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Some people when they were young shot deer, and foxes. Faulkner shot a bear, Hemingway shot lions and a lot of things. Gangs shoot people for initiation.
We shot animals, and people. But they were all small animals, and we didn’t kill anyone.
Emily
He was so cute. Younger, but I didn’t care. He was a change from the assholes in my grade like Adam and Roberto who just wanted to fuck and do it in the ass. Or come on my face like a porn, and tell their friends about it. And with them I was always the last call.
The first time I saw Ryan was over at the Oldses’ house, John and Steve’s. Everyone would go over there all the time. John with all the sophomores and Steve with all the juniors. It was the hangout house. I was always there because Maddy Patten was going out with Steve.
Ryan was there one day. It was after school. He was in John’s room, sitting on the edge of the bed playing a video game. He had a black Yankees hat on and he looked like an angel. I could tell that he was different, sweeter than the others. He had pain in his eyes.
I stared at him without him knowing. Or maybe he knew. I came up with all these fantasies just watching him play the video game. I didn’t talk to him then.
Two weeks later, there was a party at the Patten twins’ house. They’re my best friends, Elsie and Maddy. The boys called Elsie “Last-Call” because her name sounded like “L-C.” Maddy was still with Steve.
At the party, we three were playing I Never with a bunch of other girls. Someone says, “I never… ,” and if you’ve done the thing that they say, like cheated on a boyfriend, you have to drink.
“I never had sex at school.”
I drank.
“I never had sex with two guys at once.”
I drank.
“I never had sex with three guys at once.”
When it was my turn to say “I never,” I had a hard time thinking of things to say. I said, “I’ve never been in love.” So stupid.
A couple of the girls drank. Elsie didn’t drink, but Maddy did, and I thought she was stupid because that meant that she loved Steve. But then I thought that maybe it wasn’t so stupid. There was something inside me that was saying that I was in love with Ryan, even though I had never talked to him. I had this feeling all of a sudden like I wanted to take care of him.
Then it was funny because he walked in. He was with John Olds and some sophomores. I stopped playing I Never and I went over to him.
“Hey,” I said.
His friends gave him looks. He acted shy. He was like a deer.
“Hey,” he said.
“You wanna play quarters?”
He and his friends and me and some junior girls played. Pork, and Adi, and the Pattens, and me versus the sophomore boys.
We were playing on the island in the kitchen. I’m very good at quarters. They were very bad, and we killed them. After a while they all looked sick. We played eight rounds and they got it in once. On the eighth round, Ryan’s friends each took a tiny sip because they couldn’t take anymore. They left the whole pitcher for Ryan.
“You gotta drink it all, shithead,” said Pork. She was a porker. All the guys called her Pork because she had big tits and a big ass, she was loud and rude, and her hair was big and brown and curly like a beast’s. I told her to shut up. Ryan took the pitcher in both hands and drank. It started spilling around the sides of his mouth and onto his shirt. He got wet and then wetter. He couldn’t finish it all.
“Finish the backwash,” said Pork.
“Shut up, Pork,” I said.
I never called her Pork to her face. Elsie laughed.
“Fuck you, bitch, go ahead and play with your little kids,” said Pork, and she left the kitchen. I laughed. Elsie said she was going to piss, and the other girls left. Ryan was trying to take big breaths, but he was doing it very slowly. He was swaying.
“Do you need some air?” I asked.
I took him to the backyard, but a bunch of the junior and senior guys were out there. We went around to the side of the house, to a little side yard. Above, there was a trellis with jacaranda flowers; underneath it was dark and cool. He put one hand on the fence and hung his head. He breathed slowly. Then he crouched low to the ground. He threw up against the fence. I laughed a little, but only to myself. I put my hand gently on the top of his head. After he was done I helped him up under his arm. We stood for a minute in the cool dark. He was hunched with his hands on his thighs. We said nothing, but it was like we were talking. Finally, I asked if he wanted some water.
We were back in the kitchen, and I got a glass from the cupboard and took some water from the sink. He took a sip. Then he took another one. Through the kitchen door I could see Pork talking to Adam and some other guys. They were looking toward me and laughing. Adam made a gesture and smiled. I turned back to Ryan.
“You feel better?”
He nodded. He did look a little better. He finished the water. I took the glass and put it in the sink.
“Follow me,” I said. I took his hand. We went upstairs. I led him down the hall to the twins’ parents’ room. He didn’t say anything. I told him to sit on the side of the bed. I told him to lie back and he did. His feet were on the floor. Then I undid his pants. I pulled his boxer shorts down to his feet. I did it for a while. He made sounds.
I stopped. I said, “Do you want to do anything else?”
He said, “No.”
After it was finished, he pulled his pants back up. I sat on the side of the bed next to him. I asked him if he liked it.
We went downstairs. At the bottom of the stairs I stopped and he kept walking. The party was dying, but there were still people there. These people seemed slow and drunk and smiley and evil. I went into the kitchen to get some water. I went to the sink and picked up the glass Ryan used before. There was some water in it and someone had put a cigarette in it. I cupped my hands and drank right from the faucet. I turned off the water and walked out toward the living room, where I had seen Adam before. Now Ryan was sitting on the couch with Adam. Adam was laughing. Ryan was laughing too in a shy way.
When Stacey died no one knew what happened. It was after the homecoming dance. Of course Stacey was sophomore princess. She was that kind of person. A cheerleader. She was going out with Casey McDonald, and it was weird because it seemed like Casey really liked her. They were going out for six months. I saw them over the summer, at Steve Olds’s, and one time at Lake Tahoe during the Fourth of July. It was crazy. We were at a huge party. One thousand people at one house. Tosh Masuda was there with Adam and all those guys. Tosh had a gun, and when the fireworks started going off, Tosh started shooting the gun in the air. It was really stupid; the bullets could have fallen back and hit someone.
And Casey and Stacey were there, and it was so weird because Casey actually looked happy. Before Stacey, he hated girls. He and Byron would just fuck them and treat them like shit. He was in Roberto’s club, the Dirty Dozen. They all competed to see who could fuck the most girls. Sometimes they videotaped it.
But there he was, with Stacey, watching the fireworks. Both were holding red keg cups, and they had big smiles on their faces, even when Tosh was shooting the gun. And I had never had that. I had never had a boyfriend. I had never watched fireworks with anyone.
Homecoming was just like every other dance, it wasn’t a big event. We weren’t in Texas. The twins and I got pretty drunk and we stood in the corner of the gym and snuck apricot schnapps from my purse and laughed at the idiots. I didn’t see Ryan. I wanted to call him but I didn’t have his number. I saw John Olds and I asked him where Ryan was. He said that Ryan was out of town for the weekend.