After Dakota Part 27

"Fine, I'm entering a photography contest. That one they've been advertising in the paper."

The words sound strange coming out of her mouth, because by speaking them aloud she's made the whole thing real. When Mr. Duran mentioned it in cla.s.s, when he hung the flyer on his door, she tuned it all out. When he invited her to come after school so they could review her portfolio, she decided to humor him.

He flipped through the pictures: the hanging lightbulb in Bryce's room, Ricky's scar, the dead rabbit, the black widow spider in the garage, a math worksheet floating in a puddle of rainwater. She left out one of her best compositions: the guys gathered in Buzzed Head's garage, well framed and lit, with the smoke from the bong providing a haze over the whole scene. Like a photo of a dream.

"This one," he said, pointing to the picture of Meredith from the day she got her braces off. In the black and white world, she looks down to her left, hands crossed in her lap, charcoal clouds over her head like dark thoughts in a cartoon.

"Don't you get your picture printed in the newspaper if you win?" Bryce asks. "That's pretty sweet."

Claire replies, "I'm not gonna win I'm only doing it so my teacher will quit bugging me. So anyways, can I get a ride?"

By the time they meet in the parking lot later, she's coming down off her high from the day and doesn't have any more pills to keep it going. What she does have is a raging appet.i.te. Some days it's hard to keep track of whether she ate lunch or not.

"I have to make one stop on the way home," Bryce says as they pull out of the post office parking lot.

"Is it the stupid comic book store?"

The customers at Tales of Wonder today are all guys with big stomachs; one of them has the biggest white-tipped pimple Claire has ever seen, like it could erupt on its own any second. Claire wants to look and not look at the same time. Gross. Why doesn't he take an idea from all the superheroes and wear a mask?

She circles the store while Bryce talks to the old hippie at the counter, with his gray beard and bandanna. Everywhere she looks, more of the same: racks of comics, boxes of comics, T-s.h.i.+rts on the walls.

"Starfire is frickin' hot" floats out of someone's mouth.

Then she finds something called Amazing Fantasy, with a big monster named Tim Boo Ba on the cover. The monster is tall and looks to be made out of orange clay; he reminds Claire of this weird guy Tim from middle school, who had the same kind of body and always wore Toughskin pants.

But even though the cover says 12 cents, the comic is in a plastic bag with a $20 price tag on it! Claire waits for the fat wheezy guy to pa.s.s by her seriously, who gets wheezy just shopping in a store? and then slips it under her s.h.i.+rt. Anyplace that tries to rip people off with those prices deserves to be ripped off itself.

She joins Bryce at the counter, where he's buying three copies of the same issue of Secret Wars. He sees the look on her face and says, "It's gonna be valuable. Number one's always are."

Claire holds Bryce's bag in the car. "Don't open those," he tells her. "They have to be in mint condition."

The issue under her s.h.i.+rt is stiff, a corner of the cardboard backing poking into her ribs.

"You could sell them someday, get a lot of money," he says.

"Chyeah, right. Like you'd let me sell your comics."

"I meant if I wasn't around anymore."

"When you're away at college?"

Bryce pa.s.ses a lumbering city bus. "I'm just saying, you can sell them if you need money. Wherever I am."

She turns on the car radio, he turns it right off.

"You're a pretty cool sister, Claire. I know we don't always get along but, yeah, I'm glad we're related."

"Ok, now you're creeping me out."

She's even more creeped out when they turn into the cul-de-sac and see two men in short sleeve white s.h.i.+rts going door to door, currently at Steve and Bo's.

"Oh no, it's those weirdoes." Bryce speeds up in front of their house, where he and Claire dash for the front door.

Claire sits in her room, looks at Tim Boo Ba, and listens to the doorbell chime. And chime again. She watches out her window not trying to hide as the men give up and walk next door to Cameron's house. One of them looks up and sees her; she flips him off without knowing why.

83.

On a warm Sat.u.r.day morning, Bryce steps out back in his swimsuit to find his dad, s.h.i.+rtless, wearing plaid shorts, brown socks and loafers, digging in the dirt area away from the pool.

"What are you doing?" Bryce asks. He won't be able to relax in the water with his dad's grunting and low level swearing as background.

"Thought I'd get my old garden back up and running. Your mom wants tomatoes." He punches the shovel into a patch of ground and yelps. "Look at that!"

From the break in the dirt, an explosion of brown horned toads twenty, thirty, fifty, skittering in every direction. Under the fence, into the plants, into the stack of firewood. A few get to the edge of the pool and stop, confused, their sides puffing in and out like leather balloons.

"You kids used to call those 'h.o.r.n.y toads.'" His dad chuckles, taking a last look before resuming his dig. A few still stand frozen at the pool while others make their way along the water's edge. Above them, a speck of a plane paints a white sky trail from right to left. His dad looks up, s.h.i.+elds his eyes. "737," he says.

Bryce relates the story about the Salvation Army truck parked in front of the Vanzants' house the day before. Mr. Vanzant and two men in uniforms carried out box after box from the garage, enough stuff to open a store. "Are they moving?" Bryce asks.

"Search me. Maybe it's all of Dakota's things."

"You think they'd just get rid of her like that?"

The shovel clangs against a hard patch of ground. "All I know is, I wish your mother would let me at some of the junk in our garage."

"I heard that," her voice says from the open kitchen window. "And if you're so eager to get rid of junk, you can start with those ancient golf clubs!"

The jet trail dissipates, leaving only unscathed, perfect blue.

When the planting is done, Bryce can finally float in peace on the inflatable alligator, the hazy warmth coaxes him into a doze. What if the sun went supernova right now? How long would everyone on Earth have to react?

"Did you hear about the egg war tonight?" Bryce asks Cam, who floats face down on the monster inner tube later.

"That always means driving around town, wasting gas, until you find the secret spot," Cam replies. "Then it's not even worth the trouble."

Bryce scoops a vibrating cicada off the surface of the water. "Geoff heard that some UNM sorority girls are going. Might be worth checking out."

"I'm cooking dinner for Rosemary, so I can't."

Bryce says, "I don't know if I'm going it probably won't be that fun anyway." Who could've imagined the day when Bryce would be unsuccessfully trying to talk his friend into going to a event with college girls? "Let me know when you have an opening in your schedule and we can do something."

"What d'you mean by that?" Cam asks.

"Nothing. Forget it." Bryce paddles his alligator toward the shallow end.

"Look, I have a girlfriend now and "

"Really? You do? I didn't notice she's all you talk about anymore."

"I would understand if I was in your place."

"You wouldn't have to understand 'cause I would never ditch you."

"Fine, you want me to leave?" Cam's voice always so calm.

"Did I say that? Maybe I wanna hang out with you while we still can!"

"What does that mean?"

"It means... y'know, before we graduate. Forget it, I'll go alone."

They float at opposite ends. Bryce can't tell Cam the truth, because he can't imagine how his friend would look at him. One last horned toad waits on the far edge of the pool, as still as if carved from stone.

84.

Cameron's dinner date with Rosemary requires a good deal of planning.

He thinks about trying something new from his mom's copy of The Microwave Cookbook maybe the special bacon cheeseburgers with the bacon and cheese inside the patty but then settles on a non-microwave recipe he knows by heart: Cornish game hens with Dijon mustard, mashed potatoes, and peas.

He goes to Albertson's to get food and condoms (after discovering his old ones are all past the expiration date). What that means isn't clear but he doesn't want to run a live experiment and find out. He's rounding the corner to the cash register when his cart collides with Mrs. Vanzant's.

"h.e.l.lo, neighbor," she says from her towering height, a full three inches above him.

While they chitchat, he tries to slyly adjust the contents of his cart so the bright blue box of Trojans isn't right on top. She glances down at his fumbling. Busted. He brings up the waiting-to-hear-from-colleges topic as an emergency distraction.

"I remember going through this time with Dakota," she says. "I think my husband and I were on pins and needles more than she was."

"Where did she end up again?" he asks, even though he knows already.

"Was.h.i.+ngton, for one semester. She came home at Christmas and announced she was dropping out. We always believed in letting her find her own path, so we... I only wish..."

A voice calls for a cleanup in dairy.

Mrs. Vanzant says, "Some people are better suited to school than others. I suspect you'll do well."

As they start moving their respective directions, she adds, "Cameron, in case you weren't aware, I've moved out of the house."

"Um, no, I wasn't aware." A piece of news that didn't immediately travel via phone to every house on the street! A piece of news he got before his mom! Stop the presses.

"There's no bitterness involved between Marcus and myself please don't think that." She seems like she's about to say more, but then doesn't. They stand there until she puts them out of their misery with a "See you around. Take care."

Back home, he first does a sweep of the house for any leftover wads of paper towel. He changes the sheets on his bed, shoves his mom's clutter into the hall closet, and puts the pile of unopened mail in a kitchen drawer. He sets out two bottles of wine (unable to remember whether the white kind or the red kind is supposed to be served cold this way one of them will be right).

It only takes fifteen minutes to pick an outfit. Five to iron the s.h.i.+rt (and almost burn it). Another ten to do a thorough job on his face with the electric razor. A splash of Old Spice and he's good to go.

Then the antic.i.p.ation is over and Rosemary is sitting across the table from him. "Did you know parents in Europe serve their children wine from a young age?" she asks as he pours both gla.s.ses up to the rim with red.

After dinner they watch Remington Steele in the den. He worries that she's silently judging him, measuring him against the suave, European Mr. Steele. If he'd been able to watch the scene from outside his body, Cameron might have thought he was getting a glimpse into his potential future: them as a couple, relaxing on the couch with wine, TV, and each other. He would've liked the look of that future.

Then they're kissing, half-vertical, half-horizontal on the couch. She says, "Let's go to your room" and the problem is solved. He leaves the TV on behind them, something for which he's repeatedly scolded his mom.

Then they're on his bed, in the dark.

Then she undoes his pants.

Then eighteen years of waiting are over (so fast!).

Afterwards he surveys his room, everything painted in moonlight through the window. Maybe Bryce no doubt driving around, trying to find the egg war picked up the vibes of what went down, like how Obi-Wan Ken.o.bi knew Alderaan had exploded.

Later, after she's gone (European parents may be awesome, but they still have curfews), Cameron piles dishes in the sink and finishes his second gla.s.s of wine. He takes the mail out of the drawer, absentmindedly thumbs through it until he sees an envelope from University of California, Berkeley, addressed to him.

He knows what's coming: No thank you, but good luck in your future endeavors. He chose the wrong essay to mail.

The phone rings. "Did I wake you?" his mom asks.

"No."

"Grams had another stroke. She's in the intensive care unit. I'm going to have to stay longer, make all the arrangements and ek cetera." Some static on her end of the line. Not static nose blowing.

"Everything's fine here," he says, like she asked, like that made anything better.

"All the oldies in the housing complex down here have been stocking up on batteries and canned food. In case the bomb drops, you know."

Cameron is about to tell her about Mrs. Vanzant at the supermarket, but then: "You know she's so proud of you, right? She already has her plane ticket to come see your graduation."

"I think she'll be ok," he p.r.o.nounces, when in reality he doesn't know what a stroke even is.

Cameron realizes he's still holding the envelope when they hang up. He tears it open even though he doesn't need more bad news tonight.

Congratulations.

The rest could be written in Greek.

The last of the wine burns when he swallows it.