The following evening, I show up to Del’s home, using the directions that Roger scribbled down for me. His house is really just a one-bedroom shack, to be honest, but it’s got a huge yard that everybody seems to be parked on and hanging out in. There are probably a hundred people that I can see when I pull up and get off the bike.
As usual, I get people admiring the bike and commenting on it.
I can’t lie. It feels good to be noticed in a positive way.
I go in search of any of the summer school students, hoping to find someone I know to stand near instead of looking like a kid lost at a busy mall. It doesn’t take me long to see Shawn, but he just nods and keeps going in search of something. Maybe more beer.
The backyard has more people just standing and listening to music and drinking beer. Someone hands me a cup and I thank him, and then he tells me it’s ten bucks. Instead of telling the guy I’m not going to drink, I just give him a twenty, and he says thanks and disappears.
I stand there with an empty cup, waiting for my change. Then wondering if the guy knows I needed change. Then just giving up.
I see Roger talking with a group, and he says hi to me. I walk up, and he asks if I rode my bike, then asks about riding it later. I tell him sure but plan on forgetting about it the same way the guy forgot about my change.
“Dude, you need a refill,” he says.
He grabs my cup and then tells someone to get me a beer. Suddenly I see Shawn, and he’s saying hi to me and bringing me a full beer.
Gotta love high school and cliques and popularity.
Some of the people standing around here look like they’re in their thirties. Others, like me, look well under the legal age limit. But getting caught for underage drinking seems so yesterday, so Illinois-suburbs-where-people-aren’t-sacrificed.
I take a sip but don’t like the taste of the beer. I don’t even like the idea that I’m drinking.
Mom’s been doing enough of that for the both of us.
But I sip to fit in.
And that’s exactly what I do. I fit in. I suddenly morph into the crowd, listening to awful hard rock and even more awful country. I wonder what they’d do if I suddenly threw in some Arcade Fire. Torch it? I listen to Roger talking and talking more, and I feign laughter and find myself doing nothing better than I would have been doing back at the cabin. I still feel isolated and out of place even though I’m surrounded by all these kids.
What am I doing here?
But eventually, as the sun disappears and the tiki torches surrounding the backyard glow and that first beer I was going to sip has turned into my third cup, I see a streak of golden sunlight split the sea of students and strangers. Lily.
I realize why I’m here.
She doesn’t have to see me. I don’t mind.
She’s a sight to behold in this mass of ordinary people.
“Girl, you look fine,” Roger says in a way that makes me hate him.
I only wish I could say something with such ease.
Lily and her golden dress give Roger a hug. Thankfully I’m not the only guy standing here looking like a dog with its mouth open, staring at a bone.
“When you said back roads, you really meant back roads,” Lily says.
“It’s better that way,” Roger says. Then he whispers something in her ear, and she laughs.
I hope I’m not going to have to watch them all night.
“Hey, Chris,” a voice calls from behind me.
It’s Harris. He’s getting just as many looks as Lily did, but for a whole different reason.
“How’s it going?” I say with a nod.
Harris stays and talks to me. Either he’s oblivious to the stares, or he just doesn’t care. Nobody offers him a cup, but he doesn’t mind.
“Did you come with Lily?” I ask.
“Yes, definitely.”
“Like a date?”
Harris just laughs at me. “That was funny.”
I nod and smile but wonder why he thinks I was making a joke.
A popular country music song begins to play, and some of the crowd start dancing. I look for Lily or Roger, but they’re nowhere to be found.
“You look almost as out-of-place as I do,” Harris says.
“Really?”
He nods. “Come on—let’s go to the front of the house. Where it’s not as loud.”
Back on the front lawn, there are several groups of kids hanging around the backs of their trucks, drinking beer and dancing and listening to bad music. Harris and I watch them for a while, amused by their antics.
“So you’re the guy who set the record in hurdles, right?” Harris asks.
I nod.
“They keep asking me to go out for track. I try not to make it a racial thing, you know, but it’s hard to understand why year after year they keep asking.”
“You like any sports?”
“If I tell you I don’t, will that break all stereotypes for you?”
There’s a redneck song blasting that says something about the singer getting “whiskey bent and hellbound.”
“No. But if you tell me you like this song, I’ll be worried.”
Harris laughs so hard that he almost chokes. I guess that’s a good thing.
After a while he asks another question, this one not so funny.
“You were the guy hanging around Jocelyn Evans, right?”
I nod but don’t say anything else.
“The thing about this place—the most interesting people always end up leaving. It’s a known fact. That’s what I told Lily. That’s what I told her she should know. She’ll be here for a while, and then she’ll be gone. Just like that. It always happens.”
He says this in a matter-of-fact way, not in any spooky bedtime-story way.
“I liked Jocelyn,” Harris continues. “She was wild, you know, but still—there was something about her. Something authentic.”
Suddenly I want to finish this beer and have another. So I do.
I don’t want to talk about Jocelyn. Or hear how wild she might have been. Or how authentic she might have appeared to be.
I don’t even want to hear that name.
So I grab another beer.
And I stand in the glow of the warm flickering lights. And I hear the strumming of warm flowing music. And I suddenly see a warm smile facing my way.
Not long after that, I’m gone.