Starry-Eyed (51 page)

“You know, I thought you had a good theory going there for a minute,” Goose said, inconspicuously shutting off the camera, so as not to remind Stringbean it had been on, and throwing their rope line onto the dock, “but now that you kept talking, you sound pretty full of shit.”

Stringbean threw a peanut at him, and they maneuvered the boat up to the dock.

13. Flip-Flop II

The air beyond the shoreline was damper, chiller, grown-over with unfamiliar smells: must, rot, growth, neglect. Stringbean tracked old roads under decades' worth of leaves and vines, kicking herself for wearing flip-flops instead of sneakers, which clearly would have been the sensible choice for woods exploration.

“I wish we could record the smells out here,” Stringbean mused. “It smells like—I don't know, old fire. And decay.”

“That's good,” Goose said. “It does.”

Stringbean barked suddenly, feeling something slimy underfoot. She reached down to pull a slug off her big toe, swearing under her breath.

“You okay?” Goose asked, shifting the weight of their supply pack on his shoulders.

“Yeah. Just a slug.”

“Wow,” Goose mugged shock at her, chuckling. “You don't like ugly slugs?”

“Slugs are the only ugly thing I hate.”

“Interesting. I guess there are still things to learn about people you've known forever.”

Stringbean paused, contemplating this. There was so much longing Goose didn't know.

They pushed deeper into the woods. The outline of the hotel's main building was visible through the thick tapestry of trees: fir, pine, oak, birch, all deep in their summer bloom. The two waded through the carpet of leaves and needles, vines and roots.

“We are approaching the remains of the Grand Hotel Sault St. Marie from the south side,” Goose said into the camera. “It smells like fire and decay.”

14. Interlude: Back at The House

Junie Mae watched as the big machine next to Big DeeDee blinked and beeped. Big DeeDee shifted slightly in her sleep, narrow in the hospice bed since she'd lost so much weight, her arm sliding off its edge. Junie Mae crawled into the space at Big DeeDee's side, burrowing into her nook.

“BeeDee,” Junie Mae whispered. “It's me, Junie Mae.”

“I know that, pumpkin,” Big DeeDee whispered back, wiping a trace of drool out of the corner of her mouth. “What you got?”

“Do you remember how you told me that we should be grateful that Princess Diana wasn't in pain anymore? Because she had been sad, and because she was in a car crash and it probably hurt a lot?”

Big DeeDee gave a dry laugh. “You woke me up to ask me about Princess Diana?”

“No, I wanted to ask you if we're supposed to want you not to be in pain anymore. Because I think that might be hard for me, but I don't want you to hurt a lot, either.”

Big DeeDee looked deeply at Junie Mae. “Well, that's a tough one, pumpkin pie. I suppose I'll make a deal with you. How about for now you don't think too much about me hurting, but after I'm gone, you can be grateful that I'm not anymore?”

Junie Mae looked deeply at Big DeeDee.

“Deal.”

And they both went to sleep.

15. Broken Machine

Goose was trying very hard not to pee his pants in excitement: for one, this old, burned, rotting hotel was
so flipping cool
, and on the other hand, he'd been plotting getting here, particularly getting here alone with Stringbean, all summer.

There had been, in a way that felt undeniable to Goose, a tectonic shift this summer, a quickening, and even though Stringbean didn't want to talk about it, he was beginning to think they needed to. It felt enormous, and he just couldn't go on playing her weird machine songs in the dark and feeling all funny inside when he watched his sister's old
Dawson's Creek
DVDs instead of acknowledging it anymore. It was all getting too embarrassing.

It was impossible to overstate how much time Goose now spent thinking about Stringbean's boobs. He didn't
want
to spend this much time thinking about them. But they were always
there
, under the camera, under her layers of bondage, under her crossed arms. And in his dreams, in the cinema of his mind every time he closed his eyes. Stringbean seemed to have absolutely no idea that she was rapidly transforming into a high-octane
babe
. But this fact, the transformation of his oldest friend, his partner in crime, into a newly strange and beautiful creature, was as profoundly disrupting to Goose as anything ever had been. The only hidden part of Stringbean that mesmerized Goose as much as her boobs was her voice.

“We are in the main lobby of the hotel,” Goose said excitedly as Stringbean swiveled to capture the rotted Persian carpet, the sunken velvet chairs, a moss-covered reception desk, and vine-ravaged grand piano. “Stringbean, see if you can play the piano.”

“You play,” Stringbean said from behind the camera.

“I'm afraid of the bench,” Goose said, standing at the keyboard. He played a few bars of “Nearer My God to Thee.” The piano sounded wet, diseased, and demented. A key fell off.

Stringbean watched, mesmerized: this was great. She hoped the fading light and the flashlights would be enough to get it all onscreen.

Softly, as Goose picked at the ancient, soggy piano, Stringbean hummed the damaged notes along with his playing. This piano was a broken machine. Stringbean was in love with it, with its broken song.

Goose looked sharply at Stringbean. “I know you sing, String,” he said.

Stringbean's humming ceased with a gulp. “What?”

“Come on. You're not that careful about switching out the tapes. Why don't you just sing? I like the way you sing.”

Stringbean crossed her arms and grimaced. “No.”

“But no one's here.” A tinge of panic rose in Goose's throat: had he pushed her too soon? “It's just me. Here, I won't look.”

He closed his eyes and kept playing. Softly, faintly, almost imperceptibly, after a moment, came Stringbean's voice, her wordless tones, small but open-mouthed. Goose's heart thrilled at the sound of her: her voice rangy and sonorous, the loveliest snarl.
You're beautiful, String
, he said to her, inside his head.

16. Room 15: Goose

Covered in dust and elated, Goose and Stringbean pushed farther into the hotel. Goose's heart thundered as he pushed open the least-burnt of the rooms, 15. The bedspread was still laid perfectly on the imploding queen-sized bed, lace and soot and spongy green growth. The last rays of sunlight withered from the broken window.

“See what happens if you put weight on the bed,” Stringbean said excitedly, zooming in on Goose.

Goose sat gingerly on the edge and the bed creaked impossibly, more a groan of exhaustion than a squeak of springs. Stringbean sang more earnestly now, trying to match the sickening tone of the bed. Goose now stared openly at her: from the piano, he'd tried to keep her from noticing that he noticed her singing, but the fact of it seemed to be acknowledged now, unleashing the secret of Stringbean's voice.

Goose shifted around on the bed, not wanting Stringbean to stop singing. He laid back, sinking into its center: more groaning, a kind of hiss. He flipped over on all fours and gave a cautious bounce: a cough, a crack as a board burst below. Stringbean harmonized with the bed's destruction. Goose watched her and her open mouth with the camera, transfixed.
More recklessly now, he stood up on the bed, transferring his weight from foot to foot: deflating, cracking, groaning, crunching. Stringbean sang her lunatic melody louder.

Goose was bewitched by her excitement—he had never seen Stringbean look quite so uninhibited, quite so unselfconscious, quite so alive. Stringbean was a
part
of this video in a way that she hadn't been before—a voice on the tape, a performer and not just an eye. Her face emitted a light.

Goose began to jump up and down on the rotten, rickety bed. Stringbean's spontaneous song reached a crescendo, screeching wildly, the sound of her bizarre and primal and pure. Goose jumped higher as she sang louder, trying to push through the ceiling for her. He didn't want her to stop, never wanted her to stop, could hear a thousand little imaginary ceilings shattering inside her, wanted to see what kind of Stringbean emerged from that wreckage.

It was just then, at the soaring climax of Stringbean, Goose, and the bed's strange trio, that the bed gave way under Goose and collapsed entirely, pitching Goose dangerously over its edge and shoulder-first onto the floor, knocking down a sign from the wall that read
CONEY ISLAND OF THE WEST: THE IDEAL RESORT OF THE NORTHWEST
. It took everything Stringbean had not to drop the camera as she ran to him.

“Oh shit, that was so stupid of us! Are you okay? Can you breathe?” Stringbean asked frantically, rolling him over to examine him.

“Oooowwwwww,” Goose groaned in a tone not unlike the bed's. “That one's gonna bruise.” He rubbed the floored shoulder.

“Do you think it's broken? Is it dislocated?”

“Naw. I can move it okay.” Goose winced as he rotated the arm. “It just hurts where I hit the ground. Did you get it all on tape?”

Stringbean burst into laughter. “Yeah. I think so. No, I definitely did.”

“We're using that clip. No arguments.” Goose stared hard at Stringbean. The gut-tingle she gave him was starting up again. “I like it when you sing. You sound kind of like Carol Burnett.”

17. Room 15: Stringbean

“Okay,” Stringbean said quietly.

The room reverberated, stunned after all the raucous action into sudden silence, and Stringbean felt a tectonic shift somewhere, one plate slipping under another, a new intersection. She was still out of breath and flushed, overheated from the plunge into the other side of her inhibition, unburdened and bare.

Goose sat up, still looking at her, not far from her face. The look made Stringbean feel something like indigestion.

“It's, um—kind of nice to be alone.”

“What do you mean?” Stringbean said uneasily. “We're alone all the time.”

“I know, but there's always your family or mine, and Junie Mae running around—it's quiet out here. It's nice,” Goose said.

Stringbean immediately thought about running, but where? It was an island, and it'd get dark, and she'd get lost in a haunted old hotel. Then she thought,
why am I thinking about running? It's just Goose
.

“I guess so,” Stringbean said. She smirked. “You're lucky you didn't hurt yourself any worse. You were just about to be another cautionary tale about kids and trampolines.”

“Stringbean, can I tell you something?” Goose blurted out, like he was in pain.

Stringbean was taken aback. “You can tell me anything. You know that.”

“IthinkI'minlovewithyou.” Goose's words all swirled together like melted ice cream.

“What? No, you're not.” Stringbean exclaimed, shocked. “Did you bang your head?”

“No, I'm fucking serious,” Goose said fervently. “You can't tell me that things haven't been sort of—different, in the last few months. That something's changed between us.”

“I mean, we're not ten anymore, sure,” Stringbean said, oddly warm
and squirming.

“But don't you feel the difference? Because it seems like you feel it too, but you don't want to talk about it.”

The thing about Goose was that he was always willing to admit things: Goose was an open channel, a present force, an untainted reflection of things. With Goose, what you saw was what you got, and it was what made him such a good story-hunter, such a good partner in crime, such an easy addition to the yard and the kitchen and the living room and Junie Mae and the boat and the island and the business of dreaming.

Stringbean knew she loved Goose, but
in love
wasn't something she'd let herself think much about. Because she thought that's what other girls did, and scoffed accordingly. Because, deep down, she knew that ugly girls who thought about
in love
, who let themselves get attached to it, were probably heading for an emotional plane crash.

“I guess—I guess maybe there's been an, I don't know, a tension that hadn't been there before,” Stringbean admitted.

“Yeah. I mean, um, I think in general there's some stuff that wasn't here before,” Goose said, coughing.

Stringbean glared at him, her message stern and silent:
Don't you know that we are never to talk about my boobs, ever
?

“Don't be disgusting,” Stringbean said.

“Don't be mean,” Goose shot back. “Look, I've been trying to work up the guts to tell you all this for a while, so you could at least be nice about it.”

“I'm sorry,” Stringbean said, softening. “Look, you know I love you, Goose. You're like, my everything. You're the only person in this godforsaken town who I actually
want
to spend time with. Everyone else I'm just stuck with.”