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  I hop into Alex’s car, a beaten-up brown Crown Victoria, and the music is booming.

  “This will be our first song at our first gig,” Alex says over the funk-punk racket. I sink back into the broken seat, letting the music surround us while memories swallow me.

  In junior high, I didn’t have a girlfriend. Those horrible dances—boys on one side, girls on the other—made us all look like we were waiting for a firing squad to put us out of our misery. There was this one girl I liked, Debbie Wylie, but nothing ever happened. Other guys at school bragged in far too much detail about their schoolyard kisses, and the occasional anatomy excursions, but I never had a story to tell. I felt left out as everyone was pairing up but me. I was clumsy, skinny, and a little strange. My body’s battled me since birth. Allergies, asthma, and severe-enough-for-surgery ear infections were my primary afflictions, and my body won every battle during junior high.

  Freshman year of high school, the heart stopper and heart-breaker was Teresa Donaldson. I tried funny, and I tried serious. I tried paying attention to her, and I tried ignoring her. We had a great teasing thing going in a couple of classes, but I couldn’t really break through. Then came my ill-fated attempt at high school wrestling, which ended up giving me more bruises than a box of dropped peaches at the Save-A-Lot grocery store. I was a mess. I can’t say I blame Teresa for being cool to me. While I was often sweaty—an unfortunate result of wrestling other guys and not her—I was by no definition of the word hot.

  While my new buds and future band mates Alex and Sean were both exploring various and sundry female forms, I was again on the outside looking in. The more isolated I felt from the great mating rituals taking place around me, the more I followed Alex’s lead and grew more outrageous in dress and behavior. What I was doing wasn’t working, so I thought I would try something else, something wild. If I were the center of attention, then someone would have to notice me. I don’t mind being alone, but I hate feeling lonely and disconnected, a need even good friends can’t fill.

  In tenth grade, I just remember being “obsexed” all year. I looked at my teachers who wore wedding rings, and I remember thinking how they got to have sex all the time, even though they were pretty damn dull and uninteresting, so why not me? Instead, I was surfing Internet porn, seeking out real girls without success, and strengthening my left arm. I was fully convinced that I was too much of an outsider to ever get inside a girl, until I hooked up with Megan the Imposter.

  Sophomore year I also got into Goth, to Alex’s chagrin, which led to me finally getting some. Southwestern is big, and I don’t remember even seeing Megan when we were both freshmen. But by sophomore year, her Goth attitude and attire attracted my attention. We started off by teasing, which turned into tickling, which burned into touching, and then more, although at a glacial pace.

  I loved her even if I never said those words to her, but hated to learn that she came to school Mom-approved, then Gothed-up in the bathroom. We mostly saw each other at school and talked on the phone, but I never went over to her place or met her parents. She’d come over to my house, always when no one was home, where we’d partly undress for sexual success. This past spring, we were at Genesee Valley locking lips when her dad arrived on the scene. I don’t know if it was fate or if he followed us, but did he ever freak at seeing this vampirelike version of his daughter swapping spit with his worst nightmare. He pulled her aside, told me to go back to hell, and then drove her back to Blandland. My phone calls went unreturned, and a few days later at school, her true preppy self emerged from her camouflage cocoon. She was posing while I was looking for the real thing. My mood turned as black as my fingernail polish. Even though I’d etched Megan’s name into my then black-painted fingernails—one letter per finger on my right hand—she listened to the head of the family rather than her heart, scratching me off her list. After all these years of rejection, I don’t know why I shouldn’t expect the same from Kylee.

  “So, what do you think?” Alex says as the song ends and I snap back into the present.

  “Off the hook,” I say, burying my envy at his songwriting prowess. We drive, but I’m listening to my own thoughts more than Alex’s rants against the corporate music machine.

  As we enter the party, Alex puts out his radar for any Southwestern alumni in attendance. He’s convinced that high school girls just don’t “get him,” so he’s looking for someone older. He’s been flirting all summer with Elizabeth, this funky waitress at our after-band-practice pit stop the Venus, to no avail. I wish him luck, then head toward the music booming up the basement stairs. I see Kylee wearing a men’s large white shirt like a dress, dancing with a group of her girls, oblivious to anything but the music in her head. I’m oblivious to anything but the effect of the music on her hips, and its effect on me. Chad Puddle isn’t on site, so it’s sink or swim. I feel my heart thump in my chest, while other muscle reactions are occurring at a lower level when she takes off the shirt, revealing a skintight tangerine leotard top. I tug nervously on my tie-dye Dr. Seuss T-shirt and take a giant step.

  I throw no elbows as I dance through the girls-only crowd toward her. Her face lights up even in the darkness. Kylee bites her big bottom lip, nods, smiles, and moves like heaven.

  We dance more, and share a few cigarettes, cloves for her, Camels for me. Kylee ignites each smoke using her kitschy Dr. Evil lighter from Austin Powers. After she lights one just for herself, she takes my hat and places it on her head, scooping up her red shoes on the way out of the room. I pursue her outside on the porch.

  “Nice hat,” she says, touching the brim of the fedora I’ve taken from the costume closet. It covers up her violet head.

  “It looks better on you than me.”

  “You think?” Kylee replies, lightly touching my skinny arm with those tiny fingers.

  “I know,” I say quickly, tired of waiting for love to find me.

  “Can I keep it?” She takes another drag, while I watch her lungs do their work.

  “Sure, if …”

  “If what?”

  “If you’ll go out with me.” I deliver the line like a pro, even if I’m shaking inside.

  “Like nudge-nudge, wink-wink?” Kylee asks, showing a smirky smile brighter than the stars above and making a Monty Python’s Flying Circus reference to sex. MPFC is another intersection of our interests we’d discovered over the past month of premating practice.

  I hesitate, as a blush flowers across my face. “Nothing like that.”

  “Too bad.” She shrugs and looks away.

  I put my hand on her shoulder. It feels nice. “Okay, maybe a little of that.”

  “So, you’re asking me out?”

  “Well, I know you already have a boyfriend and all, but—”

  “He’s not really a boy or a friend,” Kylee says with a wicked smile-and-wink combo.

  “So, what do you think about you and me?”

  “Can I ask you something first?” Kylee replies, chilling my spine.

  “Anything.”

  “What took you so damn long?” she asks as she puts the hat back on my head.

  “Well, I-I—” I’m stammering like a newbie on opening night.

  “I thought you were gay like most of the theater guys at Central,” she says, laughing. I wonder if she’s been talking to my dad or Bob Hitchings. She moves closer, brushing her body up against mine, giving off a small shock while sparking a flutter from head to toe. “I mean, what else does a girl like me have to do? I was trying to bump into you all summer.”

  “Considering how clumsy I am, I’m surprised I didn’t fall all over you first.”

  She’s smart, sexy, and sarcastic, and I’m scared shitless. She finishes the last drag on her cigarette. “What’s with your look?”

  This is my summer of great fashion experimentation, as I reject my sophomore-year Goth and Megan-inspired black state, for every goofy T-shirt that Alex and I could acquire at the Goodwill during its two-for-one sale, and never finding
time to go Gap-ing with Sean.

  “You no like?” I bow toward her, then tip my hat.

  “It’s fine to see a guy wear a hat that’s not a baseball cap turned backward or a hooded sweatshirt. Central is full of wannabes, not real deals,” she says. “It sure gets you noticed.”

  “Not my intention.”

  She puts the pinky finger of her left hand against that luscious bottom lip. “Riiiiiiiiiiight,” she says, nailing a perfect Dr. Evil impersonation.

  “Well, not everybody likes it,” I say, understating the facts. “Like my boss.”

  “Where do you work?” Kylee asks.

  “Sometimes I usher at the Whiting Auditorium, downtown,” I tell her. It’s a sweet gig that my drama teacher, Mr. Douglas, set up for me.

  “That’s right by my house,” Kylee says. “My parents go to every benefit there.”

  “I just waltz people into their seats,” I say, trying too hard to be too funny.

  “I’ve danced on that stage myself many times,” Kylee says with pride, then starts twirling around, showing off her skills and sexiness. “Our dance troupe is doing something there in a few weeks. Do you want to come watch us? It’ll be fun.”

  “You really like to dance, don’t you?” I ask her.

  “Always, but you need to have the right shoes,” she says as I look down and notice she’s wearing bright red shoes that look like something from a production of The Wizard of Oz.

  “You’re wearing ruby slippers?” I ask, astonished and enthralled in the same instant. I have memorized her wardrobe, mentally cataloged it, even made predictions and hoped for certain outfits, but these ruby red slippers were blinding.

  “I love wearing stuff from the prop room at Central. It’s about half of my wardrobe throughout the school year,” she says in the tone of spilling a secret.

  “Hey, I’ve been using my school’s costume room as my closet for the past year!”

  “Well, Mr. Bret Hendricks, it seems we have quite a lot in common,” she says, leaning toward me. “Except one little thing.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “You’re a better actor. I sing almost as good as you, but I mostly just dance,” she says, acting out the words by twirling around, making my head spin. “I wish I were as good as you.”

  “No one ever said that to me before,” I reply, amazed.

  “Oh, don’t gimme that modesty crap,” Kylee says, breaking out her biggest smile yet. “You know you’re good, don’t deny it. Bret Hendricks, you’d stand out in any crowd.”

  “Why’s that?” I ask as I move closer.

  “Because you’re like me: the real thing,” she replies, removing my hat and all my doubts. Our lips touch, and I know I’m not in Kansas—or my father’s Flint—anymore.

  Four

  September 6, Labor Day, Junior Year

  “Get your lazy butt out of bed!”

  I ignore my father’s angry voice with both ears, but open one eye to spy the clock radio’s red numbers bright as the morning sun. It’s 10:30 and he expects me to be laboring today.

  “You got chores,” my father says, getting my attention by softly kicking the side of my bed. Even if I felt like easily rising out of bed, my appearance is too hard and raised for that.

  “It’s my last free day before school, let me sleep,” I mumble, hoping he won’t hear me.

  “Ain’t no such thing as a free day,” he quickly counters. “I’ve already worked five hours today while your lazy butt has been in bed.”

  “I’m working tonight,” I counter meekly, thinking more how my real work begins tomorrow. School isn’t work, it’s fun; facing another year of Bob Hitchings is what tenses me up.

  “Tough job, usher. No wonder you’re exhausted,” he says, then snorts. Dad uses phlegm as punctuation. “Look at me when I talk to you!”

  “Let me sleep,” I say, stalling and silently seeking blood redistribution.

  “What the hell time did you get to bed last night?” He kicks the bed again, harder; angrier. The bed shakes: he must be wearing his heavy work boots.

  If only I could tell him the truth: I got to bed early. I was in bed by 9:30, but then I’d have to tell him the whole truth: it wasn’t my bed and I wasn’t alone. Part of me wants to stand up for a little show-and-tell: “I’m straight!” then bring in Kylee as an expert witness. Instead, I try to push down thoughts of Kylee, of last night and our first time, as I figure out a way to escape my father’s daily declarations of my laziness and constant disapproval of my life.

  “I expect the lawn mowed by four,” he says. Most days this summer he’s come home for a quick lunch since his work—the Top Hat Car Wash—is only a mile or so away. Yet, I suspect his real mission isn’t food, but harassing my hide. I thought on the last day before school, I’d get to sleep past noon, but Dad’s stricter than Southwestern’s principal, Mr. Morgan.

  “But Alex, Sean, and I are shopping at Jellybean—” I lay out my facts, knowing that any sentence that begins with “but” never ends without mine getting metaphorically kicked.

  “You listen to me and your mother, not your weird friends.” More phlegm, more friction.

  Alex is persona non grata at my house. In my father’s eyes, I was more or less a normal kid until Alex and I hooked up in ninth grade, meeting in a creative writing class. In Alex, I found somebody who laughed at the same jokes, liked the same music, and felt the same disdain for the jockarchy.

  “And I expect this pigsty to be cleaned when I get home,” he says, adding a final kick to the bed, a few loud stomps, then a door slam to finish his parental-rage percussion solo.

  I wait to hear the front door lock, the sound of Dad’s truck starting, and finally feel the safety of knowing he’s on his way to work to let off his steam on dirty cars instead of his kids. His kid: he never yells at Robin, and I don’t seem to recall him riding Cam, but then again, they both turned out how he wanted by fitting in and not causing him any trouble.

  “Mom! Robin! Are you here?” I shout. When I hear nothing but silence, I return to thoughts of last night with Kylee, reliving the feeling and relieving the pressure down below under the sheets, except it’s not fantasy anymore; now it’s a fantastic memory.

  I clean up with a quick shower and proceed to clean up my room in a way that my “Mister Place for Everything” father would hate. I heave my horizontal closet pile of Southwestern costume room castoffs and thrift store treasures under the bed, shove my secondhand books, CDs, and videos in boxes, then stack those in the closet, and pack into my desk the piles of papers filled with unfinished songs.

  Next, I start to mow the lawn, decked out in my fedora, torn-and-frayed black Austin 3:16 T-shirt, and green fatigues. I get about half of it done when I’m interrupted by Robin and her giggling girlfriends riding their bikes into the driveway. I turn the mower off and greet them.

  “What’s up, Ro?” I say, shooting a friendly wave to her, which she doesn’t return.

  She looks through me, as if she’s embarrassed I’m talking to her. She turns her back, whispers something to her friends, who all break out in laughter, no doubt at my expense.

  “What’s so funny my fair ladies?” I say in an English accent while tipping my hat.

  “You are so weird,” Robin says slowly, making sure her friends savor each word.

  “And you’re so rude,” I mutter under my breath. I want to tell her she didn’t think I was weird when I helped her learn to ride that bike, played endless board games with her, or read her hundreds of library books. I want to say all these things, but I don’t. Fact is, she’d rather I not talk to her at all. She wants to sit at the cool table at school, and having a brother like me isn’t helping her cause. She avoids me like I carry the plague of unpopularity.

  “Lets go inside,” Robin says, then turns her back again to make another joke at my expense as this jury of twelve-year-olds judges me to be too strange. I say I don’t care what anybody thinks of me. But deep down I know that’s not
true. If I really didn’t care, then it wouldn’t matter when they made fun of me. I would just let it bounce off me. Instead, I’m more like this grass: they cut me down, but I just grow back.

  “Hey farm boy!” Alex yells from the Crown Vic when he pulls in the driveway just as I finish the lawn. I wipe the sweat from my brow and flick it his way. “You ready or what?”

  “Change of plans,” I shout over my shoulder as I return the mower to the tabernacle of tools. I don’t bow to the Holy Camaro Being, but offer up a one-fingered salute before I shut the door.

  “No Jellybean?” Alex sounds disappointed that our CD shop-a-thon might be off.

  “I got big news,” I say as I climb in, give him a friendly smack on the back, admire his new necklace of small silver skulls, and try not to burst his eardrum when I shout, “I’m in love.”

  As we drive to pick up Sean, then Kylee, I give Alex some details of the previous night. Alex doesn’t ask a lot of questions, which is good because it’s weird to talk about it. Stranger was that I didn’t need to talk Kylee into it. We’d done standard make-out stuff from the first night, but things progressed in our few weeks together a lot faster than with Megan. Last night after ushering at Whiting, I walked over to her house for a late dinner with her and her funny, funky parents, but Kylee had other plans, since they were out, and I was finally in.

  “I’ll never see you again,” Alex finally says in a voice filled with mock hurt.

  “Well, not as much as Kylee gets to see,” I shoot back at him.

  “Enough already!” Alex shouts. “One sex-filled night and you’re already insufferable.”

  “No, I’m just done suffering,” I reply as we pull up to Sean’s huge two-story house.

  Sean piles in, and I move to the backseat. We listen to demos of new Alex songs during the short trip to Kylee’s house. Kylee lives over in the Cultural Center area, which houses the art museum, the library, and the Whiting. We’ll pick her up, then head over to the Jellybean store down on Fenton Road. Jellybean is this great used CD, DVD, video, and book store that’s our home away from home. I used to make my mom take me almost every Saturday when I was in eighth grade, blowing my whole allowance to buy some cool book I’d read about. Mom made up the difference between what I wanted and the money I needed to buy it. She never told my dad about these income supplements, since they were not earned old-school style. Now, Alex, Sean, and I are weekend regulars, even if Sean does most of the spending while Alex and I settle for window-shopping.