“I’m not going to remember this; hold on,” I said, taking an index card from Aaron’s coffee table. I was numbering it with a Sharpie, from one, when the weed hit me.
“Whoa. Wow.”
“Uh-oh,” Aaron said. He looked up.
“Whoa.”“You feeling it?”
Is my brain falling out of my head? I thought.
I looked down at the index card that said 1)get seltzer, and 1) get seltzer twisted back, as if it had decided to fall off the card. I looked up at Aaron’s bookshelves and they looked the same, but as I turned, they moved in frames. It wasn’t like the slowness that came from being underwater; it was like I was under air—thick and heavy air that had decided to follow me. For being high, it felt pretty heavy.
“You feeling it?” Aaron repeated.
I looked at his stand-up ashtray, filled with crumpled cigarettes and the one clear, shining metal cigarette.
“It’s like the king of the cigarette butts!” I said.
“Oh, boy,” Aaron was like. “Craig. Are you going to be able to do the stuff for the party?”
Was I? I was able to do anything. Here I was making clever statements like “king of the cigarette butts"; if I went outside, there was no telling what I would be capable of.
“What’s first?” I asked.
Aaron gave me a few bucks to get the seltzer, but just as I was opening the door to go out into the world, his buzzer rang.
“It’s Nia,” Aaron said, leaping to the closed-circuit phone in his kitchen, which was full of grapefruits and dark wood cabinets.
“She’s coming?” I asked.
Nia was in our class; she was half Chinese and half Jewish; she dressed well. Every day she came in with something different—a chain of SpongeBob Burger King toys strung around her neck; one asymmetrical, giant, red-plastic hoop earring; black clown circles on her cheeks. I think her accessories were a courtesy meant to distract from her small, lucrative body and baby-doll face. If she let it all go natural, if she just let her hair swing down the way it would have if she’d grown up in a field with the wind, she’d make all us boys explode.
“Nia’s pretty hot, huh,” Aaron said, hanging up the phone.
“She’s okay.”
We sat watching the door like we were waiting for the mama bird to bring us food. She knocked.
“Heyyyy,” Aaron called, beating me.
“Hi!” I said. We rushed to the doorknob; Aaron gave a look, pulled it toward him, and there she was—in a green dress with a rainbow of fuzzy anklets on one leg. Her eyes were so big and dark that she seemed even more tiny and spindly, on high-heeled shoes that threw her forward at us and made her dress outline her little breasts.
“Boys,” she said. “I think someone has been smoking pah-aht.”
“No way,” Aaron said.
“My friends are coming. When’s the party start-ing?”
“Five minutes ago,” Aaron said. “You want to play Scrabble?”
“Scrabble!” Nia put her bag down—it was shaped like a hippo. “Who plays Scrabble?”
“Well, I do, duh, and Craig does, too"—I didn’t, actually—"and we’re some smart guys, seeing as we got in.”
“I heard!” Nia grabbed her hippo bag and hit Aaron with it. “I did too!” As an afterthought, she hit me. “Congratulations!”
“Group hug!” Aaron announced, and we got together, a tiered threesome—Nia’s head came up to my chin; my head came up to Aaron’s chin. I put my hand around Nia’s waist and felt her warmth and how narrow she was. Her palm curled around my shoulder. We pushed our torsos together in a sort of ballet. I could feel Nia’s breath between us. I turned to look—
“Scrabble,” Aaron said. He went across the living room, took it out of one of the bookshelves. He put it on the floor and we sat, Aaron between me and Nia, the ashtray taking up the fourth spot.
“House rules,” Aaron said as he flipped over the tiles. “If you don’t have any words to put on the board, you can make a word up, as long as you have an actual definition for that word in your head. If your definition makes the other people laugh, you get the points, but otherwise, you lose that many points.”
“We can make up words?” I asked. This was brimming with possibilities. I could make up Niaed—what happens when Nia touches you, you get Niaed. That would make her laugh. Or not.
“What about Chinese words?” Nia asked.
“You have to know what they mean and be able to explain them.”
“Oh. That shouldn’t be a problem.” She smiled wickedly.
“Who’s going first?”
“Can we smoke?”
“So demanding.” Aaron gave her the metal cigarette—I said no this time; I’d had enough.
For her first word, Nia put down M-U-W-L-I.
“What is that?” I asked.
“Chinese word.”
“What’s it mean?”
“Uh, cat.”
“That’s ridiculous. How do we know if muwli is real?” I turned to Aaron.
He shrugged. “Benefit of the doubt?”
Nia stuck out her tongue at me and damn it was a cute tongue. Is that a ring? I thought. Can’t be. Wait—it’s gone.
“I swear.” she said. ‘"Come here, little muwli!’ See?”
“I’m checking you on your next one,” I said.
“The Internet’s over there.” Aaron was like.
“But while you’re gone, we’re going to give you all consonants.” Nia smiled.
“Is it my go?” I put down M-O-P off M-U-W-L-I. Ten points.
Aaron put down S-M-A-P off M-O-P. “That’s a cross between a smack and a slap. Like, ‘I’m-a smap you.’”
Nia laughed and laughed. I chuckled even though I didn’t want to. Aaron got the points.
Nia put down T-R-I-I-L.
“What is that?” I asked.
“It’s a trill, you know, like a trill on the flute, except the first L is lowercase and the second is uppercase!”
“That’s not trill, that’s ‘tree-eel’!”
“Okay, fine.” She switched the letters. Now it said T-R-I-L-I.
“Trill-ee! What is a trilhee?”
“An unmentionable act.”
Aaron laughed so hard that he just had to ease his body into Nia’s, leaning on her shoulder. She pushed back, tilting her flank into him.
I saw where this was going. I made eye contact with Nia and here’s what her eyes said:
Craig, we’re all headed to the same school. I’m going to need a boyfriend going in, to give me some stability, a little bit of backup, you know? Nothing serious. You’re cool, but you’re not as cool as Aaron. He has pot and he’s so much more laid back than you; you spent the last year studying for this test; he didn’t lift a finger for it. That means he’s smarter than you. Not that you’re not smart, but intelligence is very important in a guy—it really is the most important thing, up there with sense of humor. And he has a better sense of humor than you, too. It doesn’t hurt that he’s taller. So I’ll be your friend, but right now let’s let this develop. And don’t be jealous. That would be a waste of everybody’s time.
We kept playing. Aaron and Nia moved closer until their knees touched, and I could only imagine the energy that was going through those knees. I thought maybe they were going to lean in for a first kiss (or a second? No, Aaron would have told me) right in front of me, when the buzzer rang again.
It was Nia’s friend Cookie. She had brought bottles of beer. We took ten minutes to open them, eventually hitting them against Aaron’s kitchen countertop edge, to work the tops off. Then Nia said Cookie should’ve gotten twist-offs, and she asked what twist-offs were, and we all laughed. Cookie had blond hair and glitter all over her neck. She hadn’t gotten into Executive Pre-Professional, but that was okay because she was going to high school in Canada. The guy down at the local bodega let her buy beer if she leaned over the counter—she had developed early and had the kind of massive alluring breasts that moved in
reverse rhythm when she walked.
We put Scrabble away—nobody won. The rap music seemed to be hooked up to some sort of Internet-capable playlist and kept going, never repeating, as more and more guests arrived. There was Anna—she was on Ritalin and snorted it off her little cosmetic mirror before tests; Paul—he was nationally ranked in Halo 2 and trained five hours a day with his “team” in Seattle (he was going to put it on his college applications); Mika—his dad was a higher-up in the Taxi and Limousine Commission and he had some sort of badge that allowed him to get free cab rides anywhere, anytime. People started showing up who I had no idea who they were, like a stocky white kid in an Eight Ball jacket, which he announced, coming in, was so popular back in the ‘90s that you would get knived just for having it and nobody had vintage like him.
Inexplicably, someone came in a Batman mask. His name was Race.
A short, pugnacious, mustached kid named Ronny came with a backpack full of pot and set up shop in the living room.
A girl with hemp bracelets in different subtle shades proclaimed that we had to listen to Sublime’s 40oz to Freedom, and when Aaron refused to put it on, she started gyrating and put what she claimed was a Devil curse on him, saying, “Diablo Tantunka” and pointing her fingers in mock horns: “Fffffffft! Fffffffft!”
I smoked more pot. The party was like a movie— it should have been a movie. It was the best movie I’d ever seen—where else did you get shattering glasses, a kid trying to break-dance in the living room, a dictionary being thrown at a roach, a kid holding his head in the freezer and saying it could get you high, orange vomit spread out in a semicircle in the kitchen sink, people yelling out the windows that “school sucks,” rap music declaring “I want to drink beers and smoke some shit,” and one poor soul snorting a Pixie Stik, then hacking purple dust into the toilet… ? Nowhere.
nine
Aaron and Nia talked on the couch. I took my thermos of scotch—just to have something in my hand; I didn’t open it—and watched how they moved, swaying toward and away from each other in increments that I doubt they even recognized. They stopped becoming people in my eyes; they morphed right into male and female sex organs on a collision course.
“What’s going on, son?” Ronny asked. Ronny hadn’t gotten his first piece of jewelry yet; he was in like a larval state. “You enjoying yourself?”
I was enjoying everything but Aaron and Nia. And the scotch. I wanted him to think I was enjoying the scotch, at least.
“Do you like this stuff?” I asked, opening my thermos.
“What is it?” He sniffed. “Yeah, dude, that’s hard core. You gotta sip it.”
I put it to my lips. I didn’t even take any in, just let it filter against me and felt how hot it was. It was cutting, evil, and bitter-smelling—
Ronny shoved the thermos at my mouth.
“Sip it!”
“Dude!” I backed off as scotch splashed on my shirt; it felt lighter, slicker, and warmer than water. “You’re such a dick!”
“Pause!” He ran across the room and punched this kid Asen, told him he’d had sex with his mom, and threw a pillow at Aaron and Nia, who were now attached by the lips on the couch.
I wasn’t that mad that it was happening. I was just mad that I’d missed how it happened. I hadn’t seen him lean in, or her; I wanted to know for the future, for some girl who wasn’t as desirable. But now at least I got a show; I got to see how Aaron moved his hands. He put his right hand on her face over and over, gently, while his left slid around her side and gripped the small of her back more firmly. His hands were playing good-cop-bad-cop.
There was still some scotch in the thermos. I drank from it. The taste didn’t bother me since Ronny’s shove.
“I didn’t know you drank, Craig!” a voice was like behind me. Julie, who always wore sweatpants that said Nice Try in an arc on her butt cheeks, clanked a beer against my thermos.
“I don’t, really,” I was like.
“I thought you’d be busy studying. I heard you got into the school. What are you going to do now?”
“Go there.”
“No, I mean with your time.”
I shrugged. “I’ll work hard at school, get good grades, go to a good college, get a good job.”
“It was crazy how much you studied. You always had those cards.”
I looked at the scotch. My esophagus was scorched, but I took more.
“Did you see Aaron and Nia making out? They’re so cute!”
“They’re making out?” I was shocked.
“Yeah, haven’t you seen?”
“I saw them hooking up,” I explained, looking out the kitchen at them. “I didn’t think they were having sex.”
“They’re not!”
“I thought making out was having sex.”
“Jeez, Craig, no. Making out is making out.”
“Is that the same as hooking up?”
“Well, hooking up can mean having sex. You got confused.”
Aaron and Nia were fully occupied now. One of his hands was hidden, exploring magical beige places.
“You should put it on one of your cards.”
“Heh.” I smiled.
Julie took a step toward me. “I really want to make out with somebody right now.”
Oh, cool.”
“I’ve been looking and looking for someone.”
“Um…” I eyed her. Her short blond hair framed a face that was a little wide at the bottom, and toothy, and somewhat red all around. I didn’t want to hook up with her or make out with her or whatever. The person I wanted was ten feet away. This would be my first kiss, if she were offering me. Girls loved to say that they wanted to hook up with “someone” when it was anyone but you. Julie tilted her head up, though, with her eyes closed. I looked at her lips, trying to make myself kiss them, but stopped. For my first kiss, I didn’t want to settle. Julie opened her eyes.
“Are you okay, man?”
“Yeah, yeah, I just . . .” Whew. I’m drunk and stoned, Julie. Give me a break.
“It’s okay.” She left the room, and soon after, the party. I had hurt her feelings, I found out later; I didn’t know I had that power.
I wandered over to the laptop that was supplying the music to the stereo. Next to it was Aaron’s father’s record collection, shelved in the bookshelf, of old vinyl records. I suddenly needed some discrete information to put in my brain, to push out what was there, so I pulled a record out.
Led Zeppelin III.
It was big—as big as the laptop—and the cover was a spiral of images: male heads with lots of hair, rainbows, blimps (I guessed those were the Zeppelins), flowers, teeth. The edge of the record stuck out a bit, like a tab on a five-subject notebook, and I grabbed it experimentally. It turned, and when it turned, the whole circle turned inside, and the images that showed through the little holes changed: rainbows into stars, blimps into planes, flowers into dragonflies. It was frickin’awesome. One of the symbols that popped up looked just like the levels of Q-Bert, one of the best old video games—I didn’t realize Led Zeppelin had invented Q-Bert!
I looked up—Aaron and Nia were still at it. Now he had his hand in her hair and he was pulling her toward him like a gas mask. I held the album up to hide their heads. Heh.
I dropped the album. Aaron and Nia. I held it up. More images. It was like they were part of it.
The house filled up. People began getting in line to go into one of Aaron’s book-filled closets. They weren’t making out or anything—a kid named John had announced that he had sprayed pepper spray in there and people were going in to see if they could handle it. Boys and a few girls stumbled out going “Aggg, my eyes!” and tearing, and running for water, but that didn’t stop the ones lined up after them. It seemed like everyone at the party went except me.
I looked at more albums, like the Beatles’ White Album, which I never knew was actually white, and each time I looked up, Aaron and Nia were in a deeper state of entanglement. Suddenly I got real
ly sleepy and warm, from the scotch I guess, and leaned against the album stack, just trying to rest my eyes for a minute. When I woke up I looked instinctively for Aaron and Nia; they had disappeared. I craned from behind my resting spot and looked at the clock above the TV; somehow it was 2:07 A.M.
ten
The house had thinned out.
Jeez. I got up. The laptop playlist had stopped. My night was over. All I had done was look at records and almost hook up with a girl, but somehow I felt accomplished.
“Uh, Ronny?” I asked.
Ronny was playing PlayStation on Aaron’s couch. The PlayStation cord stretched across the room. He looked up.
“What?”
“Where is everybody?”
“Having sex with your mom.”
Next to Ronny, a girl named Donna was balled up in a lump on one end of the couch. The guy with the Eight Ball jacket occupied a chair. Someone yelled to put on more music; Ronny yelled to Shut up, son. The house was full of cups—mugs and glasses everywhere, like they had been multiplying during the party.
“Does anyone know where Aaron is?”
“Pause,” was all Ronny could manage.
“Aaron!”
“Shut up, man! He’s with his chick.”
“I’m here, I’m here!” Aaron strode out from his room, adjusting his pants. “Jeez.” He surveyed the damage. “What’s up? You have a good rest?”
“Shoot, yeah. Where’s Nia?”
“Asleep.”
“You did her good, huh?” Ronny asked. “Asian invasion.”
“Shut up, Ronny.”
“Asian contagion.”
“Shut up.”
“Asian persuasion.”
Aaron yanked his controller out of the PlayStation.
“Suh-uhn!” Ronny scrambled for it.
“You want to go for a walk?” Aaron asked.
“Sure!” I got my jacket.
Aaron woke up Eight Ball jacket and Donna and got them out; he forced Ronny to leave too, over many protests. We all took the elevator down; Eight-Ball jacket and Ronny went uptown; Donna and two others slid into a cab; me and Aaron, instinctively, started toward the shimmering Brooklyn Bridge, which carved its way through the night about three blocks from his house.