Page 32 of Fade into You
“No, it’s okay. Falstaff,go away!So what’s up?”
“Oh, well, I was hoping we could get together today and maybe do some breakup planning.”
I twirl the cord around my finger, mummifying it in the cable. “Yeah, I’d be up for some nefarious scheming.”
I hear a loud clatter and a child’s cry behind her, then another child joins in. “Shh,” I hear her say, clearly muffled by her hand over the receiver. “So, I can’t meet here, and I don’t have a car….”
“My house is a no-go too, but I’ve got the perfect place,” I say, not having any idea where the hell I’ll take her, but I can’t risk Bird meeting Mack and stories hitting school about how I’m queerandfrom a fucked-up crazy family. “What’s your address? I’ll MapQuest it.”
“It’s 1813 Duchamp.”
I jot it down on a Blockbuster ad left on the counter.
“Cool, be there soon as I can.”
I hang up, not realizing until after that I didn’t even say goodbye and I didn’t ask for her number in return. My anxiety is back, or is it something else? I’m shaky, but something in me feels oddly light, like some sort of grand announcement or song could burst out of me. I guess I’m super stoked to get my Dade Saturdays back. With Bird’s assistance, of course. But what if it’s something else, that saccharine rush that comes with a manic high?
Shake it off, you idiot.
Searching my brain for somewhere we can meet (apparently her house is full of small screaming children?), I’m coming up blank. It’s Saturday, so all the usually quiet weekday places will be slammed—and filled with potential listening ears that could overhear our plotting and toss it to the rumor mill. Last thing we need is Dade and Kayla finding out what we’re up to.
Touchstone remains front and center in my mind. I usually get there an hour or so before the doors open, and the lot is always empty. If it’s cold, I can sit in the parking lot and hotbox it until I’m squinty-eyed and permeated. I love music but not particularly people, so a mild inebriation is required for the pressed-in crowds.
When it’s still warm, there’s an outside area filled with wooden spools for benches and ratty picnic tables, all graffitied up with everything from anarchy symbols to the fancySto some weird fad of Kilroy Was Here. Band stickers all over most surfaces and a blend of gravel and half-dead grass spotted with cigarette butts.Dade thinks the Touchstone before the crowd is eerie, I think it’s my kind of space. Somehow empty but waiting to be full, a space that in its emptiness, I can be in without being stoned because the people aren’t there yet and I don’t need the additional courage. I can just sit and listen to cicadas or the mourning doves that hoot out sadly, neither set of creatures audible once the music starts, but right around four thirty p.m., it’s just me and maybe Tuck and the bartender stepping out for smokes as they set up. It’s the perfect place to plot the Dade-La breakup.
Hopping into the car with the MapQuest directions Dad printed off, I pop a mixtape in the deck and throw Betty the Buick in reverse. Death comes at me all fuzzy bass and hard drums, protopunk-alicious. This is my Punk Rock Confidential mix, which is actually a set of three tapes running from the roots of punk like the Kingsmen’s “Louie Louie” and the Kinks into classics like the New York Dolls. Death is an addition from Dwayne, who opened my eyes to the all-Black trio of dudes who tackled punk before all the famous groups. They had the sound in ’75 and never got more than a single with a B-side. Two songs. They refused to change their band name to be more palatable to pop culture, and the label dropped them. Nowthatis punk rock as hell. Dwayne taped a copy of his single, and I think “Keep on Knocking” has ended up on every mixtape I’ve made since.
I hope Bird likes punk, because it’s a perfect soundtrack for today. Angry, uplifting, ready to destroy the establishment that is Dade-La. I’m amped by the fast-running lyrics, clearheaded since I know Bird prefers I don’t get high around her. When I pull into her drive, I see a split-level house that has probably seen betterdays, the lawn utterly littered with bikes, balls, chunky plastic toddler playsets, and in need of a mow. Must be nice to not have to keep everything trimmed and perfectly clean like we do for Mom.
She’s on the stoop and races toward Betty as if she’s being chased. Damn, those kids must be terrifying. Her rush brings some red to her cheeks, and the flush is mirrored in my own as I realize I’m following the lines of her face to her lips, then down the neck, to her chest and… why is she carrying a stack of books?
The door opens, she slides in smelling of sweet flowers and earthy perfume—Herbal Essences? Damn, now I’m thinking of her in atotally organicborderline PG-13 shampoo shower commercial. I dodge my eyes away from her and hope she hasn’t noticed. Instead she turns my music down.
I’d get angry, but it’s moved on to Sex Pistols, and Sid Vicious is an acquired taste. Still, I’m surprised I let her get away with it. Even Dade doesn’t screw with my volume.
“Are we gonna go or what?” she says, looking irritated, panicked, and frustratingly cute at the same time.
I slam Betty into reverse, pull her outta the driveway with a bit more squeal and fanfare than I planned, and jam her into drive—setting my sights on Touchstone.
BIRD
It’s a very strange feeling, riding shotgun in Jessa’s car, in the daylight, on a Saturday, not even knowing where we’re going. Strange, but good. Good, but a little scary. Scary, but a little freeing. Because somehow, even though I don’t really know her at all, I have the sense I could ask her to drive us somewhere, anywhere, far away from here and she would do it, no questions asked. I tilt my face toward the open window, let the breeze flow over me. The beach. Maybe she knows how to get to the beach. Couldn’t be too complicated. Just drive east, I’d imagine, until you hit ocean. Three, four hours… we could be there.
“So, what’s with the books?” she asks, pulling me back into reality.
I turn to her and realize we’re still in our little town, sitting at the corner of Main and Church, and Jessa’s watching me as we wait for the red light to change. I look down at the small stack of books perched in my lap.
“Oh, I—I may have told my mom we were going to the library.”
“Man, are your folks that strict?” she asks, accelerating too fast as the light changes to green. “You can’t just go out?”
“No, no, they’re not strict at all, really. I guess I just… I don’t know,” I say, because now that I’m thinking about it, I really don’t know why I couldn’t just say I was going out. “It’s just, sometimes I like to keep things to myself.”
“What, they wouldn’t approve of you hanging out with someone like me? You need to keep it a secret?” She laughs it off, but there’s also something in her voice that sounds hurt.
“No, no, no. That’s not it. That’s not what I mean at all. I—”
“Then what?” she interrupts.
