Amber usually works Thursday nights, but this night she was off and I was completely psyched. Amber Schneider has been my best friend since forever, since I was in fifth grade and she was in sixth. Amber is really, really funny and really tough. I can look tough if people don't know me, but Amber just is. She's about the worst scorer on the basketball team and I don't think she could make a free throw to save her life, but she always started because her job was to guard the other team's top scorer, and she had this way of just really freaking out whoever that girl was, of messing with her, even though she almost never got called for foul. I couldn't really say what she did but she would stare at them, and say things under her breath when the ref wasn't looking. Once a coach told her she had to work on anger management, but it seemed to me she was managing her anger just fine.
Plus Amber is big like me, which is nice. She told me once that I was built like a draft horse, which was a big compliment coming from her. Another time on a sleepover she did an imitation of me being carried across the threshold on my honeymoon, carrying me and everything, and I laughed so hard that pop came out my nose. That's why it's so much fun being her best friend, because I can be all goofy with her in a way I can't with anyone else.
She always wants to do my hair. She does stuff to her hair all the time, like during basketball season she dyed it fire-truck red to match our uniforms. It was—well, it was really red. She wanted to dye mine too but I wouldn't let her. This summer her hair was orange like a traffic cone. That's what it said on the bottle, even: "Traffic Cone Orange." Sort of to warn you how orange it'll be. Her mom Lori turned their living room into a beauty parlor and thinks she's some sort of expert, which she is if you're sixty years old, which I'm not. Sometimes when Amber is cutting my hair, Lori finds out and says she should cut it, and they get into a big fight with me sitting there under the sheet and everything, and the last time that happened, last year, I finally just said we had a cow about to calve even though that wasn't true and I left. And I haven't cut my hair since. Now I just wear it back in a rubber band and try not to think about it. It doesn't help that Win and Bill and Curtis all have blond hair, and Bill's is curly even, but mine is just plain old straight brown. I asked Mom about it once and she just shrugged and said that it just shows there's no justice in this world, which wasn't quite the volume of sympathy I was looking for.
***
Anyway, that night Amber was in one great mood. She works at this restaurant that does fancy wedding receptions and stuff. She can tell stories about weddings that would make you never, ever want to get married, but she's so funny about it that it doesn't matter. For example, the wedding she was working had been canceled that morning when the bride caught her fiancé messing around with the maid of honor, who was of course the bride's best friend. Every wedding Amber works is like a soap opera. Anyway, the bride showed up to cancel the reception, and then the groom showed up after her to try to get her to change her mind, and then when that didn't work he tried to get his money back from the restaurant, and then the best friend showed up too, I guess because she's a total moron, and the three of them had a huge screaming fight right there in the restaurant kitchen while Amber memorized every word.
So you can imagine how completely happy Amber was to see me. She is one of those people who could describe tying her shoes in a way that would make you just about wet your pants, you'd be laughing so hard. So I was in a pretty good mood by the time we got to town, because even though my life pretty much sucks most of the time, at least I don't have my fiancé and my best friend trying to explain to me in the middle of a restaurant kitchen with everyone listening why it made perfect sense for them to be in the shower together covered in chocolate sauce. (I'm not so sure Amber didn't make up the chocolate sauce part, but she swears it's what she heard.) Plus she'd snagged a couple beers from her mom's fridge, and that was nice too.
The whole way into town when she wasn't telling me about Mr. Chocolate Sauce I told her about Brian, about how he was so lazy and stuck-up and how he quit right in the middle of haying, and she made me tell her over and over again about him getting covered in barn dust and hay, and how he picked up the hay bales like he was an old lady or something, and she'd laugh her head off each time she heard it. I was still feeling pretty good from all of Mom's praise, but that made me feel even better.
We went to the movies of course. I didn't have much money because I never do, but Amber never minds paying for my ticket or driving me around everywhere. The movie theater is about the only place in about three thousand miles to see a movie and it has eight screens, so that's where all the kids go, from Red Bend of course and Hawley and even places like Prophetstown and West Lake. The parking lot fills up really quickly, and sometimes the cops ask to see everyone's ticket to make sure they're not just hanging out, though I don't see why the owners complain because we're keeping them in business.
Amber found a place over in the shadows and we sat on her mom's Escort shooting the breeze. After a while Kari Jorgensen ambled over and joined us. She's going to be a senior like Amber and on the basketball team too, and I've always really liked her even though she's a little too popular for us. Amber told her about how the Hawley coach sent Brian Nelson over and he hadn't made it through the day before he quit because it was "so, so hard," and Kari got a kick out of that.
Just then a Jeep Cherokee pulled up under the very biggest light, music blasting away, and Brian and his Hawley football buddies and their skinny little girlfriends who are probably that type of vegetarian that doesn't even drink milk got out. Everyone else got quiet for a minute, which is obviously what Brian wanted or why else would he have parked there with his stereo going like that?
Amber said brightly, "They are so hot," which made us laugh.
So we sat there watching them in their letter jackets backslap each other as their girlfriends giggled like there wasn't anything in the entire world these girls wanted to do except tell these guys how absolutely wonderful they were. It would have made me sick, except Amber was whispering to us her version of what they were saying. When Brian would punch someone in the arm she'd say, "I want your body, dude," like it was Brian saying it. Then she'd have the other guy say, "Oh, Brian, let me snuggle against you," and on and on until Kari and I were almost dying because we wanted to laugh so hard but we didn't want to miss anything she was saying. And then, as Brian had his arm around one of the prettiest, skinniest girls and Amber was saying (as Brian), "I knitted this sweater myself. See the neckline?" they saw us.
Actually, one of Brian's friends saw us first and pointed us out to Brian. Which meant Brian had told them about me. We certainly weren't the kind of girls they'd talk about or even say hello to if they could possibly avoid it. Pretty soon all the guys were elbowing Brian and laughing and pointing at us like we were some kind of freak show. Amber said, "They want to ask us out but they're too shy," which would have been funny except it was so obviously not the case. Then we could hear them making mooing sounds. I didn't like that one bit.
Then they started in: "There's Dairy Queen, Nelson! Go say hi to Dairy Queen!" The girls were laughing hysterically. And Brian was laughing too, looking over at me like I was the most disgusting thing in the entire world.
Amber stood up. "Let's kick his butt."
I pulled her back down. I would have loved to kick his butt, but we were outnumbered.
"What, like you're the only person here from a farm?" Kari asked. She's so great. That cheered me up more than anything.
Right then the cops showed up and everyone started going inside, including Brian and his moron friends, which didn't make me want to go inside too much.
Amber and I ended up behind the bank where her mom works. We do this a lot, which tells you something about how concerned the Red Bend police are with bank security. The one time we saw a cop, he parked at the other end of the lot and fell asleep. That night we started out like we always do, talking about how we'd rob the bank, which Amber is great at because she knows so much about bank security from Lori. Then Amber started complaining about how Lori wouldn't sign the permission slip so Amber could get a tattoo, saying Amber shouldn't do something at seventeen that she'd regret later. This is about the meanest thing I've ever heard anyone say, because Lori had Amber when she was seventeen so it's like Lori was saying that her having Amber was a big mistake. I was really beginning to regret that Amber had only snagged two beers when she started talking about all the people in Red Bend who are gay.
I know when you watch TV about half the characters are gay, and probably in New York or Los Angeles or someplace like that you could meet tons and tons of gay people, and I'm okay with that. Some folks around here say mean things, but, hey, as long as you drink your milk and don't call me Dairy Queen I don't care what you do. But I also know Wisconsin doesn't have any gay people. Or if it did, they all left.
But Amber could see gay people anywhere, from the high school principal (who combs his hair over his bald spot) to his secretary (who has big hands) through everyone, pointing out why each one was gay. It's especially funny because her examples are so good, like the kid who polishes his belt buckle or the basketball player who wipes his hands on his chest before each free throw. If I challenged her she'd just say that they were in the closet or in denial, which is something you can't really argue with even if you knew what it meant.
So she kept talking and then I kind of fell asleep, which isn't surprising considering how hard I'd worked all day, and Amber drove me home and I'm pretty sure I went to bed, but I don't even remember going up the stairs.