Authors: Rachel Vail
CARSON WAS LEANING
against my locker when I got to school the next morning.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hi.” He didn’t take his eyes off me for a second.
“I gotta get my stuff in there,” I told him.
“Your parents say anything about the smell last night?”
“Not to me,” I told him. “They kept asking each other, ‘Do you smell something?’ ‘Yes, I do. Do you?’” It was weird to try to have a normal conversation with him, as if we were friends.
“What would you have told them, if they asked you?”
“The truth,” I said. “But they didn’t ask.”
“What’s your combination?” Carson asked me, turning to my lock. It was kind of a personal question. I wasn’t sure if we were close enough for me to tell him. Just because I let a boy undo my bra, does that mean I should let him into my locker, too?
“I’m not going to steal your chemistry notebook, Josie,” he said.
“You wouldn’t want it,” I answered. “If you try to, though, I should warn you, I have a Wiffle bat.”
“And a Minnie Mouse pillow,” he said.
“Exactly. Twenty-five, six, thirty-three,” I said, figuring, what do I care? I never have anything important in my locker anyway.
Spinning the dial, Carson asked, “Who else has it?”
“What?”
“Your combination.”
Just because I’ve never given my combination to anybody before doesn’t mean I never can, or that it means anything if I do tell somebody. “Nobody.”
“So I’m your only one.” He grinned at me.
“Well,” I hedged. “Besides me.”
He yanked open my lock. “I’m in,” he said. “There’s no getting rid of me now.”
“Hey, do you have a dark spot on your eye?” I had never noticed it before, but in the midst of his wide hazel iris was a tear-shaped spot of black.
“That’s my witch-eye,” Carson whispered, leaning close. “My bio teacher, Mr. Garcia—did you have him?”
I nodded.
“He told me it was a witch-eye. He said I have magical powers. So watch out—maybe I’ll bewitch you.”
“The bio teacher believes in witchcraft?” I shook my head. “What does that say about our science curriculum?” I couldn’t help noticing some of the girls in my grade congregating at the end of the row of lockers, watching this. They really follow him around like a swarm. I dumped my morning books into my locker and excavated my chemistry stuff.
“Well?” Carson asked. “What do you believe in? Chemistry? Cold hard science?”
“Chocolate, books, and true love,” I answered.
He smiled at me. “Me, too. At least chocolate and books. Love is a brat.”
“Yeah. A brat?”
“Absolutely,” he said, leaning against the next locker, his face close to mine. “Whatever you don’t love, loves you. But whatever you love tends to kick your butt.”
“You think?”
“Trust me,” he whispered. “Stick with chocolate and books.”
“That’s been my strategy so far,” I told him. “I was kidding about the true love part. It was a quote.”
“Aristotle?”
“Zandra.”
He looked perplexed.
“My friend. You met her.”
“Okay,” he said. “Chocolate, books . . . and fate.”
“Fate? Nah.”
“How about football?”
“I don’t think so. Rock and roll?”
“Keep an open mind. Come over Sunday for the Eagles game.”
“Um . . .”
“A bunch of people are coming over around three. We’ll have some food, you know, hang out.”
“The thing is . . .” I said, thinking,
I’d rather stick needles in my eyes
. I know the people he’s friends with. Beautiful People. People who toss balls around in the courtyard at lunch instead of arguing about Ayn Rand. Players. Anyway, I was busy. “I have a party from two to four.” I bent down to search for a pen in the bottom of my locker.
“Blow it off,” he said. “Mine will be more fun. I promise.”
“I can’t blow it off. I’m working at it.”
“So come straight from it. I’ll save you a seat.”
“Thanks,” I said, standing up. “But . . .”
“Come on, Josie.” He leaned close and whispered in my ear, “I really want you there.”
“Yeah?” I asked, slamming my locker shut. “And do you always get what you want?”
“Yes,” he said.
“CARSON GOLD?”
Michael asked, hooking leashes on Fluffy and Sarge. “Seriously?”
“That’s what I’m saying,” I said.
“The Golden Boy?”
“You know another Carson Gold?”
“Your mother must think she died and went to heaven. Captain of every team, president of every club . . .”
I shoved Michael, but added, “Able to leap tall buildings, blah blah blah.”
Michael locked the door behind us. Every day after school he walks Fluffy and Sarge, then brings them home and brushes them, all for twenty dollars a week. I go with him sometimes, since Fluffy and Sarge live with Annabel and Tom in the house between my house and Michael’s, on our little dead end, one of five dead ends in our development. Michael is madly in love with Annabel. That’s really why he walks the dogs, not the twenty bucks. “So what did he ask you to do exactly?”
“He wants me to come over to his house Sunday,” I told him. “To watch the football game.”
Michael laughed.
“I’m serious.”
“You’re not going, are you?”
I shrugged. “I’m doing a party right near his house, so I might stop by, after.”
“In your clown costume?” Michael asked. “Carson Gold and his BP friends would enjoy that.”
We watched the dogs sniff around the trees. Fluffy is very particular about her spots; Sarge will pee anywhere and everywhere.
“Forget it,” I said. “How’s the song?”
“In pieces.”
“Should we work on it, after?”
“Maybe,” he said.
By then we had gotten down to the dried-up stream in back of Dead End B. I leaned against the big, bare elm tree we carved our initials into last year. Michael unleashed the dogs, who chased each other around. Michael pressed up against me and we made out for a minute. That’s what we always do when we walk Fluffy and Sarge. People sometimes think Michael and I are going out with each other, but we aren’t. We’re just friends who make out with each other. Neither one of us wants a romantic entanglement; neither of us feels the typical high school need to be half a couple. We don’t get jealous of each other and we’re honest with each other; we’ve been friends since nursery school. Kissing just happens to be part of our friendship, that’s all. I think if parents knew how many afternoons teenagers spent fooling around with their friends, they’d lock us all up until we turned twenty. But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe they did the same with their friends when they were young, too.
Usually we make out for a while but this time I pulled away. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy making out with Michael. I just wasn’t in the mood. For the first time.
Michael looked at me all confused and maybe a little rejected.
“What?” I asked, defensively. “Even a nympho like me is entitled to be not in the mood occasionally, right?”
“Whatever.” He shrugged and looked down, so his dark hair flopped over his face and I couldn’t see his eyes anymore.
“I just, I have a lot on my mind today.”
“He drove you home?” Michael asked. “That’s why you weren’t on the bus?”
“Yeah.”
“After sixth or after seventh? Because I looked for you in the library, seventh.”
“After sixth.”
He turned away.
“What? He has seventh free, too. A lot of people do,” I babbled. “Remember back in like September, October, when you were hooking up all the time with Emma Barrett seventh period?”
“Twice.” Michael patted his leg and the dogs came running. We started back up the hill together. “You were hooking up with him?”
I shrugged; he shook his head. Michael hates BPs.
“So you think I should blow it off, then?” I asked him. “The football party, I mean?”
He bent down to latch on the leashes. “Is he messing with you, you think?”
“In what way?”
“Forget it.” He stomped away from me, up the hill.
“Hey.” I caught up with him and grabbed his elbow.
“Think about it, think who this is. Carson Gold. How does he treat girls? And what do they look like, every one of them? How do they act? Right? Do you think he, or any one of his girlfriends, has ever had an original thought, or done an outrageous thing? What kind of music does he listen to? Whatever is ‘in’, I bet you.”
“You are such a snob, Michael,” I said. “The worst kind of snob, because you think you’re above snobbery. What kind of music does he like? Give me a break. He happens to be a smart, interesting guy who invited me over to watch a football game. That’s all. It’s not a referendum on his character. Forget it, I never should’ve even mentioned it.” I started up the hill by myself.
He yelled from down below, “I’d love to see you show up there as Tallulah the Clown. You think he’d even invite you in?”
“I told him I work as a clown,” I yelled back. “And he thought it was cool, as a matter of fact. He’s the one who suggested I come straight from the party I’m doing.” We stared at each other, our hands on our hips, puffs of cold air exploding from our mouths.
“Whatever,” Michael said, trudging up after me. “Do whatever you want. You’re just abnormally stoked that he’s cast his glamour rays on you, is all.”
“You think he’s too good for me? You think a guy like that would never actually like me?”
“No,” he said. “The opposite.”
“Meaning what?”
“Nothing. He likes you?” he asked. “I mean,
likes you
, likes you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you like him?”
I shrugged. “I hardly know him.”
Michael shook his head. “If he . . . Watch out for him, that’s all. I know everybody thinks he’s perfect, so nice and, and catch of all catches . . .”
I had to laugh. “Catch of all catches?”
Michael’s cheeks flamed red. “I don’t trust him.”
“Why not?” I asked. “You don’t even know him. You’re just judging him on totally superficial qualities. Isn’t that what you always say is wrong with society, that people get judged by superficial qualities? Hypocrisy isn’t confined to the Beautiful People, Michael. Hey.”
I tipped his pointy chin up, so I could look into his face.
He pulled away. “All I’m saying is, if he’s just playing you, I swear . . .” His voice cracked.
I grabbed him by the collar of his jacket. Michael and I are about the same height so I looked him square in the face, though he was looking down and away. “Hey,” I whispered. I kissed him lightly on the lips and said, “My hero.”
“Screw you,” he answered.
I followed him back to Annabel and Tom’s house. He took the brush from its shelf, put away the leashes, gave the dogs their dog treats and sat down on the step to the living room to brush the dogs. I hung back and watched. It’s like a meditation with him, I think. Stroke, stroke, stroke. I watched Fluffy go into her getting-brushed trance. I wondered what it might feel like to have Michael brush my hair sometime, if he would be that steady, that gentle with me.
“Don’t go.”
“What?”
“I mean, do what you want,” Michael said. Fluffy walked away, looking back at me over her shoulder, clearly annoyed with me for ruining the best part of her day. Sarge sat down at Michael’s feet, panting and ready for his turn. “I just . . . Trust me, Josie. Don’t go.”
Unfortunately, I rarely do as I’m told.
AS I WAS
ringing the doorbell, I had an almost overwhelming urge to run. I never have an urge to run (usually my urges are to nap) so I would’ve acted on it but I am slow even in sneakers, and in clown shoes I am likely to trip even walking. Well, I trip in sneakers, too. Diving into the bushes was not a possibility either, as his door is flanked by rose bushes. Also, I have dived into anything (it was a pool) a grand total of once in my life, an experience I prefer not to remember, never mind repeat. So I stood my ground.
Oh, hooray. In a close match, inertia wins over panic, and the crowd . . . the crowd? Uh-oh. Panic was staging a late comeback.
What the heck am I doing here?
This has got to be the most foolish thing I have ever done. I am standing on the front porch of Carson Gold’s house dressed as Tallulah the Clown because . . . why? Because Michael pretty much dared me to? That is stupidity itself. He dared me to take off my pants in kindergarten once, and I had the sense then not to do it. And now, ten years later, I am humiliating myself to prove what? And to whom?
Maybe Carson will just answer the door and smile, say, oh, great, you came straight from the party. He’ll compliment my costume and ask me a question or two about how the party went, what tricks did I do, how old was the birthday kid, as he shows me where the bathroom is. Then he’ll give me a fresh clean washcloth and some Noxzema. And some spare clothes to wear. Sure.
I am an idiot! What the hell am I doing here?
Maybe they didn’t hear the doorbell and I could just sneak . . .
The door swung open just as I was turning away from it, panic having triumphed after all.
We stared at each other, Carson’s mother and I. We’d never met before, but I knew who she was. She’s in the halls a lot at the high school—PTA president or something, probably. She was in jeans and a light blue T-shirt, her hair pulled back in a ponytail and no makeup on.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hi,” she said.
“I’m a friend of Carson’s.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, I’m surprised about that, too, actually.”
“Excuse me?” she asked.
“He invited me to a football party and, though I have forgotten why, here I am.”
Carson’s head appeared, over her left shoulder.
“Hi,” I said to him.
“Josie?”
“Yup,” I said. “I, I came, straight. Strangely enough.”
Carson and his mom continued to stare at me, so I stared back. I had never before realized how alike they looked, how specifically alike, not just in the way that all very good-looking people look sort of alike, in that they are so symmetrical, and all healthy, good-looking, all-American people have that similarly scrubbed and vigorous look about them. Carson and his mom actually had similar facial structure, with their wide-spaced eyes and their close-to-the-head ears.
“Sure is cold out here,” I said.
Carson swung the door open for me, finally. “Why are you . . . seriously, what’s up?”
I wanted to go home so bad. “I was working. Remember? You said I should . . .”
“As a clown?”
“No, as an astronaut. Yes, as a clown. I told you I do magic at kids’ parties.” This was all going so very well.
“Uh-huh,” Carson said.
“I told you I had a party today from two to four, and you said . . . I thought you . . . forget it.”
“Carson,” said his mom. “Why don’t you invite your friend in and shut the door?”
A crowd had formed at the end of the hallway. There were some adults and some kids. They were all staring at me.
“Carson,” she repeated.
“Hello,” I squeaked. “I’m Tallulah the Clown! Is today somebody’s birthday?”
Nobody answered. Earlier in the afternoon when I asked that, twenty kids screamed out the name of the birthday kid. Unfortunately there were no birthday kids in the house, and no five-year-olds, either. I glanced up at Carson, who looked uncharacteristically awkward. “No?” I asked, in my Tallulah the Clown voice. “Wrong house, I guess!”
I turned around instead of walking into the house through the door Carson was still holding open. Despite my efforts at dignity, I tripped going down the front steps and my feet found themselves in a sort of extended race to catch up with my head. If I had been trying, I don’t think I could have made a more perfectly clownish exit. Too bad that was not the effect I was trying to achieve.
I hurried down the walk as quickly as I could go, without risking further pratfalls, toward my bike, which was locked to his basketball hoop at the edge of his driveway.
“Josie,” Carson shouted.
I turned around. He was standing on the front porch in his T-shirt and sweatpants, his ragg-wool socks scrunched down below. Damn. It is seriously unfair for a guy to be so cute. “The name’s Tallulah,” I shouted back.
“I thought you were coming to watch the game.”
I cleared my throat and spoke strong and clear, this time. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”
“Yes, you did.”
Did I? Was that my plan? Why would I want to embarrass him in front of his friends? No, that wasn’t exactly it. I guess I was kind of a little bit hoping that seeing me show up in a clown suit, in full whiteface with a red ball nose, rainbow hair, and huge shiny shoes somehow wouldn’t embarrass him.
I stuck my hands in my pockets.
“So?” he asked. “You gonna watch the game or not?”
“You still want me to?”
“Sure. Come in.” He is a very well-brought-up boy, you gotta give him that. Unfailingly polite to his guests, even the ones who don’t belong.
I clapped my hand over my mouth like I was shocked, and popped in the rainbow streamer packet I’d palmed. I pretended to start to choke.
“You okay?” he asked.
I kept pretend-coughing.
He ran toward me, across the soggy, cold grass in just his cute socks. When he got to me, he put his hands on my shoulders and asked again, authoritatively, “Josie, seriously. Are you okay?”
It occurred to me that he might give me a Heimlich maneuver and make me puke on his lawn, so I decided not to drag the trick out any further. I started pulling the streamers.
“Ew,” he said. “Are you . . . What is that?”
I kept pulling, hand over hand, and the rainbow colors began streaming out of my mouth in a long paper garland. Carson backed up two steps, looking mighty confused. A crowd had gathered on the porch and was watching, so I did the whole thing I usually do, clowning around like I was even more shocked than they were, pulling and pulling, seven feet of rainbow streamers, unfurling out of my mouth. When I finished, I coughed the last little shell of it into my hand and shoved it in my pocket, and said, “Must’ve been something I ate.”
On the porch, Carson’s sidekick, Frankie Caro, started clapping. A few others joined in. I took a deep bow and Frankie’s girlfriend, Margo Van Deusen, whistled for me.
Carson, on the other hand, still looked almost comically shocked. Since I was fairly sure it was the last time I would ever have the chance, I kissed him on the mouth, leaving makeup smudges on his unresponsive face. Then I jumped on my bike, rang the bell, and pedaled off, waving a merry good-bye to the whole A-list lot of them.