“Wanna go to the movies?”
“There’s nothing good out.”
“We could see the one about the space cowboys, that looked kind of cool.”
“No, it didn’t.”
“There’s three days of summer left, you’re such a buzzkill, man.” Sean sighed and resumed bouncing a tennis ball against my garage door. Thump. Thump. Thump. “This is going to be senior year, we aren’t going to have time for goofing off soon.”
“Probably,” I said, not really paying attention. It was the day after my first experience with Support Group and we were leaning on the hood of Sean’s ancient Buick Lesabre--well, his grandma’s Lesabre that she let him drive to school and use on the weekends--trying to figure out how to spend the last seventy-two hours of summer vacation. Well, sort of. I was actually more occupied reading side effects of the antidepressants I had be prescribed on the back of the bottle. Rapid weight gain. Nausea. Irritability. Restlessness. Dry mouth. Inability to sleep. None of that sounded like a better alternative to… whatever it was I was feeling. Or not feeling. It was hard to tell. Nothing had changed, really, and I was just fine with that. I pocketed the bottle and watched Sean bounce the ball.
“You know what you need, Samuel?” Sean said, catching the tennis ball in one hand and shaking it in my direction. “You know what might actually make you fun to hang out with?”
“I can’t imagine,” I said, rolling my eyes at him. Sean was the biggest schemer I knew and was always trying to come up with grandiose plans for my self-improvement. His intentions were somewhat ironic because he was really doing it for himself, so he wouldn’t have to put up with me being such a downer all the time. I resisted his every attempt, but still, he was a pretty good friend for still hanging around me despite my crappy attitude.
“You need a girlfriend,” he said in a serious tone, as if he were a doctor and her were telling me to eat right or I’d be having a heart attack soon. Surprised, I let out a short laugh, mostly because the idea was as impossible as it was absurd. “Hey, I’m serious buddy,” Sean admonished me, wagging the tennis ball in my face once again. “My own life has improved quite dramatically since Melissa and I started dating, you know.”
“Oh, really?” I said, trying not to sound like too much of an ass. “Is that why you text me four times a day with hey, dude, you’ll never believe what Melissa said to me today, doesn’t that just piss you off?”
“I don’t text you four times a day,” he countered, tossing the ball back at the garage, unbothered by my sarcastic impression. “Like, maybe once or twice a week. But seriously, dude, girls… can’t live with ‘em, can’t live without em.” He grinned with that crooked smile that somehow seemed to make him a lady-slayer, despite the two of us being dorky outcasts. Sean was a charmer which always made me wonder why he chose to hang out with me ‘cause I felt like I held him back a little sometimes, socially. He never complained, though, which I was grateful enough for, so I never brought up the subject.
“What about Jessica Schmidt?”
“What about her?” I asked, watching the ball effortlessly hit the same place on the garage door each time. Thump. Thump. Thump.
“She could be your girlfriend,” he said with a shrug. “She’ll swallow pretty much anything on two legs.”
“How flattering,” I said, remembering then who Melissa’s friend Jessica Schmidt was, and the somewhat disturbing reputation she had regarding blowjobs in the parking lot.
“You gotta start somewhere, buddy. I refuse to let you mope your way through senior year like you have for the past three,” Sean said with a tone that meant he was serious, even if it was just a little bit.
“I don’t mope,” I said defensively, checking the time on my cellphone. It was just past noon.
“So what’s your excuse for missing every single football game, every single homecoming dance, all the formals, and refusing to go to prom a couple months ago?” He asked, raising an eyebrow at me.
“I just think it’s stupid,” I replied, feeling a twinge of annoyance.
“Bingo,” Sean said, catching the tennis ball one last time and tossing it through the open window of the car and into the back seat. “Moping, plain and simple. C’mon, let’s go get something to eat, I’m starving.”
“I’m not hungry,” I said, but I picked myself up off the hood and flopped into the squishy leather of the passenger’s seat. I was born in Arizona, and when you’ve lived in the desert all your life you kind of forget how hot it is until you turn on the A/C. Sean’s Lesabre wouldn’t start half the time, it leaked something green and sticky, and it couldn’t beat a snail in a drag race, but it sure as hell blasted cold air just fine. Sean navigated his way out of the Village and pointed the car toward Superstition Freeway, undoubtedly heading straight toward the nearest In-N-Out Burger.
“There’s supposed to be an end of summer party up in The Hills tomorrow night,” Sean was saying as we turned into the parking lot of, you guessed it, In-N-Out a few minutes later. “Melissa and I are going, you should come too.”
“No way,” I said, shaking my head. If there was one thing I couldn’t stand, it was the Hills Kids, the gated-community brats who were as uninteresting as they were arrogant. Their money didn’t bother me so much as their lack of appreciation for it, especially ‘cause you couldn’t walk ten feet in our high school without hearing so-and-so casually complaining that their smartphone wasn’t the latest model or that their BMW was actually an hand-me-down from their dad, who just got a corvette.
Melissa was actually a Hills Kid, her dad was some kind of software engineer or something who worked downtown. I only knew it because Sean wouldn’t shut up about her when the started dating in April. Frankly, I was surprised their relationship had lasted longer than a week, but Melissa seemed to be the rare Hills Kid whose parents money didn’t seem to really affect her all that much. She was still bossy and demanding and she and Sean fought all the time, but at least she wasn’t one of them, I had to giver her that.
“Jeez Samuel, you gotta give me something to work with here!” He groaned as he slid the Lesabre into a parking spot between two Subarus. “You’ve gotta cooperate with me or I’m never gonna be able to help you!”
“Who says I need any fucking help?!”
Something deep inside me cracked, some combination of buried insecurity unearthed by the Dr. Frolland’s irritatingly condescending voice and the creepy, sterile feeling of Support Group. I immediately regretting snapping at him but the damage had already been done.
“Woah, shit, who pissed in your Cheerios?” He scoffed, raising his hands up and taking a step back.
“Sorry,” I mumbled, shaking my head. I thought for a millisecond about telling him everything, from the diagnosis to the way my mom freaked out, to how my dad had reacted, to Support Group and how it felt like a real-life scene out of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Except it was way more disturbing because it wasn’t just some novel we read last year in Lit class, it was this sick sort of parade where people’s darkest secrets were put under the spotlight. There are some things guys just don’t say to guys, though, and admitting a shrink is forcing you to get mental health counseling is one of them, so I set my jaw and pushed my way into the restaurant, somehow feeling worse than I had the day before.
“Look Samuel, I’m just trying to…” I knew he was going to say “help” again, but he paused and fumbled for a different word. “...try and figure you out,” was what he finished with as he pulled his wallet from his back pocket and tapped it against his leg as he eyed me apprehensively. “We’ve got, like, nine months of screwing around left to do, it would be nice to enjoy it, huh?”
“I guess,” I said, squinting up at the menu even though I wasn’t planning on getting anything.
Nine months. It was hard to fathom the fact that three years of high school had passed by in the blink of an eye. I wasn’t even sure what I wanted to do with myself tomorrow, let alone the rest of my life. It was hard to think that far ahead, really, when it was impossible to imagine every single variable that could change between now and September.
Hell, I could step out into the street and get hit by a bus tomorrow for all I knew.
Sean, a veritable genius, had already been accepted into Stanford on a considerable scholarship. I was happy for him but couldn’t help being a little bit envious. Not because he was smart, or did really well in school, but mostly because he had a plan and a sense of direction. I, ever the resentful and unmotivated introvert, wouldn’t even know where to apply for my future even if I wanted to wrestle up my B average enough to get into a great school like Sean. Then again, Arizona State was like ten miles from my house, I could always give that a shot. I sighed and rubbed my right temple where it always started to ache when I became overwhelmed with pressure to figure myself out already.
Sometimes, I really got tired of feeling stuck. Then again, getting unstuck seemed just as exhausting all the same.
Sean got his food and we sat down at a table by the window. He tore into his burger with abandon while telling me about the upgrades he had planned for his computer with the money he had saved working at a closet of a video game store tucked into a strip mall near The Village. I was only half paying attention as I stared out the window and watched traffic flow by on the street outside. It was unusually quiet for a Friday at noon, and only a few people and cars could be seen meandering past the shopping complex.
One of those tacky looking green-and-purple Valley Metro busses pulled up on the curb on our side of the street and came to a slow, screeching halt like a giant mechanical caterpillar. I cringed, squeaky brakes being at least top ten in my unofficial log of biggest annoyances, and watched as an elderly lady and two men with bikes exited. The doors were just about closing when an a leg shot out between them, making them snap back open again.
A leg sporting torn jeans and a faded old converse sneaker attached to its foot.
A sneaker with bright green laces.
I rubbed my eyes to make sure I wasn’t seeing things (desert heat does that sometimes) but sure enough, Quinn from Support Group stepped off the bus and looked around, as if making sure she wasn’t being followed.
“Then, I figure if I put a larger solid state drive in it, I can get at least twenty-five percent more processing speed, you know?” Sean was saying, folding the wrapper of his burger, which he had practically inhaled, into a neat square. “Sammy. You listening, buddy?”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said, craning my neck toward the glass as Quinn hiked a grey canvas backpack up onto her shoulder and, with one last glance over her shoulder, began walking south along the road, away from the freeway.
“Do you know that chick or something?” Sean asked, half-standing in his seat to try and catch what I was looking at. I was about to say “yes,” but realized doing so would require me to explain Support Group and all my other newfound baggage, so I just stared at him blankly while my ears grew warm.
“Well?”
“Uhh…. no,” I said finally, shaking my head. I didn’t even sound convincing to myself, so I said the first thing that popped into my head: “I think, um, I think she’s a drug dealer. She kinda looked like one.”
Sean looked at me, mouth half open in bewilderment, while he tried to figure out what the hell was wrong with me. “Cool,” he said, giving me half a shrug and a full frown. “Her and half the other people in this city.”
Before I continue, let’s get one thing straight: I am not, I repeat not, a venturesome individual. You’ve probably figured that out by now. So I probably shocked myself just as much as I shocked Sean when I said, “Let’s follow her.”
“Are you shitting me?” He gave me that same look of utter bafflement and leaned back in his chair. “Why in the hell should we do that?”
“We’ve got nothing else to do,” I said weakly, balking at the idea a little myself. “I don’t know… maybe we’ll get in some Breaking Bad shit or something.”
“You know how that show ended, right?” Sean shook his head and laughed in disbelief. “Who are you and what have you done with my pathetic friend Samuel?”
“You’re right, it’s stupid,” I said with a shrug, trying to figure out why I had said it int the first place. Sean stood up, plopped his tray down on top of the nearest trash can and dangled his car keys in front of me.
“Breaking Bad beats Breaking Boredom,” he said with a little self-satisfied smirk. “C’mon, buddy. Let’s go on an adventure!”
Two minutes later we were rolling down the avenue in front of In-N-Out for the second time, scanning the sidewalk for Quinn (though I didn’t tell sean I knew her name) when he spotted her crossing the street two blocks down, in front of a golf course. We waited at the light, Sean speculating out loud that maybe she could be my drug-dealing sugar momma and I’d never have to work another day in my life. I laughed as a courtesy but I was actually feeling strangely nervous and apprehensive while my palms were sweating nonstop into the fabric of my cargo shorts. Finally the light turned green and we turned down the same street, which we followed down to a cul-de-sac without seeing her.
“Crap, we lost her,” I said, stating the obvious, as Sean rolled to a stop and began the eighteen-point turn it took to get the Lesabre to U-turn.
“We missed that side street to the right on our way down, she probably went down there” Sean said dismissively, finally pulling the car around and flipping his blinker on to turn. “Man this is weird, I’ve never stalked someone before.”
“Me neither,” I said weakly, having serious second thoughts about the whole thing.
“Ha! Told you!” He pointed out of his windshield and, sure enough, there was Quinn, trekking along the sidewalk at a determined pace. “I’m going to get ahead of her and we’ll wait til she passes us again.” Sean took the next right and did another eighteen-point turn before parking next to the curb. “Man, I wish we had some aviator sunglasses. We could be, like, on a stake-out or something.”
“Yeah,” I said, taking note of the huge houses in this neighborhood for the first time. Across the intersection the street was blocked by a set of wide iron gates and giant stone sign inscribed with “Harmony Estates” in huge script. “Kind of a weird place to sell drugs, huh?”
“Rich people gotta get their fix too,” he replied with a grin. “She’s probably selling xanax and vicodin and those tiny little bottles of wine that women in fur coats drink.”
We watched as Quinn reached the intersection, paused for a moment to look around, and then headed straight for the gates. She slipped her backpack off her shoulder and tossed it bodily over the fence into the grass on the other side. Then, without hesitating, she took a nimble leap up after it and pulled herself over with practiced hands. She scooped her bag up again and took off across the grass at a steady jog.
“Well, shit,” Sean said, pulling back into the street and stopping at the intersection. “Maybe she lives there.”
“People who live in gated communities don’t hop the fence,” I pointed out. We watched as Quinn disappeared into a row of shrubs flanking a stop sign just beyond the gates. “And she got off the bus to walk here, I don’t think rich people do that.”
“Ah Sammy, ‘tis not of my mind to ponder the doings of the rich,” Sean said with elegant flair as he began to navigate back out to the freeway. “Too bad she got away, now you won’t have anyone to give you a blowjob while we’re at the movies.”
“There’s nothing good playing,” I protested weakly, glancing back over my shoulder before we exited the neighborhood. Quinn was nowhere to be seen. Sean wasn’t having it though and took us back toward the freeway in the direction of the AMC.
I gave up on protesting and watched the palm trees and pinkish-orange adobe buildings sail by out the window, feeling strange. It wasn’t apprehension, and it wasn’t nervousness, but I felt as if my insides were trying to break out and run free. I patiently waited for the usual sensation of emotionless complacency to overtake me once again, but the thought of bright green shoelaces seemed to be chasing it away.
It was a whole new scary kind of feeling.
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