Birthday(19)
I clear my throat. “Anybody seen Morgan or Jasmine?” I ask. Some of them shrug and the rest go back to what they were doing. “Morgan’s a freshman? Long hair? About this tall?” More shrugging. Why is Morgan so good at keeping his head down? “Jasmine? Wears lipstick all the time? She’s Elena’s cousin?”
“Did somebody say my name?” Elena pokes her head out from the kitchen, her waist-length black hair swaying. She gives me a curious look, her pretty red lips pursed, and my mouth goes dry.
“I’m looking for Morgan and Jasmine?” I say, trying to stand up a little straighter and look a little cooler. She squints like she’s trying to remember something.
“They were here earlier. I think … one second.” She yells something out the back window and eventually a male voice calls back. “Jasmine’s ride hasn’t left yet, and I guess the little dude rode his bike and it’s still chained up behind the garage. I think I saw them headed for the backyard a while back. Good luck!”
She smiles and I wave awkwardly before I circle around to the back of the house where a bonfire looms in the center of the yard.
“Hey, Potter!” a familiar voice calls. I look up to find some other varsity and JV guys around the bonfire, specifically Nate and Chud. They seem happy to see me tonight, but I guess I did win them the game. Nate’s a sophomore and always has his arm around a cheerleader. If my life were a high school movie he would be typecast as the rich asshole whose dad wants to shut down the community center, but we’re nobodies in a shitty Appalachian town, so he lives in a trailer in the same park as Morgan. Chud’s a little shorter than Nate, but built like a brick, just pounds and pounds of muscle under a layer of fat, with a head like a rock that’s covered in acne.
They call me “Potter” because I brought Deathly Hallows to my first junior varsity practice and it fell out of my backpack, so now despite whatever else I accomplish, I’m the dipshit nerd who reads books about wizards.
“Catch!”
“What?” I just barely notice a can flying for my head and catch it without thinking, then realize it’s a beer. Am I supposed to open it right now? Do I just stand here and chug it? I haven’t tried beer again since last year on my birthday with Isaac. “Uh. Thanks.”
“Come sit,” Nate says. I pause, Morgan on my mind, but then my gaze drifts to his side where Susan, a freshman cheerleader, is sitting next to him. I stare at her heart-shaped face and spray of freckles in the bonfire light. She smiles and does a little wave and my stomach lurches. I should keep looking for Morgan, but I’ve never gotten to hang out with the cheerleaders before …
I find an empty space on one of the logs next to the quarterback, a red-haired junior named Jason. He claps me on the shoulder and taps my beer with his. I crack mine open and taste it, and it’s way more bitter tasting than the Corona. I don’t want to finish it, but I also want to look cool, so I keep sipping at it while the guys talk about the game. They tell me they’ve never seen a freshman play like I did tonight. Where was I hiding those moves all season?
“The bench, mostly,” I say. They slap their knees and cackle, but I didn’t think it was very funny.
“If you keep it up, we might make state next year,” says Chud.
“That’s, uh,” I say. “That’s a lot of pressure.”
“Pressure, huh?” Jason says. He rubs his chin and smiles. “Maybe you’ve forgotten the last fifteen seconds of the game, but I haven’t.” I take a long sip of beer and shrug. Jason jabs a finger at me and I blink. “That play was inspired. You act like a chill dude, with your surfer haircut and that slow way you talk, like all you want to do is hang out and listen to music and strum that guitar I see you with. But there’s a part of you that loves chaos and conflict. You, young Eric, will never be a man satisfied with the easy way.”
“Y-yeah?”
“Yeah!” Jason says. “I doubt you’ll be happy without it.”
“He’s drunk,” Susan says. She leans over to whisper, her bare arm brushing mine, and I blush more than the heat from the bonfire can account for.
“In vino veritas,” Jason says. An empty can flies by his head and he laughs.
“Nobody knows what that means, you fucking nerd!” Nate yells.
Jason keeps talking and I let his praise wash over me. Together with the alcohol, which is working way faster than I thought it would, Morgan slips from my mind. The fire warms my face, and I smile as Susan hands me another beer.
MORGAN
“Ow!”
“Sorry!” I say.
Jasmine and I stumble forward a few steps, and I look back to see a guy and a girl mostly in silhouette against the distant orange glow of the bonfire, their clothes rumpled and their shadowed faces angry at the interruption. “Sorry. I couldn’t see you.”
“Come on, man,” the guy whispers and I think I recognize him from algebra.
The sound system starts blasting Justin Timberlake as Jasmine grabs my hand and leads me farther into the woods. Barely any light from the bonfire bleeds through the trees, just enough for me to see Jasmine’s outline and hints of her colorful outfit as she nestles between two oak trees and pats for me to sit down next to her. The beginnings of the fall’s leaves crunch under my feet as I fold my legs beneath me. The air is still liquid in the heatwave.