And we walked in. I turned to close the door behind me, and the Colonel shook his head and said, “After seven, you have to leave the door open if you’re in a girl’s room,” but I barely heard him because the hottest girl in all of human history was standing before me in cut-off jeans and a peach tank top. And she was talking over the Colonel, talking loud and fast.
“So first day of summer, I’m in grand old Vine Station with this boy named Justin and we’re at his house watching TV on the couch – and mind you, I’m already dating Jake – actually I’m still dating him, miraculously enough, but Justin is a friend of mine from when I was a kid and so we’re watching TV and literally chatting about the SATs or something, and Justin puts his arm around me and I think, Oh, that’s nice, we’ve been friends for so long and this is totally comfortable, and we’re just chatting and then I’m in the middle of a sentence about analogies or something and like a hawk he reaches down and he honks my boob. HONK. A much-too-firm, two- to three-second HONK. And the first thing I thought was, OK, how do I extricate this claw from my boob before it leaves permanent marks? and the second thing I thought was God, I can’t wait to tell Takumi and the Colonel.”
The Colonel laughed. I stared, stunned partly by the force of the voice emanating from the petite (but, God, curvy) girl and partly by the gigantic stacks of books that lined her walls. Her library filled her bookshelves and then overflowed into waist-high stacks of books everywhere, piled haphazardly against the walls. If just one of them moved, I thought, the domino effect could engulf the three of us in an asphyxiating mass of literature.
“Who’s the guy that’s not laughing at my very funny story?” she asked.
“Oh, right. Alaska, this is Pudge. Pudge memorises people’s last words. Pudge, this is Alaska. She got her boob honked over the summer.” She walked over to me with her hand extended, then made a quick move downwards at the last moment and pulled down my shorts.
“Those are the biggest shorts in the state of Alabama!”
“I like them baggy,” I said, embarrassed, and pulled them up. They had been cool back home in Florida.
“So far in our relationship, Pudge, I’ve seen your chicken legs entirely too often,” the Colonel deadpanned. “So, Alaska. Sell us some cigarettes.” And then somehow, the Colonel talked me into paying five dollars for a pack of Marlboro Lights I had no intention of ever smoking.
He asked Alaska to join us, but she said, “I have to find Takumi and tell him about The Honk.” She turned to me and asked, “Have you seen him?” I had no idea whether I’d seen Takumi, since I had no idea who he was. I just shook my head.
“All right. Meet ya at the lake in a few minutes then.” The Colonel nodded.
At the edge of the lake, just before the sandy (and, the Colonel told me, fake) beach, we sat down in an Adirondack swing. I made the obligatory joke: “Don’t grab my boob.”
The Colonel gave an obligatory laugh, then asked, “Want a smoke?” I had never smoked a cigarette, but when in Rome …
“Is it safe here?”
“Not really,” he said, then lit a cigarette and handed it to me. I inhaled. Coughed. Wheezed. Gasped for breath. Coughed again. Considered vomiting. Grabbed the swinging bench, head spinning, and threw the cigarette to the ground and stomped on it, convinced my Great Perhaps did not involve cigarettes.
“Smoke much?” He laughed, then pointed to a white speck across the lake and said, “See that?”
“Yeah,” I said. “What is that? A bird?”
“It’s the swan,” he said.
“Wow. A school with a swan. Wow.”
“That swan is the spawn of Satan. Never get closer to it than we are now.”
“Why?”
“It has some issues with people. It was abused or something. It’ll rip you to pieces. The Eagle put it there to keep us from walking around the lake to smoke.”
“The Eagle?”
“Mr Starnes. Code name: the Eagle. The Dean of Students. Most of the teachers live on campus and they’ll all bust you. But only the Eagle lives in the dorm circle and he sees all. He can smell a cigarette from like five miles.”
“Isn’t his house back there?” I asked, pointing to it. I could see the house quite clearly despite the darkness, so it followed he could probably see us.
“Yeah, but he doesn’t really go into blitzkrieg mode until classes start,” Chip said nonchalantly.
“God, if I get in trouble my parents will kill me,” I said.
“I suspect you’re exaggerating. But look, you’re going to get in trouble. Ninety-nine per cent of the time your parents never have to know though. The school doesn’t want your parents to think you became a fuck-up here any more than you want your parents to think you’re a fuck-up.” He blew a thin stream of smoke forcefully towards the lake. I had to admit: he looked cool doing it. Taller, somehow. “Anyway, when you get in trouble, just don’t tell on anyone. I mean, I hate the rich snots here with a fervent passion I usually reserve only for dental work and my father. But that doesn’t mean I would rat them out. Pretty much the only important thing is never never never never rat.”
“OK,” I said, although I wondered: if someone punches me in the face, I’m supposed to insist that I ran into a door? It seemed a little stupid. How do you deal with bullies and assholes if you can’t get them into trouble? I didn’t ask Chip though.
“All right, Pudge. We have reached the point in the evening when I’m obliged to go and find my girlfriend. So give me a few of those cigarettes you’ll never smoke anyway and I’ll see you later.”
I decided to hang out on the swing for a while, half because the heat had finally dissipated into a pleasant, if muggy, eighty-something, and half because I thought Alaska might show up. But almost as soon as the Colonel left, the bugs encroached: no-see-ums (which, for the record, you can see) and mosquitoes hovered around me in such numbers that the tiny noise of their rubbing wings sounded cacophonous. And then I decided to smoke.
Now, I did think, The smoke will drive the bugs away. And, to some degree, it did. I’d be lying though if I claimed I became a smoker to ward off insects. I became a smoker because (1) I was on an Adirondack swing by myself, and (2) I had cigarettes, and (3) I figured that if everyone else could smoke a cigarette without coughing, I could damn well too. In short, I didn’t have a very good reason. So yeah, let’s just say that (4) it was the bugs.
I made it through three entire drags before I felt nauseous and dizzy and only semi-pleasantly buzzed. I got up to leave. As I stood, a voice behind me said:
“So, do you really memorise last words?”
She ran up beside me and grabbed my shoulder and pushed me back on to the porch swing.
“Yeah,” I said. And then hesitantly, I added, “You want to quiz me?”
“JFK,” she said.
“That’s obvious,” I answered.
“Oh, is it now?” she asked.
“No. Those were his last words. Someone said, ‘Mr President, you sure can’t say Dallas doesn’t love you,’ and then he said, ‘That’s obvious,’ and then he got shot.”
She laughed. “God, that’s awful. I shouldn’t laugh. But I will,” and then she laughed again. “OK, Mr Famous Last Words Boy. I have one for you.” She reached into her overstuffed backpack and pulled out a book. “Gabriel García Márquez. The General in His Labyrinth. Absolutely one of my favourites. It’s about Simón Bolívar.” I didn’t know who Simón Bolívar was, but she didn’t give me time to ask. “It’s a historical novel, so I don’t know if this is true,