Being the winter dance, and the last big activity before the long break, the cafeteria was decorated to the point of gaudiness, with construction paper Santas dangling on strings alongside gold and silver garlands, and every table and flat surface dusted with a layer of twinkling glitter. Me and Anthony made our rounds separately, saying hi to the various boys and girls from our grades, pretending it was a pleasant surprise to find them there of all places. Eventually, though, we settled into an empty table at the back, watching from a distance as Beth swayed from side to side with her arms around the broad shoulders of her new beau, Eric, a beefy-looking junior who’d driven her to the dance in his own secondhand car.
You let me know when you’re ready to go, Anthony said. I can leave any time.
You’re not going to ask one of the girls to dance?
Anthony sneered. There’s only two girls here who I’m sure know my name, he said, and I’m related to both of em.
You got to try and put yourself out there, I said. If that’s what you really want.
Maybe I do, maybe I don’t. But what does it matter? Even if I found a girl who liked me, she’d run off scared as soon as she learned about our family. And then the whole school would know. You want that?
No. But how are you going to find someone if you never trust anybody?
Fuck that. Trust is for our mothers. And look what it did for them.
Anthony snatched the plastic cup off the table and drank the rest of his punch in one long chug. Times like this, it was no wonder he still hadn’t made any friends at school. But neither had I for that matter. Not really, anyway. There were two boys in my grade who I was on friendly terms with, one in my English class and one in Ag Science. We shared sarcastic comments when the teacher’s back was turned, but that was it. Where they went at lunchtime, or what deeper thoughts lay behind their snarky expressions, I had no idea. All I cared from day to day was that they were cool enough not to drag me down, but so goofy that they never stirred up any strange feelings. The more determined I became about my future spinsterhood, the less willing I was to risk spending time alone with boys. And since boys were all the girls in my grade ever talked about, I spent most of my time out of class reading library books and hanging out behind the bleachers with Anthony, around whom I had built a wall of sexlessness appropriate for male relatives.
We haven’t really talked about it, I said. But do you think you’ll stay in school long enough to graduate?
I don’t know, he said. If it wasn’t for my mom, I might’ve dropped out already.
What would you do instead?
Get the hell out of the valley for starters.
All right. Then what?
Not sure. Join the Army, maybe. I already know how to shoot.
I pushed aside the plate of sugar cookies and leaned forward with my arm on the table. You’re a smart guy, I said. You’d be wasting your time in the Army.
He glared at me. I suppose your grampa was wasting his time in the service too, he said.
That was different. The California Army’s nothing but a bunch of thugs. All they do is camp out along the borders and chase down illegals. You might as well join the skinheads.
It’s not all like that, he said. I might get stationed somewhere in Sierra. They have snow up in the mountains. You ever seen snow?
No.
Me neither. But I want to. He reached for one of the cotton balls glued to the paper tablecloth. He pulled some of the fibers loose and tossed them above his head. We watched them float down to the floor and settle between our feet. Real snow’s not like that, he said. Real snow melts in your hand if you try to catch it. Our old foreman told me all about it.
The same one who taught you how to shoot?
That’s right.
Sounds like a cool dude. What happened to him?
What do you mean?
Why didn’t he come over to the new place? Like Jennifer’s guy.
Anthony spun the empty cup on the table with his index finger. Even as he was looking at me, he seemed to be staring straight through my eyes and into some far off and mysterious void. He quit before dad died, he said. Moved on to another job up north.
Bummer, I said, and Anthony nodded his agreement. You ever think about staying on at the farm? After you’re done with school?
He glared again. You saying I couldn’t do any better than this?
You know that’s not what I meant. It’s just, you’ve got a big family here now, and we’d miss you if you were gone. I’d miss you. Who am I going to hang out with if not you?
I see, he said, and he flashed me a cocky smile. Over the past few months, he had gotten really good at showing me the amused yet condescending affection of a sister’s older brother. Sounds like you’re the one who needs to put yourself out there.
Oh, right, I said. That’s just what I need. Some pimple-faced dude begging me for handjobs all the time. Thanks but no thanks.
Anthony laughed. I guess that’s what I should want to hear from my kid sister, he said. Just maybe not put that way exactly.
Tough shit. You want subtlety, try Jessie or Gracie.
He stood and pulled the wrinkled ends of his shirt out from underneath his waistband. Fuck this, he said. Let’s get some Chinese. There’s a place on the way home that’s open late.
I looked over my shoulder and surveyed the dance floor, but it appeared that Beth and Eric had already left. Okay, I said. You buying?
I waited for one of Anthony’s standard foul-mouthed quips, but for once he didn’t seem in the mood to play along. He looked down at me with solemn eyes, already holding the car keys. Why not, he said. This might be the closest either one of us ever gets to going out on a date.
We reached the front entrance right as the music was changing from a slow rock ballad to some kind of pop country track that would’ve been harder to ignore. The school, the music, and the other sounds of the dance all receded behind the taillights as Anthony drove us back into that dark and seemingly limitless countryside that separated our lives’ points of interest like the sea separated the ports in this old sailing novel I’d checked out of the library a while back. This time of year, even the orchards were dormant, the leafless trees sticking out from the ground like skeletal hands grasping for the sky. Sometimes it was oppressive, having to pass through so much dead space each day on the way to school, but just then it brought me an odd feeling of relief, sitting quiet in the car with the radio turned off, and only the lights of the dashboard to disturb the comforting darkness.
You still think about Elliot much?
Anthony kept his eyes fixed on the road ahead. I try not to, he said. But it’s hard with his wives and kids around me all the time.
Is that why you want to leave the valley so bad?
It’s part of it.
I gave him time to say something else, and when he didn’t I turned to face the window, to watch the circle of moisture on the glass expand and shrink with each warm breath I took.
We arrived home a little after nine and set up shop in the living room with our cartons of sweet and sour chicken and a crime show on TV. Those days the networks in L.A. were all about cop dramas, mid-budget serials about grizzled country lawmen busting meth cooks and smugglers in shanty towns along the Mexican border. The only one that was any good, that didn’t have the same stale formula each time, was called Peacemaker: San Bernardino County. It was about a county sheriff in the days following disbandment, when the roads were teeming with the homeless and unemployed and most small towns could only afford to offer the most basic police services. In each episode, the hero sheriff, Dick Moseby, had to reckon with some new tragedy that had befallen the townspeople, usually a kidnapped child or drug deal gone wrong, and hunt down the villains responsible. What set it apart from other shows was that Moseby changed a little bit after each episode, so that if you followed the series close you could see him transform from a clean-cut, by-the-book lawman into a guy struggling to keep his family together without turning into a villain himself. Me and Anthony watched the show regularly, and were afraid it wouldn’t get picked up for another season.