The Leftover Club (8 page)

May 1
2, 1979

There was a forgotten little playground about two blocks from where we lived in Fullerton. It didn’t belong to the city. Instead it was a sad little remnant behind an abandoned church with boarded windows and an overgrown field. None of the equipment really worked. The swing seats hung by one chain and the teeter totter was missing the plank, no doubt stolen by rebellious teens who used the abandoned lot to drink or smoke pot when playing hooky from the nearby high school. The tether ball pole was cemented deep in an old tire, but the ball was long gone. The only piece of equipment that hadn’t been destroyed by neglect and vandalism was the simple merry-go-round. It was painted in sections of red, yellow, blue and white, though all the colors were faded by the sun and the paint had begun to chip.

As sad as it looked, it was one of the happiest places on earth when I was nine years old.

Back in 1979, there was no cable TV for most kids, no home video games, smart phones or personal computers to entertain us. Instead we prowled our neighborhoods on our bikes, perused comic books and ate handfuls of candy we could buy for a dollar. All we really needed was some small patch of the Earth where we wouldn’t be disturbed. That made this playground a haven Dylan and I had found in a quiet neighborhood with a dilapidated church that didn’t invite visitors.

The older we got, the more unkind school was. As we aged out of the “
ew” stage regarding the other gender, suddenly things like boyfriends and going steady and kissing and even s-e-x became a titillating topic of conversation for kids a stone’s throw from junior high. And once our classmates found out we were an unrelated boy and girl living under the same roof, all sorts of rumors started to spread, despite how passionately I denied it.

“Why do you care?” he asked one day in our special, private spot. “If it’s not true, it doesn’t matter.”

Because it wasn’t true was precisely why it mattered. As we got older, I started to have feelings for Dylan that were in no way sisterly. I knew if he ever found out about it, I would just die. The only way to hide it was deny such proclivities instantly and vehemently.

This, of course, made me a fun target.

So every day of fourth grade, we’d take the detour from the crowded schoolyard and stop at that church on our way home. There was a corner store just a block away from the playground, where we’d raid the candy aisle and buy a forbidden soda to share between the two of us. Our mothers would have had strokes if they had seen our bounty of sugary goodness, especially since I had never been able to drop my childhood pudge.

Dylan, however,
had always been my partner in crime. He had nothing to say about my size, even though kids at school were starting to. To him, I was just Roni, the buddy he camped out with in the back yard and told scary stories to under a shared blanket with a flashlight. Others treated us like siblings. If he was invited anywhere, so was I, and vice versa. It was like we were connected at the hip. We went to matinees every Saturday, after we overdosed on morning TV that included
Looney Tunes
,
Schoolhouse Rock
, and Sid and Marty Krofft.

Saturdays were the worst for Dylan. His dad had weekend visitations, but usually flaked out at the last minute. I hated that sad look on his face, and insisted that we get on our bikes and go somewhere, anywhere, just to get out of the house.

It was on one of these Saturdays that we ended up at that neglected playground with a bag full of candies and a bottle of orange soda to share. Within minutes we lay on our backs on that dusty merry-go-round amidst empty candy wrappers, staring up at the sky and using our feet to propel it in an endless circle.

We discussed our favorite show (
The Incredible Hulk
) and the music we had recently discovered (ELO) courtesy of his AM/FM handheld transistor radio that followed him everywhere he went, hanging by its strap from his handlebar. It now sat next to our heads on the merry-go-round, blasting hits from the Top-40 station. We predicted which would top that week’s
America’s Top 40
as we sang along with all the songs we knew, with lyrics so far beyond our maturity level we didn’t even understand what we sang.

After
I belted out a Donna Summer song with gusto, he handed me the soda to wet my whistle as a reward. 

“You sing
good,” he praised.

“Well,” I corrected.

“Whatever,” he dismissed.

I giggled as I sucked on
a sweet candy stick coated with colored sugar that was supposed to taste like fruit. I wanted to tell him I was sorry that his dad flaked out again, but I learned a long time ago that he didn’t like to talk about that kind of thing. Instead it was time for Operation: Distraction. “So what movie do you want to see?”

“I don’t know. I’m not really in the mood to see a movie.”

“Oh,” I said. “What do you want to do?”

“I want to see my dad,” he said.

I turned my head to look at him. That softly worded confession was unexpected. I saw a tear at the corner of his eye.

“Why doesn’t he want me,
Roni?”

I turned over on my side and propped up on my elbow. I didn’t know what to say, or do.

He turned on his side to face me, mirroring my posture by propping up on his elbow. “Sometimes I think you’re the lucky one. Your dad didn’t leave you on purpose.”

“Still hurts,” I pointed out.

“Yeah, I know,” he said.

“And your dad can change his mind someday. He can come back.”

His dark eyes were big and sad. “He won’t.”

I didn’t know what to do so I reached for his hand, just to let him know I’d always be there for him, no matter what. He smiled. So did
I.

He pulled himself up into a sitting position, hooking one leg around one of the poles. “It’s your turn. From last time,” he said.

I laughed. Since we had been coming to this playground all year, we had to get creative with our games. We played truth or dare like most kids, but with this old merry-go-round, we came up with another game, “Truth, Dare or Puke.”

The object of the game was for the
askee to sit in the middle of the creaky old merry-go-round while the asker spun it as fast as they could. While the askee was disoriented, the asker would level their challenge… to tell an embarrassing truth, to agree to an even more embarrassing dare, or to stumble off into the corner and toss his or her cookies.

Naturally the longer it took you to answer the question or respond to the dare, the more likely you were to puke. It ensured absolutely honesty and
immediate compliance. I learned one of his most embarrassing moments in school involved laughing so hard milk came out of his nose. He learned that one of my most embarrassing moments included farting in church. He accepted my dare to act out
Greased Lightning
, and I accepted his to do a knock and run at the crabbiest neighbor’s house.

As we got older, our dares got a little naughtier.
We tested out curse words and shoplifted candy and vandalized a newly laid section of sidewalk. During our last game, he dared me to show ‘mine’ if he showed me ‘his.’ The idea of being in any way naked in front of a boy was unthinkable. I tried to change for truth, but he was empowered by the one thing I refused to do and kept spinning me around the merry-go-round, laughing so hard I thought he might wet himself. Thankfully I finally puked and it was over, and even more thankfully we had already put a rule in place that we could never repeat a dare.

So I felt more confident as I climbed off the merry-go-round and started to spin him where he sat.
After a few turns, I asked, “Truth, Dare or Puke?”

“Truth!” he said
as he held onto the bar.

I thought for a moment, but then decided
to go with an oldie but a goody. “Who’s your latest crush?”

I
couldn’t wait to hear how he answered this oft repeated challenge between the two of us, as his answers had ranged anywhere from Judy Jetson to Miss Maloney, our fourth grade English teacher. He always answered honestly because he knew I never judged. How could I, with my moony-eyed crushes over teen idols named Davy, Leif and Chachi?

Only this particular day, he hesitated. That was new.
He looked away as he held on. “Dare!”

I laughed. After as much as he tortured me last time around, there was no way I’d let him off the hook.
“No way! You chose truth.” I spun him even faster. “You’re gonna puke!” I warned with a big grin. “Better tell me who!”

“
You!” he finally admitted.

I lost my footing and fell right on my face
. I spit dirt from my mouth as I lifted up from the ground. He scooted to the edge and stalled the ride with his feet. “Are you okay?”

I nodded as I rose to my feet. I wore red shorts and a multi-colored stripped tank top, all of which
was now covered in dirt. He jumped off the merry-go-round to help me brush it off, but I backed up immediately. “I’ve got it,” I mumbled. I hopped up on the merry-go-round before he could say anything else. “My turn!” I declared as I took my place in the sacred circle.

He hooked his shoulder under one of the bars and started to spin me around. Once we were going pretty good, he said, “Truth, Dare or Puke?”

Fearing he might want to know who my crush was, or worse… if I had a crush on him, too, I had no choice but to opt for dare.

I had to hold on tight as he spun me even more out of control. Then, s
urprisingly, he hopped up onto the merry-go-round and scooted to where I hunched in the middle. His eyes glittered as he said, “Kiss me.”

My mouth fell open. Was he serious? We had lived in the same house together for going on three years, living and interacting much like brother and sister. Now in one afternoon he told me he had a crush on me and he wanted to
kiss me?

For a girl who barely got Valentine’s cards, this was all very confusing.
I was growing dizzier by the second, and I suspected it had little to do with the child’s ride we were on.

As the merry-go-round still spun and Dylan still waited, I realized that
I had two options. I could scramble off the merry-go-round and hopefully puke out of Dylan’s line of vision, or I could just kiss him.

So
I leaned over and kissed his cheek, just like I did my mom or his mom, my aunt Daphne or my cousin Charles.

Dylan’s
eyes were dark as I pulled away. As I lost myself in them, I knew he was none of those people. He wasn’t my cousin, or my brother, or even just my friend. He was now a boy. And not just any boy, he was the first boy in my life to admit he had a crush on me.

And I felt exactly the same.

It was a very significant moment.

Even though we were spinning, it felt as though time had slowed down to a crawl. When he leaned forward, I did too, until our lips met tentatively
as the world spun around us. His lips felt warm and firm on mine. It felt so good that our passionate peck lingered, just like we had seen on movies and TV. We didn’t pull apart until the spinning wheel finally slowed to a stop.

“
Ew, gross!” we heard a boy say, and we scooted apart instantly. A group of fifth grade boys who regularly made life miserable for us happened to be riding by the church at exactly the wrong moment. “You’re making out with your
sister
!” he said, as if that was the grossest thought ever.

There was only one thought worse: “Your
fat
sister!” the other boy said.

When I turned back to Dylan, I saw that he had flushed deep red. He scurried off the merry-go-round. “She’s not my sister!” he screamed back at our
tormentors. He looked back at me, as if seeing me through brand new eyes. “And I didn’t kiss her!”

He turned away and ran home.

September 2
1, 2007

Bryan and I sat together on my sofa, both of us in green face masks, wrists deep in a big bowl of popcorn as we watched an old Audrey Hepburn movie. Since Meghan had elected to spend her birthday weekend with her dad, I had my apartment to myself. And since I had been utterly depressed about it, Bryan took pity on me and announced we were long overdue for an Epic Movie Marathon Sleepover.

Scattered across my coffee table was a decimated pizza box and a stack of DVDs full of beautiful, elegant
people, many of whom were long dead. They were still the best odds for romance we had, given we were both currently single. Perhaps that was why he was singularly focused on going to our 20-year reunion. He got a perverse thrill figuring out which classmates had finally come out of the closet, especially if they had contributed at any point to his own oppression as a gay teen.

“You just want Dylan to switch teams. Admit it.”

He shrugged. “Maybe he hits for both. It’s 2007, it’s not exactly unheard of.” I shook my head. I was sure of relatively little in my life, but one thing I knew I could take to the bank with 100-percent certainty was that Dylan Fenn was absolutely, positively, indisputably heterosexual.

Bryan
wasn’t necessarily convinced. “Think about it. He’s almost unnaturally gorgeous and yet he’s never been married or in a long-term relationship. He wears pretty girls on his sleeve in some endless quest to prove his status as a hyper-stud, even all these years later. I’m just saying, an argument could be made.”

“Maybe all he needs is ten minutes alone with you,” I teased before blowing him a kiss.

“Now there’s an idea,” he pondered wistfully. “How’s that for a 20-Year-Theme? The Leftover Club Finally Fucks Fenn.”

I rolled my eyes. “I think you have a better shot at that than I do. But I already told you, I’m not going.”

“Party pooper,” he accused with a glare. “We could get the whole gang together. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse Ride Again.”

I laughed. “Don’t you mean the Three Musketeers? We’re down one member from last reunion, remember?”

“Oh, yeah. ‘Charlotte.’” He laughed. “Did you ever think one of us would ever have a go at him?”

“Nope,” I mumbled.

He leaned up and opened my laptop.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I’m just looking. There’s no harm in looking, is there?” He opened up a website devoted solely for hooking up with former classmates.

I shrugged
before I leaned my head on his shoulder to watch him scroll through all the names to find our high school. Once he found our school and our year, he typed “Olive Young” in the search box. Her photo popped up, a face we hadn’t seen in more than twenty years.

Olive didn’t last our sophomore year, opting instead to move to Africa and be with her folks during our second semester. She never returned.
Instead of college, Olive went to live with her hippie parents in Central America, where they had gone to build a school. She wrote the Leftovers for a while, but those ended when her family went to Tibet to study with the monks. After that everyone lost touch, as you often do after high school.

The name under her photo was a hyperlink, so
Bryan clicked on it. It took us to her website. She was an artist living in Northern California. “She actually did it,” Bryan said with a grin.

Olive had always wanted to be an artist, and now it looked like she had finally gotten her chance to live her dream.

After what happened with Dylan, we were all sure she’d never draw again.