This choice: Think about it some more. • Go Back...Chapter #13A School Survey by: Seuzz   "Nothing's going to get better until we get some new girls on the squad."
Jessica-you casts a sidelong glance at Cindy Vredenburg, for it is she who so spoke. She and Jessica-you are perched on the gym bleachers, looking down onto the gym floor as the boys' basketball team has its afterschool practice. Sweaty guys shout hoarsely at each other, and the rubber soles of their shoes squeak and scream as they race up and down the polished court. Cindy's boyfriend, Seth Javits, is down there, which is why she stayed after school. Jessica-you stayed with her because they're friends—as well as colleagues on the cheerleader squad.
"On the basketball squad?" Jessica-you titters. "You want to make it co-ed?"
Cindy makes a face at you. "That's the kind of joke I'd expect from your brother," she says.
Down by the river, Marc-you briefly lifts himself from the crook of his girlfriend's neck to make a face of his own. Then you dive back in to resume nibbling at Hannah Westrick.
"No," Cindy resumes with a sigh, "I meant—"
"I know what you meant, Cindy. Maybe we should stop torturing ourselves." You spare a brief, murderous glance for the girls perched on the other side of the court: Chelsea Cooper, the captain of the cheerleader squad, whose thuggish boyfriend is captain of the boys' basketball squad, and two of her sycophants. "This is the way it's going to be all year. The sooner we get used to it, the sooner we'll stop minding it so much."
Cindy hisses softly, but doesn't reply.
"You know, I wonder if there is such a thing as a non-dysfunctional cheerleading squad," you observe. "Heck, I wonder if there's such a thing as a non-dysfunctional team at this school." You nod down at the court, where a hulking brute has grabbed and is yelling at a teammate who just missed a shot. "You know the stories about the way Gordon and Steve run things."
Cindy shrugs. In the library, Eva-you, who is working on three sets of homework, pushes aside a calculus equation long enough to tap a note to yourselves into her cell phone: Make a school team functional from the inside out?
* * * * *
Ten minutes later, though it feels like three, what with the triply crowded life you're leading these days: "Oh my God, it looks like you've got enough work there for five people!"
Eva-you looks up as Anne Starkey uninvited, slides into a chair at the table where you're working. Her eyes twinkle as she looks over the stack of school books, the four spiral notebooks, and the three-ring binder you have spread around. "What classes are you taking?"
"These aren't all mine," you assure. "Jessica was here, but she's run off someplace. I think some of these are Marc's." You grimace.
Anne's eyes light up, and she leans over the table. "How are him and Hannah doing?"
"Oh, shut up!" You wrinkle a lip as Anne laughs. "He was gross enough before. With Hannah—"
Eva-you and Jessica-you each have to briefly suck in your upper lips, in vibrational sympathy with the orgasmic roar that Marc-you looses as he comes inside Hannah's throat. "It wasn't your idea to put them together, was it?" you accuse Anne. "You and her are tight as ticks."
"No," Anne says, and she looks genuinely offended. "I mean, I knew her from when she was going to Eastman, but we're not— And I didn't—" She starts to sputter.
"She just brings out the worst in Marc, or something," you grumble. And swallows it down after bringing it out. "I told you he was always gross, but—"
"Then maybe I don't want to hear about it." Anne starts to get up.
"No, I'm sorry, I didn't mean anything," you hastily assure her. "I like Hannah. When she and my brother aren't— And it's his fault."
Anne grunts, but she doesn't sit down again. Instead, she says, "You got plans this weekend?"
"I don't know yet."
"Well, maybe we should all do something together. You, me, Cameron." That's her boyfriend, the school quarterback. "Marc and Hannah, if you can stand it."
"Sure, we can talk later." For an awkward moment you look at each other, then Anne says she'll see you around, and takes off.
You don't dismiss her from your thoughts, though. Down by the river, Marc-you stares dazedly up at the roof of the minivan and thinks about Anne with his portion of your hive mind. She's a pretty red-head with lots of personality. She's also in the marching band. Doing something with a sports team seems almost as much of a cliche as doing something with a cheerleading squad. Maybe the marching band—or the school orchestra, where Eva-you plays the viola—or the school chorale—would be more ... unexpected.
You don't like to think that the question, Unexpected by who? might have an answer.
* * * * *
Thirty minutes later, though it feels like ninety, because it's like you've done that much stuff during that half hour: "What are we doing here?" Hannah as Marc-you steers the minivan into a cracked and broken parking lot next to the railroad tracks. It's surrounded on three sides by a tall, cinderblock wall surmounted by hurricane wire; on the fourth side looms a squat warehouse of grimy red brick.
"Gotta see a guy about buying a sombrero," Marc-you replies as you shut off the engine. "Wanna wait here?"
"Mm, no," Hannah says. She's a big girl, a strong girl, a bold-faced girl, but she tucks a little inside herself. "I'll go in."
"You've been out here before."
"Sure. Just not in the daytime." She makes a face. "Does someone hang out here?" she asks with obvious trepidation.
"Here" is "The Warehouse," so-called because that's what it is: an abandoned warehouse in the center of Saratoga Falls's decaying industrial district. By day it is just another squatting box of cracked bricks and busted windows. On Friday and Saturday nights, though, it is the most dangerous party spot in the city, hosting garage bands, raves, rivers of illegal liquor, and filthy rooms upstairs where overexcited teenagers can lose themselves inside of each other.
David Johnson came out once, last year, and hasn't been back since. Marc Garner comes out almost every weekend.
And on weekdays, too, sometimes, when there are no parties but there is ... business ... to be transacted.
Hannah nestles inside your arm as you lead her inside. Voices—hoarse but unmistakably male—shout and curse from the barroom. There's guttural laughter, which turns into a cheer as you saunter in with your girlfriend by your side. "Hey, Marc!" a skinny blonde kid calls out. His eyes glint. "Hannah!"
"Hey, Adam," Hannah says. It figures that she—a refugee from Eastman—would know Adam Karter, one of the most popular kids at EHS.
"What brings you out?" Karter asks. He rolls a tongue in his cheek and winks at you.
"A sombrero," Hannah says. "Is Matt around?" you ask.
"Reston? He's somewhere. Hey! Hubble!" Karter looses a shrill whistle through his teeth, and you feel Hannah flinch against you. "Tell Reston he's got customer!" he shouts at the kid who's popped his face around the corner. "How many?" Karter asks after Owen Hubble—a band guy, like Anne—has vanished.
"Two, I think."
"Sombreros?" Hannah asks.
"Tell him you just want one," Karter says. He lowers his voice. "I got the second."
"Discounted?"
"If you take three off me, sure. But you'd do me a favor if you threw a little business my way."
"I didn't know you were in the business, man."
"I'm not. Shh," he warns you. "I'll walk you out."
Matt Reston saunters in, Hubble trailing at his heels. Both are blonde, but otherwise a contrast. Matt Reston, who plays bass in a band, is short, with rock-god hair tumbling down to the top of his shoulders. Hubble is tall and gangly, and sweeps his hair up and back in a kind of pompadour. But both are dressed in grungy jeans and rag-thin t-shirts. Hubble watches with a kibbitzer's interest as you buy a blunt off Reston, exchanging small talk all the while about off-hour doings at the Warehouse.
"I didn't know anyone hung out there except on weekends," Hannah confesses when you're back in the minivan—and after having surreptitiously bought a second blunt off Karter.
"Lots of guys do," you tell her. "I wouldn't try hanging out there if I was you, though."
"Oh?" Hannah grins and pinches your thigh. "But you get to?"
You chortle and slap at her playfully. And at Westside, where Jessica-you and Eva-you are waiting with pretended impatience, you're thinking, If I was you. I could be, you know.
* * * * *
"Nice," Marc-you tells Eva-you as you study the completed math homework after supper. "It even looks like my handwriting."
"You owe me."
"Owe you what?" You grin into your other face.
"Hannah?"
You glance down the upstairs hallway to make sure you're alone, before tweaking her up near her pussy. "It's like that?"
You slap your other hand away. "Jessica thinks we should just grab random people at school. You know, if we don't want to get caught, we shouldn't even plan who we're going to add."
"But you want Hannah?"
Eva-you shrugs. "Hannah. Then one of her friends, like maybe Anne. The one of Anne's friends. Then one of that friend's friends."
"A daisy chain, huh?" Marc-you chews on the inside of a cheek. "How about a compromise? Make the Warehouse into a kind of base. Add everyone who hangs out there. Random but connected."  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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