I say to Beth.
“Well, what?”
“You okay?”
“W-when did this…” She stutters, her first hint of recognition.
“It didn’t all of a sudden happen. Laura sent me a letter a few weeks ago. We talked. And it just sort of went from there.”
I leave out the details of course. About our stolen smiles and “accidental” bumps in the hallways that each became a new promise to one another. About every forbidden late night rendezvous that by day could turn me into a social pariah. About every after-hours phone call made after Mom fell asleep so she wouldn’t know I was again talking to the girl who reduced her little boy to a pool of liquid charcoal and self-pity. About my desperate attempt to erase the pain, rationalizing that love and anguish just went hand-in-hand.
“Did you see her before or after that night we—”
“After, definitely after.” I grab the tray off the counter.
“You sure?” Beth’s eyes narrow, testing me, trying to catch me in a lie. I’m not lying, but she overestimates her ability to tell one way or the other. I’m a very good liar.
I throw a handful of ketchup packets onto my tray. Beth follows with some creamers and sugars. I sense some disbelief.
“Beth, I think you know me well enough by now. I swear to you, I thought Laura and I were done. I got the first letter from Laura, the one that said she wanted me back, right after you and I hooked up.”
“That same night?”
“Yes, I’m talking minutes after we dropped you and Claire off at your house.”
“Jesus, Hank, that was like six weeks ago. Have you two been back together ever since?”
“More or less.”
“Is that why you’ve been so weird lately? Why you haven’t been returning my calls?”
“I’m sorry.”
“What are you apologizing for?”
“I-I don’t know.” My turn to stutter. “You know, you and I, w-we…”
“You and I weren’t ever a couple, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
We sit back down at the table. I ready my concession speech. “Guys, don’t think for a second anything’s going to change this summer. We’re still going to have a blast.” My tone conveys the opposite of my original intent, like I’m trying to convince myself more than anybody else. But they play along. That’s what friends do.
Claire reaches across the table and squeezes my hand. “You bet we’re going to have some fun.”
Hatch slaps me on the back. “Even if I have to drag your whipped ass out of the house to do it.”
Again, Beth is quiet. She’s tying a discarded straw wrapper in multiple knots. She looks past us, out the window.
I catch myself staring at her for the second time this morning. As good as Beth looks in a gymnastics leotard, never mind her bikini, her usual wardrobe reads like someone in a witness protection program, like those National Enquirer photos of movie actresses who go out in public in old sweat suits, baseball caps, and sunglasses. Most of the time, at least when she’s sober, Beth doesn’t want to be noticed. Like this morning, a blue jean miniskirt that’s more maxi than mini, and an unflattering long-sleeved rugby shirt untucked and draped halfway to the end of her skirt.
But there’s something about Beth—if not a confidence, a boldness to her. She never asks to be taken too seriously. She has a hellion side to her personality. About seventy-two ounces of barley and hops separate the girl who drove your grandfather to Sunday night bingo from the girl who’ll give you a hand job in the backseat of your car. She’s a refreshing change from Laura, who tends to grow detached and sullen in direct proportion to the number of drinks she consumes. With Laura, there’s just so much emotion—too much emotion—tied up in even the smallest of affections. In a lot of meaningful ways, Beth is the antidote to Laura.
Whoa. Did I just think that?
“Hank?”
I’m busted. How long have I been staring at her? “Yeah, Beth?”
She discards the straw wrapper and grabs a napkin. She reaches up to my face and wipes a piece of egg off the corner of my mouth. She smiles. “Something on your mind?”
“Nope.” I shake my head. “Nothing at all.” I’m a very good liar.
Chapter fifteen
The Monsters of Rock. Kingdom Come, Dokken, Metallica, Scorpions, and Van Halen performing consecutively on stage over the course of twelve straight hours from noon to midnight.
Halfway into Dokken, I traded my concert tee for a few joints. The shirt looked authentic—black and red, flying “VH” Van Halen logo on the front, tour dates on the back—but it was a cheap knockoff I got in the parking lot for five bucks.
The weed isn’t a cheap knockoff. Fifteen rows up on the second level of the Hoosier Dome, through the soupy haze of tobacco and marijuana smoke, I’m pretty sure Metallica has just come off an extended version of “Sanitarium.”
James Hetfield steps to the front of the stage, long stringy hair, goatee, pitted face, wearing black from head to toe. He pumps his fist in the air, grabs the microphone. “Fuck yeah!”
Sixty-seven thousand fists raised in unison respond, “Fuck yeah!”
“I hope you fucking know that we’re just getting fucking started, because…”
Cue Kirk Hammett on guitar…
Camera two on about sixty-seven thousand bobbing heads…Camera one back on James… Go James, go…
“I got something to say-ayyy!!!”
Metallica’s signature cover of the Misfits’s “Last Caress/Green Hell” sends the crowd into a chorus of frothing-at-the-mouth shouts. The careening, paralyzing, manic headbanging is a perfect accompaniment to the song’s affirming themes of killing babies, raping mothers, and cold, sweet death.
Mom and Dad gave me a free pass for the night. Knowing the concert wasn’t supposed to end until midnight, they said, “Call us sometime later just to let us know you’re okay, and be home before we wake up in the morning.”
My parents’ misplaced trust stems from my grades—straight As for the semester, again. Tonight is their reward for me “keeping my head in the game despite everything.” Logic dictates a kid that smart can’t simultaneously be that stupid. But then again, logic has nothing to do with drinking a six-pack of beer and most of a fifth of whiskey, followed by three joints and a hit off an opium pipe administered by a biker chick who wanted to take my “cute little ass” home with her.
Van Halen squeezed out an anticlimactic twelfth-hour encore that sent us home mute, deaf, drunk, and stoned. Kent Hagen invited us to his apartment for a post-concert
