“Uh uh.”
“Volunteer for a medical trial?”
“No.”
“Get a tattoo of a screaming eagle across your butt?” I hear him snort.
“Adam!”
“Did you eat at that truck stop by the interstate? Because that would be stupid. Those hot dogs look like they’ve been there since—”
I open the bathroom door.
He stares at me for a second, like he hasn’t quite picked out what’s different.
“Oh,” he says, touching the side of my face. “It’s not stupid. It’s really hot.”
Making love on the bathroom floor is actually a lot sexier than it sounds.
— Chapter 26 —
Adam has finals to grade before winter break, so I’m home by myself a lot after work. It’s funny, I spent so much time alone in the motorhome and I was used to it, but now, when I’m alone in Adam’s apartment, I can’t stand how empty it feels. I tell Carly how I get antsy while we’re refilling the milk thermoses during a lull at the cafe. She says, “Let’s go out tonight. Cat Skin is playing at The Haunt. You’ll love them.”
And even though the shit Carly listens to makes me want to puncture my eardrums, I say yes, because the prospect of going out is too hard to pass up. She makes me sign a napkin:
I, April, promise to rock hard.
She pins it up next to Bodie’s anti-manwhore proclamation and the stack of other vows we’ve taken, promising everything from the courteous replacement of register receipt paper to the finding of existential enlightenment on one’s own time.
* * *
There are no nightclubs in Little River. And it’s not like any of us could have gotten away with chalking a license and going to Gary’s bar. He knows which kid belongs to which parent and nine times out of ten the parent is already sitting at the bar. Going out in Little River meant the deer blind with flashlights and a nicked six-pack, or hanging out in the gas station parking lot, watching the boys flip their skateboards. I was always just a hanger-on. I came as a package deal with Matty. No one ever invited me out. Margo took me to the movies in Springville sometimes, but that’s different.
I tell Carly about how there are no nightclubs in Little River and she gets it. Where she grew up isn’t much different. So she tells me to come to her place before and she’ll let me borrow some of her clothes. That’s even more exciting than going to a club.
This girl in my class, Ashley, had a big sister who would let her borrow clothes all the time and even do her hair and makeup in the schoolyard before the first bell. Heather would hold Ashley’s face with one hand to steady it and tell her to suck in her cheeks so she could brush blush in the hollows. I wanted to be Ashley more than I ever wanted anything else.
I walk to Carly’s new place, because she said she’d drive me home after. The Haunt is closer to us than to her. She answers the door wearing boots that lace up to her knees, cut-off red plaid pants with ripped tights underneath, and a black t-shirt that says Nipplehead across the chest. Her eyes are rimmed with sparkly black and purple eye shadow. When she turns around, the back of her shirt looks like a werewolf clawed her, and the blue creature on her back stares out through the rips in the fabric. I still don’t know what it is, but it has a big round eye. Her hair is extra spiky like maybe she cut some chunks out of it, but it looks good. It’s very Carly.
“Okay!” she says, bouncing to the closet before I’m even in the door. “Outfit! April! Outfit!”
She might be on something. I’m not good at telling. Maybe she just had too much coffee. She’s happy. Like capital H Happy. Like capital-everything happy. She’s HAPPY, and even if it might be artificially induced, after all the hurt she went through, it’s nice to see. She’s playing some CD that sounds like nails on a blackboard and a toddler torturing a violin. I’m guessing it’s Cat Skin.
Carly sings along, “I ain’t, I ain’t, I ain’t me! You. Ain’t. You!” as she pulls clothes from her closet and throws them on the bed. Layers upon layers of black and silver and ripped flannel. There’s incense burning and a drippy candle and scarves over the lights so her little apartment looks like a cave. Cozy and artsy and it makes sense. Not like the place we moved her out of.
“Anything you want to wear,” Carly shouts.
“Okay,” I say, but I’ve never had free rein of a closet like this before. I don’t even know where to start.
I grab a striped knit shirt and pull it on. It has a low scoop neck and my black bra straps show on my shoulders.