The Sun Goes Down in My Eyes

By June 2007 we had both successfully completed our freshman year of school. Well, I had, at least. Like last year, and the year before that, and two years before that, Maeve had to complete summer school before she could technically move on to all tenth grade classes. Yes, it sucked for her, but I guess she was used to it by now. And I was always working during the day at this sketchy dry cleaners in the next town while she was at school so we were still able to hang out in the evenings together.

I loved working at that dry cleaners. The work was easy and the neighborhood bar was right next door so my boss would always creep away there once 3:00 hit, mumbling something about a cocktail, leaving me to baby sit the counter for the next three hours. The store was always dead in the summer, what with everyone being on vacation and all, and when Tom went next door I would sit in his old comfy chair and watch Sponge Bob until he stumbled back over around 6:15. I remember I would come into work around 10 am with nothing but a water bottle to refill throughout the day, and I reveled in the way my stomach would howl to itself, slowing eating itself up as I worked in the sticky heat of the shop. Sometimes Tom would order us pizza, but I would eat slowly and throw it away when I thought he wasn't looking.

By the time July rolled around Maeve had found a new boy to love in summer school. His name was Raymond Bates and he was pretty much the most gorgeous thing I'd ever laid eyes on. He was seventeen and had sleek brown hair that flopped across his forehead just above these sparkling blue eyes that popped against his brown sun-kissed skin. He wore these loose tank tops/jersey things that showed off his toned arms and slim straight-leg jeans with holes near the corners of the back pockets that rested below his ass because that was how low he wore them.

I had heard much about him by the time I had officially met him near the end of July. They walked into the cleaners together as I was closing up the store. He had Maeve's fingers laced in one hand and he walked his bmx bike in with the other. At 6'2'' he towered over the both of us as Maeve told me that we were going to walk over a few blocks to an empty lot where he and his friends rode bikes and skateboarded.

It was called the Wastelands, and appropriately named so. Almost 3/4 of a mile of weedy concrete bordered by train tracks on the far end and a chain-link fence that we had to hop on the other. I remember shyly walking up to his friends with them, a dozen or so teenage silhouettes, and being blinded by either their beauty or maybe just the glare of the setting sun, I'm not sure, but I thought I was in heaven. So cute, and every one of them at least some variation of my "type."

While the boys skated, Maeve and I sat in what appeared to be the living room of this barren complex: Two disgustingly old couches and a broken Lay-z Boy arranged in front of a shattered TV set from the 70's. A wooden crate was our coffee table, and torn apart Playboys provided coasters for the boys' 40 oz's and reading material. Those magazines embarrassed me and I pretended that they weren't there, but another girl named Ashley who sat across from us boldly flipped through the pages, laughing at the fleshy silicone blondes and critiquing their perfectly produced curves, finding flaws in the way they waxed their exposed privates. She laughed especially loud when one of the guys would stray from the rails and ramps and come over to sit with us.

To me, Ashley was bold and dangerous. A little similar to Maeve with her "I don't give a fuck" attitude, but less intelligent in the way she executed it. She wasn't as smart, and came off as slightly obnoxious. But she was nice underneath it all, and I guess that's all that counts really.

The boy who sat down next to us was named Carl, and he had short dark hair and huge black plugs in his stretched ear lobes. He, Maeve, and Ashley easily made small talk which turned into casual lighthearted conversation between themselves, while I sat back with my mouth glued shut. Occasionally I would smile and laugh with them when something was funny, but I was seriously incapable of communicating back then. I longed to be part of the conversation, yet at the same time I prayed that no one asked me anything, because I wouldn't know what to say. I told you I was socially retarded. I didn't know what was wrong with me, why I was so incapable of human connection.

After we hung out with the guys, Maeve and I would always gossip about them afterwards. Which ones were beyond cute, which ones were far from it, and she liked to discuss which ones would be suitable for me to hook up with. For a few minutes we would pretend that I wasn't a social sped and actually had a chance with a real live teenage boy, but both of us knew that the likeliness of that happening were slim to none. That was until I discovered the power of alcohol.

It was late August, and she had been going out with Raymond for two full months now. My mom had gone upstate for the weekend, and me being the not-so-clever teenager that I am, decided to have a party.

The usual people that we hung out with came, however It didn't really feel like they were my "friends." They were all friends, and I guess they considered me a friend or acquaintance or something, or maybe they just assumed that I never spoke to anyone at all ever. But I did; if you really got to know me I would open up and become the craziest person you've ever met. Okay not really I was still pretty sedated even if I was comfortable with you, but if I didn't know you, I was sedated and trapped behind huge concrete walls.

However, Maeve and I learned that if you weren't willing to put in the time to get to know me, you could always just get me really really drunk. It was quicker, easier and had more efficient results.

That night, Maeve was the social butterfly as usual, but surprisingly I wasn't too far behind. We learned that we weren't the most serious team at beer pong, but I was a master at mixing the fruitiest, girliest, most potent drinks ever. By 11 o'clock I had abandoned my twelve pack of Coors Light for a Malibu and pineapple juice concoction.

The effects were magic. Maeve and I commanded the party, and equally so. We clung to each other for support, laughing and gabbing as best friends do. It was like whatever wall that blocked my brain from my mouth had been knocked down. I made friends, I actually made conversation and told jokes with the kids I'd hung out with so many times but had never spoken to.

With my magic potion flowing into our red cups I didn't waste my time on the beer I had. It tasted gross and it was so much easier and more effective to swallow up the liquor. There was a friend of Raymond's there that I hadn't met before who didn't have anything to drink, so the social butterfly in me repeatedly ushered him to take my twelve pack as I wasn't drinking it. I told him to take another and another and looking back I feel kind of responsible for getting him so drunk, even though he probably would've gotten that way without me.

The kid's name was Adam, and even though I was drunk, I didn't expect us to become friends that night. He was 19, and cute, and had a sick compass tattoo on his forearm. Way too cute for me. We shared a bench together at the crowded red picnic table in my backyard. There were about twelve kids sitting around this table that usually sat eight.

However the night wasn't all smiles and laughter. At one point Raymond came up to me looking for Maeve. Busy with my newfound social powers, I told him I hand't seen her. They had been fighting earlier before, I assumed she had gone somewhere to be away from him for a little. An hour later she came up to me and whispered in my ear that she and Carl had made out in the upstairs bathroom. She laughed when she said it, but I could hear the guilt in her voice. She laughed whenever she was nervous, or upset, or angry. She told me it just happened out of nowhere and I told her my lips were sealed.

I think they fought again that night, but he didn't find out about Carl. Raymond joined us outside, fervently questioning me on what Maeve was up to. I told him I didn't know but he only got more frustrated and angry until the point that Adam leaned over and told him lay off of me. He put his arm around me when he said this and kept it there after he leaned back from Raymond. In fact his arm stayed there for the rest of the night until he started complaining that he was hungry.

I happily took him to the kitchen, and opened up my refrigerator for him, but there wasn't much solid food in there/ anything that pleased him, so I took him to the pantry in the hallway but he didn't see anything there either so we returned to the fridge again, then back to the pantry.

"What do you want?" I whined after he turned down Triscuts, graham crackers, Wheat Thins, and peanut butter. It didn't help that I couldn't read half of the words on things but I kept searching, my back to him and my head practically inside the second shelf looking behind all the packages and containers.

"I don't know." He mumbled, sliding his hands down and around my waist, pulling me back towards him.

It was like his hands were pulling my stomach right down out of my body and leaving it on the floor. Even today, if I'm standing quiet enough and concentrating I can still give myself butterflies from that memory.

He was looking down at me and I was looking up at him as the the space between us slowly ceased. We kissed like that for a moment, my hand sliding up his neck and holding him to me, before he twisted me around so that he was pressing me up against the wall.

Now, I won't go into too much detail, but I will tell you that:

a.) Some thoughts going through my head were:
- Oh my God my first real kiss.
- I can't believe this is actually happening.
- Mmmhgdfgtauaqhwus.
- I hope I remember this in the morning.

and

b.) Apparently I can be a horn dog when I'm intoxicated and we stayed like for about an hour or so and continued making out again in other less private (I cringe) places.

A few hours later when we had finally separated ourselves and sobered up a little, his older brother came to pick him up. While he was waiting for him, we stood together in the kitchen with the few remaining people still there. Maeve was grinning wildly at me from her perch on top of my counter, but I didn't see Raymond anywhere. Carl wasn't there either. Just a few other boys that I knew and Adam. He talked with the other kids but laced his fingers with mine, caressing them and playing with them as he laughed at some joke that was made. When his brother called to tell him he was outside, he looked down at me and pressed his nose to my forehead.

"I'll see you around." He let go of my hand and poked me in the stomach before turning to leave. I'm not sure if he was being playful or not, but the gesture horrified me. I looked down at my stomach and cringed. why didn't I wear a looser shirt? Why wasn't I sucking my stomach in like usual? Oh no he would surely never talk to me again.

After everyone had left and we cleaned up a little, Maeve and I went upstairs to sleep in my mom's queen sized bed, gossiping about the night's events before we passed out.

From what Maeve told me, her and Raymond were "fine"; he didn't know about Carl or anything, nor would he ever find out, but after that night their relationship went in a new direction; a more passionate one, and a more destructive one.

You know how in that modern-day ice age movie "The Day After Tomorrow" they talk about the storm that changed the face of the Earth forever? Well this eventually became the relationship that changed my best friend Maeve.