At fifteen, Scotty still listened to the same ‘crap’ as his mother would call it. Kurt Cobain was long dead. So were ‘Punk’ and ‘Grunge’ and all the good indie stuff. 1995 was a good year for music, the whole 90’s music scene – most of it, anyway – had stuck with Scotty. Nirvana, Soundgarden, Hole, Rancid, Operation Ivy, they made up the soundtrack to his early high school life. And, currently, he was jamming to the sounds of the underground. Lars Frederickson and the Bastards filled his ears and vibrated his eardrums through his disc man.
He just laid on his bed, feet tapping and hands strumming like mad – empty as they were. His mother told him to clean his room but Scotty wasn’t interested in that. Scotty had music on the mind and counter culture and rebellion. He couldn’t be really angry with his mother; she was pretty cool most of the time. But he sure was angry with his teachers and his school and pretty much everyone else. They called him things, not the teachers but the kids; the kids called him things, mean things. Some days he could swear everybody else, everybody, was about four feet taller than him. But Scotty didn’t notice any of that – or his messy room – when he had the music. The music made everything all right.
And the girls, too. Scotty liked the girls, almost all of them. Not just the ‘cheerleaders’ or the ‘preppies’. Not just the popular girls that covered their flaws with money. No, Scotty saw ‘pretty’ in the female. Maybe just Julie’s smile, or the color of Cary’s eyes, but girls were pretty. The girls helped but they hurt, too. They weren’t mean like the jocks and the bullies, but when they looked at Scotty, he felt invisible. Freshman year was starting and that didn’t help much. He tried not to show it but he was nervous.
The trip to the old Jensen’s Place had made them – Darrel, and Tony, and Jack, and Scotty – immortal for a while. But things change and hierarchies rearrange and memories fade. The boys would never forget, they shared a bond that night with the fire and the whiskey. Scotty liked the whiskey. They had gotten together and drank a few times sense then but the other guys didn’t seem to get the same peace from it. Maybe in high school there’ll be parties and stuff. And high school was starting tomorrow. They’d be the only ones left that remembered that trip.
The bed was shaking, increasingly more violent. His arms and legs stopped pumping to the beat of the music. Half startled – this wasn’t the first time – he looked at his mom and hit the pause button. She had a look on her face – not for the first time – that Scotty could read to a tee. She wasn’t happy at all. Nope, momma wasn’t happy.
“You haven’t touched your room, Scotty,” hands on hips she glared at him, and she wasn’t finished, “Jack’s on the phone, but I told him you were busy and I come up here and find this!” there was the arms spreading out from the hips.
“I’m sorry, mom. It’s just, with school and all tomorrow, I’m…” he kind of grimaced, “I’m kind of nervous, you know.” And there were the puppy dog eyes. He wasn’t completely avoiding the truth. He was nervous about school tomorrow, but the other half – maybe more than half – of the truth was that he just didn’t want to do it. It didn’t matter much to Scotty if his room was a mess.
His mother’s face softened considerably. Her eye brows descended back down above her eyes, instead of halfway up her forehead and the down turned corners of her mouth adjusted slightly from a mad frown to a sympathetic, worried look. “That’s okay, Scotty,” she said as she exhaled in a sigh. She patted the top of his head to emphasize each word, “I – still – want – your – room –cleaned.”
She turned and left, shutting his door behind her. Right on mom, Scotty thought, you’re the coolest.
He did get off his bed and made a halfhearted attempt to clean his room. Then went downstairs to get the phone and call Jack back.
“Yeah, hi. Is Jack there?” Scotty waited a moment and then Jack picked up.
“Okay, mom, I got it. You can hang up now!” Jack yelled.
“Easy, dude. I’m standing right here, man,” Scotty shifted the phone to his other ear. “Anyway, what’s up man?”
“Ummm. Oh yeah, I gotta tell you. I thought about you first you know. You know how you go on and on talk-” Jack was excited. He was talking faster than Scotty could keep up.
“Slow down, man. What are you talking about?”
Scotty could hear Jack breathing, getting his thoughts together and stop rambling. “Okay, okay, there’s this new girl moved in down the road. She’s really cute. I don’t usually say that about girls, you know I don’t get why you think they’re so great, but this one’s really cute.”
“What’s her name?” Scotty’s interests were peaked.
“I don’t know man. But I thought you’d wanna know. You can ask her tomorrow.” Jack’s mother hollered in the background. “I gotta go man. See you tomorrow.”
“Later,” a smile spread across his lips, “Jacky.” Scotty hung the phone up just when Jack started to say, don’t call me that. Scotty wasn’t mean but he loved getting Jack like that. In fact Scotty got him like that every time they hung up. It was like a ritual, man.
Chuckling to himself, Scotty meandered back to his bedroom. Drifting to sleep with thoughts of this new girl, what she might look like, what kind of music she was into. He never took his headphones off and Nirvana made the soundtrack of his curiosities.
So many, so many girls. Scotty thought he’d be looking for one new girl at school. There were thousands, even the one’s he knew last year looked different. He wondered if they changed their names. Still beautiful, still, all the girls held with each of them, different amounts of the ‘pretty’. So many, so many girls.
Abruptly, his thoughts were interrupted. A very big guy sent him stumbling forward. “Get outta the way, freak!” the big guy shouted after Scotty’s awkward attempt to regain his footing. He did, Scotty did get his footing back, he didn’t fall, but a lot of good it did him. A circle of emptiness had formed around him, the empty space filled with laughter and insults. Scotty put his head down and thought as hard as he could about everything he’d like to say. See that was Scotty’s problem.
He wanted to say things to the bullies, he wanted to say things to Darrel and the teachers and the football players and – even being girls, god’s masterpiece – the cheerleaders, but he never could. He couldn’t endorse the violence and the bullying. He couldn’t become one of ‘them’. So he wanted to say things, but looked down at his sneakers instead and adjusted his book bag.
The laughter died down and the rest of the school kids went back to their routines. By now, Scotty made it to his locker but the combo lock gave him problems, as usual. On the third attempt he got it. But that was after he hauled off and punched his locker, the sound surprised him and he looked around all wide-eyed. There she was, and then the locker opened, other people found their lockers between them and she was gone. Who was that girl? Scotty thought.
Brrrriiinnnngggg!!!!!! The warning bell sounded and Scotty came back to himself. What was first period, again? Oh yeah, math. Great, he hated math and he was all over the place. The first day and he’d already been picked on and then spun right around the other way seeing that girl by his locker. Now he had to put up his lunch and find the math room and the warning bell had already rung.
He had just sat down – first row, right in front of the teacher’s desk – when the ‘beginning of class’ bell sounded. Math class droned by in the same sluggish manner that Scotty had grown used to in Junior High. So did second period. English, his third class of the day, one of his better classes, was his favorite class of the day. Not only was he good at it but he got to sit in the back of the room and she was there. That girl he saw by his locker. Who was that? But she sat across the room. He became extremely aware of what he was wearing and how he was sitting and where his hands were. He’d talked about girls for years with his buddies but he didn’t really know anything about them. For a brief second he was more scared than he’d ever been in his life.
She didn’t notice him. At the same time, the day wasn’t the greatest already, so Scotty just got the homework and replayed songs in his head while he doodled on his notebook. Eternally sighing on the inside and trying to be totally nonchalant on the outside, Scotty rode the rest of the day out in much the same manner. He had gym as last period and got all his homework done.
When he got home his mother asked him the same thing she always did, “How was school honey?” And in turn, he replied,
“Fine.” And went up to his room and his headphones. High School wasn’t so much different than Junior High had been. Same kind of bullies same kind of confusion. Only, maybe more confusion, he couldn’t get that girl out of his head. Her name was Cindy; he remembered that from the roll call. What he didn’t fully understand was the chemical changes going on inside his mind and body. Whirlwinds of undefineable emotions were lurking right below the surface. He was so mad at that older kid for pushing him he could explode and at the same instant Cindy made him feel… well, he wasn’t sure, the only thing he could say about it was that it was quite the opposite form the way he felt thinking about that jerk in the hallway.
The next day came and went without incident. Other than to say that Robert, the bully, reduced his assaults to simply kicking the back of Scotty’s shoes every morning, but Scotty could take that. And then it was Friday. For Scotty, Friday went by way too fast and lasted much longer than almost everything else in his mind. Camping at the Old Jensen Place was one of those things. One of those things Scotty would remember forever. A lot happened for him on Friday.
Everything started out normal. The bus ride was solitary and silent – and half asleep. In the five minutes before class started when Scotty walked the halls with Jack, Robert, Scotty’s personal bully it seemed, started in on the heels of his shoes. Kicking them whenever they’d come off the ground in a step forward. Only, Scotty wasn’t in the mood. He never really was in mood to be treated like that, but he could tolerate it, most of the time. Today, the conversation between him and Jack ceased immediately – stopped for Scotty, Jack kept on talking, rambling about some new computer thing or what the News Hour had to say.
Maybe it was the way his jaw clenched when his heel was kicked sideways, or maybe it was the frustration he didn’t fully understand surrounding that beautiful girl (they were all beautiful in their own way, but this one…). Maybe Robert’s screwed up parents or whatever had done something to Robert to make his day a bad one; whatever it was Scotty slammed into the brick wall before he knew what happened. He lost his balance and fell/slumped against the wall, dragging his shoulder down the unpainted brick. The pain came from two sources simultaneously, his ankle and his shoulder sent flashing neon, Roman candle signals to his brain.
I’m hurt!
That bastard did it!!
Destroy him!!!
And Scotty was off the ground and his fist connected with Roberts nose in one movement. Robert’s nose exploded and like on Monday there was an empty space surrounding them. For a few seconds that Scotty wouldn’t clearly remember, they were alone in that hallway.
But Scotty was on the move and as much as he never would admit it, the reason he didn’t see clearly what happened in those few moments were the tears welling in his eyes. Now they ran down his cheeks. Not in big rivers and his chest didn’t hitch as if he were sobbing but he was a wreck. He found his first period classroom and took his seat. The lights were still off, that’s how he knew the ordeal hadn’t been a long one. He folded his arms on his desk and put his head down in them. He’d become one of them, one of the monsters, at the same time he’d stood up for himself. The girls he didn’t see any beauty in would see beauty in this. The guys he thought were jerks, others like Robert, would think he would become one of their numbers. And what would Cindy think?
The warning bell rang and then the final bell. Shuffling feet and dropping book bags brought him out of his own thoughts enough to make it through Math class, and then Biology, and then he got to English.
They didn’t have assigned seats in English and again Scotty was the first one there. He didn’t spend time exchanging pleasantries with anyone, not even Jack or Tony or Darrel. He got the back row, all the way to the outside, by the window.
It wasn’t long before the other kids started filing in. Scotty was writing in his notebook and oblivious of what was going on around him. He didn’t even hear the teacher start up. His favorite class and he just couldn’t get rid of the slimy feel from being violent, from hurting someone. No matter how deserved. Then his chair jumped underneath him. And again.
Scotty pulled his head out of his notebook and looked straight over to his left. Straight into the biggest green eyes he’d ever seen. Straight into Cindy’s eyes. And again a moment, maybe two, just maybe, stretched into a memory forever. A priceless, intangible treasure that couldn’t be bought or sold, or forgotten.
“Hey,” that was all she said. Hey, was all she needed to say. Scotty fell instantly in love.
“Hey,” he said in his best… whatever: tough guy, cool guy, smart guy, ‘Scotty’ guy, voice he could.
Cindy chuckled slightly in her throat and looked down at her paper. “So what about that guy, he had it coming,” she looked back at him. He was still looking at her, he didn’t know for sure if he could stop. It’s really a wonder that he heard her over his heart drumming in his ears.
“Yeah, well…” Scotty didn’t know what to say, he’d never been this confused in his life.
“Here,” she slipped him a folded piece of paper. Of course, he didn’t open it until later when she wasn’t around. Turns out it happened to be one of Scotty’s best days. She had written her phone number on it. Below the number a short note was scrawled: call me before 5! And the dot on the exclamation point was roughly shaped like a heart. Now he definitely didn’t hear anything. His heart was practically beating its way out of his chest; the drumming reverberated through his body to a deafening point.
The rest of the school day went as usual, only now Scotty had forgotten all about the ‘fight’, if you could call it that. All Scotty could think of was the girl. Cindy. And the number. He got home at four and made himself wait until four-thirty to call her. A shaky hand dialed the numbers.
“Yes, hello. Um, is uh, Cindy, um, there?” oh he tried, he tried so hard to pull of the polite young man, calling for this woman’s daughter. A daughter who was perhaps an angel in the flesh, or a goddess.
“Hold on, sweetheart,” presumably Cindy’s mother said. Scotty’s cheeks grew hot at the word ‘sweetheart’. He felt even more like a little kid, silly.
“Hello,” such a musical voice she had, so wonderful, just that one word. Everything she said was like music. Everything was going to be okay as long as he could hear that voice or see those eyes, natures perfect green.
“Hu-hey, how’s it going?” oh, god, he was wrecking big time and he knew it.
“Good. What are you doing later?” she asked so casually.
Scotty was speechless. What was he doing later? What the hell, nothing, he wasn’t doing anything later. He tried to say that and some kind of guttural sound came out that, apparently, Cindy deciphered into ‘nothing’.
“Hey, that’s awesome. I’m going to a party with my sister. She’s in college and she said she’d take me to a party cuz we’re like in high school now. Everyone seems so immature, but you, Scotty, you see the same thing I do.”
Good lord, Scotty didn’t know how to handle this, he just didn’t know what to say. “I… I don’t drive…” totally against his wishes that last word went up so it sounded more like a question.
“Oh, no it’s cool Scotty, my sister’s going to take us… um… I mean, me with her. I think your house is on the way,” her voice changed from lighthearted to unsure. Of course he wanted to go. Maybe she realized how forward she was being. More likely she realized she was talking to ‘Scotty’.
“Us,” he reached, he put all of his bravery into that one word. “For sure. When?”
“Uhhh…” now she wasn’t so sure – Scotty smiled on the inside for that, not to be mean, it was nice to have someone to share this uncomfortable moment with. “Yeah, for sure. How about thirty minutes?” it wasn’t a mistake on her part, she was really asking. That was cool as hell.
“That’d be great,” he said, and then the coolest thing he could think of. “Later.” He hung up the phone in a hurry.
SHE WAS GOING TO BE HERE AT FIVE! Scotty’s mind roared at him. FIVE O’CLOCK!
He rushed upstairs to find his mother. She was at the vanity in the bedroom. Such a perfectly arranged vanity. He told her he was going out with a girl he met at school and his mom told him that was great. Told him that High School wouldn’t be so bad. Well, High School sucked, but going out with Cindy was great.
As soon as her sister’s car pulled up Scotty thought again about what he was wearing and how he was standing. He’d never been this nervous in his life. Cindy reached across the back seat and opened the passenger side door for him. “Come on, she hollered.”
He was thrilled hear the System of a Down coming out of the car’s speakers. The guy in the front seat wore a studded leather jacket and close-cropped Mohawk. They drove for what seemed like forever and then some weird kind of cigarette was being handed to him from the front seat. He’d tried smoking before and his mom’s cigarettes made him sick. But this cigarette smelled sweet, this cigarette smelled different.
Cindy grabbed it and Scotty was glad it was nighttime, his cheeks started warming up. Smoked on it, but she didn’t do it like his mom did. The end glowed brighter and died out, brighter and dimmer. Then, Cindy acted like she was holding her breath and an orange ball was floating in front of Scotty.
At the same time he reached for it Cindy let out a bellowing cough. Scotty was worried but he was filling his lungs from this odd cigarette and started coughing, no choking. Scotty was choking and the interior of the car got bigger and they – all three of them – were laughing. And then he was coughing and then he was laughing. Scotty couldn’t tell his friends that much about the rest of that night. The beer and pot kind of took over for his brain there for a while. He could tell them, everyone from the rooftops, even, about Cindy’s fingers entwining with his and the those beautiful green eyes. The girl that lived down the road from Jack – Jacky, ha ha – had the most beautiful green eyes. Cindy, he’d never known a Cindy before and he wanted to laugh but he didn’t want to be stupid around her. And that was funny, too.
Her eyes weren’t funny, no; her eyes were green, beautiful. Scotty loved those eyes. And the grin he wore, try as he might to look tough, felt just right. Her hand in his felt even better.
No comments:
Post a Comment