The Spectacular Now (12 page)

Chapter 30

Aimee must be a little nervous. I catch her taking a sip of beer after all. She makes a face like she just downed a pint of bleach, but at least it’s a start. I try to soothe her a little by giving her the background on all the characters at the party, but I can’t make much headway, what with person after person dropping by to shoot the shit with me, including three ex-girlfriends. The problem is I’m just not really a benchwarmer when it comes to parties. No sidelines for the Sutterman. I like to get right in the middle of the action.

Aimee, though, she doesn’t even know what the game is, much less how to play. I try to drag her into conversations, but I’m not having much success, even when Shawnie Brown, my girlfriend from sophomore year, comes over. Shawnie’s very touchy-feely and loud. She makes these great exaggerated facial expressions to go along with her stories and loves to do this deal where we talk to each other like Italian mobsters. It’s hilarious. But I swear, with each second, Aimee seems to shrink further and further into the giant purple coat.

Then, finally, there he is—Cody Dennis in all his puppy dog–eyed glory.

Immediately, I wrangle him over and introduce him to Aimee. He eyes the coat but doesn’t make any wisecracks. In fact, he hardly says anything. It’s up to me to keep the stories cranking so that the conversation doesn’t freeze into a long, hard stretch of tundra. On and on I go—about the party at Paxton’s house, the one at the La Quinta Inn, and the really, really kickass one at Lake Tenkiller last summer—until finally I run out of party stories and, out of sheer luck, hit on the perfect topic—my online research into Commander Amanda Gallico and the
Bright Planets
books.

At that, the light in Aimee’s eyes supercharges. She knows all the Web sites I visited and starts in quizzing me about what I thought. Surprisingly, I remember quite a bit and impress her with my take on the philosophy behind Commander Amanda’s journey. “Inner prosperity,” I say. “That’s the thing. I mean, take me up to the Bright Planets right now. Screw a bunch of power. Screw enslaving the world. We don’t need that. No way. We just need to grow wild, like alfalfa or something.”

She’s all over that. “You’ve got to read the books. You remind me of Zoster, kind of. He’s the only one that really understands Commander Gallico. In the third book they get trapped in a Shuxushian cave prison together and escape into the underland of Marmoth, which is where I got my idea for the kind of ranch I want to have someday. I’ll lend you the book. It’s a pretty good one to start out with.”

“Great,” I say. And it does something to me to see her little white face beaming with so much enthusiasm against the background of purple coat. It’s like my beer buzz just cranked up to a whole new level. I almost forget about Cody standing next to us, not to mention the whole reason for rounding him up in the first place.

“Sorry, Cody.” I slap him on the back. “Didn’t mean to leave you stranded here in a different galaxy.”

But he doesn’t look bored in the least. “No, man,” he says. “That’s cool. I’m into sci-fi. Have you guys ever read this graphic novel series,
Solar Bull
by Lawrence Black?”

I’m like, “Can’t say that I have,” but of course, Aimee’s all, “
Solar Bull,
yes, I love
Solar Bull.
”

Then there they go, leaving me behind this time. And I know I should be happy. This is exactly why I carted Aimee out to the party. But the truth is it’s a little cold here in my own little non–
Solar Bull
galaxy.

She laughs at something Cody says about a rocket-powered llama, and he reaches over and touches the sleeve of the giant purple coat. She leans a little toward him, her face still beaming. It’s stupid, but I want to step in between them, maybe even lead her away somewhere. But just then, Cassidy appears in the clearing on the far side of the keg, looking like a beautiful fat goddess, and I’m transported to a new sparkling warm galaxy, far, far from Solar Bulls and llamas.

Chapter 31

I tell Aimee and Cody I’ll be right back, but they barely notice. Across the way, Cassidy stands beneath the bare branch of an oak. She still hasn’t seen me, but I can tell she’s searching. Then Marcus West steps out of the shadows and puts his arm around her. Have you ever started to wave at someone and then realized they weren’t really waving at you, so you abort and go for a head scratch instead? That’s how I felt. Only instead of scratching my head, I break off my beeline for Cassidy and abruptly turn toward the keg.

My cup needs a refill anyway. It always needs a refill at a party like this. Cheap 3.2 beer. In fact, I chug one down and go for another. Cassidy and Marcus are now talking to another one of the basketball players and his girlfriend. That’s all right, I tell myself. There’s no reason I shouldn’t go over there. Of course, Cassidy was bound to show up with Marcus. This isn’t the night we hook up again. This is just the night when she realizes how inevitable it is for us to hook up again.

“So, what’s up, people?” I say, approaching Cassidy’s little group. “What’s the deal, no one has a beer yet?”

“I’m not drinking,” says Marcus. “But I see you have two beers yourself.”

“I just brought an extra in case anyone else wants one.” I’m looking straight at Cassidy.

“Sure,” she says. “Thanks.” Not even one sarcastic remark about me and beer to go along with it. Now the friends they’re talking to—Derrick and Shannon—that’s a different story. They’re both staring at me like I’m some kind of notorious strangler who just showed up with a bouquet of dead roses at his latest victim’s funeral.

I’m not here to make any trouble, though. At least nothing blatant. I’m just going to hang around and let my natural positivity vibrate, maybe drop a code word here and there that only Cassidy and I know the meaning of. I don’t need to make any big declarations. I don’t need to pick fights or show off or come riding in on a gleaming white steed. Just letting the good old inner Sutterman radiate out in waves will be more than enough to remind Cassidy of what she’s missing.

We haven’t been talking for more than ten minutes before I have everybody laughing, even Derrick and Shannon. They’re rolling over this story about the time in grade school when I staged a footrace between a schnauzer and a poodle and sold tickets. Listen, it’s hard not to have a good time around me. I know what I’m doing. I’m a fun guy. I spread the prosperity to each and all.

I’ve just reached the end of the story when I hear a voice over my shoulder. “What’s so funny?”

It’s Denver Quigley. He’s tall with wiry blond hair and a big, heavy, Neanderthal forehead. I never could understand what Alisa Norman sees in him, not so much because of his looks but because he’s about as entertaining as ten pounds of asphalt.

So I look him in the eye and go, “Schnauzers.”

And he’s like, “What?”

“Schnauzers. That’s what’s funny. It’s just a hilarious word, don’t you think?”

A dull, annoyed look falls across his eyes. “Whatever, Sutter. Has anyone seen Alisa?”

“Sure,” I say. “I saw her a while ago walking down by the lake with Jason Doyle.”

His eyes flare. “Doyle?” He spits the name out like a mouthful of spoiled milk.

“They were just having a little friendly conversation,” I say, and Quigley goes, “Well, maybe I’ll just have to give him a little friendly ass-kicking.”

He starts away into the crowd and Marcus is right behind him going, “Hey, Denver, now, I’m sure it’s nothing. Slow down.” Derrick and Shannon are tagging along too, and Marcus looks back over his shoulder and tells Cassidy to wait there, he’ll be right back.

After they disappear into the crowd, she shoots me this withering gaze. “What are you up to now?”

“Me? I’m not up to anything.”

“Is Jason Doyle even with Alisa?”

“He might be. He seemed to have the idea that she dumped Quigley like a lump of frozen shit out of a 747.”

“And you didn’t have anything to do with that?”

“Would it piss you off if I did?”

She smiles. “Not really. Jason deserves it.”

“I do what I can in the name of justice. Ready for another beer?”

“Sure.”

So now it’s just me and Cassidy, the way it should be. We hit the keg, and I give her the lowdown on how well Ricky’s making out with Bethany. She’s happy for Ricky and has to admit I did a good thing helping them get together.

“So, do you believe me now that I was just hanging around with Tara Thompson to help Ricky out?” It’s a bold question considering the touchiness of the subject, but sometimes you just have to open the hatch and make the leap.

She stares at me for a moment, then nods. “Yeah,” she says.

“I guess I do. But I don’t think you were making all that much of a sacrifice. I mean, Tara’s pretty cute.”

“Well, let me see, who would I really prefer?” I hold my hands out like scales. Cassidy’s my beer hand. “Over here I have cute Tara.” I lower my non-beer hand a little with the weight of Tara’s cuteness. “And over here, I have spanktaculiciously beautiful you.” I drop the beer hand way down. “I think it’s pretty obvious, don’t you?”

She scrunches her nose and shakes her head. “Don’t smile at me like that. You know what that smile does to me.”

“Oh, I’m irresistible, all right.” I turn the smile up a notch to high beam. “There’s nothing I can do about that.”

Just then, a shout rises up on the other side of the crowd. Somebody’s pissed off.

“Uh-oh,” I say. “Quigley must’ve found Jason.”

Sure enough, sounds of a scuffle follow another angry shout, and the crowd surges back. Cassidy and I circle around to get a better view, and it’s Quigley, all right, but it’s not Jason he’s pounding. I don’t even recognize the guy. Must be some dude from another school who doesn’t know the dangers of flirting with Alisa Norman.

But if it’s not Jason at the end of Quigley’s fist, I ask myself, where is he? There’s Alisa in her dangerous red sweater, and there’s Derrick trying to pull Quigley back and Marcus wedging himself between Quigley and the poor dude from another school. And all around there’s kids laughing or gasping or yelling encouragement, but no Jason. And no Aimee.

Cassidy yells, “Marcus, look out,” as Quigley breaks away from Derrick’s grip. But it’s too late—he slings a punch that misses its target and smacks Marcus square in the ear.

Cassidy goes, “Pull him back, Derrick, pull him back,” and takes off running through the crowd. It’s okay now, though—Derrick and Marcus both have a hold on Quigley, and the other kid’s buddies are pulling him away. Cassidy’s right behind Marcus now, touching his back gently, I guess just to let him know she’s there to support him.

This is a development I didn’t foresee. I mean, a punch in the ear while performing an act of heroism is bound to draw Cassidy’s attention away from fun with me for at least thirty minutes. Talk about a plan backfiring.

Then, suddenly there’s a voice in my ear. “Guess you were wrong about Jason Doyle.” It’s Shannon, standing next to me. “Looks like he found someone else to flirt with.”

I’m like, “Where?” and she points to a dark corner of the clearing, far away from the fight. There’s Jason standing under a big oak, whispering something, his lips not even an inch from Aimee Finecky’s ear.

Chapter 32

Okay, so maybe what I have to go break up isn’t as perilous as Marcus wading into the middle of a Denver Quigley beating, but does that mean it’s any less noble? I don’t think so. The stakes are probably even higher. I know what Jason has in mind. He’s thinking, I’m getting ready to peel me a giant grape and taste some sweet, sweet nerd nectar. It’s just too bad that Cassidy doesn’t know what I’m up against here.

“So, where’s Cody?” I say just as Jason leans his head over Aimee’s, sniffing her hair.

“Oh, he left.” Jason holds his ground. “Guess he couldn’t take the competition.”

Aimee has a look on her face like she just stepped off the Tilt-A-Whirl and is about to puke.

“What happened?” I ask her. “Did you drink some more beer or something?”

Before she can answer, Jason goes, “I may have got her a cup.” He grins slyly. “She just needed to loosen up some. Socially, I mean.”

I touch my fingertips to her chin to get her to look at me. “Are you all right?”

She tries a weak smile. “Yeah,” she says in that two-syllable no/yes way of hers. “I’m just really not used to drinking.”

“You were wrong about Alisa and Quigley,” Jason says. “They’re not broken up after all. I guess some poor dude over there found that out.” He’s sneering now. I’m sure he suspects I played him.

So I’m like, “That’s why I came over here. That fight’s over. But Quigley’s not satisfied. He’s asking who all was talking to Alisa before he got here. He’s taking names, dude.”

The sneer evaporates from Jason’s mouth. “Wait a minute. All I did was ask her if it was true that they were broken up. When she said no, I was outta there.”

“That’s cool,” I say, all sympathetic. “I’m sure Quigley’ll understand. You know how he is.”

Now, it’s Jason that’s looking a little sick. “Yeah, I know how he is. Shit.” He glances at Aimee, the little pale face, the lipstick, the giant purple coat. “You know what? I’ve gotta go. I’ll talk to you at school.”

“Hey, Jason,” I call as he starts away. “You might oughta take the long way around to your car.”

He waves me off, but you can be sure he puts plenty of distance between himself and Denver Quigley.

Aimee tries an awkward version of the old
now-it’s-just-you-and-me
smile, but to tell the truth, I’m not sure what I’m going to do with her. I’ve saved her from Jason Doyle’s sex-maniac clutches, and Cody Dennis was a washout—what’s left?

The rest of the party has returned to normal after the Quigley dustup, and there’s Cassidy across the way, standing apart from a group of jocks. She’s looking right at me. What’s going on in that female mind of hers, I can’t tell, but when Marcus walks over and wraps his arm around her waist, she returns the favor. Still, she’s staring straight at me, so I do the only thing I can think of at the moment—squeeze my arm around Aimee’s puffy purple shoulder.

“Let’s take a walk down by the lake,” I say, still gazing at Cassidy. “This party’s getting lame.”

“Really? Are the other parties usually different?”

“No, they’re all the same.”

There’s a dirt road that runs along the side of the lake, and on the way over I bum a strawberry wine cooler from Shawnie, not for me, of course, but for Aimee. She looks like she could use it.

“Oh, I like this,” she says after a sip. She takes a bigger drink. “This is good.”

As we walk along under a big, fat, almost-full moon, we talk some more about Commander Amanda Gallico and Zoster, the underland of Marmoth, and Adininda, the beautiful Siren of the second moon of the planet Kosh. I’m starting to think I’d actually like to read some of those books. I mean, I am a big reader, but mostly just stuff on the Internet, blogs, MySpace, zines, all sorts of crazy things.

I’m always reading biographies online—Dean Martin, Socrates, Joan of Arc, Rasputin, Hank Aaron, Albert Schweitzer. And of course, you have to love the three-namers—Edgar Allan Poe, Lee Harvey Oswald, Jennifer Love Hewitt. People’s lives are interesting. Books seem a little old-fashioned, but hey, I can do old-fashioned if it’s good.

After finishing the last of my beer, I pull the flask out of my jacket pocket. “So, if you could go on any adventure here on this planet—I mean, like a real-life adventure—what would it be?”

She sips at her wine cooler. “I guess it’d be something with horses. Someday, I’m going to take a trail ride into the mountains, maybe like the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in New Mexico.”

“I’ve never been there.”

“Me either. I’ve just seen them in books.”

“That’d be cool,” I say, though it’s a little hard to picture a pale bookworm riding the high country in a pair of chaps and a Stetson hat. “So, you’d just ride up there alone?”

“No, I’d have someone with me.”

“Who? Someone like that Zoster guy?”

“Maybe.” She looks off down the road. “How about you? What kind of adventure would you go on?”

“Hey, every day’s an adventure for me. I’m not much of a long-range plan maker. But I’ve thought some about going to the Amazon. I’d go down there and, like, fight against these rain forest–bulldozing corporations that run the natives out of their Garden of Eden and stick them in little wino outfits. That’s what I’d do.”

“That’d be great,” she says, but I get the feeling she was hoping I’d jump on board with the horse idea, so I go, “Have you ever thought about riding horses in the rain forest? I mean you wouldn’t want to just hike around down there and get your foot eaten off by an exotic tarantula. No. What you’d do is take horses in by boat and then ride them around on these ancient Incan trails and everything.”

That perks her up. “I bet you could. I bet they have mountains down there with views that nobody’s ever seen before.”

“Oh, it’d be panoramic, for sure. You never know—they might even have some hidden valley with pterodactyls flying around and stuff.”

“Yeah,” she says. “I bet that’d be an amazing trip.”

Our shoulders touch as we walk, and she looks up and smiles.

A ways down the road, there’s a covered pier that people fish from, so we walk out there and sit on the railing facing the water. The stars are bright and make crosses of light on the little black lake waves. Aimee’s about to the bottom of her wine cooler. I wish I’d got her a couple more. When she finishes it off, I take the bottle and toss it, end over end, at the trash barrel about twenty feet away. Real loud, it clangs against the inside, and I’m like, “He scores from three-point range!”

As a reward, I take a swig from the flask, and surprisingly, she asks if she can try a little.

“You sure? It’s pretty stout stuff.”

“I’ll just take a sip to see what it’s like.”

She turns it up and more than a sip goes down, and the next thing, she’s coughing and gagging all over the place with her eyes bugged out. I slap her on the back but there’s too much coat back there for that to do much good. Finally, she calms down and goes, “Wow, I guess some went down the wrong pipe.”

“I told you it was stout.”

“I’ll be careful next time.”

“Next time? That’s what I like to hear. You fall off the giraffe, you gotta get right back on.”

“Give me a couple of minutes.” Her eyes are watering but she’s smiling and not a sickly little smile like before either. She’s enjoying the shit out of herself.

We stare off at the lake for a moment. “You know what?” she says. “There’s something else I’d like to do too. It’s not like a big grand adventure or anything, but it would be a big deal to me.”

“What’s that?”

She looks at my flask. “Can I have another drink?”

“Already?”

She nods. This time she just takes a little sip. When that doesn’t throw her into a fit, she takes a bigger one. “That’s not bad,” she says. “It kinda burns going down, but it’s not bad.”

“Yeah, it’s good stuff.” I take a shot myself. “Anyway, what’s this big deal thing?”

“Well, this isn’t something I’ve told anyone else, not even my friend Krystal. But what I really, really want to do is go live with my sister in St. Louis and go to college where she goes—Washington University. It’s a great school.”

I’m wondering what the big secret is. Seems like a perfectly normal thing to want to do. “No reason why you can’t. I’m sure your grades are plenty good enough.”

“It’s not my grades I’m worried about. It’s my family. My mom says I have to stay here and help with the paper route and the bills and everything. She’s not as healthy as she used to be with her heart and all. In a couple of years my brother can help out more, but until then, I’ll just go to the community college.”

“You’re kidding, aren’t you?” I’m staring at her, all amazed at what she’s saying, but she just gazes down into the black water. “I mean, you’re like this extraordinary genius chick, and your mom’s making you go to the community college? No way. You need to get yourself to St. Louis with your sister
tout de suite.
”

She explains how it is, though. Her sister, Ambith, had this humongous blowup with their mother about moving off to college and now they hardly talk. Ambith got a scholarship but she still has to work a full-time job to get by. So, like, about every other day their mother gives Aimee the spiel about how the family will collapse if she quits the paper route.

And then there’s Krystal Krittenbrink who’s planning on going to OU, which is only about twenty minutes away, so she’s counting on having Aimee around to keep being her best—and probably only—friend. It’s ridiculous.

I’m like, “Wow, these people have really done a job on you.”

“Why’s that?”

“Look, they’ve got you thinking you’re like Atlas, you know, carrying the whole world on your shoulders. You’re not. You’re just you. You have your own problems to worry about. Here’s what you need to do. First, take another swig of whisky, nothing big, just a little one.”

“Why?”

“Trust me.”

“Okay.” She takes the flask and tilts it up. “Whoa, that one really burned.”

“All right now, I want you to repeat after me: Get off my goddamn back, Krystal fucking Krittenbrink.”

“What?”

“Just say it.”

She gives it a try, only way too soft and without the
fucking
and
goddamn
, but I’m not about to let her get away with that.

“No,” I tell her. “You’ve got to say it like you mean it, and you have to say
fucking
and
goddamn
. Curse words are absolutely one hundred percent necessary for something like this.”

“Maybe I better take another drink.”

I pass her the flask, she hits a good one, and then tries again. This time she really puts some heart into it, except you can tell her curse words need some work. So I tell her to go again, only louder, and I demonstrate by yelling across the lake, “Get off my goddamn back, Krystal fucking Krittenbrink!”

And then she goes for it, and I tell her, “Louder,” and she really belts it out. I know it has to feel good because she lets go with another one without any prodding at all, and this one flies out of her like a big, jagged hunk of igneous rock and goes flaming across the lake.

Next, I get her to let loose on her mother and then Randy, her mother’s lazy, good-for-nothing, Dr Pepper–swilling boyfriend. It’s great. We’re both belting them out, one after the next.

“Get off my goddamn back, Krystal fucking Krittenbrink!”

“Get off my goddamn back, motherfucking Randy!”

“Get off my goddamn motherfucking, sonofabitching back, Mom!”

You can practically see all the dank creepy-crawlies that have been weighing down her stomach go spewing out in the wake of every volcanic shriek. Louder and louder we scream until, finally, we’re laughing so hard we can barely get a word out. I’ve never seen her laugh like this before. It’s a sight to behold, a wonder, like the Eiffel Tower or the World’s Largest Prairie Dog.

“Feels good, doesn’t it?”

“No,” she says. “It feels
great
!”

“And now we just have one more to do. One more person to shout down.”

“Who?”

“The guy that broke your heart.”

“What guy?”

“Now, you’re not going to tell me no one’s ever broken your heart, are you?”

She stares across the water and fiddles with her fingers.

“Come on,” I say. “You can’t get to be seventeen without at least one rotten, brain-curdling relationship.”

It takes a while before she says anything. “The truth is I’ve never been in a relationship.”

“Well, it doesn’t have to be, like, some huge, heavy thing. I just mean some dude that you kinda went out with some.”

She looks down at her hands. “Guys don’t think of me like that.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Guys don’t look at me like a girlfriend, you know? They don’t think I’m pretty and all that kind of thing.”

This is brutal. I mean, sure, she’s no super-hot spank machine, but she’s no gargoyle either.

“You’re crazy,” I tell her. “Didn’t you notice Cody Dennis and Jason Doyle were both hitting on you a while ago?”

“No, they weren’t.”

“Yes. They were. You’re a sweetheart. I mean, look at your soft little eyebrows, look at your cute, pouty mouth. You’re sexy.”