0min.
After they’re in, everyone’s buzzing. God, what do you think they’re doing? Kyle rubs his hands together. Shhhh I want to hear. Angie blows her breath onto the windshield of Mr. Kauffman’s Harley, fingerpaints a heart. Miranda fusses her hair. Wade holds in a giggle. Holly looks for exits. Tobias’s foot taps fast against the concrete as he stares at the closet door. Rahkim checks his phone, “When does Mrs. K get home?”
“I hope never,” says Tobias, crouching down to take a practice spin.
Tobias has prepared, has practiced all his life. At the age when he still ran errands with mom, he’d wander Bon-Ton and press his body inside the racks of winter coats, the heavy carousels of jeans, and once, he zipped himself into a suitcase. She’d exit the dressing room and search out his hiding place. It was like he had these shells he fit into. It was the same quiet pressure of having every pillow, blanket, and cushion in the house laid on him, in mom’s crazy game of “Earthquake.” She’d sit at her desk to sketch him bursting out. But the bursting wasn’t his favorite part. It was just before, when a barely-bearable weight was there, fabrics touching all of him at once. It equaled the beach, when your body caved into to a wave. Earlier that day, the party slowly approaching, he waited for his dad to leave for bowling and then shut himself in the foyer closet. He moved his tongue around his mouth, jostled his body, and whispered to the coats. He arrived early, dropped his bike in the grass. But Cara’s mom hadn’t left yet. Cara waved him off from her bedroom window. Go away. He waited in the woods, summoned Angie Freedly’s boobs, saw his face fitting between them snugly. A new shell, a warm bed waiting.
1min.
The Marriage Question is posed with irony, an eye-roll. Shut up. Turn six. Real funny. Wade shrugs, looks around at all these kids he doesn’t know. Miranda says, “What if, though?” and Wade says, “See?” and Miranda says, “I mean, what a terrific story for their children,” and Wade says, “I hope Andy has protection,” and laughs at his own joke. Tobias laughs late, the only other one. “What protection?” he asks. All six of them laugh. “Shhh, you guys,” Tobias says, “I think I heard a moan.”
“No, he’s proposing,” says Wade, smirking.
Wade was married once. At age eight, his twin sister Ana led a service in the alley beside their apartment. He stood on a purple milk crate across from Cara, his cousin. Ana made them promise to always be good to each other, in sickness and health. When Cara said I do, Wade shrugged, laughed, and said, “I do-do.” And then Cara kissed him and he could tell—he just knew—she had a sore throat. He spent the next day off school spraying Cepacol into the back of his mouth, plotting divorce. Wade isn’t here for girls and their shiny sparkle mouths, looking like creatures of the deep-sea. He’s here to make Rahkim laugh. Everyone loves Rahkim (the only 8th grader on JV) and his deep new voice that makes you picture God. Wade’s not sure the exact number, but if you make someone laugh enough times you are friends. Which means he’d no longer have to hang with his sister, or his cousin.
2min.
Side-conversations. Did you know? Have you heard? She tweeted that? Rahkim finds a football and draws a plan on the laceless side, whispers to Kyle. Hut-hut then he button hooks and Rahkim pegs Tobias in the back. Wade laughs the loudest, but they pay no attention. Tobias walks away, joins Holly near the closet. They whisper and press their ears to the metal door. They agree: sounds like the ocean. Miranda and Angie take the hockey-stick corner. Miranda needs pointers. Angie’s got answers. Miranda has braces, but Angie says it doesn’t matter. All the boys hear is “…tongue.”
Anyone would embrace their bottle-spin landing on Angie, even some of the girls. Being almost fourteen, a year older, she feels responsible for everything going right (plus Cara begged her to come, confessing “I’ve never done this before.”) Angie keeps a timer, runs the show. Everyone deserves to grow up with the rules set, Angie reasons, like when her mom lets her lick the foam off the top of her beer but explains how much is wasted when you open it wrong. Her mother does plenty of things wrong just to teach a lesson, by way of opposite example, like when she comes home with her make-up all uneven and blurry. Before coming, Angie applied lip-gloss so carefully, dabbing the skin around her mouth with a tissue, keeping everything inside the lines. She straightened every strand of bright blonde hair. In her first closet, last summer, Angie found a pack of cigarettes in a jacket-pocket. Sometimes hope lies in these places: her younger sister will pay a dollar for each one.
3min.
The cupcake ice is broken. Well if no one else is gonna do it. Wade can’t wait, takes the first one. Freezing rain makes a racket on the garage roof. Everyone looks at him like it’s his fault. “Eat these, people,” he says through a mouthful, “that’s why I brought them.”
“Who are you?” asks Rahkim. Kyle laughs. Wade takes one and whips it at Kyle, but misses. Rahkim picks it up, drops it in the trash, and runs his hand under the utility sink. Holly, Tobias, and Angie grab cupcakes. Miranda is too worried about her teeth.
“Watch yourself,” says Rahkim, it seems, to everyone.
Rahkim came to reunite with someone older. This whole thing is juvenile to him. He knows an authentic woman, one true beauty, the angel who used to park the library bookmobile on his block and hand him strange titles once a week. And her name is Mrs. Kauffman. And she used to brush her hand against his. And she smiled like something was trying to burst out of her through her mouth, something behind her teeth or deeper down. He hasn’t seen her in a year, since his father filed a complaint after finding Catcher in the Rye, and Fifty Shades of Grey, and The Souls of Black Folk in his room. Rahkim accepted the Facebook invite from Cara but he imagined it coming from her mother. He wore a crisp black polo and khaki pants, a charcoal puffy jacket. He borrowed a big splash of his father’s cologne. And another. And he wanted to find her, or at least her room. He wanted her to read something to him. He had a feeling she was in the house.
4min.
Someone takes a phone call. Ooo Rahkim has a girlfriend. He rolls his eyes. Or it’s his mommy. “But what’s the difference?” cracks Wade. Rahkim tightens his fists. “Don’t joke about my moms, bitch,” and slams the door to the house behind him. The noise ricochets around the hollow garage. Everyone expects Cara to peek her head out of heaven and ask What was that? Rahkim’s slammed door leaves an echo. But the closet holds.
Fear is in low-tide for Holly, so she starts her excuse, “Guys I feel really, just…”
“Well you definitely look sick,” says Angie. Laughter breaks.
Holly had her first kiss last summer at a kid’s camp. Her first kiss was in a fight. Her first kiss was with a girl. Her first kiss ended with her peeing, on the girl. Her first kiss was with Angie Freedly, the girl astride the Kauffman’s Harley, the girl gabbing about her mother’s boyfriend. How badly Holly wants to ride on the back, behind Angie. But Holly has to go in with a boy and there isn’t one alive who smells good and she’s scared. She would die to go with Angie, but she doesn’t think that’s in the rules. She would have been happy enough with Cara, but the bottle looked just to her left, at Andy’s lap. Who made these rules? How long is seven minutes? How much does Angie remember about her? Why is Angie even here? Cara isn’t even friends with her. Cara is friends with Holly, right? What is Andy doing to her in there? Holly is nervous and sick, like her body’s that up/down pirate ship ride, and the rain on the roof, is it ever going to let up? The garage is afloat, broken, slowly taking on water. She imagines smashing the bottle when it’s her turn to spin.
5min
Time has got to be up by now. Definitely. It’s been forever. Tobias and Holly hurry toward the closet. At least ten minutes now. Slowly everyone starts to move in. “Nope!” Angie says, checking her phone, “nope nope nope!” She takes guard in front of the closet door, the bottle in her hand, waving everyone back. Miranda defends beside her, “She set a timer, people. 90 seconds yet.”
“There’s no way,” says Holly.
“Shut up, lesbo,” says Angie. Miranda spits in laughter, but clamps her hand over her mouth like she knows, but knows she shouldn’t.
“Whore,” whispers Holly. Angie swings the bottle down on a toolbox. It doesn’t break. She hammers it again, harder. Nothing. The only noise is rain. Angie spikes the bottle down, and brown shards sprinkle the floor. She picks up the sharp neck, holds it in the air, and no one speaks, until she laughs. And then everyone laughs, each for their own reasons.
Miranda’s mother and father are always asking her to lighten up. You’re a kid. Stop thinking so hard. They joke around so much that Miranda is starting doubt what’s right and what’s wrong. She watches old movies for lessons, Philadelphia, Casablanca. Her dad says, “Grow up, Randy” even though she hates that name. “You know we have color channels.” Her mother recently said, “With great boobs comes great responsibility,” but then laughed so hard she spit gin across the carpet. Miranda’s chest is small, but existent. Nothing like Angie’s, but nonetheless, she feels noble, feels fairly certain that love is the backbone to kissing, to touching, to sex of any kind. Her dolls proclaim unconditional love before she rubs them together. She wants to feel lips, yes, but she wants a story more. She’s next but won’t spin until Rahkim’s back in the room. He was the only person to say hello to her, and it made her smile, which made her stop smiling, to cover up her teeth. She’s learning to smile only with cheeks. She’s here to learn what to do with her mouth, in the dark. But only after she hears “I love you.”
6min.
Places, places. It’s almost time. Who’s turn is next? Should we sit in the same spots? Holly, Tobias, and Wade find their seats. “Rock’s still MIA,” says Wade. “We have to wait,” adds Miranda. Angie pushes the bottle pieces into a dust pan with her sneaker, kicks some pieces under the wooden workbench. Kyle says, “I’ll find a new one,” and opens the fridge door. “Holy shit.” His first public swear word. He grabs a bottle of Yuengling, tries to open it with his teeth, like his brother. But it doesn’t budge, and his lip bleeds.
Kyle’s thoughts are on fire. They’re wasting the night in here with these girls while all around the garage sit ingredients: spray paint, gas cans, rust remover, drain cleaner. There could be clouds of fire in the backyard right now. Give him ten minutes and he’d have a smoke bomb that would fill the block. If his grandma hadn’t made him go, hadn’t driven him there and insisting it would be good for him to be with kids his own age, or if it weren’t for his team captain, Rahkim, being such a loverboy, they would’ve ditched at the get-go. They’d be at the park bridge throwing firecrackers at fish. Kyle’s got half a dozen in his knit hat, which he won’t take off because the buzzcut his grandma gave him is disgusting. Everyone here is so uptight, so worried. He just wants to have fun, see something blow, break apart, change shape before his eyes. He’s hoping this whole thing gets old fast and the guys just bail together for something interesting. Little Tobias can come, even Wade, if he insists.
7min.
Someone’s home. Oh my god oh my god oh my god. Should we go? Yellow light beams through the garage-door windows, sweeps across the room. They duck and scramble. Holly stands behind Angie, who hides her. Wade grabs the full bottle of beer from the middle of the floor, stuffs it in his hoodie pouch. Everyone is still, silent.
Suddenly they’re inside a machine. The noise of the lifting doors makes them deaf. Crunches and squeaks. Kyle pulls his hat down over his eyes. A blinding light rushes in and erases them. The Kauffman’s stop the Honda halfway in, and they get out.
“What is this?” Cara’s father says.
Rahkim comes in through the side door, panting. “Mrs. K!”
“Who are you?” she says, it seems, to everyone.
Angie pouts at Mr. Kauffman, points to the closet.
When he opens the aluminum doors, Tobias leans and sees Cara, her face perfect, make-up smudgeless, asleep in a sort of bed that makes him miss his mother. Mr. Kauffman observes his daughter, hugging herself in his leather jacket, and some kid sitting on a pair of boots with his head against a snowsuit. Both are asleep. But he’s seen this act before.
“Stop pretending!” he yells, and they both come fast out of a deep, real sleep. Every child runs. Soaked in rain. Like it isn’t too late.
Tyler Barton is the fiction editor of Third Point Press and an MFA candidate at Minnesota State University, Mankato. His published stories can be found at tsbarton.com. His jokes can be found at @goftyler.