AUTUMN WAS ALWAYS the best season in southern Ohio. The trees on the rolling hills changed from verdant green to melancholy shades of orange and brown. The afternoons were bright, warm, and full of summer’s last breath. The excitement of football games on crisp evenings mixed with the chill of morning frost and the knowledge that winter approached, bringing with it boredom and not much to do inside.
If autumn was the best season, homecoming was the best dance. In contrast to spring prom that bankrupted young hearts and pocket books with its intense social pressure, all teenagers of a certain age looked forward to homecoming with an excitable nervousness. A life full of strange experiences and frighteningly new milestones lay ahead, and for a teenager, the homecoming dance was a milestone the size of Pike’s Peak. Mainly, though, the dance was another opportunity to meet the opposite sex and hopefully not screw up like the last time.
Although it was Dean’s birthday, school passed calmly and without incident. When no planes fell on his head during band practice or trucks full of fertilizer crashed through the school, Dean began to forget that it was his annual day of doom. Brenda even smiled at him when he greeted her in the hallway. After school he wasn’t poisoned or forced to wear female clothing. That evening the football team didn’t contract dysentery in the first half of the game, and Dean’s performance during the marching band’s halftime show was acceptable, perhaps even good in the eyes of most adults that were paying attention on account of having to be there.
The homecoming king and queen were crowned at halftime. Nothing shocking there––popular seniors Shawn Williams and Debbie Lippmann––but as Dean stood with the rest of band on the sidelines, he saw the junior high king and queen walking up the fifty-yard line and his stomach burned faster than a plastic B-25 loaded with M-80s and fistfuls of sparklers and covered in gasoline. Resplendent in a satin and taffeta gown of neon fuchsia, Naomi walked with a blonde, rail-thin kid Dean didn’t recognize. Amidst unintelligible barks from the P.A. system, the previous year’s winner placed a silver tiara on Naomi’s head, crowning her the junior high homecoming queen.
Dean might have fainted for a few seconds. It was hard to tell because the band members packed together so tightly. It was more likely that he traveled into the future a short moment until a helpful soul, probably a percussionist, dumped a cup of ice down the back of his uniform jacket.
Dean fumed and sweated until the third-quarter break, then pushed through the crowd to find Mike standing in line for the snack bar.
He tapped on the tall boy’s shoulder. “Did you see what I just saw?”
“Yeah, it’s awesome,” said Mike. “Chili dogs are half-price!”
“No, mucus breath! Naomi’s the junior queen!”
“Keep your voice down,” hissed Mike.
“I have the right to shout if it’s my last day on earth!”
Mike pulled Dean around to the side of the snack bar. “Listen, it’s a wrinkle in our soup but there’s no reason to get excited.”
“No reason? To get excited? If she’s the junior queen, her parents will be at the dance. They’re probably here right now!”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Mike. “What are they going to do in front of everyone? Beat you senseless? Strip you naked? Or strip you naked and beat you senseless? Calm down, because absolutely nothing’s going to happen, and it’s all proceeding according to my plan. Naomi and I staged a little fight in front of her locker today. All her friends think she’s dating you now.”
“I haven’t said a word to her!”
Mike put a hand across his chest and bowed. “I wrote a love letter and it just so happens to have been read by all the eighth-grade girls.”
“That’s even better. Now I don’t even have a chance with fourteen-year-olds.”
“Don’t be silly,” said Mike. “It doesn’t matter anyway, because Brenda likes you.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, really. Trust me.”
Dean took a deep breath. “Wow. That’s ... wow. I guess we’ll go ahead with the plan.”
“That’s the spirit!”
The game finished in the usual manner for the Hidden Valley Pirates: utter and ignominious defeat. The opposing team reached a score of three figures, and it seemed as if they weren’t even trying at that point. The game over, every band member, football player, and cheerleader rushed to lockers and various practice rooms to prepare for the dance.
Dean changed into black slacks, collared shirt and tie, and the central focus of his outfit: a gray acrylic sweater covered in abstract black triangles. The style was in fashion and made quite the statement, which was This is 1988, I couldn’t find anything else to wear. His bag and trumpet stayed in the equipment room with the property of other band members going to the dance.
Dean walked through hallways lined with photos of past graduating classes of Hidden Valley High. These massive placards went all the way back to the hallowed days of 1961, when the high school had opened. The halls were packed with present-day teenagers waiting for the dance to begin, many of whom chatted below photos of their mothers and fathers immortalized in black-and-white.
Teenagers clustered together defensively, the boys in dark pants with sharp creases, starched shirts with skinny ties or bolos, and pullover sweaters. Girls wore short dresses in solid neon colors with puffed-out flounces and layers of ruffles. Hose and pointy shoes were a requirement of fashion, if not the weather. The lucky or determined boys who had learned to speak to the opposite sex without falling on their faces or looking stupid now stood with a date and her friends and began to realize they were at a dance, where face-falling and stupid-looking were dangerous possibilities. Plans for escape were formed and discarded in the minds of a few boys, oblivious to the fact that the girls were ahead of them in this department, having planned every contingency and conversational topic weeks before in their diaries.
Dean hadn’t planned anything. His mother had always said to be yourself, but Dean knew he wouldn’t get far talking about Simon Belmont or whether Scarlett was hotter than the Baroness.
He wondered if he should look for Brenda or wait until the dance started, when the voice of Frenchie Davis shot out from a pack of girls in teased-out hair and swishy satin dresses.
“Dean-o! What’s going on?”
To keep from talking about the Naomi situation, Dean had stayed away from Frenchie all day. He didn’t like lying to Frenchie. Somehow he always found out.
Dressed to the nines as always, the diminutive boy wore a white jacket over his black button-down shirt and slacks. His sleeves were pushed up Miami-Vice style, but with the blonde, feathered hair Dean thought he looked more like Luke Skywalker’s tiny twin than Don Johnson.
Frenchie pulled Dean into a sacred circle of flowery smells and Wrigley’s chewing gum.
“I heard you and Naomi are a pair. Is that true?”
Dean rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah, sure.”
“Really? If you needed a girlfriend, Dean, why didn’t you ask me for help? I may have the body of a superhero and the mind of a genius, but I’ve got the heart of a matchmaker.”
“I didn’t plan anything. It just happened.”
“But with an eighth grader? You know about her parents, right?”
“Listen, Frenchie, I gotta go.”
“If you’re looking for Naomi, I know exactly where she is.”
Frenchie led Dean through the crowd like Moses parting a sea of hair spray to where Naomi stood quietly with the very blonde and very skinny junior high king. Dean tried, but still couldn’t remember his name.
“Beat it, Dubrowski,” said Frenchie.
“What?” stammered the boy. “I’m supposed to escort Naomi––”
“You’ll be escorting flights of angels to heaven when I get through with you,” said Frenchie, as he poked Dubrowski in the chest of his rayon jacket.
“I don’t understand.”
Frenchie sighed. “You still owe me that favor, remember?”
&nbs
p; “Yeah, Frenchie, but––”
“No ‘buts.’ Just do the moonwalk out of here. I’ll show you how.”
Frenchie winked at Dean and disappeared with Dubrowski. The double wooden doors to the gym swung open and “Lady in Red” flowed through the air. The crowd of perfumed teenagers pushed forward.
Dean held out his arm to Naomi. “Shall we?”
She nodded and slipped a white-gloved hand through the crook of his arm. They moved toward the packed gymnasium, but a strong hand clamped on Dean’s shoulder and pulled him back.
“Where are you two going?” asked Mr. Jenkins, the deep-voiced seventh-grade history teacher.
“Inside,” said Naomi.
Dean began to sweat under his sweater. He wondered if the teachers knew what was going on.
“No, no, and definitely no,” said Mr. Jenkins. “The junior king and queen are part of the processional. Don’t enter before the senior king and queen, because you’ll have to go out and come back in again, and then who looks stupid? Me, because I’m in charge.”
Dean cleared his throat. “I’m not––”
“Kids these days ... do I have to draw you a picture? In crayon? Just go to the other door and wait.”
“Yes, Mr. Jenkins,” said Naomi.
They struggled through the crowd to where the homecoming king and queen stood in front of another entrance to the gym, laughing at some private joke. Shawn and Debbie only glanced at Dean and Naomi and continued to whisper to each other.
Dean sighed and covered his eyes with his fingers. “I shouldn’t be here. If there’s any place in the world I should be at this moment, it’s not here.”
Naomi pulled his hands down. “Thanks for doing this, Dean. I know you’d rather be at home watching TV or reading comic books.”
Dean nodded. “I’m much cooler than you think, and I’d be doing something completely different, which would be ... sorry, throat’s a bit dry ... something like repairing my motorcycle. That’s right––it’s broken because I hit a turtle and almost died. But of course, I didn’t die since I’m talking to you and I’m good at motorcycles.”
Naomi laughed, and Dean’s chest tingled like he’d just won the Olympics and had been awarded the all-around gold by Nancy Reagan.
“You’re a funny guy,” said Naomi. “I know you don’t have a bike.”
“Shhh. It’ll be our secret.”
“Speaking of secrets––”
Smelling of lavender and Fruit Stripe, Naomi kissed him on the cheek.
“Thank you,” she said.
“You’re welcome.”
Dean felt his face heating up. He became very conscious of the laser-beam eyeballs of King and Queen Popular.
“Oh, no,” said Naomi in mock horror. “I didn’t activate your superpower, did I? You know, like how anger brings out the Hulk. Please don’t turn into a green-skinned wrestler and level the entire school! I was looking forward to the dance and stuff.”
“I’ve done some incredibly embarrassing things, but since you asked I’ll try not to destroy the dance,” said Dean. “This one time.”
“Did you ever wonder what would happen if Bruce Banner has to pee really, really bad, right, but he stubs his toe in the doorway? Like the worst toe-smash you’ve ever had, one that would make Mother Teresa curse like a sailor. Does he change into the Hulk and immediately blow the walls apart with a torrent of urine like a stream from a fire hose? Or does the Hulk have the decency to run outside before he explodes?”
Dean laughed. “I don’t think ‘decency’ and the Hulk go together. In reality he’d be jumping around like a naked, gamma-powered monkey, blowing apart buildings with any and all of his bodily functions. It’s a good question, though, like asking what happens when Superman sneezes.”
“He can’t sneeze. He doesn’t get sick.”
“If he has a nose, he has to sneeze. Also, a man who rockets through the atmosphere can’t avoid getting the occasional june bug up his nostrils.”
Naomi nodded and stared into Dean’s eyes. He turned away after the long and uncomfortable space of a nanosecond.
“There’s something on your face, maybe an eyelash,” said Naomi.
She reached up but Dean jerked away, a hand over his right eye.
“Don’t touch it!”
“Why not?”
Dean blinked. The vision from his right eye had become extremely blurred, like a chalk painting in the rain. “My contact just fell out!”
He patted his face and sweater frantically, then dropped to his knees and scanned the waxed floor.
Naomi bent down. “I don’t see it.”
“That’s the point of contacts! You can’t let them fall out because you can’t see them when they fall out!”
The music coming from the gym changed to “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life,” and Mr. Jenkins grabbed both door handles.
“Ready, kings and queens? No close dancing. Remember the old saying, ‘grinding away is not okay.’ ”
Dean held up his hand. “Wait!”
Mr. Jenkins swung open the doors and the air filled with music. A disco ball hung from a high rafter and spun waves of light over the crepe-covered walls and polished basketball court. Scores of pink and white balloons dotted the waxed floor. The visiting team bleachers had been pushed back to make room for refreshments and tables. Teens waved or popped white-hot camera flashes from the wooden bleachers on the opposite side.
Shawn and Debbie, the senior king and queen, walked out stiffly. They posed for photos inside a lattice covered with pink flowers.
Still desperately searching on his hands and knees, Dean wondered if he’d swallowed his contact. The split vision of clear and blurry started to give him a massive headache.
“Your turn, kids,” shouted Mr. Jenkins, over the music.
In a quite unladylike manner, Naomi used both arms to pull Dean to his feet.
“Dean! We have to go.”
“But I can’t see!”
Naomi stuck out a white-gloved elbow. “Grab on.”
Dean was not a Communist or from the planet Zooberon, and knew that a gentleman should never allow a lady to lead him into a formal dance. However, he realized that this rule was from an age that lacked contact lenses, teenage peer pressure, and Christopher Cross.
Naomi held her satin-covered arm like a ‘V’ and Dean slipped his arm through. As straight and dignified as possible, he strolled with her into the gym, keeping his right eye open for depth perception, but closing it frequently because of the dizzying, out-of-focus blurriness. The unintended impression he gave the entire crowd was of a young man with a bee in his eye.
Mrs. Shafer, the homecoming coordinator, ninth-grade English teacher, and official photographer, held up her hand before Dean and Naomi had made it to the flower-covered lattice.
“That’s not Dubrowski,” she said to the trailing Mr. Jenkins.
“It’s not? You’re right, it’s Cook! What the devil are you doing, Cook?”
“I honestly don’t know, sir.”
“Good God, man, stop winking at me like that. Switch arms with the lady, you fool. Where’s Dubrowski?”
“I honestly don’t know, sir.”
“Horse pills and broken records,” said Jenkins. “Nobody knows nothing.”
“That’s a double negative,” said Mrs. Shafer.
“I know what it is, Marianne. Don’t you start with me!”
Naomi raised her hand. “Steve had an emergency and went home.”
“That’s a fine jar of jam on the sidewalk,” said Jenkins. “Take the blasted photo and we’ll fix it later. Put Dubrowski’s name in the yearbook, nobody reads the claptrap anyway.”
“But––”
“Do it, Marianne!”
With a defiant glare Mrs. Shafer led them to the flowered lattice. She snapped photos, giving the pair instructions to turn this way and that. Dean followed them as best he could, but couldn’t keep his eye open for too long. As a result, Mrs. Shafer
had them trade sides so that Dean’s twitching eye was hidden from the camera.
“Do you have a sunburn or something, Cook?” she asked. “Your face is very red.”
When they finished, the cheers of the crowd drowned out the music. This wasn’t for Naomi and Dean, but because the wait was over and everyone could dance now. A tsunami of teens surged onto the balloon-covered gym floor while Dean escorted Naomi to the bleachers, in the opposite direction of the human tide.
“We’re supposed to be a couple,” she said. “Don’t you want to dance?”
“I guess one dance won’t hurt, but I need to find my other contact,” said Dean.
He held Naomi’s right hand awkwardly and slid his other hand behind her back. A respectable distance must be maintained while dancing with your best friend’s girlfriend, he said to himself while he danced closer to a beautiful girl than any teenage boy had a right to, and tried to think of baseball. As they swayed among the other couples, his good eye caught a glance of the furious face of Naomi’s brother John. This created less of a need to think of baseball.
After the song ended, he led Naomi to a seat on the wooden bleachers near her friends and scrambled out to the hallway.
A pair of spit-shined shoes interrupted his close inspection of the hallway floor. Dean followed sharp-creased trousers up to the mask of fury that was John’s face. Two massive paw-like hands pulled Dean to his feet.
“Stay away from my sister, you disgusting pervert,” John snarled.
“I didn’t do anything!”
“Shut up! And stop winking at me! Everyone knows what you’re thinking and it’s disgusting!”
“But I lost a contact.”
“Really? Stop winking or I’ll take the other one out with my fist.”
He dropped Dean into a heap and walked away.
Dean trudged away from the gym, a tactical retreat and walk home on his mind. He paused at the door of the band room and heard the slap-slap-slap of men’s dress shoes on the waxed floor of the corridor. He looked back to see Mike running toward him down the long hallway, the weighted ends of his bolo tie hitting both shoulders as it whipped left and right.
“Wait up,” he yelled.
Dean spread his arms and shook his head in disbelief.
“Where have you been? John almost murdered me under the Class of 1972!”
“Looking for you, that’s where,” said Mike, out of breath. “You have to stay with Naomi and let me dance with her.”
“No B-25 is worth getting punched in the face,” said Dean. “Maybe a life-sized one with real guns, but not a model.”
“Why are you winking at me? That’s really weird, dude. Okay, we’ll go back into the dance, you cuddle up with Brenda for one song––she’s dying to see you, by the way––then come and sit with Naomi.”
“Fine, fine,” said Dean. “Apart from the fact that my parents are going to bury me alive for losing a contact, I have to wear those stupid Coke-bottle glasses, because this headache is massive.”
“Glasses are even better! Nobody gets punched wearing those.”
“I don’t want to find out,” said Dean.
He found his trumpet case in the equipment room and took out the dreaded instrument of ocular embarrassment. The eye doctor must have had something against Dean in a previous life, because in addition to the obscene thickness, he’d given the lenses a bronze tint, making Dean look like a near-sighted mafia don.
He rested them on the bridge of his nose and immediately became dizzy. The contact in his left eye combined with the eyeglass lenses in a kaleidoscope of twisting shapes and refractive error.
“I can’t wear these either.”
“Take out your other contact,” said Mike.
“And put it where, a cup of punch? It’ll dry out and I’ve already lost two of them.”
“Okay, genius––either take out that contact or I’ll burn your house down. Girls don’t wait forever.”
Dean used his thumbs to pop out the heavy lens on the right side of the glasses. He placed them back on his nose and grinned at Mike.
“Now who’s the genius?”
Mike shook his head. “You’re the strangest person I know. Come on, Cyclops.”
They clip-clopped through the waxed hallways like iron-shod horses and pushed into the gym as a Bruce Hornsby song was ending.
Brenda finished the dance on the arm of a skinny blonde boy in a suit. Dean spotted her and wove through the teenagers heading back to the bleachers. “Tonight, Tonight, Tonight” started up and others resumed their dancing.
Dean tapped the blonde kid on the shoulder. “Beat it, Dubrowski.”
“Not you again,” said Dubrowski. He turned and did a classic double take at Dean’s strange, half-glassed appearance. “Oooookay. I’ll see you later, Brenda.”
He slunk away, and Dean executed the maneuver he’d been practicing for months in front of a mirror. He placed a hand on his chest and bowed.
“May I have this dance?”
Brenda stared at him, stock-still, the chewing gum in her open mouth in serious danger of tumbling out.
Taking the lack of a negative as a positive, Dean held Brenda’s right hand and pressed the small of her back with the other as they began to move with the crowd to Genesis.
Brenda swallowed her gum. At the end of her brief choking spell, Dean felt pressure to start a conversation.
“Nice dress,” he said. “It really makes your eyes pop. What would you call that color? Teal or aquamarine?”
“Dean Cook––are you for real?”
“I’m ... uh ... really here, if that’s what’re asking. I mean, what’s real, anyway? The floor? Taxes? We’re all probably just eyelash mites in a giant alien overlord’s mascara, when it comes down to it.”
“Okay ... number one, your glasses are broken, and number two, you’re dating Naomi.”
“I am not!” Dean looked around at the staring couples and lowered his voice. “I’m not.”
Brenda tossed her long black hair like a pony twitching its tail. “I read your note,” she said. “It’s obvious you really like her.”
“Didn’t your sister tell you? Mike was supposed to––”
“Don’t mention that sleaze bag. Yes, he gave my sister mono and yes, I got it from a slice of her half-eaten cheesecake. How was I supposed to know? Did I deserve two weeks of mono for wanting more delicious, chocolate-covered cheesecake? Show me a girl who doesn’t want more cheesecake and I’ll show you a boy dressed as a girl!”
“Sure, but––”
“I wouldn’t believe a thing he said to me even if he said it to my face. And you, by the way, shouldn’t be dating eighth graders. Okay, so you’re kind of a mess, but maybe if you got rid of those glasses and stayed away from bright lights, you’d almost look like Tom Cruise.”
Dean’s face tingled. “Really?”
“Sure. You would have been just my type, if Steve hadn’t asked me out two minutes ago.”
“Who?”
“The junior homecoming king, Steve Dubrowski. He’s smart, too, and a ‘mathlete,’ whatever that is. Do they go to state? He wants me to wear his Chess Club jacket.”
Dean sighed. “Chess team jacket.”
“Excuse me, but I go to the mall like, every day, and it’s called Chess Club.”
“Sure, Brenda,” said Dean, with slumped shoulders. “But my SAT is higher than his. And you know he’s too young to drive.”
“I guess so, but at least he doesn’t wear glasses. Wow, do I need another stick of gum!”
The song ended right then, and the pair broke up. Dean lost her in the crowd but didn’t care too much as he walked with bowed head toward the exit, intending to escape a second time or at least ram his face into something hard until his face or the something gave way.
“Dean! Up here!”
Naomi waved at him from high on the wooden bleachers. The next song had a fast tempo, and Dean decided to at least keep his word to Mike if noth
ing else. He wouldn’t get pummeled for sitting next to a girl.
He blazed a trail up the bleachers past teens holding hands and trying to sit as close to each other as possible under the hawk-eyed chaperones, and plopped down next to Naomi.
“What’s wrong? You look like you need a hug,” said Naomi.
She slid an arm around his side and squeezed. Dean smelled her lavender perfume again and felt the weight of her head on his shoulder.
“We shouldn’t be sitting this close,” he said.
“Why not?”
“Your brother said he’d kill me.”
“That’s impossible! Bobby’s in the hospital.”
Dean shook his head. “John.”
“Oh, right,” said Naomi. “That sounds like John.”
“Why is Bobby in the hospital?”
“John.”
Dean groaned. “These are supposed to be the best years of my life. Turns out they might be the last years, too.”
Naomi giggled, and that made Dean feel better. He liked making her happy enough to laugh.
“You’re so dramatic,” she said. “Sure, he might punch you in the face or snap a few fingers, but he’s not going to kill you.”
“I feel so much better.”
“Now my dad, he might kill you. He’s done it before,” said Naomi.
“Who?”
“My dad!”
“No, I mean who did he kill?”
Naomi pointed at the gym entrance. “My dad!”
Dean followed the line of Naomi’s primary digit to a massive figure in plaid shirt and jeans. He towered over the swirling crowd of teenagers like a redwood in a forest of pines, and coincidentally, with skin just as bark-like. A faded red trucker’s cap with the Massey-Ferguson logo squashed his bristly black hair, and his beard would have put to shame any Confederate re-enactor of Pickett’s Charge. The rumor mill claimed that he raised tobacco and steers, but Dean could never think of the man as anything other than a very angry lumberjack. One whose astoundingly pretty daughter Dean was now being hugged and leaned upon.
“I should go,” he blurted.
“He’ll see you,” said Naomi. “Quick! Let’s dance with everyone. You can sneak out the other door.”
Luckily, the music changed to a slow song and almost everyone stood up to pack the gym floor. Naomi held Dean’s hand and helped him navigate down the bleachers and into the middle of the crowd. She pulled Dean’s arms behind her back and they swayed together, much closer this time.
Dean kept his head down. This brought him close to Naomi’s neck, and he decided this was an appropriate moment to review in his mind last year’s major league record for stolen bases.
“You’re a sweet guy,” whispered Naomi in his ear.
“Rickey Henderson! I mean ... don’t do that, it tickles.”
“Mike would never do this for his friends,” said Naomi.
“Whisper in my ear? I certainly hope not.”
“No, silly! Pretend to date a girl for your friend. I think Mike’s too selfish for that. Maybe I should date someone like you.”
“You mean, actually date someone you’re pretending to date? I’d do that in a flash, if Mike ends up in the hospital next to Bobby. With all that pain medication, he won’t know flip from flap.”
Naomi giggled and squeezed Dean, pressing her body tightly against him. She yelped and jumped back, hands over her chest.
“You pinched my boob!”
“No I didn’t! It’s the pins!”
“What?”
“I use pins to hold down my tie.”
“But you’re wearing a sweater!”
Her brother John pushed through the giggling crowd of teens, the red mist of deadly murder in his eyes. Dean considered his options, weighed the pros and cons of a very public and humiliating beating, and decided to run for it.
And run for it he did. The most ardent Nazi watching through his telescope from a base on the Moon would have said Dean lacked talent and even the most basic skills, but would see that the boy had enough practice in dodge ball and foot pursuit to escape quite a few angry boys and the occasional angry girl who would inevitably get on their bikes and catch him anyway.
In this scenario there were no bikes, however, and Dean weaved, jinked, and flat-out “booked it” through the crowds on the dance floor and into the empty corridors of Hidden Valley High.
He waited in a pitch-black girl’s bathroom for what seemed like hours but was probably only five minutes, then crept back through dim hallways lined with silently frowning beige lockers.
From this end of the rectangular school building, the only way out was through the main entrance in the lobby, past cases full of football trophies and parents waiting for the dance to end. Rather than sleeping in the girl’s bathroom all night for the second time in his life, Dean decided to try and sneak through the parental gauntlet.
He found an old jacket in his locker. Holding it over his head like a celebrity dodging the paparazzi, he navigated halfway through the parent-packed lobby and suddenly froze.
Before the stainless steel and glass entrance doors stood Naomi’s murderous lumberjack father, chatting with a pair of adults that Dean had never met before but who were strangely familiar.
Both looked mid-thirties in age. The man was the shorter of the pair and wore a dark gray blazer that looked suspiciously like one in Dean’s closet. He was pale, slight of build, and had a cropped, spiky haircut. Although not as tall as Naomi’s father, the woman towered over the blonde-haired man. Her brown hair cascaded in feathered waves across the shoulders of her scarlet jacket. A matching miniskirt and high heels were complemented by black stockings with that line up the back of the leg.
The tall woman laughed. The pair seemed to be in the middle of a conversation with Naomi’s lumberjack father.
“Of course not! The pills just take the edge off.”
Since he was a teenage boy in a body flooded with a massive amount of hormones, Dean admired those smooth, shapely legs for a few seconds. An enormous hand curled around the back of his neck and pulled him forward.
“Here he is,” boomed Naomi’s father. “The man of the hour himself.”
He pulled Dean close to the strange couple. Dean wished for nuclear Armageddon at this particular moment, although he doubted the sight of mushroom clouds would shock a murderous lumberjack for more than a few minutes. Perhaps the couple were Federal drug agents in disguise and would save him from the extreme beating that was only seconds away.
“Hello, son,” said the tall woman.
If Dean’s heart knew what was going on and cared enough to stop squishing blood through his body, it probably would have stopped squishing blood through his body. Dean’s face had more leisure time and replicated the same wide-eyed, Juicy-Fruit-tumbling expression as Brenda had earlier.
“Don’t look so shocked, dear,” said the spiky-haired man.
“Mom? Dad?”
The huge, leathery hand of Naomi’s father patted Dean on the shoulder, but the large man said nothing apart from grinning widely.
“We wanted to tell you for a long time,” said Frank Cook, a father Dean had known for many years not to wear a dress and makeup, but who was now wearing a dress and makeup. “It was hard to find the right time.”
“I’m sure it is,” said the lumberjack in a solemn tone. “Very hard.”
“Tell me you came from a party,” said Dean. “Or forgot this isn’t Halloween. If you tell me you’re really, really drunk right now that would also clear things up.”
His mother shook her head. “I’m sorry you had to find out this way, Dean.”
“Had to? You didn’t have to switch clothes and walk into my homecoming dance!”
“It’s not just switching clothes, it’s a lifestyle,” said his father. “Remember that episode of Real People a few years ago, where the husband and wife decided to swap gender roles? They wore clothing of the opposite sex to the grocery store, to their jobs, even at ho
me. Both that and your experience at the pool party a few years ago really convinced me. Your mother and I talked about it for a long time and finally decided that yes, this is who we really are. We’re choosing what to wear, who to be, and sticking to our dreams.”
Naomi’s father cackled. “That dress is sticking to your legs pretty good, Frank!”
Dean’s father pulled at the hem of his skirt. “That’s strange. I used a dryer sheet.”
“This isn’t happening,” mumbled Dean. “I must be lying at the side of the road somewhere with brain damage.”
“It was a hard decision, son, and we know you might think we’re crazy,” said Dean’s father. He tossed his brown curls dramatically. “But tell me who’s crazy? The man who conforms to the silly rules of society, or the man who stands up for freedom?”
“The man who’s not wearing a dress,” said Dean.
Someone grabbed the back of his sweater.
“Got him!”
Dean dropped to his knees and squirmed out of the sweater and John’s grasp. He bolted through the steel doors of the school’s main entrance, almost knocking over a pair of necking tenth graders, and sprinted toward his car.
He didn’t have a clue where he’d go and simply wanted to be anywhere but this humiliating place that contained his father and mother in drag and people that wanted to murder him.
Dean’s car was a Ford Country Squire of 1977 vintage, a maroon station wagon with peeling wood stickers on all sides that should have been considered more of a “land barge” or “tugboat with wheels” than a normal vehicle, but Dean had the keys. That made it the best car in the world at the moment.
He revved the old V-8 and swerved out of the parking lot, John and his father hot on his tail in their Chevy pickup and his parents behind them in a blue K-Car.
Dean took the country roads too fast. Only a mile away and inside a ninety-degree curve in the small town of Relief, Ohio, he lost control and crashed straight through the twin gasoline pumps of Delawder’s Pizza Gulp. Fountains of fuel erupted from broken supply lines in the concrete.
Covered in glass and gas, Dean squeezed out from a window of the station wagon and ran up the highway. John and his father, along with Dean’s parents, stopped their cars and gawked as the flat-roofed cover over the fuel pumps swayed, then pancaked onto the gushing pumps and station wagon.
Dean’s father sighed. “Well, at least it didn’t––”
The station exploded.