Dad drops my best friend Evy and me off at the bottom of Betty’s steep driveway, and we run to the door in the pouring rain. I wave back at Dad to acknowledge that I heard him yell, “I’ll be back at 10:00.” Betty’s mom holds the door for us as we step into the house and drip all over the welcome mat. “There’s all kinds of soda and chips down there,” she blinks over the top of pink-rimmed half glasses as she points the way to the basement. Her blonde frosted hair pokes up in hairspray-stiff clumps all over her head. “The pizza will be here in about half an hour.”
Evy and I make our way down the steep steps to the garage-like atmosphere of the Marks’s basement. My dad “finished” our basement when I was pretty young so it is strange to me to see one in such a raw state. I’m not sure whether Betty hung the paper Chinese lanterns from the pipes running along the ceiling for the party or whether they are part of the year-round décor. The soft orange, yellow, and red tones that glow from the lanterns lend a romantic air to the musty smelling space. An eight-foot folding table, borrowed from their church, is set up against one wall. A purple, red, yellow, and blue tie-dyed tablecloth hides the finger paint smears from years of summer Bible School arts and crafts. A juke box, with most of its neon lights burned out, sits in the corner playing the 45s Betty loaded in there during the afternoon with help from Kate and Virginia. Mr. and Mrs. Marks’s decades-old singles—music from the ’60s and ’70s—lend authenticity to this retro-themed party.
Evy and I take in the scene from the bottom step and observe Danny Ayres step over to the juke box and punch in the number for “American Pie.” As its opening strum and lyric begin, girls all around the room join in to sing. Knowing all the words was a prerequisite for attendance this evening. The boys mostly ignore the song until the chorus comes in with its upbeat rhythm. Couples then begin to pair off and dance.
I scoot along the back wall behind the table heavy laden with bowls of pretzels, potato chips, cheese curls, and corn chips. There is onion dip and taco sauce and a big washtub full of iced coke, lemon-lime, root beer, grape, and orange soda. I pull a can of root beer out of the tub and wipe it off with a napkin. I then flip the top off and toss the separated piece in the trash container.
It’s not long before I lose sight of Evy in the crowded room that is growing warm from the BTUs emanating from the dancing bodies at Betty’s Birthday Blast to a 1973 Past. I am wearing what my mother considers to be the coolest clothes she ever owned as a teen—the first outfit that was completely store bought—and, thus, why she has kept them for all these years. I think I look pretty good in Mom’s old purple velour hip-hugger flair slacks and the tight-fitting top that she calls a body suit. A harlequin pattern in purple and black decorates the scoop-necked long-sleeved material the top is made from. It snaps together at the crotch in order to keep the top from coming out of the hip-huggers. I wear her brown vinyl belt and matching lace-up boots to complete the ensemble. Despite my outfit, I suddenly feel out-of-place and wonder what I am doing here at this party with all the cool people. The Fivers—a group of girls Mother has quizzed me about, asking whether they are mean or not—are here along with the rest of the cheerleaders and football players. “American Pie” continues with its references to cars and waterways, and I don’t believe anyone in this room really knows what this song is about. They are all singing now and getting louder with each verse.
In the back corner of the room I see a group of people gathered around a pool table playing a friendly game of “Eight-Ball.” My root beer and I make our way to this quieter area where my wallflower status is less likely to be noticed. On a high stool, under a single bulb burning bright with 60 watts of power, sits the one boy in my world that can cause my breath to catch in my throat. Scott’s tall lean body is folded into its usual pose. A composition book on his lap, a pen in his slender fingered hand, he is writing the prose we all admire and imagine will one day make him famous. When he isn’t racing his road bike, competing on the swim team, or running in local 5K events, he is writing fiction. His dream is to one day be a novelist. None of us doubts he’ll achieve his goal. He looks up briefly and catches my eye, but does not invite me to come near.
Perry stands next to him, her arm draped possessively around his shoulders. I hate her for the familiarity she practices on him. She is an interloper, and a stranger, and in as much as I feel out of place here, she truly does not belong. Perry is a petite well-proportioned girl with long silky blonde, almost white, hair. She wears clothes straight out of the fashion magazines with all the right accessories: belts, necklaces, scarves, headbands, boots, earrings, bracelets, and rings. She is the envy of every girl and the object of desire of every boy. She is my opposite in every possible way. Her accoutrements say it all, “I’m confident. You want me.” Never mind her complexion is pock-marked and sallow, her eyebrows and eyelashes so light, they are nearly invisible. She possesses that kind of frailty that brings out the protective nature in all of us. She doesn’t have a thought of any substance running through her head, which is of no consequence to tenth grade boys.
Perry arrived at school in September, a quiet affected girl from a small town in Texas. She is Betty Marks’s cousin and Perry’s parents are in the middle of a nasty divorce involving loads of money, real estate, and a twenty-two-year-old redhead, one of the fresh crop of Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. Perry will live with her Marks relatives until things are settled, and that will take nearly two years.
I should feel sorry for Perry, and if she’d been interested in any other boy, I would have. But Scott is different. We have never discussed nor agreed upon any exclusive understanding, and no one even knows we are anything to one another. But, since the beginning of this past summer, this budding novelist and I have been “together.”
The dancing crowd in the other section of the basement starts swaying to the dirge-like final verse of “American Pie.” They continue to sing along with the words, and even some of the boys have joined in. Perry leans over and whispers something in my novelist’s ear, and Scott smiles. I feel sick.
“They make a cute couple, don’t you think?”
I look over my left shoulder where Kate Henderson is motioning her eyes toward Perry. My stomach does a flip-flop, but I say nothing back to her, not trusting her reasons for saying this to me. The Fivers rarely speak to me any more. In fact, the last time Kate and I were really still friends was back in fourth grade when we were paired up for a science project. The project was about how to distinguish one tree from another by its bark. As budding arborists, we went around to various trees on the school grounds, and at home, and left four-inch scars in the trunks by collecting bark samples.
“Hey Virginia,” Kate calls out to her best friend, another Fiver, standing just a few feet away. Virginia walks over, acknowledges me with a smile and flirty tilt of her head, and then turns her attention to Kate. “Go over there and see if you can find out what they’re talking about,” Kate orders. Already it has started, and as far as I know, my novelist and Perry haven’t been together. They are just flirting.
Virginia presses her double Ds into Scott’s arm as she looks at what he is writing. I see Perry’s confidence drain away, and her once smiling mouth turns into an inconsequential smear of pink lipstick on the background of her gesso-colored face. The girls are now in a silent battle of feminine wills to dominate and conquer. Scott looks up from his writing, toward me, but I let Kate think he’s looking at her. Kate wiggles her fingers at him to signal a greeting. I smile to myself with an unspoken affirmation that I will tell absolutely no one about us. I want us to be safe from all the games. I don’t want anyone dictating expectations to us. I like it just the way it is . . . a secret.
Dad picks Evy and me up, as planned, at 10:00 on the dot. I have to pull on Evy’s arm to coax her up the stairs. The party is winding down, and most of our classmates have already left, but she was hoping for a kiss from Nate Thomkins, and it hasn’t happened yet. Virginia moves in to Nate’s body space within seconds of my dragging Evy away. My novelist has been pulled over onto a broken down couch to watch a replay of the Penn State Notre Dame game from this afternoon. Evy and I are silent on the drive home, both worried about the late night outcome of what we’ve left behind.
A few days later Scott and I lie next to one another in his darkened room listening to the seconds tick by on his nightstand clock. We still have half an hour before either one of his parents comes home from work, but I know it’s almost time for me to leave.
On Wednesdays, I stay after school to take an oboe lesson. I’ve told Mom, who doesn’t want to drive all the way into town to pick me up, that I can catch a ride home with a kid who lives in our neighborhood, but I have to wait until he’s done with sports, which is over an hour later. Mom is fine with this plan because it saves her a trip. Even though she isn’t concerned, I further lie by saying, “I’ll just do my homework while I wait.” She nods her head, and I know she likes this embellishment.
What I really do after my oboe lesson is hop on the city bus, which drops me off thirty minutes later right outside Scott’s house, just a half-mile from my own home.
“You still haven’t told anyone right?” he asks with that concerned look he gets in his hazel-colored eyes.
“No,” I answer. “No one knows.”
At first, this idea of keeping everything secret adds to the excitement, and I like the thrill it gives me. Later, I want everyone to know.
“But, you know what they’ll do if they know,” he warns. “They’ll ruin it all.”
He’s right, of course, and already knowing I want him forever, I say nothing.
