The Van Pact

16: Stevie

I normally hate it when Valerie ditches me.

            Tonight, though, wasn't so bad.

            Velociraptor finished the final song of their set about ten minute before nine. Carla, Jan, and I were still standing in the front row by then. I like Carla and Jan, even though they are a couple and couples are usually insufferable. Carla had been Valerie's and my third amigo since ninth grade, when she switched in from the local Catholic. Now that she's got Jan and her brain is on boyfriend mode, we don't see as much of her, which is sort of a bummer. Carla's a majorette (and we all know how they can be), but she's also a misfit toy (she has a thing about stationary, reads a lot of non-fiction, wants to go to law school, and refuses to drink). That's why she gets along pretty well with Val and me. We have no code of acceptable behavior (though, when I think about it, sometimes I wish we did. Valerie could use some guidelines from time to time). Jan's not bad either. He dresses like a greaser and drives his uncle's 2001 Mustang (but always at exactly the speed limit). He's a big John Mulaney fan. In fact, his main ambition in life is to parlay his YouTube fame into a comedy career. As of right now, he has seventy-five subscribers, and he's about as funny as a Marmaduke comic. He tries so hard though.

I hadn't been to a Secret Art Space show before so I didn't know that after the concert ends, the band usually hangs around the stage for a while and talks to fans. When Shane Hernandez (my lab partner in Honors Physics last year; drummer in the marching band but can play like 5 other instruments; loooooves Stephen King; husky in a way that's not conventionally attractive) unplugged his bass, I was still too busy ignoring Carla and Jan's conversation to anticipate what was about to happen. When Marc Shahidi (don't know him, sophomore, looks like Prince Naveen) set his guitar in its case, I noticed the crowd swell. When Dillon Liguori (senior, half theater kid, half swim team jock, 100% luscious brown hair and oversized ego) jumped from the stage to the front row, maybe three feet from where I stood, a chorus of screeching, clamoring underclassmen sprung all around him. I was pushed backwards toward the wall as if by a tide rolling away from the shore.

            The first sign of tonight's magic happened just after that.

            Jesse appeared right beside me. Sans glasses. He must have climbed down from the stage and swerved to right, like me, to avoid the feeding frenzy around Dillon. He couldn't possibly have sought me out, right?

            "Wow, Stevie," Jesse grinned, "you look like Taylor Swift."

            "Thanks," I could hardly breathe. "You too!"

            Jesse smirked, and I remembered what an idiot I am.

            "I meant-" my tongue felt fat in my mouth. How was I supposed to move it, after saying a stupid thing like you too.

            "Her legs are superior to mine," Jesse chuckled, "I can't pull off a mini skirt, I've tried." That self-deprecation! Jesse and I spoke the same language! I almost felt comfortable around him. He lifted his moss-green eyes and scanned the crowd around us. "More people than I thought showed up."

            I was about to comment on how talented his band was (of course they were good. Jesse's first chair in percussion. He has rhythm. And rhythm is the foundation of a good band), when Carla beat me to the punch. She and Jan had washed over to my corner of the wall, too.

            "The last one you did," Carla bopped her shoulders around to an imagined beat. "I love it, what's it called?"

            "That was a cover of Arthur's theme song," Jesse narrowed his eyes. "It was kind of a joke?"

            "I told you," Jan elbowed Carla, "Clifford's theme was completely different."

            "It's a logical mistake," Carla defended herself in the Georgetown Law voice she loves to practice. "If Val was here, I ninety-nine percent guarantee you she would have guessed the same way as me." Her gaze fell on me. "Hey, Steve, where is Val?" 

            "My dates always abandon me," I shrugged.

             "Valerie's here too?" Jesse stood on his toes and looked over my head. That small action made me hyperaware of my height. I was overcome with a quick, intense bout of shame, then an equally intense bout of guilt for feeling shame at an unchangeable feature of my body (or as I like to think of it, my slowly-dying meatprison). It's hard to fake a flirty, boy-attracting personality when overcome with guilt and shame about one's gawky, skinny, slowly-dying-meatprison.

I attempted to swallow down all of my feelings.

            "If Stevie's somewhere," Carla explained, "Valerie's nearby. They're a two-for."

            "A bromance," Jan added, "or, a ho-mance, if you will."

            "Jan," Carla winced, "that's not okay."

            Jan giggled as Carla launched into high level critical theory. I know I'm a nerd, but that girl- I mean- who brings Howard Zinn to a beach? That's what I want to know. She'll do very well at Georgetown. My eyes were drawn back to Jesse. He smiled at me. An easy-going, not-secretly-dead-inside, friendly smile.

            I remembered my guilt and shame and wanted to throw up. Where was Valerie?

            "Uh, yeah," I said to no one in particular, "I'm going to go find Valerie."

Carla nodded at me, but started quoting Audre Lorde. Carla wasn't going to change Jan's opinions (actually, I'm not sure that he has any, the troll), I don't know what she thought she was accomplishing.

            I turned around and started for the nearby stairs. I thought maybe I could leave and walk to Gus- I mean- Valerie's van. It was dark, and I'm clearly physically weak, but I was so miserable that any potential mugger would let me be, if only out of a common pathos. I was confident about that.

            "Hey, I'll go with you," Jesse said behind me.

            I could feel my feet turn to salt.

***

A/N: Okay, short update today, I know. But the next section is pretty long so I couldn't fit it into this update and I couldn't break that section up. I'm debating posting that next update later this afternoon (either that or Friday as usual). What do you fellas think?