Supernormal (8 page)
Danny had given Cam a complicated merry-go-round of directions, but in the end finding his house was as simple as following Tyler after church. Tyler was carrying a party-sized bag of Tostitos, and a jam jar of…
“Salsa,” Tyler said, when he caught Cam staring. “My grandma makes it. You’re going to want to take it slow, though, it’s not for beginners. Danny’s cousin Roger blew his eardrums out last Fourth of July.” He nodded a question at the foil-wrapped package Cam was holding.
“Cookies.”
Tyler’s eyes went alert. “Meg’s cookies? Chocolate chip cookies?”
“Yes.”
The Evans’ house was a stretched-out one-story, in that Spanish-style stucco with the red tile roof that was so popular in Sugar Beach. There was an abandoned girl’s bike in the driveway, and the lawn desperately needed a mow. Danny swung the glass-paneled front door open before they even knocked, diving at Cam with a cry of, “You brought them!” He snatched the package out of Cam’s hands and rushed back inside.
Tyler raced after him. “No fair! Hey! Hey—those are for sharing!”
Cam stood there for a moment, feeling like an uninvited vampire. He stepped inside.
His first thought was that somebody definitely lived here. There was a controlled kind of disorder, the sense of a mess that was barely kept in check: jackets tossed onto chairs, a pile of mail spilling off the hall table, movie magazines sprawled open on the couch, a basket of laundry waiting to be folded. Human touches, too: a calendar, scribbled on, dates circled; photos of Danny in a graduation cap and gown, Danny and a young girl at Disneyland; the same girl and an older woman in matching Christmas sweaters. So many photos. They were hugging in all of them.
The house even smelled
like people. His parents’ house had always smelled like furniture polish and disinfectant. The air there had been like a museum’s, so cool and dry it set his eyes itching—
Cam shook his head. He needed to stop thinking about his parents.
Tyler and Danny were in the kitchen, hunched over the foil package like wild animals. “Some of those are for Liz,” Cam told them.
“Liz’s not here,” Tyler said, “she loses out.”
“They’re, like, soft and crispy at the same time,” Danny managed between bites. “How does she do it? It’s magic. It’s cookie magic.”
Tyler stared Cam down, but he gave in. “What’s on the line-up, Danny?”
“We’re doing a Southern Fried Festival for our friend from Georgia.”
“
Kentucky Fried Movie
?”
“Better.
Sling Blade
. And then
To Kill a Mocking Bird
, and we end it with
Sweet Home, Alabama
.”
“That’s a chick flick.”
Danny shrugged. “Yeah, so?”
“You watch chick movies?”
“Of course. For research. I’m dating a woman, I got to know how women are thinking. I don’t see you dating a woman. You should watch chick movies.”
“Liz is not a woman,” Tyler said.
“Uh, I can confirm that she is,” Danny said, swinging his arms. “Because I have seen her naked. Because we have had sex.” Danny grinned and then winked at Cam. “And she is
hot
.”
“Oh my god, Danny—” Tyler put his head in his hands.
“What? You’re a clever boy, you had to have figured it out. Like that one time, when we were late for pizza, and you snarked about how hard was it to find your way in a town of five thousand and then I started snickering ‘cause you used the word ‘hard’? It’s cause we just—”
“I
meant
that ‘woman’ implies an adult, okay? Your mom is an adult. Ms. Gowan is an adult. Liz isn’t an adult. And I don’t need to hear this—I mean, Christ, she’s like my
sister
—”
“Excuse me,” Cam said.
“Great, now you scared him away,” Tyler said.
Cam caught the front door as it swung open, before it crashed into the wall and sent the vase on the hall table to the floor. “Something wrong?”
“No, no. Sorry I’m late.” Liz wedged her way in, tote bags hanging off each arm. Her face was red with the heat, and there was sand in her hair, fading the pink streaks. “You guys didn’t start yet, did you?”
“Where the hell have you been?” Danny called.
“Where do you think?”
Cam reached to take her bags, but she shrugged them off in one tense movement. He grabbed the coat tree before it clattered to the floor. Liz let out an angry huff.
“Dammit, Danny, who uses coat trees anymore?”
“My mom. We didn’t start. Tyler’s still bitching about the selection,” Danny called.
“Yeah, go take a shower,” Tyler yelled.
“You jackass. You don’t know if I stink, you haven’t smelled me yet,” Liz protested, heading into the living room. She shoved past Tyler and Danny into the kitchen.
“Smelled you just now,” Tyler said. Liz offered him a finger as she chugged a bottle of water.
Danny looped an arm around Liz’s waist and pulled her close. She shrieked with laughter as the water spilled between them. But she softened into him. “And you smell pretty. Like a girl. Like a pretty, pretty girl.” He burrowed his head in Liz’s neck and sniffed dramatically.
Tyler rolled his eyes. “Christ, get a room, will you?”
“Throw that at him, please,” Danny requested, and Liz obligingly chucked her water bottle at Tyler’s head. Even with him ducking, it nailed him right between the eyes.
Cam realized that he was still standing in the hallway, holding a coat tree. He hated this. Hated that he felt awkward. Hated that he would see the laughing and the having fun, and he would freeze up.
He set the coat tree back on its feet. It wobbled back and forth on its feet for half a second before crashing loudly to the floor. Danny, Liz, and Tyler looked over at him. Danny grinned. “Dude, that better not have dinged the floor. That’s Mom’s favorite part of the floor.” He laughed when Cam did a panicked check of the floor.
“I don’t think he likes us,” Liz said, resting her chin on Danny’s shoulders.
And Cam stood there, trying to force himself to move, relax, be natural, and failing, and thought, I don’t know if I like you. I don’t know you. And you don’t know me and you’re treating me like I’m a friend and I’m not sure I can deal with that.
He forced himself into the living room and took an awkward seat on the arm of the couch. “What’s wrong?”
Liz shuddered and stepped away from Danny. “The usual. Come on.
Sling Blade
. Let’s do this.”
“The usual?”
“Coach Parker,” Danny informed Cam.
“Don’t worry about it. And don’t ask her,” Tyler said. “Let’s all pretend that Liz is fine and just start the movie.”
Danny laughed. “You’re an awful friend.”
“Coach Parker what?” Cam asked Liz.
She rolled her eyes, but there was a bitter twist to her mouth. “Coach Parker just—being Coach Parker.”
“He doesn’t like Liz,” Tyler informed him.
“Why not?” Cam offered a smile. “You seem likable.”
“‘Cause she’s a woman,” Danny said. “Coach Parker isn’t all that fond of the ladies. Well, not, ‘ladies.’ More just Lizzie.”
“Why not?” Cam asked.
“Because girls don’t play baseball,” Liz spat out, as Tyler leaned back on the couch with a sardonic look on his face. “Girls play softball, or lacrosse, or field hockey
,
or they run track with
other girls
. They don’t play baseball, and if they do then they don’t play it with the boys, and they certainly don’t play it better than the boys. And if they do play it better, then obviously they’re cheating because there’s no way puny girl muscles could stand up to the big, strong
men
—”
Danny pulled Liz to him again, running his hands up and down her arms. “All right, all right. Breathe.”
“I don’t know why you put up with it,” Tyler said.
“I don’t,” Liz said, the anger on her face melting into razor-edged satisfaction. “I make him choke on it. I’ve been on that diamond every day for the past six years, I play on Christmas. He can say whatever he wants, but you better believe when we get out there I shove it down his fucking throat. But that doesn’t make it any easier to listen to.”
“Just look on the bright side,” Tyler said, and ignored the startled glances both Danny and Liz shot at him. “The only reason Coach Parker is behaving this way is because he’s grown up in a society that strictly divided certain activities along gender lines and equated success at those activities with success as a person and, in particular, as a man. It goes back to being the caveman with the biggest club. In a way, it’s understandable, considering he grew up in that time and culture, which stressed adherence to these archaic and arguably medieval stereotypes, to the degree that they have become inexorably tangled up in his gender identity. The odds are fairly good that he’s not actually being mean simply for the sake of meanness; it’s just that he’s had his values and ideas of self corseted by a time and culture that we, as a society, have now moved past, especially as regards to gender roles. It’s a lot to deal with.” Tyler paused. “Or it could be he’s just an asshole.”
“That’s the bright side?” Liz asked.
Tyler shrugged. “I, for one, find the fallibility of my fellow men—and women—to be very comforting. It’s nice to know everybody’s messed up in their own little way.”
“Plus,” Danny tossed in, “one day you’re going to be a starting pitcher for the Yankees, and he’s going to be old and alone and sitting on his couch, watching you on TV.”
“Giants,” Cam said, and then cleared his throat when everyone looked at him. “The Yankees are across the country. You, um, you wouldn’t want to move that far away from your family. The Giants are based in San Francisco. I believe,” he added lamely.
“That’s even better,” Danny jumped in. “Because then we can go to all of your games, and the money we save on airfare to New York we can put towards costumes.”
“We’re going to dress up?” Tyler said.
“Of course we’re going to dress up. If she gets to be a Giant, we all get to be giants, and we’re going to be jolly and green. It’s only fair.”
Liz dropped her head against Danny’s shoulder. When she spoke, her voice was muffled against his shirt. “I don’t even mind what he says to me—I mean, I do, but I’m a big girl. I can handle it. But the stuff he says to the kids. He doesn’t even think about it, but I can see it rub off on them. It’s a damn cycle.”
“Fallibility of the human condition,” Tyler said.
“No, it’s not,” Danny continued smoothly, “because for every stupid thing Coach Parker says to them, they see that nice Miss Bell, who teaches them how to keep their eye on the ball and not to be jerks, and who
flatlines
all those stinky boys on the field, and the cycle, it will break into little pieces and float away, like that vampire chick at the end of the second
Blade
movie.”
“Wait, Billy Bob Thorton’s a vampire?” Tyler asked.
“No, you idiot. The one we’re going to watch, with Billy Bob, that is
Sling Blade
. I’m talking about
Blade II
, with vampires and Wesley Snipes. The one where he’s a half-vampire vampire hunter and he teams up with a group of vampires in order to kill off the uber-vampires that are killing off all the regular vampires, and, for fuck’s sake, it’s like you live under a rock. What do you do all day?”
“I have three jobs, I have to pay for college, you dick. Besides, that doesn’t even make sense. Why would Wesley Snipes help out the vampires?” Tyler demanded. “He’s a vampire hunter. Why not just sit back and have a pina colada and let the uber-vampires do his work for him?”
“They explain it all in the movie. And he’s not going to have a pina colada, he’s a vampire. He’s going to have, I don’t know, a Bloody Mary. Except not, cause they’re gross. And he helps the vampires out.”
“Wait, he’s a vampire, and he’s killing vampires? That’s sick. He’s like a serial killer.”
“I’m going to grab a shower,” Liz said, and Cam looked away as Liz snagged Danny’s mouth for a kiss. Danny barely paused mid-argument.
(
“It’s a greater good kind of thing. Like teaming up with Russia to defeat Hitler.”) “You’re going to want to get a soda or magazine, something,” she told Cam. “They’re going to be at this for a while.”
By the time Liz rejoined them, Danny and Tyler agreed to swap out the planned line-up for the
Blade
movies
.
“I thought we were going to watch Southern movies, to welcome our new Southern friend,” Liz said.
“I’m pretty sure there’s a Southern vampire in there somewhere.”
“We’re also going to watch
Tru Blood
,” Tyler said, gesturing at Cam. “They’re Southern.”