Notes on a Near-Life Experience (18 page)

I
T'S 10:39 P.M.
I
OPEN MY HISTORY BOOK
. I'
M SUPPOSED TO
read two chapters by tomorrow and write a list of questions about the end-of-chapter questions. Mr. Bingler is determined to get us to “question what the textbook wants us to believe about America,” so instead of answering the damn questions at the end of the chapter, we have to come up with new ones.

The phone rings.

It's Haley. “Let's sneak into the Olympus Lakes pool.”

“Can't. History homework.”

“I already did it. I'll tell you what's in the chapters on the way over and we can do your questions on the way back.”

Yeah, it's cheating; yeah, Haley's a straight-A student with a perfect academic record; and yeah, we've done this a
million times over the years. Sometimes I read and report, sometimes Haley does.

Her justification: “It's ethical because we're really just supposed to learn the material; the way we learn it doesn't matter, as long as we learn it.”

“Okay. Just us, or should I invite Al and Julian?”

“Just us. It's been a while.”

Haley flashes her brights, our signal. My parents'—I guess my mom's now—bedroom faces the backyard, and my bedroom window is visible from the driveway, so when we were younger, Haley used to shine a flashlight in my window to signal that she was there. That was before we all had cell phones, back when my parents would have cared that I was leaving the house at night without their permission. I like that Haley still does it the old way, that to her it's still natural to use our signal, that she's even adjusted it so that she can use her car to do it. It's nice that there are things between us that haven't faded or been lost.

“I love that you still do that,” I tell her as I get in the car.

“What?”

“Flash your lights. You could just call. The way things are now, you could probably honk your horn.” And even if anyone was home, they'd probably be too drunk or too preoccupied to notice, I think.

“Huh.” She wrinkles her brow. “I've never really thought about it. Habit.”

“So why the sudden urge to sneak into the pool?”

“The moon was full, my homework was done, and I missed you.”

I crane my neck out the window and look up at the moon, a perfect white disc hanging in the blue-black sky. “Thanks.”

“No, no, thank you for coming. So, let's get the history over with and then we'll talk. He's got us doing the Industrial Revolution and the civil rights movement….”

“What?” Mr. Bingler has a habit of jumping around a lot and having us study two completely different periods of history at once. He seems to think he's teaching us these deep, profound lessons about history by doing this. But I usually don't get it. “Why would he put those two together?”

“It's kind of interesting….” Haley talks fast, and by thetime we get to the entrance to Olympus Lakes, she's pretty much finished her synopsis. She types a number into the keypad at the security gate and it opens.

Olympus Lakes is a housing development surrounded by man-made lakes on two sides and a golf course on the other two. It was built when I was in fourth grade. In true yuppie fashion, the development has a Greco-Roman theme; most of the homes have columns, and all the streets are named after Greek and Roman gods and goddesses. Navigating through the place is always a treat. “So I turn left on Adonis?” “No, you go past Adonis and Aphrodite to Jupiter, and it's left on Jupiter.”

A bunch of new kids moved in and came to our school when it was completed, and my friend Ana, who's on the
dance team with me, was one of them. The first time I went over to her house, she took me to the community's clubhouse, which has a huge swimming pool with waterfalls, natural-rock waterslides, three diving boards that are all different heights, and several hot tubs shaded by tropical plants. I was astounded. Back then, everyone else's pools had a deep end, a shallow end, and, if you were lucky, a diving board and/or a hot tub. Haley and I have been sneaking into Olympus Lakes ever since. Now, of course, tons of people have upgraded their pools so that they look like Amazonian lakes, but I still love sneaking in here, although we hardly ever do it anymore.

We skinny-dip because it feels more dangerous, but we only do it when we're sure no one else is around. When I hear about the wild things other girls do, flashing their chests at Mardi Gras, snorting coke at parties, I realize that I am a total dork. But I have to admit, I still feel like a rebel when I skinny-dip in this pool.

Haley and I scale the fence, throw our towels on some plastic lounge chairs, and strip down. We cannonball into the pool, as always, and when we surface, we swim around for a few minutes.

“It's to cold to stay in here long. Let's get in the Jacuzzi,” she says, shivering.

“I want to swim a little longer,” I tell her.

Haley gets out of the pool and goes to the hot tub, turning on the jets before she gets in. I paddle around the pool a few more times, float on my back for a while, and notice how
small my breasts look when I lie on my back. After I am convinced that there is no getting around the fact that they are hopeless, that I will never be featured on a Girls Gone Wild video, I get out of the pool and walk over to the Jacuzzi.

As soon as I sit down, Haley blurts out, “Your brother called me up at two O'clock in the morning last night to ask me to the prom.”

“What did you say?”

“I think he was on something.”

I wonder if she means that he wasn't just drunk, but high, too. I almost ask, but I worry that Haley won't want to go to the prom with us if she finds out how Allen's been acting lately. “Very funny.”

“No, I'm serious.”

I avoid looking at her. “He was probably just nervous. What did you say?”

“I told him I'd get back to him…. He wasn't just nervous, either.” She waits for me to look at her, but I play with the bubbles from the jets instead and pretend that I have no idea what she's getting at.

“So are you going to go with him or what?” I try to seem nonchalant.

“Well, I wanted to ask you what you thought. I mean, I know we'd go with you and Julian, so that would be fun. And I know Al wouldn't pull any Ricky Friedman crap, either. But…I don't know. Did you tell him to ask me?” Haley asks.

“He asked you because he wanted to. That's all.”

“Okay. Then I'll go with him. But what's the deal with him lately?” Haley moves away from the jet behind her. Her skin gets irritated if she sits in front of it for too long. “We have ceramics together and he hardly ever comes to class. And I swear there was something wrong with him when he called me.”

“I think he's been really busy with work, and he coaches Keatie's soccer team with Julian. He was probably just tired.”

Haley looks unconvinced.

“Anyway, it's none of our business, right?” I say.

“He's your brother, so it is your business. And I'm your friend, so if your family is having a rough time and you want it to be my business, it can be my business, too. Look, Mia, if you don't want to talk to me about it, that's fine, but if Allen's doing things that could get him, or other people, into serious trouble, someone needs to do something about it.”

“You're starting to sound like one of those drug awareness videos they show every year during Red Ribbon Week,” I joke. How can I tell her that I can't even deal with my own feelings about my disappearing family and upside-down-inside-out world, much less Allen's?

“I'm sorry,” she says, “but I still mean it.” She looks at me hard for a moment, to show she really is serious. “Anyway, you and Julian are definitely my business. So what's up with that?”

“I don't know…. It seems like things are good.” I lean my
head back, dip my hair in the water, then wrap it into a knot to keep it out of my face. “Okay so this might be kind of a creepy question, but…do you think I have nice boobs?”

“What?” Haley says, her eyes immediately shifting away from me, as if she wants to make sure I know she is not looking at my breasts.

“No, not like that…I mean… Julian and I kiss. And I like it, don't get me wrong. And we don't necessarily need to do anything else at this point, but isn't he supposed to want to?”

“And you think this has something to do with your boobs?”

“I don't know.”

“When you were walking over here from the pool, I thought, 'Mia has great, perky boobs,' in a strictly nonlesbian way, you know.”

“Really?”

“Totally. Mine are droopy compared to yours.” Haley is beautiful and she has a fantastic body. If I didn't know who her parents were, I'd think she was the love child of a basketball star and a big-breasted supermodel.

“Nah. I was just cold.”

We leave when our hands and toes get pruney, and make up questions for Mr. Bingler's homework on the way home. We try to make them sound like textbook questions, but we throw in a few nonsense questions because it's so late and we're sort of out of it.

“How are the effects of the Industrial Revolution apparent in the roots of the civil rights movement?”

“The civil rights movement was not civil, nor did it actually move, but it was right. Discuss.”

When Haley drops me off, Allen's car is in the driveway, and the light in his room is off. See, he's fine, in bed by twelve-thirty. When I pass his room on the way to mine, his door is slightly open, but I don't look in.

T
HE
C
HRISTMAS BEFORE
I
TURNED NINE
,
MY GRANDPARENTS
, my dad's parents, wh've never been great present givers— one year they bought us all new pillows—bought us each a board game. Allen got Monopoly; I got Sorry!; Keatie got Candy Land. I never played mine, but Allen liked his; Keatie was too young to do much more than strew the cards from hers all over the house.

Anyway, that spring we all got the chicken pox. My mom was out of town visiting an old college roommate, and our housekeeper-nanny lady, Prudencia, wouldn't come over because she'd never had chicken pox, so my dad had to stay home from work and take care of us.

It was his idea to play Monopoly.

So we started playing and my dad started talking about
how he hadn't lost a game of Monopoly in twenty-six years or

something like that.

“Get ready to lose,” Allen told him.

After about three hours of Monopoly I was bored, confused, and almost out of money; Keatie was making towns out of the houses and hotels, pretending to blow them up with the tin top hat game piece that no one had wanted to use; and Dad and Allen were in another galaxy, intent on the game.

I rolled the dice and got an eight, which landed me on a square belonging to Allen that had three houses on it. I counted out almost all my money and gave it to him.

“You got a double,” he said. “Two fours, you get to roll again.”

“I don't want to,” I said. “I'm tired.”

“It's the rules.” Allen pressed the dice into my hand and closed my fingers around them.

I rolled. Two ones. I moved forward two spaces. Another of Allen's squares; this one had a red plastic hotel on it. I gave Allen the rest of my money.

“That's not enough; you have to mortgage your properties.”

“Just take them,” I said handing Allen all the cards in my possession.

“All right!”

I began watching TV with Keatie, who'd tired of bombing plastic villages. And then the tide turned.

Smack in the middle of a rerun of
Scooby-Doo
on the Cartoon Network, Allen yelled, “Ye-eah! You are so finished!”

“We'll see,” said Dad, with an odd edge to his voice. He counted his money twice. He turned over each of his cards one at a time, adding in his head.

“You don't have enough, Dad,” said Allen.

“We'll see,” he repeated, writing down numbers on a piece of paper money.

“I beat you. You're done.”

Dad calmly picked up the game board and folded it, funneling the pieces on it back into the box. He gathered up his multicolored paper money, put it away, and walked out of the room without saying anything.

Keatie remained entranced by the TV. I watched Allen, mystified. I saw Allen's face crumple as he bowed his head and began putting his money and cards back in the box.

Dad didn't say a direct word to Allen or me for the rest of the day. He still wasn't talking to us when my mom got home from her trip the next day, and by then, Allen wasn't talking, either.

“What's going on here?” said Mom, sensing the tension within minutes of arriving home.

Neither Dad nor Allen spoke.

“Allen beat Dad at Monopoly, and Dad hadn't lost in forty-eight years,” I told her. “And now they won't talk.”

“What? Don't be ridiculous, Mia.” She looked at Dad as if she expected him to debunk my story. He didn't say anything.

“It's true,” I insisted.

Her mouth twitched, the way it does when something bothers her but she doesn't want to show it. She looked at the
two of them. Allen pursed his lips; Dad looked away.

“Russ, tell me what happened.”

Dad shrugged and took Mom's bags down the hall to their room.

“Al, is that true?”

Allen nodded. His face tensed, his eyes got watery, he hung his head.