All the Rage(10)

After the first few minutes, he winks at me, like it can’t be helped. After the next five, I can’t help but sigh and he tells me kids my age don’t know shit about patience and then the air-conditioning flatlines and none of it matters anyway because he melts, he leaves without ordering. He’s not the only one. Tracey tells everyone drinks are on the house and by then it’s my break, thank Christ, because people are mouthing off like it’s something we’re doing to them on purpose.

Holly looks like she’s going to kill someone. She’s been in a pissy mood since she overheard Annie making plans to crash that college party this weekend, just like Holly thought she would. Now Annie’s grounded, Holly’s son is babysitting her on Friday and from the sound of it, no one in the house is speaking—but Annie’s slamming lots of doors.

“Thank God I don’t have to like her to love her,” Holly told me.

I find Leon in the kitchen and he asks if I want to spend the next twenty minutes with him in his car. I say yes and we sit in the back of his old Pontiac with the AC blasting and the radio playing low, awkwardly passing time with a deck of cards. It’s a vintage pack he found in the glove compartment when he bought the car and he decided it could stay because it features sexy pinups from the fifties. He’s embarrassed when he tells me this, watching as I sift through the cards, admiring the girls.

“Pretty,” I say.

“I’ve seen better,” he says. I flush.

He tries to show me how to do a shuffle called the Sybil cut but it’s too hard to follow, so I just watch the cards play against each other before turning back into a deck.

“Fun night, huh?” he asks.

“Real fun.”

Goose bumps prickle my arms and legs. I feel him beside me, so much. Too much. I stare out the window. I see the diner from here. I see patrons inside the diner from here. The bike rack. My bike. I watch a trucker and a woman cross the lot, their arms wrapped around each other. He nuzzles her neck and she tilts her head my way and I swear our eyes meet for half a second. I wonder what she sees when she looks at me.

I wonder what Leon sees when he looks at me.

How he decided on me.

The woman and the man climb into his semi.

“So how do you feel about good food and good people?” Leon asks. It’s so unexpected, I don’t know how to respond. He smiles. “That bad, huh?”

“Why?”

He tosses the pack of cards into the front seat. “I’m going to a party and I’m positive I’d have more fun with you there. It’s at my sister’s, this Friday. She’s in Ibis. How about it?”

“I have to work, Friday. You know that.”

“You could get Holly to cover for you. Or one of the other girls.”

“I have to, uh…” I forget what I have to do. He’s asking me out on a date and I feel about a thousand different things at once and not all of them are bad. I stare at my nails. But. All I manage to get out of my mouth is, “I don’t know.”


“But that’s not a no?”

“I’ll have to see if … I’ll have to see.”

Because there are things I need to know but I don’t know how to ask him, wouldn’t begin to know how to put them to words. I don’t think you can. I study Leon’s profile, my gaze traveling down the ridge of his nose to the soft outline of his lips, to the sharp outline of his jaw. I wonder what it would be like to run the outside of my hand against it, to be close enough to do that. I am close enough to do that. I hate him a little, for the feeling between my legs.

“Do I have something on my face?” he asks.

“No,” I say. And then, “How would you describe yourself, Leon?”

“I’m awesome.”

“Seriously.”

“Ouch.” He clutches his chest. “What do you want me to say?”

“I can’t tell you or it won’t be true.”

“I think I’m great, for whatever that’s worth.”

It’s not worth anything. I look out the window again and I want to know what’s going on inside the semi. That girl looked like she knew what she was doing, like it was easy.

She didn’t look afraid.

“Look, when we go in, I’ll get my phone. We can swap numbers. Just let me know sometime tomorrow if you want to come and I’ll pick you up. Not a big deal if you can’t.”

He reaches over and squeezes my hand, startling me with his sweetness. But just because something starts out sweet doesn’t mean it won’t push itself so far past anything you could call sweet anymore. And if it all starts like this, how do you see what’s coming?





when i run, I don’t have to think about anything.

I don’t have to think about Leon, or my underwear, or mom, or Todd, or Penny, or Alek, or Brock. But then that last one—he comes up beside me and matches my pace. I take a quick look behind me. Everyone else specks the distance. I want to be them. They don’t have to worry about this. They can run without being chased because that’s what’s happening here. Brock is speaking to me with his body. It’s in the way he keeps it so close to mine. In the way he breathes, so heavy and loud, I can barely hear my heart. His arms lash at the air. He’s telling me the space between us is nothing, is something he’s letting me have, for now. I can barely keep myself ahead of him. I’m fast, but his legs are longer.