Time Lifts the Light

The room was dim, the ghostly light from the kitchen bathed everything in a pale blue glow. Mikey was bustling around, digging through a pile of clunky VHS tapes.

"Home movie, home movie, Peter Pan..." he mumbled, quickly glancing at the titles on the tapes. "It's here somewhere, I swear."

I shifted my position on the floor in front of Mikey's T.V., crossing my legs. I suddenly felt a foot gently prod my back. Screwing up my face in disgust, I turned around to find D.B. sitting on the couch, arms crossed and looking up at the ceiling, blinking innocently.

"Gross, Daniel."
"Whatever do you mean?"
"Keep your feet to yourself," I muttered, turning back around.

I felt his big toe trace my spine.

"D.B.!"
He laughed evilly as Kim rolled her eyes and slapped him upside the head.

"Ouch!"
"Thanks, Kim."
"No problem, Indy. Girl power."

Mikey's apartment straddled the thin line between clutter and chaos. Tiny knick-knacks lined every available surface. It was with some embarrassment that Mikey told me his mother's favorite hobby - collecting souvenirs. She was a warm, if slightly kooky woman who loved to comb tourist shops. Her snack platter (presented on a tray she had snagged from a New York airport) was wonderfully insane -- marshmallows, peanut butter, Skittles, and cheese puffs.

"It's here somewhere!" Mikey whined. "Ultimate Lawnmower Scream 3: Sophie's Revenge is the best horror movie ever. It was so low budget that it was never released on DVD. I had to scour the movie bin at Goodwill for an hour - "
"What time is it?" D.B. asked. "I think Family Guy is on."
"No!" Mikey shouted. "We are not watching Family Guy. Turning on the T.V. is admitting defeat!"

I stretched out on the floor, twisting a little to look at D.B. The red mark where Travis pushed him into the locker had turned into a bruise. That coupled with the way his hair was never quite combed enough and the scar stretching through his eyebrow made him look a bit haggard, as if he'd just stepped away from a fight.

"I'm just glad we're not at the game," Kim sighed, twirling a piece of her long blond hair between her fingers.
"Me too," D.B. agreed heartily. "Even if we never watch this stupid - "
"Found it! And it's not stupid!"

Somehow we all ended up on the floor, clutching a blanket around our shoulders and jumping at the slightest noise. Mikey whimpered pitifully as the eerie music started again. On screen, Sophie crept through her parent's old, ornate mansion. She raised her hand and Kim screamed -- it had been infused with the rolling blade of a lawnmower.

"Don't go downstairs, don't go downstairs," D.B. was chanting.

Sophie started up the creaky wooden stairs, slicing chippings off the banister with her lawnmower hand.

"Those look like the apartment stairs," Mikey whispered.
"Shut up Mikey, shut up, shut up!" I groaned, clutching a fistful of D.B.'s shirtsleeve.

Suddenly, the lightly clicked on.

"Kids, maybe you should - "
"AHHHH!"

My heart leapt up into the region of my throat as the four of us screamed bloody murder. The snack tray was knocked across the room, spraying the room with marshmallows. Somehow the blanket got stuck on D.B.'s head. He flailed violently and began screaming things like, "Don't lawnmower me, Sophie!" and "I don't know where your hand is!"

"Kids, maybe you should get going!" Mikey's mother yelled over D.B.'s screams.

We calmed down enough to pull the blanket off of the still thrashing D.B. and realize that it was only Mikey's mother telling us to get out.

"It's very late," she continued, rubbing her forehead.

D.B. took me and Kim home without finishing the movie. Mikey looked hesitant to let us go, not wanting to be alone after watching half of the movie. We didn't speak, but a silent sort of panic buzzed through us as we walked across the dark parking lot a little quicker than necessary. But, by the time we'd reached Kim's stately white house, we'd calmed down a great deal and Kim was back on the subject of Homecoming.

"You should come over tomorrow, Indy," Kim said as she got out of the car, the streetlights casting an orange glow over her. "We can get ready together."
"Okay," I mumbled. Images of Kim pulling and tugging my hair into a fancy pile of curls filled my head.
"D.B., you can pick Mikey up and then come get us here, right?"
"Yeah, sure."
"Okay!" she squealed. "See you tomorrow, losers."

She bounded out of the car and raced to her front step, no doubt to go put on her Homecoming dress again.

"Why are we friends with her?" D.B. asked dryly as he pulled out of her driveway.
I laughed.
"Hey, do me a favor and find my sketchbook back there," he said, inclining his head toward the dirty floor of the back seat.
"Aw, Daniel it's all gross back - "
"Just do it!" he groaned. "You wanna walk the rest of the way home?"

I rolled my eyes and stretched into the back, my stomach resting on the console between the driver's and passenger's seats. The floor was littered with water bottles, torn pages, candy wrappers, and a few articles of clothing. I finally found the black sketchbook under a dirty grey sock (with Wolverine from X-Men printed on the heel) that I had previously been afraid to pick up.

"Found it?" he asked.
"Yeah..."

I didn't turn back around into my seat, though. I remembered, weeks and weeks ago, D.B. telling me about how he constantly rips pages out of his sketchbook, only to change his mind later and tape them back in. The crumpled bits of crisp, white paper caught my curiosity. I reached out and began rifling through them, smoothing the first one I grabbed out on the floor.

It was a detailed sketch of a zombie crawling out from a gutter, his dirtied nails scratching gouges into the cement. I snorted in laughter and snatched another piece of paper from the floor.

"What are you doing?"
"Nothing. Just looking at all these drawings you threw back here."

I felt the car swerve dramatically as he looked back at me. My button down shirt had been pushed up a little past the waist of the school-issued skirt. I could feel D.B. lightly touch the little patch of bare skin on my hip as he asked distractedly, "Why?"

His fingers were cold. I looked back and saw that he was leaning over me slightly, trying to see what drawing I had in my hands. I squirmed a bit so that I could pull my shirt back down and he pretended not to notice that he had ever touched me, casually turning around putting his hand back on the steering wheel.

"Because they're really good and you're a great big shit to ever throw them away." He snorted at my foul language and repeated the line under his breath, chuckling. I was looking at a fully finished water color painting of a raccoon, creased down the middle. "What was wrong with this one?"
He took it and placed it over the front of the steering wheel, glancing down at it quickly as we came to a halt at a stop sign. "I don't remember," he mused. "Hm... I like this one." He folded it up along the crease and put it in the glove compartment.

I found a page of doodles, filled with a quick sketch of Charmander, a deep sea diver, a few tic-tac-toe games with Kim (she had written KIM RULES over the tiny board whenever she'd won), and a conversation with Mikey that, as far as I could gather from their equally sloppy handwriting, discussed Mr. Cross' creepy walrus mustache.

"Get back up here," he said. "Most of those are really bad."
"They're all great, dumbass."
"Yeah, yeah."

I straightened up and sat back down in my seat with his sketchbook on my lap.

"Are you thinking about studying art in college or something?"
"Uh -- or something."
"What?" I blanched. "Why not?"
He shrugged, accidentally taking a wild left hand turn at the last second. "I don't know. Money."
"There are scholarships."
"I wouldn't get - "
"You would."
"Alright, fine. Effort. Work. Planning."
I scowled. He knew full and well what I thought of those excuses.

He laughed at my expression and pretended to shake it off. "This conversation depresses me," he said jovially. "I meant to woo you with my undeniable charm and awesome skills!"
I rolled my eyes.

He pulled up into my driveway and wrenched his car into park. He took the sketchbook from my lap and started flicking through it, his eyes quickly scanning each page before darting past it and onto the next one.

"Aha!" he cried, dramatically ripping one of the pages from the spiral-bound book. "Let the wooing commense!"
"Oh, boy..."
"Okay, you remember how you stuck your head out the window last week?"
"And Mikey said I looked like a dog."
"Well, you were sticking your tongue out."
"Liar! I was not!"
"Okay, okay. But it was still really funny."
"Ha ha," I replied dryly.

He handed me the drawing he'd ripped out.

"I tried to draw it, but it came out less funny and more..."
"Wow," I breathed.
"Yeah. So... there you go."

He'd done a sketch of my profile, as seen from the driver's point of view. I was clutching the window with my left hand, my right tangled in my hair -- pushed off my face completely - save a few wandering strands - by the rushing air. My mouth was open in laughter, and my eyes were squeezed shut from the force of the wind. I looked closely and saw that he'd even done my reflection in the rear-view mirror.

"This is... This... Thank you, D.B."
He rubbed the back of his neck. "I can't afford a cardigan -- or, wait -- corset - "
"Corsage?"
"Right, a coronation. Whatchamacallit. So there's your -- thing."
"It's better than flowers."
"Sweet. Good. I thought you might -- What are you...? Oh, a hug. Okay." He patted me awkwardly on the back. "I just didn't want to give it to you in front of Kim and Mikey."
"I understand."
"Okay... Well, see you tomorrow."
"Yeah."
"Bye."
"Bye, D.B."

-_-_-_-

Complete silence descended over the interior of D.B.'s car. It was as if the four of us were strangers - formal, nervous strangers. The slide of silk against the rough leather upholstery of the beaten red Sedan seemed to be deafening, the eyes of the rest of the drivers on the road seemed drawn to us. It was as if, somehow, everyone knew how uncomfortable we were.

Despite her rampant excitement in the weeks proceeding tonight, it was clear that Kim was not in her element. Her chic red dress fit her perfectly, something that she was definitely not used to. (Although, Mikey didn't seem to mind.) It suddenly dawned on me that, just maybe, she had been using her enthusiasm to cover up the fact that she was terrified of acting nice and courteous and dressing like a lady. Her usual collection of cut-off shorts, angry-looking band tees, and ability to burp the alphabet seemed to support my theory.

Mikey was no different. His mother had gotten so excited that he wasn't going to a school dance in sweats or dressed as a Wookie that she'd rented him a tuxedo. He kept pulling at the collar and swallowing hard, clearly uncomfortable and gazing out the window wistfully.

"It would be so easy to jump..." he muttered as D.B. drove across a bridge, white-knuckling the steering wheel and nervously tapping his left foot.
"What was that, Mikey?" I asked.
"Nothing. Never mind."

We pulled up to the school. Cars filled the front parking lot, as well as the one next to the cafeteria. They overflowed onto the street, parallel parked next to the sidewalk and making D.B. drive much slower and cautiously than he would under normal circumstances. We managed to find a spot across the street from the gym, where the dance was being held. As I opened the car door, I could hear the opening of "Let it Rock" by Kevin Rudolf(1) pumping all the way from the school.

Kim wrinkled her nose and Mikey feigned throwing up.

"Bad music," D.B. mumbled as he helped me step out of the car. "Another reason we should just turn around and go back - "
"Good idea!" Mikey interrupted, opening his door again. "Let's go."

I pressed my hand to my thigh as a gust of crisp autumn wind threatened to lift my simple black dress. The entrance to the gym was draped with shiny plastic streamers in red and black. Over the door, there was a store bought cut-out of a hand of playing cards with the words "Casino Night" written in bold block letters through the middle.

"Why are you three so nervous?" I barked. "Calm down!"
"Easy for you to say," D.B. challenged. "Look at you -- you look amazing."
"Shut up, so do you!"

He rolled his eyes and tugged on the sleeve of his father's suit jacket, which was a bit large in the shoulders and short in the arms. D.B. was probably the most self-conscious out of all of us tonight. He was late picking me up from Kim's house because, half-way there, he realized he'd put on dark blue socks instead of black ones.

Mikey gulped audibly and Kim smacked him on the shoulder. "You look good too, dumbass."
"Thanks baby," he said, but I distinctly heard him mutter something that sounded like, "Waiter."

We began the walk toward the school, nothing but the sound of my black heels and Kim's red ones clicking on the pavement. For some reason, I felt calm. Or as calm as I could get, seeing as this was my first Homecoming, too. (Even at my old school, I wasn't one for dances.)

Daniel caught up to me and started talking to the ground.

"I'm really sorry."
"What? Why?" I snorted, caught off guard.
His neck turned red. "I just feel really stupid because I'm probably going to be the only one in a dumb, mismatched suit with - "
"D.B., don't - "
"Hang on, let me finish," he breathed. "You are Kim are rich - "
I snorted. "Uh, way off."
"Compared to me, you are. And... Well, Mikey's mom got all excited about this, so he's all decked out - "
"Decked out?"
"Don't make fun of me," he said seriously, turning to look at me. A crease formed between his eyebrows.
"I - I'm sorry. I didn't mean... I was just trying to lighten the mood..." My voice trailed off into nothingness.
"I'm wearing sneakers, Indy."

I looked down at his battered Converse, at the grey laces that used to be white.

"This was supposed to be all special, or whatever. I'm ruining it."
"You," I hissed. "Are a self-centered, egotistical idiot."

His eyes widened. This had not been what he was expecting.

"D.B., you are not so important that your clothes would put a damper on this dance." It came out sounding stern, but I tried hard to soften my voice. "For your information, there are only a few ways you could ruin the night. A chain-saw is one of them. A battle axe is another. Your suit?" I offered. "Not so much. Okay?"
He huffed and continued looking at the ground.
"And I love your sneakers."
Begrudgingly, he let out a laugh. "Me too."
"There you go!" I cried, slapping him on the arm. "Sulking doesn't suit you, Daniel Booker Hawkins."
"Shh!" He checked over his shoulder, trying to make sure nobody had heard his full name.

Kim and Mikey caught up to us, looking slightly less seasick. D.B. offered me his arm and I stuck my tongue out at him before taking it and stepping through the barrier of sparkly streamers into our school's sad excuse for a Las Vegas casino.