The Laws of Average (8 page)

“Clear.”

The car jerked with a fat, forward motion, its nose opening into the little street. The girl kept her vinyl sandal firm against the brake pedal and shot a full-on look to the box on the dash. It hadn't moved.

“Eyes on
the road,”
Roy said. Mary's daughter rolled her eyes up the dashboard and onto the windshield. She kept her hand on the shifter and slowly raised the arch of her foot up and off the brake. Mary's T-Bird crept forward as its transmission slowly turned the back wheels no longer held tight against their rusty discs. When she touched the thinner, longer gas pedal with the same foot, the engine surged and she instinctively brought the other sandal down where the previous one had just been not even a full second prior. The translucent red needle sealed behind the thick plastic of the tachometer throbbed as the engine revved, yet the car was no longer moving.

“Yeh can't hold both pedals down,” Roy said. “Let off the brake.”

The girl eased her foot back from the gas pedal and the tach needle drooped. She hadn't even thought about it.

“I said
brake.”

“I
know!”
Blood rushed into the round cheeks of her round face on her round head. She didn't look up into the mirrored squares to check, either. She could feel it, warm under her skin. Roy reached his arm towards the steering wheel, fingers spread into a web as he aimed them for the the dull knob on the shifter.

“I've
got it
, Roy!” She stared hard into his face and clenched her hand tight around the knob, her arm locked where it latched at the elbow. Roy drew his hand back into his chest and met her eyes. She wasn't even remotely fucking around.

There are three accounts of what happened the rest of the afternoon, but only one of them made it back to Mary. The one that didn't mention Some Boy on 8
^th
Ave W. This was the same one Roy narrated to Mary when he arrived back at the house sans Mary's daughter, the frame of Mary's T-Bird bent where the girl had cut the corner onto 2
^nd
Ave N too sharp and thundered over an ornamental lava rock decorating the empty parking lot of an insurance agency. This is the one where the girl was hysterically upset and terrified about Mary's reaction and had begged Roy to deposit her at a friend's house and that she would return to Mary's house after Roy explained what happened because the girl needed to calm down first. This is the official account, and its facts are uncontested.

The second account of what happened the rest of the afternoon is the one Mary's daughter's friend told Mary's daughter's friend's father, the one which included all of the facts of the official account but adds the slight bend that Mary's daughter needed a lift over to 8
^th
Ave W because that's where the car was going to be towed and then Mary's daughter would snag a ride home with Roy in the flatbed, or something like that, because Mary's daughter's friend's father neither paid much attention nor cared, which, of course, was the entire reason Mary's daughter cajoled her friend to cajole her father in the first place. This is the same account that wrankled Mary's daughter's friend's face because (A) she knew it wasn't true and (B) Mary's daughter absolutely bajillion percent protested her friend even so much as thinking she would tag along.

The third account of what happened the rest of that afternoon is the one which matches pretty closely to the plan Mary's daughter had all along, the one where she took the corner at 2
^nd
Ave N too fast on purpose and with great aim.

This is the one where her friend's father pulled away with her friend still in the back seat because Mary's daughter wouldn't even let her out of the car to take the seat she had just vacated in the white Subaru, afraid that if she so much as cracked that back door, her friend would spring free like an excited puppy and the girl would never get her back into the car.

This is the one where the girl resumed crying as soon as the Subaru made the right turn onto 3
^rd
St, crying even harder than she had in front of Roy after bricking the car to a stop there in the furthest full lane of 2
^nd
Ave N, the pack of cigarettes having sailed all the way into the back bench seat of Mary's T-Bird—a perfect shot, really, even better than the one's she'd practiced in her mind dozens of times before drifting off to sleep in Mary's house.

This is the one when she pounded the lead door knocker on that monstrous house on 8
^th
Ave W lined by equally monstrous hedges, the girl's sandals sticky on the painted porchboards, her eyes flooding, cheeks burning when the screen door snapped behind her and she stood inside. This is the one where Some Boy pulled her into him with his thin arms, the hallway shrinking with his breathing, and the buddump-buddump-buddump-buddump under her ear, the cartilage pressed all the way into his T-shirt, the outside world muffling and fuzzing as she pressed hard into him, trying to ignore the datastream pouring into her brain from the other ear until Some Boy tipped her temple towards him and cupped the open ear with his hand, sending her into a stereophonic blur of warmth interrupted only by the voice imploring her to
“Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.”

This is the one where the girl led their hand-holding processional up the large wood staircase, a tiny parade of flip-flops and bare feet up into the empty room in which Some Boy slept and dreamt of Mary's daughter, the empty room in the empty house filled with their meager shuffling even though there was no need for quiet, because this was all part of It, and the girl was all the way inside now, sitting him on the foot of his own bed, closing the door they'd just passed through, the grainy floors groaning softly under her steps as she kicked off her sandals—1—2—and they slapped against the mopboards.

This is the one where Some Boy sat absolutely still, shushed by the girl's index finger balanced perpendicular against her lips, the girl's sign language echoing Some Boy's words from the hallway now a full story below them, her other index finger noodling her thin poplin shirt apart, the skin of her neck fading from the summer's bronze, the gradient bleeding into the same shade of notebook paper Some Boy used for scribbling endearments and affections to her, her belly a puff of cotton.

This is the one starring Some Boy inching towards her when she dropped her arms, scooching his knees forward with thin bursts from his calves until the tips of his toes discovered her shirt on the small creep of floor between them.

This is the one playing out in her mind, an opera.

This is the one of no turning back. This is the one.

The only.

I didn't come here with her, nevertheless she is slow-dancing me above a gymnasium floor freshly sealed with acetane two days ago and definitely still reeking of it. Bon Jovi's power ballad “Never Say Goodbye” is thundering its way through the other couples here on the floor before shattering against the bleachers where other color-coordinated pairs of people are either arguing or not trying hard enough to conceal their clumsy groping of one another. There are also a few singles sprinkled amongst them, but the loners mostly sit in the front rows of the bleachers, where the couples have dibs on the higher planks, higher and further back at nearly a 45 degree angle overhead. By the time the sound waves get here, they are thin, watery, and a bit shrill. This, despite the fact that the Z-103 sound crew (comprised of only one dude, a lone radio DJ who calls himself Logan Tusow (aged 46) and has arguably the area code's thinnest beard (b/w matching moustache that doesn't touch) and rents to himself his rent-to-own PA system on Friday nights (divorced three times, currently engaged, no children) to all the junior high schools) has the bass jacked up so high that the large framed photos of basketballers in short-shorts are rattling against the brick wall to which they (the photos—not the basketballers nor their short-shorts) are affixed, as are the shoegazers underneath who don't feel like bleaching it, who instead park themselves at L-shaped angles against the walls surrounding the entire area, so from way up above (assuming you could actually
get
above, that is), if you were to look through the roof as if it weren't actually there (another fairly large assumption, obviously) and stare down, it would almost seem like the borders of this room are constantly infected with carpenter ants. Occasionally glances rise up to make sure the photos buzzing overhead aren't ready to crash down on them when they aren't looking (which is never) or in some way expecting it (ditto). Because that would just be their luck, they think, and it would confirm their reticence to come in the first place, so, in a sense, there are a handful actually wishing for it to happen, so they could later tell their respective whomevers (from the dreamscape fog of a hospital scene played out over and over again in their minds bent by watching far too many Hollywood sap films and mid-afternoon soap operas) I TOLD YOU SO, and soak deep down into their self-deprecation. But for the majority of them (and, quite likely, really, ALL of them, even the ones praying for the catastrophe from above that will never come), the longing to be part of the central scene on the dance floor—to be only of of the legs of those stiff compasses lumbering and spinning around one another—well, that longing simply overwhelms them.

Case In Point: Lucy Walker, cajoled into coming by her friends Monica and Shawneen, who purposely didn't tell Lucy they were meeting Terry and Tracy Franks here, and who, upon seeing aforementioned Franks Brothers, squealed in complete syncopation as if they had rehearsed the precise tone and octave (they had) for the last two weekend sleepovers at Monica's house (these, too, Lucy had not been informed about nor invited to, for now-obvious reasons).

Case In Point: Graham Nelson, whose mom begged (and ultimately bribed) him to come tonight for the official reason that all his friends from this new school would be here (all zero of them) and he wouldn't want to regret not going to this some 20 years later, but for the unofficial reason that Graham's mom was meeting Graham's dad for a roleplay session at the Purple Sage Motel just down Kimberly Road, and she couldn't miss her chance (again) to play Daddy Warbucks in their Little Orphan Annie Routine.

Case In Point: Cindy Barker, who didn't go home after school today, hiding in the shower room until the Sadie Hawkins affair tonight started taking shape with its folding tables screeching across the gym floor and the early-arrivers arrived early sporting their identically-paired/colored/sized/ stretched/embroidered Izod polos; Cindy Barker, who took Angee Feltman's threats all week to “beat” her “ass” as true and unalterable fact; Cindy Barker, who had blown the points curve for all the pre-algebra classes all trimester, five straight tests and six pop quizzes in a row.

Case In Point: Angee Feltman, who is totally unaware of Cindy Barker's breath, scent or smell here along the wall, but even if she were, the plain truth of the matter is that Angee wouldn't make good on those earlier promises to “beat” any portion of “ass” because she is here waiting for Val Talaander and Katrina Ailes to show up. And they aren't going to. And Angee hasn't started to realize this just yet, so she is perpendicular to the wall, just left of the double metal doors propped open-open with matching metal folding chairs, her toe touching the same wall where Lucy, Graham and Cindy currently reside, Angee pretending that she is only temporary here despite the fact she isn't rocking an Izod, the embarrassing truth still waiting to reveal itself while she queues for Val and Katrina all evening, because what it all really boils down to is everyone here is just killing time until their parents roll into the parking lot at 9:30 to corral them all like farm animals. It just seems that some of them—the wallflowers especially—are more aware of this fact than the others.

I am aware of this only because as she continues spinning me around (she always leads) in her half-circle steps, the scene on the wall refreshes in my view every five seconds, and virtually without exception the figures and faces remain motionless and changeless, a fleshy mural interrupted only by the shift of an arm or the deep heave of a chest when its owner takes in a big breath to immediately push the air out, thin mouths with lips gapped into half-sneers as the pale rush of popcorn breath floods the room. See, she is left-handed—more like left-bodied—and is out and out militaristic about exercising her southpaw tendencies (see above). She not only writes left, bats left, throws left, but leads-on-the-dancefloor left (she always leads), so our combined orbit is always counter-clockwise, and about every 10
^th
step I fumble my own left foot either too near inside or too far outside the narrow fulcrum we've created between our feet to pivot around, breaking the nervous rhythm nearly every time I do this. She shifts her leading arm (she always leads) to compensate for the break, to wit I respond with my own compensation with my trailing arm, so the total effect is something like an airplane's propeller sputtering and wobbling immediately after ignition. And she always notices the sputterings, keeps mental count of them for each slow song, tabulating them at the end of the evening into some karmic algebra that will help her formulate her next move in our 36-minute old relationship which started beyond the double metal doors, taking me largely by surprise.

Like I said, I didn't come here with her. Didn't make plans to meet her by the pay phones or outside the bathroom. Didn't write her a legal paper note in purple ink to slide between the chevron slits of her locker. Didn't meet up with her in the lunch line to plan the whole evening out, in between the lunch ladies piling our molded brown trays with various shapes and thicknesses and smells of carbohydrates and fat.

I for reals and truly just didn't.

I did, however, do all of those things with Natalie Boxnard, whose name does an adequate job of describing her, moreso really than I could do or want to. Natalie is pretty much the girl version of me, especially in the fact that she's hopelessly right-handed, passive-passive aggressive, and considers any Friday night exciting in as much as it contains viewing either of the Patrick Swayze classics (namely,
Dirty Dancing
and
Point Break
) on videocassette. These are the evenings of her clad in her United Colors of Pajamaton, her father's athletic socks scrunched down on her ankles, quite possibly the world's largest bowl of unsalted/unbuttered popcorn strategically positioned on the couch between us to ensure it totally kills any potential for something even faintly resembling a romantic mood (Natalie's flood insurance-selling father has used this tactic for a long long time, having perfected his libido-crippling concoctions on Natalie's three older sisters; suffice to say, Mr. Boxnard knows his stuff when it comes to flatlining his daughters' emerging sexual proclivities, and most definitely keeps better tabs on teen hormonal swings and the flavor-of-the-week androgynes adorning the covers of Tiger Beat, 16, etc. etc. etc. (bold pastel-colored blocks of lettering floating over naturally curly hair: “Justin Dreams of You!”, “Inside Kirk's Dressing Room!”, “Taylor-Joey-Taylor Throws The Best Pool Party EVER!”, etc. etc. etc.) than he (Mr. Boxnard) does when it comes to whatever particulars flood insurance salesmen are supposed to keep track of (if any). I know the popcorn routine far too well, and have endured it far too many times than is reasonable for a completely harmless boy like myself).