“Crazy party,” Paul Ricker said to me the next day. We were in the locker room after practice.
“Yeah,” I said. “It was all pretty weird.”
“I don’t remember anything that happened after nine, but I heard about the Ouija thing. Don’t worry about it. One of those things told my sister that she was Jesus.”
“You don’t remember anything?”
“Well, a couple flashes here and there. I remember singing a lot. And a little bit of the poker game. And looking for my pants. That’s about it. Except. .” He leaned down so his mouth was close to my ear. “I think I screwed somebody. Don’t remember any of it — dammit! — but I woke up the next morning with this feeling, and when I felt down there it was just like after. . you know. How’s that for fucked-up?”
“That’s definitely fucked-up,” I said.
“I have a list of candidates, but how do you figure something like that out? You can’t just walk up and say, ‘Hey, Cindy, did we screw last night?’ Except I’m sure it wasn’t her. Anyway, I’ll figure it out.” He left his practice uniform in a pile at his feet and walked off to take a shower.
“Good luck with that,” I said, and waited until he was done with his shower before I took mine.
Cindy found me again while I was waiting for the bus. There was barely enough light to read by but I was sitting in the grass with my history book and for once I could pay attention to what I was reading, so I didn’t notice when she came up, and only saw her when she sat down next to me.
“Hey,” she said. When I didn’t look up she pushed my shoulder. “Hey!”
“What?” I said.
“What?” she said, imitating my voice but making me sound like a retard. “Thanks for coming to my party last night. Too bad you ruined it by being the Antichrist.”
“Whatever,” I said. After the Ouija game I had left, though Cindy asked me to stay, and made a big joke of the whole thing by taking the planchette and pointing it at people, and saying things like “You’re Ronald Reagan” and “You’re the pope” and “You’re a double-penised huffalump!” But I felt like it had been a mistake to come. I went home and felt that way for the rest of the night. “I usually don’t go to parties. Something stupid always happens to me at parties.”
“Not that it’s bad. I wouldn’t mind meeting the Antichrist. I have a lot of questions for him, because he’s somebody in the know. Right?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, think about it. He’d know more than us, right?”
“I guess.”
“I used to be into all that shit, back in junior high. Black candles and secret piercings and praying in your fireplace and being, like, Satan is my master! I had black hair back then and hung out with Susie Freep. Did you ever know her? She goes to Trinity now.”
“No,” I said, still trying to read.
“Good thing. She was a bad influence. My mom practically had to send me to a deprogramming camp to get me away from her. She was like our high priestess or something. She gave it up, though. Now she’s in Young Life. How about that?”
“Yeah,” I said. Then she was quiet for a moment, but it was too dark to read. The sky was still bright pale blue, but shadows had come over the grass and I couldn’t make out letters anymore. Cindy leaned over and put her head on my shoulder. “It’s going to be a beautiful evening,” she said.
“I like the fall,” I said, not moving.
“It’s my favorite season,” she said. “Still, even with September and shit. Hey, my mom and my sister are going to be gone until Friday. You should come over and watch a movie or something.” She was quiet a little while longer, and I was wondering where the bus could be, when she said, “Last night I dreamed I was having sex with my father.”
“Everybody has that dream,” I said, which is true, if a therapist saying so makes a thing true. Cindy took her head off my shoulder and when I turned to look at her she threw water in my face.
“Jesus,” I said. “What was that for?”
“Does it burn?” she asked. “Does it hurt you?” And even though the water was in a regular squirt bottle I knew it was holy water.
“Jesus Fucking Christ,” I said, grabbing it away from her and taking a long swig of it. It was very warm, and I thought as I drank it that she must have been keeping it close to her body all day. I threw the bottle down. “How’s that?” I asked. “Now will you lay off? Now will you just leave me alone? I don’t have any answers for you. I don’t know shit.” And I picked up my bag and my stick and walked off.
“It was just a joke!” she called out. “Come on. I’ll give you a ride!” But I kept walking all the way home.
I was mad all through dinner, so I barely talked at all when my mother asked me questions about the party. She said she was sorry if it wasn’t very fun, and told me I shouldn’t judge all parties by one party, and that to give up on all on account of the one would be like giving up on people just because my father was a boor and a cheat. Then she told me stories about parties she had gone to in high school, and about the prom, when she’d nearly died in a boating accident, except that the natural buoyancy of her dress saved her. I had heard the stories before. I hardly ate anything before my stomach started to hurt. I kept thinking it was being so mad that gave me the stomachache.
I was nauseated later, but didn’t throw up until close to midnight, just after I fell asleep. I woke up to it — a horrible burning stab in my belly, and then a feeling of fullness, and then I was throwing up right in my bed. When I turned on my light I saw that it was bright blood that had come up. It covered my sheets and my pillow, so I changed them, thinking that was all that was going to happen, and even feeling a little better, but then the burning came again, and though I made it to the toilet this time, I had barely finished throwing up before I had to sit down and shoot black blood out of my ass. I sat there for a little while, shaking and cold, before I got dressed and knocked on my mother’s door.
“Mom,” I said, “I need to go to the hospital.” I knocked again, and called out again. The dog barked, but there wasn’t any other answer. So I drove myself.
“I hate social workers,” Cindy said. She came to visit me in the hospital, though I didn’t want any visitors. She showed up with my homework and a bunch of homemade cards, and I had thought that the art teacher had made everybody draw a card for me, like we used to do in grade school when a kid got sick or their dog died, but when she gave them to me I saw that she had made them all. “One of them kept coming to our house. This Red Cross lady. I don’t even know how she found us, but she kept showing up and my mom kept letting her in, and they would sit around having tea, and then she would talk to each of us in private. Like my mother didn’t already have a five-hundred-dollar-an-hour therapist before my dad died. ‘It’s hard to lose your father,’ she told me, ‘but it’s even harder when it’s a national tragedy and not just a personal one.’ I told her that was very wise, but I said it like, wise, you know? Like you could tell by the tone of my voice how I thought she was clueless. But she thought I was complimenting her and she told me I was very mature for my age. So when she came again, when we were alone, I leaned over to her, and guess what I said?”
I was staring out the window at the perfect fall day. I wanted to be at practice.