Playing With Matches

My car started on the second try. Fortunately, it was making only the clunking and wheezing sounds that night, and not the ominous grinding noise. I sped off to Amy’s house.

  It was the first time I’d been there in the daylight. Every house in the subdivision was less than five years old. The developers had bulldozed an old-growth forest and planted these buildings. Dan described these neighborhoods as “too new to have ghosts.”

  Just before I could get out to ring the bell, Amy jogged out of her house. She shouted something to someone inside, then tried to pull open the car door. I had to lean over and open it from the inside.

  As Amy sat down, her ponytail swung over and smacked me right in the face. I probably could have died happy right then. She kissed me, half on the mouth, half on the cheek. While I was introducing Jessica, Johnny winked at me. He was impressed.

  Conversation was kind of stilted on the way over. I wasn’t sure Johnny was capable of not discussing bodily functions; he just sat silently. And I still felt awkward around Amy. What did she like to talk about?

  You never had trouble talking to Melody.

  I tried to kill the annoying little thought, but it wouldn’t shut up. By the time I managed to block it, I was driving nearly seventy.

  There were about twenty cars parked in front of the small house. The thunk-thunk of hip-hop music rattled the windows. Clearly, the host’s parents were out of town.

  I parked, and hand in hand, Amy and I walked into the house. It was hard to keep the big cheesy grin off my face. People would notice when I walked into the party, and not because I had something caught in my teeth. And not because they were staring at my date’s scarred face. Now I just had to make sure I didn’t screw up and embarrass Amy.

  You never worried about embarrassing Melody.

  Festivities, it seemed, were in the basement. The second we went downstairs, we were assaulted by the stench of human bodies, smoke, and beer. The deafening music vibrated off every surface in the rec room.

  There were about twenty or thirty people here, and I didn’t know a soul. Everyone was dancing, laughing, and having a great time. I went to touch Amy’s hand, but she had already bolted to meet some guy.

  He was a huge black dude, well over six feet tall. “Jamal!” Amy shrieked as she hugged him. My fists clenched. Why was she so happy to see him?

  Jamal apparently knew Johnny. They smacked hands. Johnny introduced Jessica. I waited for Amy to introduce me, but she didn’t. Eventually, Jamal left to greet other guests.

  Melody never ignored you around other people.

  Before I realized he had gone, Johnny returned with a six-pack. Amy and Jessica each took a beer. I wasn’t much of a drinker but wanted to fit in. Unfortunately, I couldn’t bring myself to drink when I’d be driving, so I stuck my unopened can behind a couch. Johnny, who was already chugging his, didn’t notice.

  I glanced around the room. I recognized Dylan among the faces. There were several people I knew by sight but not name. Other than that, I was among strangers.

  Amy said something to me, but I couldn’t hear her over the music. She gestured that she was going to go say hi to some friends, and faded off in the crowd. I turned to say something to Johnny but he was gone too.

  I suddenly felt out of my depth. I didn’t drink; I didn’t smoke; I didn’t like rap; and I hardly knew anyone here. Amy had been right: it was unhealthy that I always hung out with the same four or five people. When they were gone, I felt really self-conscious, like if I tried talking to anyone, I’d look like a nerd.

  Melody never left your side when you went out. You were the one who took care of her.

  Amy was on the other side of the basement, laughing with some friends. Wondering if it would come off as obsessive, I made my way toward her. Someone grabbed me from behind.

  I half expected Jamal, ready to throw me out of his party for being a loser. It was Dylan.

  “Dude!” he howled, raising a frothy plastic cup. “Hell of a party! Wooo!”

  “Yes. Woo.” I wanted to hate this guy. I wanted to remember how he’d beaten me up and insulted Melody. But all I could think of at the moment was that he was someone I knew, someone who would talk to me.

  Dylan chugged most of his beer. “Dude, did I see you come in with Amy Green?”

  I straightened with pride. “She’s my date.”

  “You freakin’ rock, Leon!” This apparently called for another drink. He grabbed a can out of a cooler. “But, um, weren’t you dating, um…”

  “No!”

  Dylan popped the top of his beer, then shoved it at me. “You rock, Leon! You goddamn rock! Woo!” He disappeared, howling, into the crowd.

  I hoped he’d end up with a football scholarship or something. The man would fit in well at college.

  Rather than turn down drinks all night, I decided to carry around my beer. I’d been at the party for only ten minutes and I’d sweated through my shirt. Every time I tried to stand somewhere, someone would bang into me. It was too uncomfortable to hang out, too loud for conversation. Johnny had vanished with Jessica. I searched for Amy.

  The crowd, I noticed, was moving away from the center of the room. Several couples were dancing to the vicious beat. Some moved quite well; others were too confident or too blitzed to care. The crowd shouted. Girls shrieked. Guys howled.

  I realized that Amy was one of the dancers, partnered up with Jamal. He was a good dancer. Amy, not so much, but she followed his lead. I felt a twinge of misplaced jealousy. They were just dancing, after all. All I had to do was wait for the song to end and cut in.

  Yeah. All I had to do. Like that was going to happen. There was no way I was going to attempt to dance in front of all these people. I simply stood on the outskirts of the crowd, hoping Amy would remember me.

  You never had to try to impress Melody.

  The voice in my head was so insistent that it was hard not to verbally argue. I gnawed my lip to stop my mouth from moving. If I started talking to myself, I’d end up double-dating with Dan and his voices.

  More and more people joined in the dancing. Amy changed partners. I kept telling myself that the next dance I’d grab her, but I always lost my nerve. Sweaty people smashed into me. The temperature of the basement began to approach sauna levels and I started to get real thirsty. The beer was tempting, but the mental image of a cop smelling even half a can of beer on my breath scared the piss out of me.

  Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to get some fresh air. I toyed with the idea of asking Amy to come with me, but she was having too much fun. Screw it, if she wouldn’t make an effort to be with me…

  I fought my way upstairs and found the bathroom. The heat had caused me to sweat away any chance of needing to use it, so I ran some water and washed my face. What the hell was wrong with me? Here I was, at a party with a beautiful girl, and I was having a lousy time.

  I recalled something from just one week before, on the way to the dance. Something Melody had said.

  My parents are going to be out of town next weekend, Leon.

  That was right now. And to be at this party, I’d given up a chance to…

  I was locked in a bathroom, pretending to pee. My date was getting passed around the dance floor; no one here wanted to talk to me; and I was bored out of my skull. And I was here by choice. Instead of taking off Melody’s clothes. Instead of seeing her whole body. Instead of becoming a man.

  What the fuck had I been thinking? Just because Amy was a little prettier…well, a lot prettier. A whole lot. I thought of her in the halter top. The bikini picture in the yearbook. The way she kept kissing and touching me.

  Just be patient. The time will come. You would have been using Melody, anyway.

  Much as I didn’t want to, I had to go back downstairs. I wasn’t going to dance or drink, and conversation was impossible. I guessed I’d just sweat in a corner until Amy decided it was time to leave.

  When I walked back through the living room, I saw that three guys from anoth
er school had turned on the video game system. Two of them forced electronic men to beat the hell out of each other while the third shouted advice.

  “Hit B! No, B! Jesus, you suck!” They didn’t notice me.

  “Hit B and C at the same time,” I suggested. On the screen, one muscleman beat the other’s face into the ground.

  “Tight!” shouted the victor. The loser rolled his eyes and handed the controller to the spectator.

  “I’ll pass. Let the new guy have a go.”

  I hesitated. But what harm would one game be? I grabbed the controller and began to play. The two other guys hollered advice.

  Three games later I was undefeated. “So how come you’re not down with everyone else?” asked my opponent, a little bitterly.

  “I can’t stand rap,” I answered simply.

  “All right, gimme a shot,” said one of the other guys. “What’s your name, anyway?”

  “Leon.”

  “I’m Mike. This is Brian and Brian.”

  Mike and Brian No. 1 began battling, and Brian No. 2 and I shouted what they were doing wrong. Finally, I was having fun. Sitting there with three other guys, playing a game that I could have played any night, while my date danced with every other teenager in east Missouri. It never occurred to me to go back downstairs.

  After saving the world from alien invasion, liberating Europe, and taking the Cincinnati Bengals to the Super Bowl, I knew I had to stop.

  “Gotta fly, guys,” I said, happy that I had managed to do something fun that night. I tried not to think about Melody and how we would have done a lot more than play video games.

  “Take care, Leon,” said Mike, without turning around. “Let’s get together sometime.”

  I wandered back down the stairs. I noticed there were fewer people now. Apparently, some of the guests had passed through the living room without my even noticing. For a few minutes I couldn’t find Amy and thought she had left without me. I found her sitting on a couch, talking to two douche bags.

  They were a couple of good-looking guys from another school. They reminded me of Dylan, only without the moronic charm. They sat on either side of Amy, hanging on her every word. Something told me they weren’t interested in her cheerleading stories.

  Amy didn’t notice me as I awkwardly stood there, and eventually I had to interrupt.

  “Hey, Amy?”

  She looked up. “Oh, hi, Leon. I wondered where you ran off to.”

  Not enough to look for me, apparently. “You about ready to go?”

  One of the human piles of garbage shot me an evil look but didn’t say anything.

  Amy yawned. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “I’ll go get Johnny.”

  I found him standing in a corner, his tongue rammed down Jessica’s throat. He disengaged just long enough to tell me he had another ride home.

  Amy joined me at the top of the stairs. So did the two pricks she’d been talking to.

  “Leon, you don’t mind if we give Andy and Conner a ride home, do you?”

  I minded.

  “Sure. You live nearby?”

  “Actually,” said one of the asswipes, “we live out in Wright City.”

  “That’s like twenty miles west of here,” I whined.

  He laughed. “Then we better hit the road.”

  29

  NOT EXACTLY PARADISE, BUT BY NO MEANS AN UNPLEASANT EXPERIENCE, BY THE DASHBOARD LIGHT

  I stood next to the pump at Garzi’s Gas ’n’ Go, spending my last ten bucks on fuel. It had taken us half an hour to drive Dumb and Dumber out to Wright City. Amy sat turned around in her seat, talking to my passengers. All they talked about was music I didn’t listen to, movies I hadn’t seen, and pop stars I hated.

  No one talked to me. I was a hired chauffeur.

  Now we were back in St. Christopher. It was nearly two in the morning. Amy sat on my hood, talking on her cell phone.

  “Okay, Mom. I’ll be home in ten minutes.” So much for any alone time with Leon.

  Amy rummaged in her purse and pulled out her ever-present cigarettes.

  “You shouldn’t smoke while I’m pumping gas.”

  She lit up. “I’m too young to die.”

  I angrily shoved the pump back into the slot. I might as well not have existed tonight. Christ, was this what dates with Amy were always going to be like? Because if it was…

  Amy slid up behind me as I was replacing the gas cap. She placed her hands on my hips and ground her chin into my shoulder.

  “You’re annoyed. I can tell.”

  If I’d been born with a spine, I might have said something. Instead, I laid my hands across hers.

  “No, I’m not.”

  Amy snuggled closer. “What’s wrong, Leon?”

  “You, uh…kind of ignored me tonight.”

  She pulled back and I turned around. “I’m sorry. I guess you were bored. Why didn’t you dance?”

  “You know the stereotype that white people—”

  “Tell you what.” Amy interrupted my joke. “Next time we do what you want.”

  “Okay.”

  And then we were kissing. Hard. It wasn’t like kissing Melody, or the two or three other girls I’d kissed. Amy pressed her face so hard into mine it almost hurt. She wrapped her hands around the back of my head, like she didn’t want me to pull away. After a few seconds we slowed down and took it easier. She pressed her tongue into my mouth. I placed my hand on her forearm, then ran my fingers up her bicep. After a brief hesitation, I slid my hand into the armhole of her sleeveless top. She didn’t stop me when I began rubbing her shoulders from inside her shirt.

  After about five seconds, she pushed away and wordlessly got into the car. I wiped some drool off my chin and followed.

  Okay, that was pretty nice. Who cared if Amy liked to dance or asked me to give her friends a ride? She was into me! At least for now.

  I returned home around three, hours after my curfew. Not that it mattered; I couldn’t remember my parents ever staying up to wait for me. And yet, when I walked through the door, I found my dad watching M*A*S*H reruns in his bathrobe.

  “Dad! Didn’t think you’d still be up.”

  He turned off the TV and stood. “Couldn’t sleep,” he said, obviously lying. “Where have you been? You’re late.”

  “Sorry. I was at a party, kind of lost track of things.”

  Dad had a funny look on his face. “Have you been drinking?”

  “Huh?”

  Dad’s voice was less than civil now. “You drove home. Have you been drinking?”

  What was this, MADD night? “No. No, I didn’t drink.”

  There was a brief silence, during which I could tell that Dad was smelling my breath. Then he smiled. “I’m going to have a grilled cheese. Want one?”

  I nodded. The encounter had frazzled me a bit. Though Dad had never spanked me as a child, I had the uncomfortable feeling that if I had driven drunk, he’d have whupped my ass.

  Dad was buttering bread in the kitchen.

  “You know,” I said, getting out the griddle, “you’ve never waited up for me before.”

  “You never really went to parties before.”

  “Yeah.”

  My father tossed the sandwiches onto the stove. “Did you have a good time?”

  I thought about the video game marathon I’d ended up participating in. “It was okay.”

  “So what’s this new girl like?”

  I never really felt like discussing my life with my folks, but for some reason I needed to open up that night. “She’s beautiful. Blond, a cheerleader. She’s great.”

  Dad nodded appreciatively. “So are you two dating now, or what? Hand me the spatula.”

  I remembered how I’d been ignored for hours. I remembered Amy’s beer-soaked kisses and thought how I would gladly suffer through more nights like this if I could taste those nicotine lips again.

  “I dunno, Dad. I wanted to for the longest time, but now…” I shrugged.

&nbs
p; Dad didn’t say anything; he just tended the food for a bit.

  I continued talking without any prompting. “Dad, did you ever have a girl just turn you on so much, make you so crazy, that it didn’t matter how she treated you? Like you were willing to have a crappy time just so you could be with her? Does that make sense?”

  Dad scooped the sandwiches onto plates. “Oh yeah,” he answered decisively. We sat down at the table.

  “I mean,” I continued around cheesy mouthfuls, “she’s nice; she’s fun; but when we went out tonight, I really didn’t enjoy it. It’s weird.”

  Dad nodded. “It happens.”

  “But she’s wonderful! Any guy would kill to go out with her. And she likes me. I guess. So why couldn’t I just enjoy it? It’s not like when I—” I caught myself just in time. No need to remember that.

  Dad finished his last bite. “Son”—he looked me square in the eye—“we all come to this point sooner or later. If this is the first time you’ve been messed up by a woman, it sure won’t be your last. Would you like a piece of advice? You know, from someone who’s been there?”

  I nodded eagerly.

  “Get used to it.” With a grin he patted my shoulder and walked off to bed.

  I sat in the dark kitchen, feeling thoroughly confused. Instead of snuggling naked with Melody, I was talking to my dad. I’d given up sex, a girlfriend, and a best friend so I could grope Amy at the gas station.

  But that wasn’t all Amy and I had. I remembered how she’d talked to me about her family problems. How she’d made me realize I was more popular than I thought. How she’d promised that I would get to choose what we did next.

  Things would work out. They had to.

  30

  YOU WON’T HAVE MELODY HENNON TO KICK AROUND ANYMORE

  “JUST SO YOU KNOW,” bellowed Mr. Hamburg the following Monday, “SOME SUBHUMAN BARBARIAN DRANK THE LAST COFFEE IN THE TEACHERS’ LOUNGE.” His voice dropped to an ominously low volume. “And did not make a fresh pot. SO I APOLOGIZE IF I AM NOT MY USUAL JOLLY SELF.”

  Across the room, Melody sat in silence. Now that she’d changed lockers and lunch tables, this was the only time I saw her anymore. It had been a week since our breakup, and I didn’t have the courage to try to talk to her again.