“She had that fire,” I said, and the ghostly lit face of Skink stared hard at me as I said it.
“And remember now, she was only fifteen. But still. And so I asked her out, because when you’re that guy, it ain’t no big thing to ask some sophomore out, and damn if she didn’t say no. Surprised the hell out of me, and it wasn’t like a shy no, it was like a get-lost-you-asshole no. The guys, they got a laugh out of that one, but I wasn’t laughing. You know how sometimes you see a girl every day of your life and it’s just like nothing and then, when you decide you might like her, well, then every time you see her after that your heart just goes a little crazy? That’s the way it was with Hailey when she said no to me. And after that, all I wanted in this world was her.”
“She was playing you,” said Skink.
“Maybe, but, you know, it was more like she really just wasn’t interested, like there was nothing I could give her that she had any use for. So then I did like the full-court press, you know, being extra nice and getting her invited to all the parties and looking out for her all the time, like in the cafeteria and such. But none of it seemed to work. Until the reefer. I never expected her for that. Me, I started early, smoking with my mom.”
“Your mum?” said Skink.
“My stepmom. My real mother, she left when I was young and took a chunk of my daddy’s money, and then he got married again to someone not much older than me. And she was the one turned me on when I was just fourteen. My dad was out on business, and she came in wearing one a her outfits, which was not much at all, and looking damn good, and she up and asked me if I wanted to try something. Sure, I said. So we lit up in the backyard just like that, lying side by side in the chaises next to the pool, blowing smoke into the air, and ever since, that was how I had my fun outside of school, blowing reefer. It was why I eventually quit the ball team and started cutting school, because it was all getting in the way of my drugs. I mean, my future was set, I was going to work in my daddy’s car lots and become as rich as him and spend my nights banging models and smoking the best weed money could buy. My future was laid out smooth as ice, and I was all for it. Well, asking Hailey out to the movies or some dance wasn’t working, so one day, out of desperation, I sidled up to her in school and asked if she wanted to blow some dope down at the quarry, and what she did surprised the hell out of me. She looked up, smiled that wicked smile of hers, and said, ‘Now you’re talking.’
“So that’s how we started together, hanging at the quarry with the rest, smoking dope. She pulled it in with this intensity I always remembered. The rest of us was just having some fun, but for her it was serious stuff, like the joint, it was a lifeline she was sucking at, like there was something dark she was trying to forget. I figured it was her father’s death that was bumming her and I brought it up once and she told me to shut up in front of everyone, and that was the last time I did that.
“Now, it was clear that she was my girl, and at the quarry, with the others, she was all full of affection. I’d sit there with my arm around her and we’d act like a couple, and sometimes she would exhale the smoke right into my mouth and that got me harder than anything. But, you know, it never moved beyond that. When we were alone, she was cold, man. I’d sit there and try to kiss her and she wouldn’t kiss back, her lips were like smooth slivers of marble. She’d let me grope her breasts, which was pretty nice, but when I tried to reach lower, she’d slap my hand away. I tried to force it once, and she kicked me so hard in the nuts I couldn’t stand up for a week, and that was the last time I tried that, too.
“But I didn’t sense like she wasn’t that kind of girl. It was more she wasn’t gonna be that kind of girl with me. Now, I’d been going all the way since I was fifteen, and Cheryl like couldn’t get enough of it, but Hailey wouldn’t give me a thing. Just to keep me happy she would jerk me off now and then, but she’d do it only ’cause I was begging and it wasn’t so much better than me doing it myself, worse actually, because she was always acting like she was in a hurry for me to finish, which kind of ruined it. Anyone else, I’d a sent her packing, but her refusals just drove me more crazy. I even once said we could get married, and all she did was laugh at me like I was some zero asshole. It was humiliating enough to be a turn-on. So that’s the way it was when Jesse Sterrett all of a sudden started hanging out at the quarry.
“Jesse and I used to be best friends. We played ball together all the time, basketball, baseball, everything. He was quiet and I wasn’t, he was poor and I wasn’t, he was humble and I wasn’t. We was a perfect pair. But he turned against me when he started hanging with that Leon Dibble. I never liked that kid, thought he was strange in the brain and told Jesse so, and it was like Jesse near took my head off. Next thing you know Jesse’s always off with his new best friend and I’m like nothing to him. It wasn’t no surprise to anyone that Leon was as queer as a three-legged goat, and I figured that made Jesse the same. And he proved it to us all when Leon, he killed himself, it was like Jesse went into mourning. It was no use trying to talk to him after that, he wouldn’t talk back. Got so the only way I could get a reaction from him was to needle, needle, and so I did, and he just took it and glowered, and at least that was something. But then he started hanging out at the quarry.
“I thought maybe it was me he was interested in, like as a friend, like he wanted us to be pals again. He wasn’t there to toke, ’cause he didn’t toke, and he wasn’t there to joke around, because he didn’t joke either. He was just there. And then I got an inkling he wasn’t there for me, he was there for Hailey.
“Why is it that everything we most dread in this life we end up forcing on ourselves? I started making fun of him, needling him like I did, laughing at him for not reefing up with us, for being so quiet, for not liking no girls. Laughing at his back when he stormed off. And then one night, when he stormed off, Hailey, she gave me a look that froze my heart before she went off after him.
“It wasn’t long before I realized something was going on, and it drove me insane. The thought of her doing all the things with him that she wouldn’t do with me. I couldn’t sleep. I started hanging outside her house at night, waiting to catch her with him. I never did but that meant nothing. Sometimes, in desperation, I called out her name and that uncle of hers, a brutal piece of man if ever there was one, would rush outside with his shotgun and tell me to get the hell away or he’d spatter me sure all over the county. I knew he would, too, it was in him, but it didn’t mean a thing to me. I was insane. And then one day I just went after Jesse.
“I always was taller than him, stronger than him, and when as boys we wrestled, I always ended up on top forcing him to yell uncle. But he had kept playing ball and working out and the only thing I was exercising was my lungs, and this time it wasn’t even close to a fair fight. I started it, he finished it, and I ended up in the hospital.