Playing With Matches

  I kept waiting for Melody to tell me to stop, to push me away. But she just kept kissing me.

  Without speaking a word, we moved from sitting on the hay bale to sitting on the floor, our arms wrapped around each other. It wasn’t a conscious choice, but soon I was laying her down on the floor. We were side by side in the straw. My hand crept up the back of her shirt, my fingers savoring the curve of her spine. I rubbed her skin from the base of her bra to the top of her panties. She didn’t stop me; she just breathed harder. Sweat rolled down her forehead.

  And suddenly, I was straddling her. She lay on her back, almost hyperventilating, her eyes closed. My fingers grabbed at her shirt, clumsily fumbling with the buttons. And then her top fell open, revealing her almost naked torso.

  The scars ended just below her neck. Oh, Christ, those smooth shoulders, that flat tummy…and her plain cotton bra. Oh, Christ! The clasp was in the front. I could see my hand trembling as I reached for it.

  And then Melody’s eyes shot open and her hand found my wrist. She smiled sadly.

  “Not yet, Leon.”

  I was drenched in sweat. Slowly, with regret (and a little relief), I climbed off her as she closed her shirt.

  “I’m sorry, Leon. I’ve…You’re the only guy I’ve even kissed. I can’t do that, not now.”

  “Don’t be sorry. There’s no rush.”

  “Leon? How many times have you…you know…”

  I gave her a big kiss. “Melody, I wish the world thought I was as macho as you do. This is as far as I’ve ever been.”

  We snuggled for a long time, there on the floor. Our lips touched; our fingers explored. We kissed and laughed and held each other.

  Wow.

  Much later, we walked giggling into the afternoon sun. Melody brushed some hay out of my hair. I groaned inwardly when I realized we’d have to remount the devil horses.

  To my relief, Melody untied them and let them wander free.

  “Let’s walk back.”

  Hand in hand, we walked the half mile back to the house.

  So I’d almost undressed Melody. And I’d made out with her twice. And hung out with her all the time. There was no doubt anymore. She was my girlfriend.

  Melody smiled at me and I squeezed her hand.

  “Melody?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Listen. Um, the spring formal’s coming up. I was wondering if, you know, you’d like to go with me?”

  I knew there was no chance she’d turn me down, but I still got pleasant shivers when I saw the way she smiled.

  Ah, what the hell. Melody made me feel special. She made me feel like Dylan, like one of those guys who didn’t have to prove anything. She made me feel like any girl would be lucky to have me.

  I liked almost everything about Melody. I could live with the one thing I didn’t like.

  Besides, she said she wasn’t ready for that…yet.

  19

  DEAD MAN’S HAND

  The student council weenies had plastered the school with posters advertising “Take My Breath Away,” the theme for the upcoming dance. Fliers warning about the evils of drunk driving were taped on every wall. Dr. Bailey nearly had a stroke when he saw that someone had drawn swastikas on the foreheads of the models in a photographer’s ad.

  I was walking Melody out to the bus after school.

  “Hey, Melody? How many mosquitoes does it take to screw in a lightbulb?”

  She smiled. “How many?”

  “Only two. The question is, how did they get in there?”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “It’ll come to you.”

  Since that day in the barn, I’d given up all pretense that Melody wasn’t my girlfriend. I held her hand when we talked. I kissed her after school. I even let Buttercup take our picture, my arm draped around Melody’s shoulders. And we were going to the spring dance together.

  I braced myself for the fallout. I was ready for the snide comments, the mocking laughter, the jokes about my ugly girlfriend. But the thing was they never materialized. Maybe it all happened when my back was turned, but all my clever rebuttals and insults didn’t do me any good. I never had to stand up for Melody.

  Even my friends approached my having a girlfriend with their usual lazy indifference. Samantha went from harassing me about using Melody to harassing me about how Melody was too good for me. Johnny, who’d once made a substitute teacher cry with a joke about her mustache, never commented on Melody’s looks (just her study habits, clothes, and poor taste in guys). Even Rob accepted a Leon girlfriend with his normal snarling apathy.

  Still, it wasn’t like Melody was ignored. We both noticed the stares, the whispered comments, the blunt questions from children. We just pretended not to.

  “So I bought my dress yesterday,” continued Melody as we stepped outside among the pulsating throng of bus riders.

  “I rented a tux. Nothing like having your crotch measured by a strange man.”

  Melody laughed. “I can’t wait till next Saturday.”

  I had never been to a dance, and I wasn’t totally excited. The tux was uncomfortable. The tickets were expensive. I could not dance, and Samantha was the only other person I knew who was going.

  Then again, I thought about our trip to the shed. The promise of things to come. My big car, and the empty country roads outside of St. Christopher.

  “I’m excited too, Melody. You sure I can’t give you a ride home?”

  She picked up her book bag. “No, I’ll take the bus. Mom and I are going shopping for shoes right when I get home.”

  We kissed, and I watched Melody weave her way onto her bus. Even though students were crushed together and shoving, Melody walked unmolested. No one went near her; it was as if she walked in a separate reality.

  Rob didn’t need a ride that day, so I took the opportunity to grab a couple of books from the library. (I’d spent study hall trying to circumvent the porn filter in the computer lab.) As always, the library was almost deserted. I poked through the almost pathetic science fiction section, but there wasn’t anything there I hadn’t already read. I ended up checking out Starship Troopers. It had lasers in it.

  Dan Dzyan sat at a table near the exit, staring intently at a book. I attempted to slink by. I wasn’t in the mood to see autopsy photos.

  Dan didn’t seem to notice me; he was too absorbed in his book. He’d read something, look at his palm, then look back at the book. It was called Divination. He must have been teaching himself palmistry.

  I lingered too long. “Hey, Leon,” he growled, not looking up. “Have a seat.”

  I considered ignoring him but thought the better of it. I had enough going on in my life; I didn’t need a voodoo curse on top of everything. Warily, I pulled up a chair.

  There was an odd assortment of crap on the desk in front of Dan: a lump of wax, several sewing needles, a deck of cards, and some raw corn kernels. Dan was still staring at his hand.

  “According to this, I don’t have a love line.” He shrugged; the news didn’t disturb him. “Hey, do you know what tiromancy is?”

  “What?”

  “The art of predicting the future using cheese.”

  There was no good response to a statement like that.

  “Did you want something, Dan?”

  “Yeah.” He picked up the cards and shuffled. “Let me tell your fortune.”

  The cards were from the Casino Queen riverboat in East St. Louis. “Don’t you need a special deck?”

  “Nah, this’ll work.” He fanned out the deck. “Pick a card. Not that one! No, not that one either…. Ah, for Satan’s sake, Leon!” Dan reshuffled.

  “Now pick a card.” I grabbed the top one. The three of diamonds. Dan checked a table in the book. “No, pick another one.”

  Dan apparently didn’t like any of the fortunes. I was nearly a quarter of the way through the deck when I pulled a card he approved of.

  “The joker. That suits you, Leon.” I couldn’t tell if he was trying
to be funny. He checked the book. “The joker is a holdover of the Fool in the old tarot deck. It symbolizes someone who rushes into things without thinking, insults people without meaning to, and will never find romantic happiness.” He grinned. “It’s like the worst card you could have drawn.”

  “Bye, Dan.”

  “Hold on. Did you know the Puritans considered the joker to be an evil card? When they burned witches, they’d use a burning joker as kindling!”

  “Really?”

  “Nah, I just made that up.”

  Talking to Dan was like listening to Sr. Lopez Lopez’s language tapes: I recognized the words but didn’t understand what was being said. I got up.

  “Leon?” Dan was leaning back in his chair, holding the deck in one fist. “The cards don’t lie. I’d be cautious if I were you. Don’t do anything rash.” He attempted to cut the deck with one hand, causing the cards to fly everywhere.

  20

  LEON TO THE RESCUE

  We often make offers when we never intend to follow through. How many times have we said, If there’s anything I can do for you, just ask? A couple of weeks earlier, when I’d told Amy she could call me if she ever wanted to talk, I never really expected her to take me up on that.

  It was the Saturday before the dance. Jimmy and Johnny were grounded; Rob was out hurling pizza dough at his part-time job; and Samantha was off visiting her boyfriend. Melody was at Tony’s softball game. I’d politely declined when she’d invited me.

  Of course, that meant I’d sentenced myself to a quiet evening with my parents. Dad and I relaxed on our living room couch, watching a rented movie. Dad had picked it out, so it featured a lot of car chases and explosions (though not near as many as a Bart Axelrod feature). Mom sat nearby, working on her unending scrapbook.

  The semimilitary movie made Dad remember his years serving Uncle Sam and he was well into another story.

  “So then the DI—that’s drill instructor—gets right in my face and calls me a worthless piece of”—Dad glanced over at my mom—“poop. Then he made me do fifty push-ups.”

  “That’ll teach you to sneeze in formation,” I replied. I’d heard the story a dozen times. Though my father never had anything good to say about his time in the air force, he sure talked about it a lot. Maybe after twenty years of pushing pencils in an office, he looked back on his military time as the wild and crazy days.

  I wondered if I’d ever have any wild and crazy days, or if someday I’d be boring my son with stories of Pioneer Lanes and nights at the lock and dam.

  The phone rang and my mom answered it. “Yes, he’s here; hold on.” She passed the cordless phone to me.

  I pressed the receiver to my ear and was shocked to hear someone noisily blowing their nose.

  “Johnny?” I asked.

  I heard a hiccup on the other end, then a voice.

  “Leon, this is Amy.”

  I sprinted to my room so fast I almost stepped in the bowl of popcorn. Amy? Calling me?

  “Um, hi.” I attempted to straighten my hair in the reflection of my computer monitor until I remembered she couldn’t see me.

  “I wasn’t sure if this was your number. Do you have any idea how many Sanderses there are in the phone book?”

  “Uh…” How should I respond? Laugh? Try to make small talk?

  “So…,” said Amy after a pause. “What are you up to?” Her voice was flat, like she was talking just to talk.

  “Just watching a movie with my folks.” On Saturday night. Real cool, Leon.

  “Oh.” There was more silence. What did she want? Amy wasn’t the type of girl who had to chat with classmates on the weekend for something to do.

  “Leon,” she eventually said hoarsely. “Can we talk? Do you have time?”

  I pulled up my desk chair. “Of course. What’s on your mind?”

  “No, I mean, can you come over for a little bit? I understand if you’re busy.”

  I was already pulling on my jacket. “Where do you live?”

  I was driving nearly twice the legal speed limit. My parents hadn’t even looked up when I’d babbled about having to go see a friend. Amy lived about ten miles away, and I planned to be there in five minutes.

  Steering with one hand, I pulled some gum out of my glove box and pondered what was happening. Amy wanted to talk. What the hell did that mean? She had friends she could talk to, but instead she’d called me.

  I was at a loss. Guys never needed to talk, and Samantha didn’t exactly confide her thoughts and fears to me. And yet Amy had asked me to come over.

  I remembered an episode of Tales from the Crypt I’d seen with Melody. A cute girl asked out her nerdish coworker, seduced him, and then sacrificed him to an alien god. It was an outlandish idea, but better than any theory I could come up with.

  Amy’s house was in one of those ritzy St. Christopher subdivisions that literally sprang up out of nowhere in a matter of weeks. Every house had two stories and a two-car garage. I was very aware that I was driving the skuzziest car in the neighborhood.

  I pulled into her driveway and paused for one second. What would Melody think of my running off to Amy’s house late at night? Amy hadn’t exactly been nice to her at the bowling alley.

  I swatted at the dummy hand grenade hanging from my rearview mirror. There was only one way to find out. Melody didn’t have to know that I’d been here. Besides, I somehow doubted that Amy planned to meet me at the door in a skimpy negligee.

  Taking a deep breath, I rang the doorbell and waited. And waited. I was sure I’d gotten the address right. Was Amy even there? I remembered the other time we were supposed to do something together. Jesus, maybe she stood me up again.

  I jabbed the bell a second time, right when Amy opened the door. She was dressed in sweatpants and an old sweater. Her hair hung in unkempt strands down the back of her head. She was puffing on a cigarette. And yet she was still just as gorgeous as ever (after I mentally added the bikini and the suntan lotion).

  “C’mon in,” she mumbled.

  Amy’s house was at an almost German level of order. All the chairs were exactly three inches from the table. All the blinds were pulled to precisely the same level. It looked like someone had placed the doormat with a T square. Still, something was odd. There was a large blank spot along one wall, as if there’d been a second couch there recently. The walls were covered with photos, but there were weird gaps, like some were missing.

  I remembered her mentioning her parents’ divorce. Her father must have taken some stuff with him when he left.

  Amy sat on the couch and patted the cushion next to her. I flopped down beside her, perhaps just a little too eagerly.

  She exhaled a huge cloud of smoke. “Thanks for coming out. I’m sorry to call you this late. You want a soda or something?”

  “No, thanks.” I was aware that my leg was jiggling, and I forced myself to stop it.

  Amy crushed out her cigarette and stared at the ashtray for a while. I stared at the blank TV, desperately trying to think of something clever to say to end the silence.

  “Leon, are your parents still together?” Amy asked out of nowhere.

  I began to see what was bothering her. “Yes.”

  “Do they ever fight?”

  I thought about my goofy mom and dad: how they constantly bickered, finished each other’s sentences, and spent a weekend alone in Branson every summer.

  “Sometimes.” I didn’t think spats about who didn’t pick up the dry cleaning were what Amy had in mind.

  “Mine do. Did.” She ran her fingers through her tangled hair. “I mean, all the time. Every week they’d have a big damn blowout. When I was little, they’d try to hide it. But for the past few years, it was screaming, cussing, breaking things. And they’d try to get me to take sides.” Amy snorted long and loud. “And even after all that, I hate that they’re divorced.”

  I opened my mouth to say something stupid, but she plowed on. “The bitch of it is, they still fight! It’s l
ike even though Dad lives way out in Chesterfield now, they have to make a point of calling each other up to yell at each other. That’s what happened tonight. Mom called Dad up, and I could hear her telling him to go to hell from the bedroom. She doesn’t even care how that makes me feel.” Amy massaged her temples.

  “Did you ever tell her that?”

  Amy turned to me and I was surprised at how bloodshot her eyes were. “Yes. Tonight, actually. So she started yelling at me instead. Said I didn’t appreciate her, said I always took Dad’s side, said…said I didn’t love her. And then she left. Drove off. I don’t know where she is.”

  Amy’s lower lip began to quiver and her face grew red. “How…how could she say that? I love my mom! How could she…” And then she was crying. It wasn’t like when Melody cried, with silent tears and internal pain. Amy went from zero to bawling in two seconds.

  “Let it all out,” I said unnecessarily. She was already sobbing. When I put my arm around her, she didn’t pull away. She snuggled in closer.

  After a few minutes she sat up, blew her nose, and reached for her cigarettes.

  I laid my hand on her wrist. “Don’t.”

  She smiled through her tears. “You can have one, if you’re hungry.” She leaned back and rested her head on my shoulder. I didn’t move an inch. Well, I actually moved several inches, but that was strictly involuntary. I had to remind myself that Amy just wanted to talk, and if I was going to face Melody on Monday, I should remember that. So I attempted to channel the spirit of Yoda and give some advice.

  “Your mom didn’t mean what she said. She’s just in a bad place right now, and took it out on you.”

  “I know that. She probably went to my aunt’s house. In a couple of hours she’ll come back and we’ll make up. But it really hurt me, what she said. I…I didn’t want to sit here alone. That’s why I called you. I was scared and angry, and didn’t want any of my friends to see me like that.”

  “Yeah.” There was a tinge of bitterness in my voice. Apparently, she still didn’t even consider me a friend. I scooted away.