I told them, “I guess so,” and they said things like, “Good.”
I imagined a couple of reasons for their change.
The first arose from the strange look in their eyes when they approached me. I could tell they were dealing with unfamiliar emotions here, unfamiliar emotions for teenagers, anyway, all headlined by a feeling of pity. In each of their awkward handshakes or polite questions, I felt that I could see right through their eyes and into their kitchens, their dining rooms, where their parents had told them about what happened to my family. And when they first shook it off as something completely irrelevant, I could see their parents slowing down to emphasize the tragedy, perhaps pointing over at their own siblings, or maybe even attempting to explain to them the devastating depth of parental love and what the loss of a child would do to them personally. And then, through the earnest timbre of their voices, I imagine these kids got it for a second. I think that perhaps there was a minute or two when their young hearts collapsed heavy inside their chests. Not for me, necessarily, but rather for the glimpse of their own mortality as a thing they’d not considered before, a wobbly house of slick cards. Still, since none of these friendships stuck around, since none of them galvanized into anything more than that initial gesture at the dance, I’ve come to suspect a different reason for their concern toward me during this time.
The Perkins School was a private school, I remind you, a small community, and we were seen by the rest of Baton Rouge as some sort of paradise. In this way, we were often scorned by outsiders as spoiled kids who had no idea of reality, even by those parents who would have sold their homes to afford their children a shot at this haven. So it was important that we lived up to the hype. To sit in a classroom with a desk left empty by a kid in some sort of turmoil, in some deep depression, did not fit the brochure. The silence that followed my name during roll call, for instance. The empty space on Mr. Taylor’s wall where my history project was due to be tacked up. All these things were unacceptable. It was therefore critical I get back to school on Monday, you understand, so they could forget what my tragedy had tempted them to learn.
Yet not everyone played this game. Lindy, for instance, offered me no condolences.
She arrived late to the dance with a guy named Matt Hawk. He was a senior at McKinley High, a public school known to be rough and tumble. It was the type of place we Perkins School students made fun of, not out of snobbery, necessarily, but simply to assuage our own fears about how long we would last at a school where fights broke out at recess, where smart kids got jumped in the bathrooms.
And since McKinley had no sort of dress code, our own private-school attempts at rebellion seemed foolish in their presence. I was big trouble at Perkins, for example, because my bangs fell over my eyes. I had a hole in my left ear. Matt Hawk, on the other hand, had a silver bolt pierced through his eyebrow. He had a black ring through his nose. He was punk in a way that no Perkins kid would ever have the courage to be, and even his hair, thick and tall and unkempt, looked as if nothing could tame it. And at the far end of his muscled arm, the arm of a future mechanic, perhaps, a woodworker, he had a series of black leather bracelets. Beside these bracelets, he had a strong-looking hand mapped in veins. And worst of all, on this night, inside this hand, he held Lindy’s.
Lindy wore a dress I can best describe as gunmetal blue, and she was stunning, although she’d done her best to hide this fact. She wore dark eyeliner, combat boots, and had her hair pulled back tight and severe like some depressed artist. She had regained a little weight in the recent months, though, and, thankfully, no longer had the look of a bulimic waif. Still, her jaw was sharp and defined. Her anger was striking and impenetrable. Her supremacy was, to me, so obvious.
She and Matt Hawk spent the evening standing in the corner of the auditorium like judges. They looked much older than we did. And I suppose the other girls, although they made fun of her behind her back, were jealous of Lindy for this catch. I watched random groups of them approach the couple cautiously, to shake Matt’s hand, to remind him that they’d met before, but he acted aloof. The chaperones, you could tell, were as displeased as I was by his presence.
How did Lindy even meet this guy? I wondered. How much of herself did she give him? How much of her life had I lost that past year?
I couldn’t keep my eyes off her.
In a break between the music, she and Matt snuck outside with the band, and when they returned, they giggled with each other as if stoned or high on cocaine. A group of Perkins School jocks soon became aggravated by Matt’s attendance, as well, and circulated the idea of beating him up in the parking lot, as if letting him know about territory. This fantasy was short-lived, however, as even the strongest among them likely imagined being caught alone in a movie theater parking lot by vengeful public-school gangs. In this place, we knew that there would be no survivors. Still, we talked tough, as kids do.
The rest of the Spring Bash was uneventful.
I pretended to have a nice time while watching Lindy. (She tried, once, to get Matt to dance to a Guns N’ Roses song. She went to the bathroom three times. She hugged him around the waist, which he shrugged off.) The only other thing I really remember about this dance is seeing Randy, whom I had since drifted away from (he’d become preppy and athletic), slinging his date over his shoulder during a cover of “Pretty Woman.” He looked happy in this pose, and I was pleased for him. I wished him well.
Then, before the dance was officially over, the cool kids began filing out. We, Artsy Julie and myself oddly included, had been invited to an unchaperoned after-party and, as is the case with everything in high school, this is when things got interesting.
20.
The party was thrown by a girl named Melinda Jones. Her family, even by Perkins School standards, was filthy rich. Her father was a lawyer and state politician, and this position had apparently granted him immunity from all things, including parenting, so Melinda’s mansion was considered by us to be little more than a well-furnished brothel. Understand, of course, that this was all rumor to me. I’d never been there before this night.
So, I was excited.
Artsy Julie and I piled into a car with four other kids and, before we were even out of the gymnasium parking lot, warm twelve-packs of beer were pulled from beneath the seats, joints rolled up and lit in mere minutes. I indulged. Artsy Julie, on the other hand, seemed immune to it all and politely declined both the booze and drugs as if she had no interest. She was wet with perspiration, happy and sober, and I could smell her sitting next to me. She stuck her head out the window and lifted her heavy hair from her neck. I felt oddly jealous of her, curious about what went on in her head. What did she think of me, for instance, when we were kids on Piney Creek Road? What did she think of me now? What did she think about anything?
I didn’t ask.
In fact, by the time we arrived at Melinda’s house, I’d almost forgotten about our date entirely. The reasons for this were predictable and obvious. I was sixteen years old. My sister had just died. Lindy would be at the party. I was unhappy. This one night, I figured, could be the exception.
Similar to the way we used to race across campus as eighth graders, trying to form some sort of reputation, I fantasized that I could plant my own stake in the ground at this event and establish myself as a wild man of sorts, perhaps someone even a bit dangerous, someone like the older boys I had watched at Perkins who became famous as “partiers” and who girls like Lindy (I hoped) gravitated toward almost unconsciously. Someone, I knew, very much like Matt Hawk.
So when we entered the party, I scouted for trouble.
In the living room, expensive couches and antique end tables had been placed against the walls, where some boys I didn’t recognize were setting up instruments. People lined the staircase to the second floor and watched them get organized. They had amps, mics, drums, and guitars, and things looked promising. In the kitchen, half-empty bottles of booze covered the marble countertops and, scattered around the tiled floors, a series of ice chests sat stuffed with every cheap beer you can imagine. Natural Light. Miller High Life. Old Milwaukee. One chest, in particular, was full of Rolling Rock and the bottles inside that open chest glowed like emerald treasure. I grabbed one, drank it with a thirst I didn’t recognize in myself, and felt brave. I then grabbed another bottle, as to look perpetually double-fisted, and walked outside, where people were standing around a swimming pool and smoking cigarettes, some inhaling, many not.
Parentless and free, we were beginning our trek into pandemonium that night and everyone knew it. We stood around, drinking in our nice clothes, not yet soiled, and stared at the shimmering pool like the finish line we knew it would be. I spoke to people I rarely spoke to and began intentionally slurring my speech to get the word out. When people asked how wasted I was, I told them, “I’m just getting started,” and they were encouraging. I smoked dope out of a two-foot bong in the pool room. I lied and told people that I had pills I wanted to take but left at home. I used words like “quaaludes” that I didn’t know the exact meaning of and tried to establish some semblance of mystery. When I heard the music crank up inside, I raised my bottle in the air and stood like a statue. I wouldn’t let anyone talk to me until the song ended. I then paid a guy five dollars for a pack of his cigarettes and lit one after the other, exhaling as often as possible through my nose to look tough, to look as if nothing could bother me.
Within the hour, everyone was hammered.
Boys began to wrestle around in their suit coats, and girls flirted with guys who were not their dates. A series of dramatic and complicated high school plotlines soon twisted through the house and, amid the madness, a Jack Russell terrier (Melinda’s, I’m guessing) swam in the pool, nipping at the discarded corsages that floated like candles at a Chinese funeral. I watched two guys climb up on the roof. I saw a girl fall into the bushes. Then, through the large picture windows that faced the pool from the den, I saw Lindy and Matt Hawk walk inside.
As any person in love would do, I threw some immediate and irrational thought toward what they had been doing in the past hour (they fucked in his car, she blew him in the driveway, they shot up drugs in some public-school bathroom), and the worst in me came out. I declared myself officially wasted and began stumbling around. I imagined myself a bigger person, physically, and fantasized about bedding down any girl that dared look at me. This was not entirely an act. Since I rarely drank at that time, the beers had made my face numb and emboldened me. I walked inside and watched the band.
I’d taken up the guitar myself since Lindy went dark, remember, and so I spent a few songs sizing up the guitarist. And although it is not in my sober nature to boast, the truth of the matter is I could wail. Such was the end result of many nights spent alone with my guitar, aping the songs I imagined Lindy listened to, the result of myriad fantasies of myself center stage with Lindy in a spotlight before me. I was a true Artist in this regard, I suppose, as all people are when they spend time alone with their heart and mind and try to bridge the great distance between them.
So when the band looked like they were about to take a break, I asked the guitar player if I could sit in for a song. He asked me if I could really play or if I was just wasted and I said something asinine like, “Does the pope shit in the woods?”
“If you break any strings,” he told me, “I’ll kick your skinny ass in front of your date.”
“Relax,” I told him, and did a few impressive scales to put him at ease.
Then I searched the crowd to find Lindy.
When I saw her, she was standing in the corner and arguing with Matt, who looked like he might as well have been waiting around at a dentist’s office. His boredom was well rehearsed and unshakable, and Lindy was becoming animated, drinking something out of a plastic cup. She looked already drunk, and this pleased me.
I turned to the band, cranked up the amplifier, and played the first few notes of the Guns N’ Roses song “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” the one I’d seen Lindy attempt to get Matt to dance to at the party. The band recognized the song, like everyone our age did, and picked up the beat. When I turned back toward the crowd, the song coming together better than even I had hoped, I saw Lindy looking at me. She’d cocked her head to the side like a dog sizing up a stranger and there passed between us a moment, I believed.
Then she turned back to Matt.