“Okay, so you go up the stairs and then you make a—” He holds his hands up, trying to figure out which is right and which is left. “I’ll show you.” He grabs my hand, threading his sweaty fingers between mine, and leads me across the living room. We walk up creaky, crooked steps. It’s the second door on the left.
I close the door behind me and have to push hard to get it to stay shut. There are porno mags on the back of the toilet and a hair clog in the bathtub drain so big it looks like it could grow legs and run away if it wanted to. I pee hovering as far above the seat as possible and wash my hands with hot, hot water. I wish I could run every part of me under hot water. I’m still not thawed.
When I open the door, the room across the hall is open. There’s a black light and someone painted a drippy skull and crossbones on the wall with Tide so it glows. Lion Boy sits on the bed strumming an electric guitar that isn’t plugged in. Thin metal chords sound vaguely like November Rain.
“You play?” I say.
“Yeah, you?”
“A little.”
He’s wearing a shirt now. A white one with a face on it that looks kind of like one of the statues from Easter Island. The stupid Seuss hat is on the bed next to him. He hands the guitar over. “Play something,” he says. Suddenly he doesn’t seem like such a lame-ass bonehead. He plugs the guitar into a small amp and turns the volume down.
I’ve never played an electric. The strings are thicker and feel like they will leave my fingers bruised, but I don’t mind. I play the song I wrote about my dad, the angry one, and I almost cry, but I don’t. I bite my cheek and strum hard like it’s just part of the song, until I can pull it together and sing again. I don’t care that Lion Boy is watching; it feels like being me to play this guitar. I finish the song and he asks me to play another one. I play Lay Lady Lay.
“Did you write that too?” he asks when I’m done.
“Dylan did,” I say, laughing.
“Does he go here?”
“He’s in our lit class,” I say, because I don’t know how to explain Dylan to someone who doesn’t know.
Lion Boy slides his fingers under my hair and kisses me. I don’t even know his name. His mouth tastes like sour beer and something burnt, but it’s actually kind of nice to be kissed. He grabs the guitar from me and lays it in its case. We lie on his bed and kiss for ages. It takes him forever to work through all my layers of clothes. It’s hot and sweaty and my skin sticks to his. He falls asleep before we really do anything. We’re just lying there in our underwear groping each other and he drifts off, lips still pursed, arm over my waist. He snores a little, wrinkles his nose a few times. He looks so peaceful. I don’t think I’ve ever felt that peaceful in my life.
When I’m sure he’s not going to wake up, I lift his arm and sneak out from under it. I throw clothes on and sprint to the bathroom. On the way, I peek down the stairs. Everyone is gone except for the girl in the belly shirt and her boyfriend. He’s holding his hand to his forehead. She’s crying hard.
I decide I can probably get away with a shower. I wad up like twenty sheets of toilet paper to remove the hair from the drain. I make the water so hot that my skin feels like it’ll burn up and peel off. Use someone’s Head & Shoulders and wash the bar of soap hard before sudsing up my body. When I’m done, I realize that touching any towel in the bathroom will interfere with my clean state, so I use one of my flannel shirts instead. I poke around and find a hair dryer under the sink. Use my fingers as a brush and do the best I can to untangle all the knots and blow my hair out straight, so it won’t look messy in the morning.
Lion Boy is snoring away when I get back to his room. I layer on the rest of my clothes, leaving my wet shirt hanging over his desk chair. There are two rolls of quarters on his desk. I take one, telling myself it’s fair payment for the shirt. His guitar is just lying there in its case, shiny and clean. Can’t be more than a few years old, so there’s no great history. But you can’t do that. You don’t take someone else’s guitar. It’s like a code.
When I walk downstairs, the fighting couple is gone. I dig my screwdriver out of my bag so I won’t have to fumble for it in the dark, snake it up my shirtsleeve, and slip out the door.
— Chapter 11 —
The screws on the license plate are rusty. I can’t see well, but I smell the breakdown of old metal and feel rust in the way they turn. It makes me think of pulling nails from scrap wood with my dad, back when he had illusions of building us that house. He’d yell at me if I bent the nails too much so they broke before they came out of the boards. And I remember that he didn’t yell at me when I stepped on one. It went right through the sole of my old ripped sneakers into the middle of my foot. It hurt so bad I stopped feeling the pain. I tried to hide it, because I thought he’d be mad and scream something like Damn it, Ape! We’ll never get this house finished if you don’t stop fucking around! But the blood soaked through my sneaker and it was impossible to hide. My dad turned white when he noticed. We couldn’t get my shoe off because the nail was still stuck in my foot and neither of us could stomach the pull, so he scooped me up in his arms and we went to the ER.