Four

“Hey there, Andy baby.” Kate said as he jumped in the backseat. He adjusted his beanie and nodded at us, with his headphones on.

I pulled out of the parking circle and turned toward the park.

Kate cranked up the stereo, blaring The Violent Femmes. I eased the clutch as I went over the hill into the skatepark, my car making ungodly noises.

“Nice, Alice.” Kate laughed.

“Get your own car, loser.”

“Why? You drive me everywhere, it’s a good deal.”

“Mooch.”

“Chauffeur.”

“Look who it is.” She pointed.

Aaron was skating, and his tight jeans and hoodie looked good. Really good. He ollied a five foot gap, and Kate whistled appreciatively. We parked and got out. Kate and I grabbed our one deck that we shared, and Andrew took his. I handed him a juice box and walked over to the fence to watch the boys. A bunch of the littler kids waved at me, and I pulled a bag of cookies out of my backpack. They all ran over, sticking their hands in to take one each. They were like Pavlov’s skaters. Aaron manueled up to the fence, popping his board up with his foot.

“Hey guys. What’re you up to?”

“That one is my brother, we come here with him to bring him snacks and attempt to skate.” I gestured at Kate, who was rolling slowly on the mini-ramp.

“Nice.” He laughed appreciatively.

“Want a cookie and a juiced box?” I offered to him.

He shoved a cookie in his mouth, and mumbled “Thank You” spewing crumbs.

“I saw that gap you did, nice.”

“Thanks.”

“Five bucks if you can kickflip it.” I challenged.

“Done.”

He went back over, hopping on his board, picking up speed. He started his line, and went to pop over the ledge. He bailed midair, and fell to the ground. I laughed.

“Uhh, how bout I just buy you beer at the party?” he said sheepishly, sticking his hands in his pockets. I lit up a cigarette, smirking. This felt good.

“Let me see you skate.” He challenged me back.

“Oh jeez.” I rolled my eyes. I grabbed the deck from Kate, and hopped on, my cigarette pressed in my lips. I pushed off, and headed for a ramp. I just went up and back down, but at least I stayed on. He clapped, sarcastically, a crooked grin on his face. A little kid ran up to me and asked for another cookie.

“Yeah sure, Colin.” I skated back over to the fence and handed him one.

Kate wandered over too, and helped herself to a cookie.

“Let’s roll a j at your house?” she asked

“Sounds good, then I need to do some homework.”

“Yeah, right. Hey, Aaron, want to come?” I shot her a look.

“Come where?” he was praticing some sort of complicated flip thing.

“To Al’s house for milk and cookies and a joint. Or maybe a blunt.”

“Sure.”

“Follow us there.”

I turned into my driveway, shutting off the ignition. I did a terrible job parking and shrugged at Kate. I got out and leaned against the door, watching Aaron park.

“He is so cute.” Kate pointed out.

“I know. What is a cute boy doing at my house?”

“You know, I have no idea.”

I let us in the house, which was empty. My mom was still at work, thankfully. My house was clean, and it smelled like laundry. I was sort of embarrassed by it though; there were little figurines and dorky stuff everywhere. We went into the basement, grabbing a bag of chips and some soda first.

My basement smells like a combo of spilled food and pot smoke, which is why my mother never goes down there. She is blissfully unaware of my substance use, because she is rarely home. She’s a single mom, a lawyer, who is married to her job. I spend most of my time looking after Andy, because she can’t, really. I even cook him dinner and stuff. Anyway, I didn’t know what to do with a boy in my basement, so I concentrated on rolling a killer blunt.

“So what did you do this summer besides grow five inches?” Kate asked him.

“I taught swim lessons, actually.”

“Like a lifeguard?” I blew a cloud of smoke into the air.

“Kind of.” He took the blunt as I passed it to him. “I just paddled around with little kids for ten bucks an hour.”

“Nice.” Kate nodded.

“So you guys did what all summer?”

“This.” We both answered in unison.

“Aha. No jobs?”

“Al here gets paid to watch her brother, and my parents give me money because they don’t love me.”

“You two are crazy.”

“That’s the word on the street.” Kate was in her element now, high and talking shit.

“It really is.” I added.

“Nah, no one thinks that. Except me.”

“Please, everyone thinks that. We’re not cool enough to be party girls, so we’re just…. Girls who offend people like Caitlin Connors and Ms McDonald, and smoke a lot of weed.” She laughed.

“This is true. But you guys are funny, I think.”

“That is also true.” Kate was still chuckling to herself.

“I’m just a guy, though. I’m not even as noticeable as you two are.”

“You will be.” I muttered. I knew it was only a matter of time before he became sexy skater boy to our whole grade.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“She means you got… different this summer.”

“How so?”

“Uh, better at skating?” she offered.

“I guess.” He looked confused.

We sat around for a while longer, watching TV and talking bullshit about people in our grade. Aaron offered to give Kate a ride home, so I went upstairs to do homework.

“I quit.” I said out loud to myself. I had done about five math problems and my brain was hurting. Then I remember Hot Teacher Guy, and pushed myself to at least finish half of the problems. The sad thing was, I was pretty good at math, I just never paid enough attention to know what was going on.

“There. Good enough” All done, almost.

“Alice? Who are you talking to?” my mother called.

“No one. Uh, Myself. Uh, no one.” I answered.

“Oh I thought Kate was here.”

“Nope. How was work?”

She launched into a long description of a case she was doing. She was, ironically, a divorce lawyer. She had represented herself in my parent’s divorce almost five years ago. I heard she was the best divorce lawyer in town, whatever that means.

“Thanks for the leftovers, Alice.” She went back downstairs to eat cold chicken parmesan I had made earlier. As far as I knew, Andrew was doing his homework, but who knew. He had started bugging me to let him smoke pot, and I was relentless in saying no. I no longer trusted Kate with him, because she would probably think it was funny. She thought giving her dog beer was funny too, but then, she was kind of a sick fuck.

I realized that I smoked a lot of weed somewhere around august, but Kate and I had nothing better to do. It was beginning to be an expensive habit though. Plus some of the kids in our grade had starting doing other drugs, acid, shrooms, and I didn’t want to get caught up in that. Maybe I did. Whatever.

Kate lived 8 houses down from me, and proximity was the man reason for our natal friendship. We played kick the can as kids. We lived in a pre-fab neighborhood with tons of other kids around. There was Mark Cohen-Barnes, who I thought was rad. He was this Jewish hp-hop kid. Then there was Olive Moore, who was also cool, in a misanthropic, outcast kind of way. Stacy Cartwright lived there too, which would make the party easy to go to. And sexy Jonas lived nearby. He was this artsy boy who I had a terminal crush on, which was now eclipsed by Mr. Cooper. I was boy crazy, from a creep distance. Who likes their math teacher?

The next few days of school were weird, because of Aaron. He was super friendly to me, but I was awkward. Now that we had hung out, what was I supposed to do?

Friday during school, he turned around in psych to talk to me.

“Do you need a ride to the party?”

“Yeah, she does.” Kate answered for me.

“Uh, yeah that’d be sweet.” That’d be sweet? What was I thinking? And I didn’t need a ride, she lived two streets away. But I guess this was Kate’s plan. The big make-out with Aaron? Maybe. He was a good practice boy, because college was looming and I was going to be the Creepy Virgin on Campus.