The Hurricane

7

A stiff wind chilled the sweat on the back of Daniel’s neck, then moved off to rustle in the trees. The concrete patio behind the house was wet from the running, shivering, dripping swimmers. Daniel got out of the way as more people filed through the swish and slam of the glass door. He felt pathetic without anything in his hand and no one to talk to. He shoved his fists into his shorts and tried to look normal. He swore someone in the pool said something about a creeper, and further swore that they were referring to him.

Daniel strolled off to one corner of the patio where there was less light. He then realized that this would do nothing to make him appear more normal.

A girl from his homeroom—Valerie, he thought—ran by in a soaked t-shirt, her lacy red bra visible beneath. The glint of steel from her lip and nose piercings caught Daniel’s attention. He had no idea she had them, having never seen her outside of school. As she shuffled around to the pool’s steps, he saw that her shirt just came down to her waist, exposing the panties she was wearing for bottoms. A tattoo peeked out between the two at him, like a bashful eye. There was no way she was old enough to get a legal tattoo; he wasn’t sure about the piercings, what age you needed to be to get them. Daniel wondered what her parents thought about it all.

As the DJ moved from bass-heavy hip-hop to some rapid trance music, the energy of the crowd intensified. Or maybe it was the wind picking up. Daniel huddled up to the side of the house under a mildewed awning and watched his classmates in their natural environment. He felt like a naturalist on safari.

This is the missing episode of Planet Earth, he realized. They never did a show on the most bizarre life form of them all: humans.

A boy one year older than his sister joined Daniel in the darkness, his red Mohawk spiked up tall. He leaned against the wall, slid down to his butt, and started trying to coax a flame out of his lighter, his hands forming a desperate variety of cup and bowl shapes against the wind.

Daniel looked from the triangular spikes pointing up at him, to the kid with the horn-rimmed frames and flat-billed trucker hat, to Valerie’s metallic adornments. He looked from the skinny jeans to the baggy pants that were shaped like shorts, but so large and worn so low, they almost went to the kid’s ankles. There were girls in glitter, girls with black lips, girls with fake tans, girls powdered to a vampiric pale, kids with spiked collars, with outrageous cowboy beltbuckles, with superhero shirts, with faded logos of products that none of them had been alive for the manufacture of—

And Daniel looked down at himself. He wore a pair of tan shorts that looked like at least a dozen other pair of his tan shorts. He had picked out one of the few t-shirts that was both clean and hadn’t been left in a twisted ball to wrinkle. There was nothing hip about his shirt. Nothing vintage. Nothing ironic. It was just plain and dull and normal, like him.

The wind whistled through Jeremy Stevens’s back yard, howling through the trees, heard even above the music. Daniel had a sudden realization: he was the only kid he knew who didn’t fit in somewhere. And it was because he wasn’t even trying. He had put no effort into it. A cannonball threw a splash of water his way, and Daniel danced to the side, catching a little on his shin. He laughed and scanned the cliques, wondering which one he could probably belong to. Were there any that didn’t require tattoos or needles? Was it too late to try and join a group during his senior year? How would he walk up to the hipsters in a pair of tight pants, the cuffs high above his ankles, a scarf around his neck in August, and explain to them that he was now one of them? Or would he be better off just dressing up and waiting for them to come to him? That sounded more reasonable. Daniel wondered what Roby would think. Then he wondered what was taking his friend so long to fill his cup and come out and join him. He looked around for the couple and saw, now that he was looking for differences amongst his classmates, what they all had in common. One accessory that even the swimmers had, holding them up above the turbulent, rippling water:

Plastic cups.

????

“Ten bucks.”

Daniel handed the kid a twenty and took his change. The bill he got back was soaking wet with what Daniel hoped to hell was pool water. He wadded the tenner, shoved it in a pocket, and took his cup.

Someone did a handstand on the keg while Daniel waited in an amorphous blob of a line. Once they were done, several people squeezed through from behind to get topped up, and Daniel realized he’d have to be a little more assertive if he was going to get a drink. He pushed through and held his cup out alongside a cluster of two others—plastic rims crinkling together—while someone showered gold-colored beer in all three and across their knuckles.

Daniel came away shaking foam off his hand. He wiped his palm on his shorts, then realized how that smell was going to linger. He tried to remember if he’d told his mom he wasn’t going to drink at all, or if he’d said he was just going to have one. His brother was driving, he reminded himself. He took a sip from the cup, foam tickling his nose, and wondered if his brother had also promised not to drink.

“Are you in line?”

Somebody tapped Daniel on the shoulder. He spun around and realized he was standing by the keg, sipping on his beer. A pack of thirsty animals with empty cups were arranged behind him, all of them staring.

“No, go ahead.”

Someone mumbled “rando” loud enough to hear, and Daniel wanted to point out that he wasn’t random at all. He’d been invited by someone who’d been invited by someone.

“Jeremy Stevens would’ve taken summer school if it weren’t for my best friend,” he wanted to shout out.

He shuffled out of the way and back into the house, dodging elbows and potential spills as he went. The number of people in and around the house seemed to have doubled since his first tour through. Daniel rose up on his toes and looked for the distinctive dark curly head of his best friend, wondering where they’d gotten to. He thought of asking people, but could foresee the wrinkled faces and the confused “Who?” he’d likely get from most of them. But hey, at least he had his accessory. His drink. He took another gulp, waved his hand toward the far corner of the kitchen like he saw someone he knew, then squeezed through the crowd in that direction.

Daniel was rounding the center island when someone bumped into him from behind, sending him and a splash of his beer into the girl ahead. Daniel cursed and apologized, but his efforts were drowned out by the girl’s startled screams. He reached to brush the foam off her back when she spun around as fast as a tiger—and he smacked Amanda Hicks on the boob, instead.

“What the f*ck?” Amanda looked down at her accosted breast, then twisted around like a snake as she tried to reach the back of her shirt. “Was that beer?”

“I’m sorry,” Daniel said. He pulled his hand back before she could bite it off.

“I’m so f*cked,” she said. She looked up at Daniel. “You’ve totally f*cked me.”

Daniel wanted to point out that the most they’d done was kiss, and just that one time.

Amanda punched his shoulder and stormed off, the crowd parting before her huffed rage like a running of the bulls that had been soberly reconsidered.

“Nuts,” Daniel said. He took a swig of his foamy, sorta-cold beer and fought to look inconspicuous. The DJ went back to bass thuds; a plate in the Stevens’s kitchen cabinet rattled to the beat.

“Daniel?”

A familiar and piercing voice squealed at him from behind. Daniel turned and saw the last person he ever expected to see at the party. He would’ve been less surprised to see the girl from the summer before—the second person whose tongue he’d had in his mouth. Instead, he saw his sister, Zola.

“What in the hell are you doing here?” he asked. Both of them looked down at the red cup in her hand, and then at the one in his.

“Don’t you tell mom,” she said.

Daniel steered her toward the sink where a pocket of reduced jostling beckoned.

“How did you get here?”

Zola peered over her shoulder at her friends, but let Daniel guide her by the elbow away from them. “I was at Susie’s and her boyfriend called. We just stopped by so she could see him.”

Daniel tried to grab the cup of beer from her, but his sister steered it away from him. She took the opportunity to nod at his cup. “Didn’t you tell mom you wouldn’t drink tonight?”

“Did I?” Daniel asked. “I thought she said one was okay.”

Zola frowned, and Daniel remembered correctly.

“Truce,” he said.

Zola nodded. She took a defiant sip of her beer, and Daniel felt some foreign sensation, like seeing a color he couldn’t name. He wished he’d hadn’t gotten a beer so he could lecture her, or stop her, or feel less like a hypocrite for doing so. He took his own sip instead, feeling suddenly as if he and she were both of an undeterminable age and either a gap had opened between them or had closed. He had no idea which it was, or in what direction.

“Did you get invited to this?” Zola asked, lowering her drink and glancing back at her friends.

Daniel felt a twinge of humiliation. “Roby invited me.”

“I thought I saw him when I came in,” Zola said. “But who invited him?” She raised her hand. “Never mind. I don’t care.” She nodded to one of her friends, who was waving her hand. “I’ve gotta go. My friends are waiting for me.”

“Wait. When did you get here? Have you seen Roby?”

She pointed toward the ceiling. “He was going up the stairs when we came in the front door. I dunno, maybe ten minutes ago?”

Daniel watched as she spun back toward her gaggle of giggling, freshman friends. He peered down at his beer, finished off what was there, realized he was already buzzing and was destined to get grounded for the miserable evening he was having. He went off in search of Roby.