I walk to school. The parking lot is a wasteland. Old clunkers take up the faculty side and as the hour wears on, the students’ side will divide itself between slightly better used or newer models of the same cars, depending on whose parents paid for them. I pull the front doors open and step inside where I’m silently greeted by two old, blank-faced mannequins in the middle of the entranceway. A boy form, John, and a girl form, Jane. John and Jane are the first things we see when we come in each morning, our daily dose of school spirit. John wears a retired football uniform and Jane wears the latest in cheerleading and when the teachers aren’t looking, the boys feel her up and sometimes the girls too, a slick-quick grab of a breast because ha, ha, so funny.
Today, there’s something different about Jane. Her pom-poms are at her feet, her arms are as crossed as they can be, and tucked into the crook of her elbow is a stack of neon posters. Pink, yellow, green, and orange. I know what it’s for but I grab one anyway and take in the bold-faced call to action, the one I’m duty bound to answer because I have finally come of age.
WAKE UP
It’s time for the annual seniors-only bash at Wake Lake, that one night of the year all the parents in town know their kids are getting trashed near the water doing what trashed kids near the water do. We came out of our mothers aware of this party. Our parents went to it and their parents went to it and their parents’ parents went to it. Fuck graduation; this is It. No amount of alcohol poisoning or unprotected sex or accident or injury will get in the way of this honorable Grebe tradition, this very important rite of passage.
Every few years some concerned parent tries to shut it down. It never works. No one can make a case against it because every legendary bit of trouble that comes from the lake is committed by kids from families no one wants to make trouble for. Good families. They’re the business owners, council members, friends of the Turners. And Sheriff Turner is always very good to his friends. I flip the poster over. E-mail S L R for more info. That’s Andy Martin, the yearbook editor.
I crumple the poster because I’m not here for that. This is what I’m here for: to search the school. I look in the trophy cases, check every locker row, the girls’ room and the boys’, the gym and the cafeteria, the New Books! display in the library.
My underwear doesn’t turn up.
I head for homeroom and pick my usual desk at the back, next to the sinks and not the windows, because any view of the outside world—even one as lackluster as Grebe’s—makes the day drag on that much longer. After a while, Mr. McClelland comes in. He’s the youngest member of the faculty and he tries too hard. I don’t think I’ll be here the day that finally gets crushed out of him, but it’ll happen. It always does.
Students slowly trickle in, pieces of brightly colored paper clutched tightly in hands, even those who aren’t members of our senior class. Some are already on their phones, e-mailing Andy for details, no doubt. It’s a kind of digital vetting process, even though date and time is going to end up the worst-kept secret in this school. And you can always count on a few underclassmen sneaking past the frontlines to drink in some of the glory.
Penny Young and Alek Turner enter the room. It’s Penny first, and she’s still perfect. I can say it over and over because it will always be true. You can tell she’s perfect by the way everyone looks at her. They stare openly or glance furtively—the point is, they want to look because the looking is good. Alek’s entrance is altogether a different thing. He saunters in, a boy who claimed the world, but it’s not his fault; he only took what was offered. He wears a Grebe Auto Supplies shirt, just in case we forgot he’s marked for that empire.
He murmurs something in Penny’s ear and they move around each other with the ease of two people who grew up together but we all did. Someone flicked a switch on them in ninth grade and called it love.
“Announcements soon,” McClelland murmurs. “Everyone, be seated.”
They settle in a few rows ahead of me. Even from here, I can smell Alek’s cologne and it reminds me of last year, our heads bent together, scribbling about Romeo and Juliet for an English project and I thought it was a joke when Mrs. Carter paired us up; Paul Grey’s daughter, Helen Turner’s son. Two households both alike in dignity except there was no dignity on the Grey side, just Helen firing Paul the day he drunkenly called her a cunt in front of all the other boys in the auto shop because goddamn, it’s hard to work on something with an engine when you have a vagina for a boss.
Alek senses me watching. He turns in his seat and his eyes meet mine. I rest my middle finger across my lips; red on red, the most subtle way I can tell him to fuck himself because I’m not stupid enough to say it out loud in a world that’s his fan club. He turns back around, rests his arm over Penny’s shoulder and brings his mouth to her ear. She gives him a playful nudge.
Sometimes I imagine taking a walk with him. I imagine leading him behind the school and into the trees. I imagine stomping on his skull until all his fine, sharp features have turned to pulp. Until all the parts of him that are too familiar disappear.
He’s looking more and more like his brother these days.
“could you drive me to the Barn before I go to work?”
Mom pauses at the bottom of the stairs, Todd close behind. They’re both disheveled and flushed and I don’t want to think about what they were doing before I got home. I toss my book bag against the wall and decide I like the look of it there, that this is what I’ll do every time I make it back from school until it’s second nature. A house isn’t a home until it becomes a habit.
“What do you need?” she asks. Todd slips past her and steps into the kitchen. I hear the fridge door squeak open.
“I’m down to my last bra. I’d bike but I’d be late for my shift.”
“Sure. Just let me get my purse.”
She ducks into the kitchen, tells Todd what’s going on, and then the short, sweet sound of their mouths meeting. She reappears with the car keys clasped in her hand.
“Be nice to spend some time together, huh?”