“I wanted to be an astronaut when I was little,” he said. “Can you imagine that? Me up in space? I bet being up there’s a lot like being dead and alive at the same time. You are really and truly not in this world anymore. The only other time you can say that is when you’re dead, and you can’t even say it then because . . . well, because you’re dead.”
He glanced over his shoulder and let out a laugh. I suddenly felt so sad for him. I wasn’t sure about his past, who he was, but right there is when I first sensed the sadness of Alex Kincaid. I felt the vacuum in him. It was the same as the one in me. It wanted, but it didn’t know what it wanted, so it pulled at everything.
“I wanted to be an FBI agent,” I said. “But I think that’s just because I was really into this TV show about FBI agents when I was little.”
“If you want to be a FBI agent you have to have never done any drugs, like, ever. They give you lie detector tests.”
“I think there’s like a ten-year gap or something.”
“But still. I have a feeling the first ten years of my life are the only ten consecutive years of my life where I didn’t do drugs.”
“When did you first smoke pot?” I asked.
“Eleven.” He wandered the yard, kicked at an old softball that was hiding in the grass. “It was with my dad. My mom found out and was all furious, but two months later all four of us were lumbering around the house stoned out of our minds.”
“Four of you?”
“I have an older sister. She’s in Europe. Has been for a while.”
“What does she do there?”
“She ran away to get away from my parents. My dad’s in jail now and my mom moved to Texas with some piece of shit trucker named Buck who was one of the reasons my dad got put in the clink in the first place. One of the worst people I’ve ever met. I’ve always wanted to get out of Cedarville, but I wasn’t about to go with that guy. No fucking way. So I stayed behind. I live with my grandma now. It’s just me and her and her cat Snowy. One big happy family.”
He laughed nervously. I guessed he’d had to explain this situation before, and somewhere along the way he’d gotten into the habit of punctuating the whole story with a laugh to make things easier for everyone involved.
He asked if I wanted to go for a drive and I said yes. The idea of being alone in a car with him again sounded heavenly. We walked around the side of the house to his car. I felt the pricks of stray hairs all over my arms, neck, and back. They could’ve belonged to any of us. I ran my hand over my shaved head. I swore I could feel my hair growing back already.
We drove aimlessly across the darkened countryside. The engine rumbled and knocked under the hood, but Alex didn’t seem to worry, so neither did I. We talked about bands we liked, television shows we hated. He told me about his grandmother and her church where people ran to the front of the congregation in mid-hymn and twitched with the spirit. He said that it never ceased to terrify him, that he didn’t understand why anyone would want to voluntarily lose themselves in something when it seemed like life was all about trying to find yourself. I told him a little about my parents, about how lost they still were and how it sometimes felt like they’d given up trying to get unlost. I sarcastically said that maybe going to church would do them some good. Alex laughed and said that was doubtful.
“Wanna park somewhere?” he asked. “Get on the roof and watch the stars?”
I told him I’d like that. He pulled over at a random spot on the road.
“Let me grab my cigarettes and we’ll go up,” he said.
He flicked on the dome light and started looking for something in his glove compartment. I couldn’t stop staring at his chest, at his nipples and the patch of hair that ran down to his belly button. He was rounded shoulders and muscled arms. He was perfect. I must have been staring too hard, because suddenly he stopped going through the glove compartment and just stared back at me. It was as if he’d just pulled the emergency brake on everything. The music moved, but everything else stood still. I turned away and looked out at the night, darker than ever thanks to the light in the car. He put his hand on my knee.
“Dade, it’s okay.”
I didn’t reply. I was so thirsty and in shock about his hand on my knee that I almost opened up the door and ran into the night.
“It’s okay,” he said again. I looked over at him. “I get it.”
He shut the dome light off. He leaned forward and kissed me. It caught me off guard, but my mouth reacted before my mind. I kissed him back. The underside of his upper lip was warm and soft. I pulled back and we stared at each other for a few seconds. Then it was me who bridged the distance, and we were kissing again, slow and deliberate like ice melting on a countertop.
Chapter 11
The next day was one of those unbearably humid days where stepping outside was like stepping into an armpit. Mom and Dad were gone for the day, so Lucy came over and we made margaritas with twice as much tequila as was called for and hung out by the pool in our bathing suits. I told her about my night with Alex, about kissing him, about the way he’d played with my fingers during the last half of Dingo’s set. She didn’t make me stop talking about him. She let me go on and on. I told her that it all felt as if it were happening to someone else, like my memories of the previous night were someone else’s memories that had been cruelly dumped into my head to show me everything that was missing in my life.
I told her I was scared I’d mess it up and that all of this would disappear as fast as it appeared. I talked about my shaved head and about his eyes on my face right before he leaned in to kiss me for the second time. I told her about the Tomato Hoof record I’d downloaded and listened to three times that morning and how every song on there reminded me of him so much that my stomach would cramp during certain melody lines and guitar parts, especially during the last thirty seconds of “Gravity Is Serious,” where the lead singer keeps repeating: I don’t wanna be a part of the stratosphere / I don’t wanna make policeman sounds.
“I want to meet him,” she said. “I want to meet this guy.”
“We’re hanging out tomorrow night, just him and me, but you’ll meet him soon. I want you to tell me what you think.”
“It’s so hot.” She spoke slowly, as if the temperature were affecting her speech. “I fucking love it.”
“Summer’s good, but I think I’m more of an autumn guy.”
“Aw. How sensitive of you.”
After Lucy left, I wandered the house in a daze. My brain was fuzzy from the tequila and the heat. The cool air of the house sharpened the sensation of the sunburn on my back and made it feel like my shoulder blades were giving off sparks. I had the Tomato Hoof record on at full volume. The walls bled guitars and drums, words and melodies. The songs were everywhere.
I was sitting in the kitchen wearing my bathing suit and a black hooded sweatshirt when my mother came home. I was watching some dating show on MTV and eating unwashed strawberries straight from the container. She walked in through the garage door and screamed.
I dropped the strawberry I was holding and looked over my shoulder at her. “What’s the matter?”
Her mouth hung open and her eyes were wide and bugging out of her head. She looked somewhere between totally shocked and possessed.
“What do you mean what’s the matter?” she asked. “What the hell happened to your hair?”
“Oh yeah. I forgot.”
“What do you mean you forgot?” she asked. “You look like a serial killer. How could you forget?”
“What do you mean I look like a serial killer?”
“You look like a serial killer,” she said again.
“So does that mean the entire Cedarville boys’ swim team looks like serial killers?”
“Did you join the swim team?”
“No, but you know, this is what they do. They shave their heads.”
She squinted at me like I was insane. “Then what are you talking about? What’s gotten into you? Where’s
my son?”
“I wanted a change,” I said. I got up and put the strawberries back in the refrigerator. “Can’t things change? Do they have to stay the same all the time?”
I started upstairs and she followed.
“No. They don’t. But when changes are made in my household, I would like to be made aware of them.”
“Well, you’re aware,” I said.
I went up to my room and shut the door behind me, but she came in after me not two beats later. I pretended to occupy myself with the little things that littered my desk. Papers, pencils, a plastic toy robot I purchased from one of the little machines at Food World.
“Where were you last night?” she asked. “I heard you get home at five in the morning. That is unacceptable. Unacceptable . And this. Your hair. Did this happen last night? What were you doing last night that got you to do this? Was it that Lucy girl?”
“Lucy’s my friend, Mom.”
“Well, she’s ruining your life. And friends don’t ruin each other’s lives.”
“What are you talking about? How is shaving my head ruining my life?”
“If Lucy jumped off a bridge, would you?”
“I guess that depends on what was at the bottom.”
“Har, har, Dade. Hardy frickin’ har. You know, I smell the pot. Every now and then was fine. I could deal with that. But your room smells like a drug den.”
“You’re exaggerating.”
“Give it to me,” she said, holding out her hand. “Give me the marijuana. Now.”
“It’s gone,” I lied. “I smoked it all.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Well, believe me. It’s gone.”
“What about the pipe or the joint or the bong or whatever it is you smoke it out of?”
“I don’t have a bong, Mom. And besides, I’ll be gone in two months and then I can do whatever the hell I want. I’ll buy a hundred bongs if I want, and there’s nothing that you or Dad will be able to say or do.”
She gave me that wilting look, the look of death that she could sometimes whip out of her back pocket. She left the bedroom without even bothering to slam the door shut for punctuation. A minute later I heard her scream. It was different from the one that she’d let out when she walked into the kitchen. This was one of frustration, an animal sound shooting through the halls and rooms of the house. Then I heard glass breaking. I sat on the edge of my bed and shut my eyes.
Don’t go down yet. Wait a few seconds.
I found her leaning against the kitchen counter and vigorously massaging her eyes with the palms of her hand. She’d thrown the bottle of tequila that Lucy and I had nearly finished against the refrigerator. What was left of the liquor had run down the surface of the fridge and pooled on the floor with the broken glass.
“Mom?”
She looked up. Her eyes were red. I couldn’t tell if it was from crying or the rubbing. She gave me a defeated little smile, one that reduced everything to a petty, insignificant level.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t think it’d be a big deal.”
She reached into the drawer for her Marlboro Lights and lighter. She didn’t even bother opening the window. She just lit up.
“I was driving home and I kept thinking about when your father and I first got married and when we had you. The farmhouse. I don’t know why I wanted to live in a farmhouse so badly, but I did. Remember the chickens?”
“I remember.”
“You were really young then. And your father was teaching high school PE courses, and he hated it, but he would come home and play his guitar on the porch and I’d be in the kitchen screwing up dinner. And you’d be there, all happy because you were a happy kid. And nothing made you happier than sitting there while your father played the guitar. Your father and I were young and in love and poor. We didn’t have anything. We used to say that all the time, that we didn’t have anything. Just you. And now look at us. I was thinking about that when I was in line at the grocery store the other day. I kept wondering what changed.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything. I pulled out an unused pair of yellow rubber gloves and a plastic Food World bag from under the sink. I put on the gloves and carefully picked up each shard of glass and placed them in the plastic bag. My mom presided silently over everything from the side. I used paper towels to wipe the tequila off the floor and the refrigerator, the fancy quadruple-ply kind that sucked up lots of moisture, and I thought of how this would make one screwed-up paper towel commercial. I took the bag out to the curb and threw it in one of our big rubber garbage cans. I tossed the gloves in as an afterthought. It felt like using them again would be bad luck.
When I went back inside, my mother was gone. Her unfinished cigarette was crushed out in one of the dirty bowls in the sink. The odor of the tequila, the cigarette, and the dirty dishes conspired to make the room smell like Cherry’s. From above my head came the sound of my mother shuffling down the second-floor hallway. She moved with slow, sliding steps, the kind I made when I was an overtired four-year-old being dragged back to bed for the fifth time by my father. On the refrigerator television there were models strutting down a runway, flashes all around them as they walked with dramatic assurance. They had peacock feathers in their hair and wore neon makeup in tribal smudges across their eyes and mouths. Their faces gave away nothing. They knew exactly where they were going.
Alex arrived at eight thirty the next night, half an hour after he said he was going to be there. I spent the extra time waiting on the couch, staring at the same patch of neighborhood through the picture window and just waiting for his car to roll into the picture.
“Who are you waiting for?” my mother asked. She’d been gardening and popping pills all day. They were lime green ones, ones I hadn’t seen before. They must have been something new, something stronger and speedier.
“I’m going out with my friend Alex.”
She stood silent in the living room for a few moments, eyeing me. Her mind was probably making connections between recent events and this name she’d never heard before.
“A new friend?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Does he shave his head too? Is that why you shaved yours?”
It was the first time she’d mentioned it all day. I didn’t answer. I just kept staring, waiting.
“So you’re taking his car? Not yours?”
“That’s correct.”
“Is he a good driver?” she asked.
“Very,” I lied.
“Well, I think one of the many lessons I’ve learned over the last few weeks is that you’re beyond coming home at a decent hour, so at least keep me updated. Send me a text message that says you’re not dead or something. That’ll make me feel better.”
Alex’s Citation pulled up just then and I hurried out the front door without saying anything. His windows were rolled down and he was blaring some wild speed metal. He waved at me when he saw me coming and I waved back.
“Get me the hell out of here,” I said when I climbed into the car.
My mother was watching on the porch with her arms crossed. She was squinting intently toward the car like she was trying to see if she recognized my new friend from a wanted poster.
“Is that your mom?” he asked. He waved at her. She didn’t wave back. Instead she just jutted out her chin and stared harder.
“Dude, c’mon. Let’s go.”
It was the time of the day where the sun was giving off its last brightness, one that seemed greater than anything all day. The rays came from low on the horizon, blinding us in some stretches and burning behind us on others. He was driving over the speed limit as usual. I was turned toward him in my seat, in love with the way the wind felt on my shaved head and the song on the radio, all buzz saw guitars and a guy growling in German.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. He was sprawled out low in his seat, super relaxed and probably high. “
Where do you want to go?”
“I don’t care,” I said.
“Somewhere new?”
“I’ve been everywhere. Take me somewhere I’ve never been.”
“Oh, so he’s been everywhere,” Alex said to himself. He shot me a charming grin. For a moment I thought I might be too sullen to let it affect me, but before I knew it my scowl had melted away and I was smiling like a fool. He rubbed his hand over my shaved head. We drove out of the city in the opposite direction of Dingo’s place. Before long, the sun had been reduced to a little glow far off to the west and Alex had to turn his lights on. We’d stayed quiet for most of the drive, and it took me some time to realize that’s what I needed. I was glad he was able to recognize that, and impressed that he knew before I did.
“Bad mom business?” he finally asked.
“Sort of. It’s always bad nowadays.”
“That sucks. But I hear ya. I have those days. Or had them. Before my mom left.”
“It’s not exactly the same. I mean, I guess it is. But it’s not. My mom’s sick.”
I’d never said it before, but suddenly it almost felt like I’d solved something. I’d put a word to it. She was sick. But the moment I’d picked that answer, a hundred questions grew in its place.
“We’re all sick,” Alex said. “I was thinking that the other night at Dingo’s place when everyone was there going crazy and shaving their heads. I mean, I remember in high school seeing people who seemed like they had it all together. People like Jessica Montana or Judy Lockhart. Everyone thinks girls like them have a perfect life and that they fall asleep every night without any thoughts or fears or whatever. But it’s not true. Everyone’s got that thing in them that keeps them awake.”