After Dakota Part 26

On the way back from Taco Bell at lunch, Claire takes two more pills, then a hit of pot when the guys pa.s.s the pipe around. Because why not.

Mr. Duran sends partners out to take photos of something, showing the use of something. Claire and a girl named Rebecca, her hair nicely French braided but her face covered in juicy zits, walk over by the athletic field. A P.E. cla.s.s plays kickball on the far diamond, the thump of feet against the rubber maroon ball carrying through the stillness.

"I see you driving to lunch with Ricky and his friends," Rebecca says as she measures the light.

"Uh-huh."

"My friend used to go out with Scott."

At the moment, Claire's not entirely sure which one Scott even is.

In the middle of frog dissection in Bio, the word cloaca sends Claire into a paroxysm of laughter, to the point where Doctor Baca asks her to excuse herself until she can act like a civilized student. She steps outside in her goggles and gloves, leaving her lab partner Mary Ann alone.

The bell rings after sixth period. Amazing how fast that day went by. She hates to think about the chunk of the school year she wasted before opening her eyes.

Claire isn't sure if today is the day of the week Meredith can meet at the arroyo; the others are taken up by receiving tutoring, giving tutoring, piano, and now tennis lessons. But there she is, staring intently at a hill of red fire ants. "I wish we had a magnifying gla.s.s to burn them," Meredith says.

"Yeah," Claire says, just to say something. Are the ants aware of the two G.o.dlike beings above them?

Meredith glances up. "Look at you."

"What?"

"You're like totally pale, Morticia." She sings the duh-duh-duh-DUH of the Addams Family theme song, snapping her fingers.

"Maybe I'm getting sick."

"Can you please cough on me? I need an excuse to stay in bed all day and do nothing." Meredith jumps back and forth among the multiple narratives of her life: possibly trying out for the school play to get extra credit in Drama, her tennis teacher's ankle tattoo, Justin Vance growing his hair out like s.h.a.ggy.

When it's Claire's turn to talk, she only shrugs and kicks at a tumbleweed. This Meredith who gave the lecture about shoplifting certainly wouldn't understand anything Claire could tell her.

79.

Insanity.

There's no other word for this. Bryce should turn around and go to the snack bar for lunch. Walking through Ms. d.i.c.kinson's door, doing what he's planning to do, is a suicide mission.

But Luke Skywalker didn't turn around when he saw the Death Star.

Don Quixote didn't turn around.

Ms. D sits alone in her cla.s.sroom, eating Ritz crackers, reading a book called The Magus.

Bryce says "Can I talk to you?" and she jumps out of her chair.

"Oh, Bryce, you scared me half to death!"

He realizes how creepy he must look, so he compensates by laughing to show her it's all cool. Only then he can't stop laughing. Or sweating. "You don't eat with the other teachers?"

"All they do is complain about their cla.s.ses. It gets boring after awhile." She sets her book face down, crinkling the spine. "How's second semester going?"

"Fine." He's not here to talk about second semester. He's here to ask her out. His arguments are ready for her arguments: he's too young (eighteen is old enough to be drafted into the Army); he's her student (not anymore); he's a student (not for much longer). If this works, he won't be known as the flower guy; he'll be known as the guy who went out with the hottest teacher of all time.

Bryce stands by his old desk, but then thinks that might remind her he was in the cla.s.s once, so he moves to Cam's old desk. "So, I was wondering."

Why the pause? Do it. Do it!

Right then Mr. Bloom walks in. His hair slicked straight back. His tie loosened just so. "Hey, Sarah, brought you a treat." He shows a pink can of Tab from behind his back.

"Oh my gosh, you're the best," Ms. D says.

He goes on, "I have to call Anthony's parents today. I should save us all a lot of trouble and just tell 'em is that their kid is dumb as a bag of rocks and will be lucky to have a career at McDonald's." He looks at Bryce as if only now noticing a third person in the room. "Sorry, were you two having a conference?"

She pops the top off the Tab. "No, Bryce and I were chatting about... What were we chatting about, Bryce?"

"I came by to, uh, say I miss your cla.s.s."

"Aw, thanks, sweetie."

Bryce stops in the bathroom after making a semi-graceful exit. What had he been thinking? She wouldn't say yes. Mr. Bloom is obviously her type. Bryce could play the cancer card, but then she'd look at it like going out with a Make-A- Wish kid.

He doesn't notice the overflowing urinal next to him until his shoes are soaked.

The school's boiler, once again with a mind of its own, kicks on the hot air at the end of lunch; combined with close-quartered sweat glands, each cla.s.sroom takes on the atmosphere of a tropical rain forest. So it is that Mr. Buckland's sixth period cla.s.s finds themselves released to the outside in order to read and take notes on Albert Camus's The Stranger.

Bryce sits down at one of the picnic tables with the best intentions, but the recently re-emerged sun and the bangs and clangs from auto shop conspire to keep him from focusing. Instead his pen goes to work on its own.

"Looking good," Mr. B says.

Bryce squints up at his silhouette. "Sorry. I'm reading. Really." Even though the entirety of a notebook page is covered with a drawing of Iron Man battling Smaug the dragon.

Mr. B reaches for the notebook. "May I?" Bryce hands it over, ashamed, ready for the talk about wise use of cla.s.s time. Mr. B flips through the pages, where English notes share s.p.a.ce with superheroes and mythical warriors. If he recognizes the faces of certain female students, he doesn't comment. "When you're a famous artist, I can brag that you were once my student," he says.

"That may be a while."

Three boys Bryce can only tell the gender from this distance walk slowly along the fence, carrying garbage bags for campus cleanup duty.

Mr. B hands back the notebook. "It's nice to have a pa.s.sion in life, Bryce. Talent helps, too."

"I don't think I'm gonna be able to follow my pa.s.sion too far."

"I have a business degree from the University of Oregon." Mr. B taps his long pinkie nail on the table. "It had so little to do with what I wanted from life, I wonder if I could have done better things with those four years."

"I applied to ten different colleges and I don't wanna go to any of them. I hope I get rejected."

Mr. B says, "Hoping for rejection is something one doesn't hear very often on a high school campus. Did you tell your parents before they spent all that application money?"

"They wouldn't understand."

"Ah, now that is something one hears often on a high school campus." Mr. B straightens up. "'The Master observes the world but trusts his inner vision. He allows things to come and go. His heart is as open as the sky.'"

If Bryce could wave a magic wand and have Mr. B as a dad, or uncle, or older brother...

"Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to make sure all of your cla.s.smates are at least pretending to be productive." He's gone several steps in the direction of the Smokers' Tree when he calls out, "Oh, and Bryce? Nice job capturing Tara's likeness in that drawing."

80.

Cameron has spent a lot of time with Rosemary during these weeks, to the point where his mom even said, "Give her a break before you smother her." Molly knows nothing beyond Rosemary's name. Every time Cameron imagines introducing them, he imagines his mother's reaction (shock? horror?) at seeing the face that just walked through her door. It's best that mother and son keep their romantic adventures private from each other.

Now, with Molly off on an all-day hike, Rosemary sits at Cameron's desk and types her Hamlet essay (the role of Ophelia blah, blah, blah) on his computer. When she's finished, Cameron reads over her shoulder, intoxicated by the coconut smell of her shampoo, the feel of her hair against his cheek, and p.r.o.nounces the essay excellent. She sends it to the printer; they kiss while the ink head whirs back and forth, paper coming out at the speed of a growing plant.

Their dates so far have ended with some heavy making out...

In movie theaters, where they can usually hold out until the film is over they saw most of Romancing The Stone but not much of Splash.

In his car, where the windows fog up so thickly he sometimes has to take her home with his head leaning out the driver's side.

Each time, she holds her hair aside with one hand so it won't end up in their mouths, while her other hand cups his cheek. She makes little noises like mouse hiccups when they really get into it. His hand migrates from her knee to her thigh to her chest.

He wants her to put her hand on him, inside his pants. He needs that moment.

He arrives home from these dates each time with hot pink lips, as if he's applied something with strawberry in its name.

The night in his car when she unhooks her bra his jeans seemingly five agonizing sizes too small is the night she whispers, "Take me to your house."

He wills every light to turn green, figuring they have at least two hours of his house being empty. Rosemary holds his free hand in both of hers the whole drive, occasionally bringing it to her mouth and kissing his knuckles.

The radio reminds them over and over that video killed the radio star.

They finally get there and, while he finds it more than a little difficult to stand up, not to mention walk, he leads her as fast as he can to the front door. Too many lights left on yet again.

"Cam?" his mom's voice comes from the kitchen. He dies a little inside. She had a date tonight! She'd been getting ready when he left! The guy's name was Jonathan!

Molly sits at the kitchen table, in one of her sparkly short dresses, makeup tracks down over her cheekbones. Cameron knows what's happened without even asking, because he's seen it before: the date went poorly, the guy was an a.s.shole, or she's generally feeling sorry for herself. He hates her right then for doing it tonight. Why can't she be stronger?

He turns and pulls Rosemary out behind him. He backs out of the driveway in such a rage that his tire goes up over the Vanzants' curb.

Once again they stand on her front porch. "Sorry," Cameron tells her, and he can hear the bitterness in his own voice.

"It's fine." She takes both his hands in hers. "We'll see each other again, I suspect."

"Thank you," he whispers between kisses, not even sure what he's thanking her for. So many choices. Finally she goes inside and he sits down in his car too hard, given the condition of his groin and lets out a yell on the quiet street.

He intended to drive around long enough to give his mom a chance to take her sleeping pill and pa.s.s out, but when he gets home she's still sitting. He readies himself for one of two things: either a scolding about how rude he is, or a p.r.o.nouncement about the c.r.a.ppiness of all men everywhere.

Instead she says, "Your grandmother had a stroke."

He sits at the table with her and listens. She has to fly to Florida in the morning; she doesn't know how long she'll be gone. While he certainly feels sad, while he certainly loves his grandmother (in the way one loves a relative they usually only see once a year), a small percentage of his attention is dedicated to the fact that he will have the house to himself, and what good can come from that.

Cameron has always loved the airport. When he was a kid, on those occasions where they flew to California instead of drove, his dad would take him to the big gla.s.s cases by baggage claim. Lining the shelves inside was the most wondrous fleet of tiny airplanes any kid would ever see: pa.s.senger planes, military jets, and some behemoths that looked like they could fly to Venus and back. This is what inspired their model building, their quest to recreate the display in Cameron's room. Bryce was so lucky to have a pilot for a dad.

Cameron pulls up to the curb and takes his mom's suitcase from the trunk. The airport is deserted under an early concrete sky. She hugs him, then takes his face in her hands. He waits for the final instructions, the ones she'd accidentally left off the list on the kitchen counter, but she just nods as a skycap comes toward them.

81.

Brenda Marshall, her clarinet case in one hand and a limp carnation like a banana peel in the other, opens Pandora's box and releases the Seven Evil Words on Bryce: "I like you as a friend, but..."

And with that, Bryce officially gives up on women.

82.

"Can you give me a ride to the post office this afternoon?" Claire asks Bryce on their drive to school. Inside her backpack is a manila envelope awaiting stamps.

"Why?"

"I have to mail something."

"No duh. What is it?"

"C'mon, can't you just drive me?"

"That's the price for a ride."