Never Have I Ever(12)
In the very back, behind the cleaning products and the extra sponges, I saw a large green bottle lurking. Red wine? It had been left there so long that the top was dusty, and the big bottle meant it was cheap. Too cheap to be seen in the living-room bar. I vaguely remembered Dad bringing it home a few months ago. To make sangria. Mom had told him, “I said inexpensive wine, not salad dressing.” That was like Dad, though. He did it wrong so Mom remembered not to trouble him with errands.
I paused. Except for tastes of my mom’s champagne at New Year’s or weddings, I hadn’t really ever had a drink. But I might like it, and Tig for sure would be impressed. Plus, Mom owed me some fun. She’d taken all my money and ruined my summer in one fell Monday swoop. And it’s not like I’d get caught. Mom was blind to cheap stuff, and Dad only noticed the things that were not right there waiting when he wanted them. If I made off with the Blanton’s, he’d bellow, Janine! at my mother right at 7:00 p.m. sharp. But this? It was invisible. If my brother had ever looked in this cabinet, he’d have snootched it long ago.
I had to shift half a dozen cleaning products to get the giant jug out, careful to avoid any kind of clanking. Then I put everything back and hurried away, slipping out the back door and into the night.
Tig waited at the edge of the yard, dressed in his uniform as well, though his pants were frayed at the bottom and his hand-me-down shirt had faded from navy to a muddy royal blue. I lumbered toward him, hampered by my guitar, the heavy jug, the tote bag on my shoulder. As I got close, I saw that the bruise on his cheek had faded to an odd army green in the moonlight. Last week he’d gotten into it with Assholio, his mom’s new boyfriend, but he didn’t have new bruises. Not anyplace that I could see. I lofted the jug as I reached him, and he mouthed, Damn, Smiff, yeah!
He always called me by his own slurry, punk-rock version of my surname, Smith. Never Amy. Smiff or Smiffy. I loved how cool it sounded, but I hated that it turned me into some kind of buddy-buddy. Practically a boy.
He took my guitar with careless chivalry, and the two of us hustled in silence for his car. It was a gleaming cherry-red steel tank of a car, a 1967 AMC Ambassador, or most of one. He’d built it himself out of cast-off parts in a garage bay at his ex-stepdad’s garage. It looked as danger-sexy as Tig himself, especially at Brighton, where it hulked among Jeeps and hand-me-down BMWs and convertible Miatas. Now he was gathering chunks of 1978 Chevy Novas and putting them together into another car, maybe to sell.
“Want to practice driving?” he whispered, holding out the Ambassador’s keys.
He’d offered last time, too, but I’d said no, instantly. Not because I didn’t want to. I had my learner’s permit, and I was wild to drive. But I’d worried I wouldn’t fit behind the wheel. I’d had an instant horror flash of my gut catching, of me pushing and grunting and trying to wedge my body in with Tig watching. I’d turned him down, but then I “accidentally” left my purloined Shipley snacks in the car. Once he was settled, I went back for them and tested it. I’d slid onto the bench seat behind the wheel just fine. I hadn’t taken Tig’s long legs into account. I’d been hoping that he’d offer again.
“Hell, yeah,” I whispered now, and took the keys. He had his license, so that made my learner’s permit legal. Or would have, if he’d been a grown-up.
“I been thinking about the band name,” Tig said once we were in the car with the doors shut. In my neighborhood every house was a custom build on its own huge, wooded lot. No one was going to hear us from the road.
“I thought we were the Failicorns?” I said, pulling at the silver hardware on the seat belt, blushing.
The Ambassador had only lap belts, and the one on the driver’s side was set for Tig’s slim frame.
“Failicorns sounds like an all-girl band,” he told me.
“Screw you,” I said. I had the lap belt clicked shut now. I turned the key, and the muscle car’s big engine growled to life. “What’s wrong with an all-girl band?”
He fished in his curls for the joint he’d tucked behind his ear but almost dropped it as I lurched us forward. He laughed, and I tried again, struggling with the clutch pedal. I’d learned to work a manual transmission in driver’s ed, but Tig’s car didn’t handle like Brighton’s limp fleet of hand-me-down mom sedans.
I began winding my way out of the neighborhood. Not to the front entrance, where a decorative wrought-iron gate said waverly place in scrolling letters. Toward the undeveloped land at the back. Tig tucked the joint between his lips and did that cowboy move with his Zippo, zinging it against his jeans so the lid flipped up and the light flared. I hastily rolled my window down; Lysol could only cover so much. He got himself a good lungful, then passed it over.
“Nothing’s wrong with an all-girl band, except that by definition I can’t be in one.” He talked airless and weird, holding smoke.
I rolled my own window down and took the joint, sealing and unsealing my lips to let a lot of air in as I toked. I liked to get high, but not too high. Mildly stoned made me the best kind of hungry; I was always hungry, but high I could eat without feeling the shags of fat hanging off my frame, without feeling invisible eyes judging me, without the aftertaste of shame. I’d even eat in front of Tig—a thing I never did straight—snarfling down whatever Waffle House would bring us. If I oversmoked, I felt a weird pressure, like a band around my chest, squeezing my heart. I also got paranoid, and way too free. What if I got so high I forgot myself? I might lurch at him with my hungry mouth open, my greedy hands grasping his body; it would destroy whatever the hell this weird friendship was between us, and I lived for our rambling lunchtime conversations, our study sessions at the library, and, most of all, these nights.