“No, you weren’t, David.” Mom put her knife down and wiped her hands on her hips. She turned to me. “You can go, darling.”
I turned Les Misérables back up. It had been easier than I’d thought.
So if all the other girls, including my mom, were crazy about HP, how did I feel about him? I know that’s what you’re thinking, Novak.
Was I in love with him? My mother would say I was, but she also drove us to prom with the theme tune from Titanic playing on her car stereo, so don’t believe anything she says. Why was it so crucial that I define my feelings for him? If you ask me if he dominated my teenage years, that’s an easier one to answer. The truth is I don’t know if I was ever like the other girls. I knew HP too well. He was handsome; I liked seeing him with his shirt off; but when I caught myself looking at him, it felt kind of . . . obscene. We were friends. We were at ease and had no need to decipher ourselves. Not, at least, until after the camping trip.
chapter
* * *
3
We drove out to Elbow Lake in Ezra’s beat-up old Chevy, Korn pumping from the stereo. Four of us had crammed into the front bench seat—Ezra driving; HP next to him; HP’s current girlfriend, Lacy; and me.
Lacy’s thigh pressed against mine, the sweat between us off-putting. Every now and then one of us would smear it off our legs while looking the other way. I didn’t want to absorb anything she secreted. Her shoulders looked like moose antlers but, according to Ezra, she did a “mad nasty dance.” Actually I wasn’t sure what that was, but it sounded like a reason for an eighteen-year-old boy to date you.
For June, the sky blazed blue with the promise of a great summer. Looking back, I see I was swept up with everyone’s pure potential. We were done—free to go in whatever direction we chose, with a whole summer dedicated to nothing but one another. There was a camaraderie, a unity in our not-yet-knowing, and it was the first time I’d ever felt truly a part of something. Come fall, our grad class would hit the ground like marbles and scatter in fifty different directions, but for now we were free-falling. There are so few times like that in your life—when nothing is marked or limited by loss, when the possibilities seem endless and hopeful. I wanted to shout out loud at the world’s infinity but with all the windows down in the truck, Lacy’s long dark hair kept whipping into my mouth.
“You bring your bikini, Little John?” shouted Ezra, his dark eyebrows raised above the rim of his aviator sunglasses. “I’m hoping it has polka dots. You could totally pull that off.”
HP shook his head and put his arm around Lacy, his hand grazing my shoulder, too. “She’ll have brought her oversized men’s T-shirt.” He winked at me while I glared at him.
“Hidden treasures,” said Ezra, nudging HP and passing him a beer. “I like a challenge.”
They clinked beer cans. Even Lacy laughed.
“You’re going to need a better map, boys.” I pushed past Lacy, squashing her back in her seat as I grabbed HP’s beer from his hand. A crescent of amber lilted around the rim of the can, warmed by HP’s mouth. As I sipped it, one elbow out of the window, I noted that Lacy wasn’t smiling anymore.
We stopped at the liquor store on the outskirts of town. You’d think it would be hard for four underage kids to get beer, but with HP it took about thirty seconds. When a fifty-year-old man in beige slacks walked out of the store carrying a bottle of vermouth, I swore and slouched farther down inside the truck, keeping one eye on HP.
“Shit, LJ, isn’t that your old man?” Ezra hunched over the steering wheel.
“So busted,” I breathed. Through the open window of the truck, we could hear that HP’s whistling had stopped. The three of us gaped at him from twenty feet away—even Lacy, who had no knowledge of my dad.
“How are you, Mr. Petitjean?” HP’s voice didn’t waver.
My dad jumped and turned, hugging his blue glass bottle.
“Oh, HP. How’re you doing? Are you loitering, disturbing the peace?” Dad laughed at his own question, his reedy shoulders raking up and down.
“I’m off to grad, sir. We’re going camping.”
“Oh, the camping trip. Yes, I heard about this one. What a grand idea. Sleeping under Andromeda, the old twinkling face of Cassiopeia?”
HP can’t have known what my dad was talking about, but his expression remained steady.
“Actually, young man, I was going to ask you, between us boys, to watch out for Angela. She’s a bright girl with an exciting future. I’m sure you’ve noticed.”
HP nodded.
“And do you know of her plans for college?”
He didn’t because I had none.
Dad’s narrow head tilted. “Did you want to ask me?”
“Not about that, sir, no. But could you maybe help a guy out?”
No way. No way was HP going to ask my dad to buy us beer.
“It’s grad, after all . . .” I heard HP say before my dad blocked our view of him and everything became muffled.
I watched my dad scratch the top of his messy hair, take hold of HP by one shoulder and lean in close. Then he walked back into the store. HP put both arms straight up into the air and grinned at us, lowering them quickly again as my dad reemerged and handed HP a case of Budweiser. “One each, remember, and none for my daughter.” He strolled towards his car with his vermouth.
“Legend!” shouted Ezra when HP got back in the truck. “That’s your best one yet!”
HP scrambled past my knees and wedged himself back in next to his girlfriend. He yanked at his buckle, whooping. “I don’t know why you complain about your folks so much, Little John. Your dad’s awesome.”
“What did you say to him at the end?”
“I just told him the truth. What? You never thought of that before?”
“Why is it always so easy . . . ?” I began, but Ezra bounced us off the curb of the parking lot and onto the highway, and I never finished the thought.
“What if we get pulled over?” Lacy asked as we raced away.
“We won’t.” HP cranked the stereo and shifted to look at me. “All good, John? Are you mad I asked your dad?”
I shrugged. “My parents understand you better than they do me. Or just plain like you better.”
“What’s not to like?” he yelled as he passed me a can and slapped me on the collarbone. “And it’s not a competition. Drink this and stop thinking.”
“Big Bad Grad!” Ezra shouted, honking his horn. We roared along the highway away from town. I sipped a Budweiser and wondered how I would ever in my life be able to leave this place without HP, since the world rolled open only for him.