I don't know this guy in my driveway. He doesn't even look familiar, standing in his logoless sweatshirt, calm and angry. I wonder how much of our conversation Danielle can hear. What do we look like posed this way, framed by the headlights of her car?

“What were you listening to in the car?”

“Who cares? The radio.”

“WQQD, right?”

“Probably.”

“It sucks.”

“We could change the station.”

“No,” David shouts. “We can't. We all have to listen to it. That's the point. I have to listen to sucky music, you have to stick your tongue in Danielle's mouth, we have to make at least an A–in English or we will never get into law school …” David stops suddenly and his expression changes. “Excuse me,” he says a little less loudly, “I have to puke.”

Only David would start the sentence I have to puke with an “excuse me.”

I cross the path of the headlights and try to guide him over to what's left of the shrubs I ran over last fall.

“No—not in that bush,” he says, sounding very concerned. “I've already puked there.” He points across the driveway. “This one over here needs some too.”

I help him across the driveway and wait quietly beside him as he retches into the matching shrub remnant. After a few minutes he stands up, looking a little less angry.

“I'll go home,” he says softly.

“You are not driving home.”

“I'm not sleeping here.”

“Danielle and I will drive you.”

“I can drive. I'm not that bad.”

“I will tackle you and take away your car keys. You are not driving.”

There is a long pause. His face is a complete blank. “I suck.”

“You're just drunk.”

“No, I'm a shit. A total shit. I'm supposed to be your friend.”

“You
are
my friend.”

“I am?”

“Yes, you're my best friend.”

“Still?”

“Yes. David, I still need you to be my friend. Did you just puke on my shoe?”

“A little.”

I think his sudden turn to the maudlin is worse than his anger. I wipe my shoe off on the grass, put a hand on David's arm, and lead him over to Danielle's car. Danielle's door opens—she must have been watching all of this. She isn't smiling, but she doesn't seem angry. She gets out and opens the door for David and I guide him into the backseat. He's still mumbling about what a shitty friend he is and how I should punch him or something, but he stays upright. I don't bother with the seat belt. For a moment I wonder if I should ride in the back with him, but I don't. Danielle doesn't ask the plan, and I don't even ask whether she minds driving David home and then dropping me back here again. I could have put him in my car, but I didn't think of that
until now. The truth is I don't want to take him by myself. Maybe Danielle senses this.

Nobody talks on the way to David's house. When we get there, he climbs out of the car and walks to his door. I swallow hard, trying not to imagine what it feels like to have to make that walk with Danielle and me watching him. He never turns around. We are too far away to hear the slam of the door, but part of me feels it.

Danielle doesn't ask any questions on the way home. We talk in near whispers about the most normal things we can come up with—school and homework and whether I've rented my tux. “It's late,” she says, leaning over and kissing me softly.

“Thank you,” I say. I don't watch her car pull away.

A disaster in three acts, two of which take place in the bathroom at the Sheraton Hotel, which isn't bad as bathrooms go, but not where I was hoping to spend my prom