Derek and Emerson prowl around, rummaging through the cupboards, pulling out jam, peanut butter, macaroni, Oreos. They fry all the bacon and eggs, stirring in ingredients — olives, onions, cocktail franks — apparently at random. When it’s done, the boys half stand, half sit on tall stools pulled up to the counter; Felice sits across from them, knobby elbows on the counter, and watches them eat hunched over their plates, a bar of light cutting across the kitchen from a blue-veined window in the back wall. Felice nibbles a strip or two of Emerson’s bacon — refusing the eggy mess — imagining, with some pleasure, her mother’s revulsion at such food. Her mother didn’t entirely approve of food anyway. Felice thinks of her poking at a steak with her fork, saying, It’s sodden. The food is gone within minutes. Emerson makes an attempt at stacking dishes, but Derek waves them down. “Leave it, the maid’s around somewhere.”
He leads them out a back door to the polished slate patio and a racked assortment of iron weights, dumbbells, and two padded benches. The boys peel off their T-shirts: both of them are big and broad, but Emerson’s back and biceps are defined, anatomical. Derek points a remote, turning up the volume on a portable player; music pulses, drumming the air, a Teutonic frenzy. “Rammstein!” he crows at Felice. “ ‘Du hast,’ ha!”
Felice slides into a painted Adirondack chair under an umbrella and watches the guys clatter on and off the benches. They laugh and clap: Derek shouts, “You got it! You got it!” slapping his hands together while Emerson swings the weights up and into his chest. Felice is used to boys showing off for her, but she notices a sort of concentrated seriousness of purpose in Emerson, as if he is focused on a point buried inside his own body. Derek drops the weights, clanking loudly, groaning while he lifts the bar, then hectoring Emerson, standing over him at the head of the weight bench, arms outstretched, ready to catch the bar. Emerson lifts in near-total silence, his neck flattening and his veins bulging in dark seams beneath the surface of his skin. Derek’s sets taper off but Emerson keeps going, sliding one, then another set of thick plates on the bar. Mesmerized by the rivulets of sweat trickling along his brow and neck, Felice loses track of the amount of weight Emerson is lifting. The sun climbs to a steeper, hotter angle, approaching 90 degrees — but Emerson continues with single-mindedness.
As she watches Emerson in his silent exertions her thoughts feel sharp, her emotions honed on a hard edge. Felice hasn’t seen this sort of focus since the days when her friend Hilda flew down parking ramps on her board, hair whipping, her arms aloft, pulling out nose grinds, rails, flips, drop-and-grabs. Emerson in movement is like a new sort of beauty: she’d always thought of beauty as a kind of passivity. Felice has never pursued anything so passionately herself. She grew up taking admiration for granted — eyes all turning toward her — soaking the air with a goldenrod-colored aura. She didn’t have to do a thing to be loved: by her family, their friends, the teachers at school.
Derek dutifully assists Emerson, jotting down weights and reps, racking his weights, helping him to chalk his hands. Emerson switches from barbell to dumbbell, through overhand and underhand grips, shoulders, biceps, triceps, deltoids, pectorals. He’s flushed all over, glowing, panting, hair glittering, swigging from a pitcher of water Felice refills from the tall blue bottles in the refrigerator. Felice watches the whole session — two continuous hours of methodical training — her long, thin legs drawn up beside her on the chair, her black hair flared across her back. Emerson finishes his workout by gulping the water straight from the pitcher, then dumping the rest over his head. He waves at Felice as if too tired for words, then wanders to the outdoor shower around the side of the house. His sweat-soaked shorts flap over the edge of the wood stall. She hears the hiss of the water and wonders what he would do if she joined him. Then Derek appears. He sprawls in the chair across from hers, dragging an arm across his forehead. “Awesome, right?”
“I guess.”
“You hungry yet? You want something?” he asks. “Or you one of those air fern-type girls?”
Felice shakes her head, eyeing the shower mist.
Derek grins at her, shoulders jutting, straight arms, palms flat against the seat of his chair. “I’ve seen you around the Green House, right?”
Felice looks away, lifting her chin. “If I had a house like this, I’d be home all the time.”
He bobs his head. “Hey, you can come over, like, whenever.”
“What does your dad do?”
“He’s a psycho-the-rapist.” Derek’s smile reveals a crooked incisor and bicuspid. “He talks, talks, talks, then he gives his clients nice painkillers. He says it’s ‘therapeutic.’ ” He makes air quotes with his fingers. “We’re all best friends with the shipping department at Merck around here.”
Felice glances over his shoulder at the shower again; frilly green shrubs and bougainvillea surround the yard. A single palm branch arches above a white rope hammock almost hidden among the trees.
“You can even live here, if you want. For real.”
She crosses her arms, the long bones pressing against each other. “We’ve got another plan.”
“Yeah? What?”
She can’t help herself: she wants to tell someone. “We’re going to Oregon. Maybe.”
Derek doesn’t say anything for a moment, studying her, his eyes still and small. “Oh yeah? Since when?”
“He’s going to train at a special gym out there. I’m going with him.” She thinks: I’m going to do it.
“Right.”
“We are.”
“Oregon? Do you have any idea how far that is?” A leaf shadow bobs over his face. “How’re you gonna go?”
“We’ve got some money.”
“Yeah? How much?”
“Plenty.” She hesitates. “Almost a grand.”
He sagely gazes over her head, evidently digesting this information. There are premature lines running from the sides of his nose to the corners of his mouth, a divot between his eyebrows. He’s no older than Emerson, but his skin looks weathered as sandstone. Finally he says, slowly, judiciously. “That’s enough to get you there — maybe — depending — but not much else.”
Felice shrugs, sensing he’s right — a band of anxiety encircling her ribs — because now she feels invested in the plan — but she won’t let him see this. “We’ve got other… sources.”
“Uh-huh. Like?”
She examines the cuticle of her index finger. “My brother Stanley maybe. He owns Freshly Grown.”
“Pff! No he doesn’t.”
She lifts her chin and peers at him through lowered lids.
Derek’s grin disappears. “No fucking way. The store? In Homestead? Are you shitting me? My dad is, like, obsessed with that place. We get all our protein mixes and eggs and stuff like that there. No, really, I gotta admit, that place rules.” He angles his face to one side. “You just mean he runs the place, right? He doesn’t actually own it?”
“He owns it all right. Came up with it, started the whole thing out of nothing,” she boasts.
Derek’s face softens with a pleased wonderment. “Wow,” he says. “That is too cool. I gotta say, I love that place. Do you hang out there a lot?”