college kids must have some sort of supernatural messaging and communication system, because by the time i amble over at eight o'clock, it looks like three-quarters of the nation had appeared in a university dormitory parking lot, packed nearly shoulder to shoulder in uncomfortable proximities. it's a brisk night, though my arms tingle and scorch beneath my flannel shirt like it's a steady eigthy-five degrees. i can't find aman in the thick of the crowd — which is funny, because aman is the tallest person i have ever known on a personal level—but i find veronica far too quickly, playing off the cold eating through her slinky blue dress as affection by brushing my shoulder with her bare one. she looks pretty, though, and i tell her so.
"you don't look so bad yourself," she says, touching my wrist, speaking with that peculiar tone of nonsexualness she always insists on using when talking to me. i create a small distance between us, just in case she wants to try anything physically too.
"let's go into the kitchen. there's beer and better music in there," she whispers in my ear, and i follow her reluctantly through throngs of sweaty adolescents. i wonder how old i look to them. considerably older, i think, because of the creases that line my forehead at veronica's voice—but one glance at the student ID card in my back pocket, or even the faintly naïve look cass had told me i could never wipe off my face, and my ripe sixteen told the story for itself. i'm a wise sixteen, though; an unhappy adult in a teenage boy's body.
the kitchen is airtight and humid, scenting strongly of alcohol and other somethings i couldn't quite place, nor wanted to. the music is better, though, truly. wierd pop tunes no one has heard of. veronica glides around me like a butterfly, lifting my hands and whipping her hair and twirling herself. i'm no cassandra—i would give her a good time, regardless of my attraction—so i dip and spin her around a couple times for good measure. she blushes blood cell red.
about an hour into the party, the mood suddenly changes. the already small crowd in the kitchen thins out—allegedly the host was doing asinine stunts with fire, girls, and watered down booze on the patio—until it's just me and veronica and a self-involved couple, deeply concerned and entangled with one another, sort of like ropes pretending to be people. i don't know why, but look away only when the guy looks up at me, not angrily, but open, elastic, at ease.
"hey, you wanna go somewhere?" veronica says softly. i swallow nerves slow and difficult as pills.
"where—where d'you wanna go?"
"maybe—maybe upstairs? i don't really know the geography of this place. let's explore together." she gives me her hand and picks me up from the kitchen floor, and i follow her up a staircase, my senses bathed in fear.
the thin hallway upstairs is lighted by overhanging chandeliers, setting sensual shades and shadows up and down the walls. veronica keeps on looking back at me, and then giggling like mad. i catch my own eyes in a reflecting mirror: wide and stupid. i shake myself back into my head.
we come to the end of the hallway quickly, a love seat with bedroom-like padding sitting what i assume is supposed to be invitingly. i sit down first, and veronica soon afterwards, leaning into me, her jewelry jingling like warning bells.
warning one, jingle: her hand on my leg.
warning two, jangle: her hair swiped behind her ear, lips smacked together. say, "i'd like it if we had sex tonight, jordan. you ever been with a scorpio before?"
warning three, jingle, jangle: she climbs on top of me, handsy and swift, and i scream before i can form a thought and say anything, so loud she falls off my lap, face first onto the hardwood floor. never have i held myself in such contempt.
"veronica, i'm sorry, i just — i like you, i do, but i just didn't want to do anything with you, not here, and not right now—or ever, maybe, i'm just not—it's not because of you, veronica, i swear on it, i swear," i stutter, but veronica is crying a river and i feel too bad to do any more. i kiss her on the forehead and rush down the stairs. this was enough party for me.
by the time i escape to the outside, the cold's picked up immensely, and i'm shivering to my death without ever having done anything worthwhile . i'm too rattled by recent events to care too much about it, though, so i settle down on the chipping bench adjacent to a sandbox in the backyard and wait for death to claim me. i hadn't even realized until then that i had been so tired. sleep comes to me in foot-high waves.
through the slits of my eyes, however, drifting in and out of a perilous siesta, i see a darkly clad figure shuffling around the backyard. naturally, i wake the hell up — this wasn't a particularly nice part of town, despite the illusions created by grandiose home architecture and rich kids flooding the place like a swimming pool, and i knew it. i stand up swiftly, my hand on my upper thigh as if i was reaching for the revolving gun i didn't have, something uncle munro had taught me to do one time when his ex-girlfriend came to our house in the middle of the night, a switch blade tucked under her breasts. a way of intimating the enemy.
"hello? who's there?" i call out shakily. i think about veronica, and painful the wood must have felt on her cheek. how much longer it must have stung—might still be stinging— because i left her there alone.
instead of stepping back, the shuffler just seems to come closer, looking up now, with an unnerving curiosity.
"jordan?"
eli lifts his hood, and his soft features illuminate before me. i breath out the exhale of a survivor.
"jesus christ, eli, you nearly gave me heart attack," i tell him. i reckon probably i wouldn't have minded if he had given me one, if it were possible. better tonight than any other.
"what are you doing at a college party on this side of town? you friends with the host?" i ask. he grins shyly.
"yeah, actually. he's my brother," he answers. i screw my mouth into a corner to keep my jaw from flapping open.
it was strange to think that mike damien — standard sport-brand stocky and horse-faced, though supposedly pretty book smart — could have even a distant connection to eli, baby-faced and gentle, a bit awkwardly suave, in his special way.
"well, your welcome to join me on the bench," i tell him, gesturing to it graciously. he turns his face away, grinning mischievously.
"or—we could go to the lake and play with the fireworks my dad hid somewhere in the woods," he suggests slyly. "unless you're too scared."
this is such a boy thing to say i kind of want to laugh — daring me to do something, like i'm twelve years old at a lunch table again— but it sounds strangely and seriously exciting when eli says it, so i nod, equally as mischievously, and walk in sync with his strides from his house, straight into the mouth of the woods.
YOU ARE READING
CALIFORNIA DAZE
Short Story'-he's always going to be there at the back of your mind.'
