Nebraska Stars

Chapter Four

The first bad decision I made was letting Clark lead me out of the kitchen and into the backyard. As we stepped through the sliding glass doors, I glanced back at Jo, who was grinning and giving me the thumbs up. 

Clark took my hand and led me through the crowd of kids. The backyard was alive with activity. Some guy was playing amateur DJ over by the pool. He was wearing an oversized hooded sweatshirt and huge headphones and was sitting between two massive speakers, cranking up the volume and playing bass-heavy dance music that was so loud and forceful I felt like my whole body was vibrating. Girls in string bikinis hoisted themselves up onto the shoulders of their football player boyfriends and played chicken in the pool, occasionally letting out peals of high-pitched laughter. A girl dressed all in black threw up violently into the bushes while a dreadlocked girl in hemp pants held her hair and rubbed her back. There were Chinese lanterns and twinkle lights hung everywhere, and I wondered fleetingly if it had been Jay who'd hung them. I couldn't picture that.  

Jay's backyard was huge, and it was surrounded by a stone wall as I supposed most backyards in ritzy neighborhoods like this one were. Clark led me to the very edge of the yard and then sat down and leaned up against the trunk of a giant old oak tree whose branches hung halfway over the stone wall. The way he was sitting, Clark was facing the stone wall and because of the tree trunk, he was hidden from view of the rest of the party. I wanted to sit the other way, facing the party, because it appealed to me to be able to watch it from afar, to have a kind of buffer zone between me and all those people I was probably supposed to be like but felt cut off from. But when Clark motioned for me to sit next to him, I did it without hesitation. 

"I had to get some air," he said, exhaling as he spoke. He reached up and removed his ridiculous trucker hat, revealing a mass of brown hair that had been matted down beneath it. He tried to fix his hair by mussing it with his hands. Then he shook his head, stuck his tongue out, and let out a little yell, like he was trying to shake something off, some sleepiness or some boredom or something.  

My next bad decision came in that moment. I reached over and swept his hair out of his eyes. I tucked a loose strand behind his ear. I was so close to him, so close to his face. I had never been this close to a guy in my life-well, not a real guy anyway, a guy that wasn't a family member or a doctor or something. I couldn't see the moon, but it must have been there somewhere, because we were in the shadow of the tree and the stone wall, but a sliver of light still illuminated his eyes, his lips, his smooth tanned skin. He stared at me and neither of us seemed to be breathing. The noise of the party fell away and I could only hear my heartbeat. In a split second, he had pulled me close and started kissing me. The silence that had filled the previous moment was gone. His hands were in my hair, on my face, on my back, pulling me tightly, almost forcefully to him. He tasted like smoke and beer, and there was an urgency to his kisses that frightened me a little.  

I had never kissed anyone before. Not really. I went to a New Year's Eve party freshman year and when the clock struck midnight, this kid Brian Marvin who everyone called cone-head for obvious reasons stole a kiss from me, but just a quick peck on the lips. This kissing with Clark was real kissing, grown up kissing. And I had no idea what I was doing, or why I was doing it. 

Clark started kissing me along my jaw and down my neck. It tickled a little bit, and I guess it felt kind of good, but mostly it just felt strange. I felt kind of the way I did that afternoon the cops and paramedics were outside my house-like I was floating up outside of my body, taking notes and watching from afar. I tested the waters a little by putting my hands in Clark's hair. I let my fingers comb through it, and to my surprise it felt soft and silky. I let Clark kiss my neck and I tried to relax into it. I put my arms around his waist and rested my head on his shoulder. He smelled good, like cedar and soap. Did guys his age wear cologne? God he smelled good.  

I exhaled deeply, and he seemed to respond to that. His lips found their way to mine again and his kisses seemed even more urgent now. He was hugging me so tightly, I felt that safe feeling I always feel when someone hugs me like that. His heart was racing, his breathing quick. I put a hand under his shirt. I just wanted to feel his skin, his body. I just wanted to see what it felt like. 

I slid my hand up his shirt, up the smooth, warm skin of his back. He kissed me harder, and I felt sort of...powerful. But then, he moved his hands down my body. He slipped the strap of my sundress off my shoulder. His hands were fumbling for the zipper of my dress. I pulled away.  

"You wanna go to one of the rooms?" he asked breathlessly. He pulled back and looked at me, almost pleadingly. His hair was even more messed up now, his eyes looked glazed over, and his lips were flushed. 

"Um...I don't think so," I said softly. "You know, I'm leaving in two days for Nebraska for the whole summer." I pulled my dress strap back up onto my shoulder and scooted my body a little further away from his. I hadn't thought about it before, but my dress was probably going to be covered in dirt and grass stains when I stood up.  

"So?" he said. He'd pulled out a lighter and was flicking the flame on and off. 

"I don't know..." I trailed off. I had thought it might matter to him that he would probably never see me again, but I guess not. "I think I have to go find Jo," I said, standing up and brushing myself off. The sounds of the party had crept back in and were now so loud, I felt like I couldn't hear anything but bass beats. He didn't move. He pulled that joint-looking thing from his pocket and lit it, then took a long drag and eventually exhaled a plume of blue-gray smoke. 

"Is that...pot?" I asked, and even as I said it, I knew I sounded like such a loser. 

He looked up at me, a big smirk on his face and let out a short chuckle. "Is that pot?" He said, mocking me. "Nah, it's just a rolled cigarette. It's cheaper if you roll 'em yourself. I'm pretty sure it's healthier too. You want one?" 

The third bad decision of the night. "It's not healthier," I said as I crouched back down so I could be at his eye level and held out my hand for a cigarette. "There's no filter in hand-rolled cigarettes so you breathe in more tar." 

He chuckled again. "Quite the expert," he said, and he took the cigarette he'd been smoking out of his mouth and handed it to me. "Now what you wanna do is, suck in a little bit, then hold the smoke in your mouth for a sec, and then inhale it. Then just breathe out and do it all over again."  

Even though I had never smoked before and probably wouldn't ever smoke again, I realized right away that there was something very intimate about sharing a cigarette with someone. In a way, sharing this cigarette with Clark felt even more intimate than kissing him had. 

I coughed a little bit after my first inhale, then handed the cigarette back to Clark and said, "What makes you think I don't know how to smoke?" 

He chuckled some more.  

We sat there silently for a few more minutes, just two people who barely knew each other sharing a cigarette. As weird as it sounds, what I was thinking is that I wished I could be the girl who would say yes, who would go up to one of the bedrooms in Jay's house with Clark and do whatever it was he wanted to do. I wanted to want to do it too. I wanted to get drunk like that girl I'd seen throwing up in the bushes, or dress provocatively like Jo. I wanted to ride a motorcycle and feel the wind on my face like Alan. I wanted to let go...of everything. I wanted to be ready to let go, and then just let go. I felt like I was on the verge of something, but I just kept pulling back. And that night was no different.  

After a while, I left Clark sitting there sandwiched between the tree and the stone wall and I walked back, through the throngs of sweaty, happy, dancing teenagers, through the house which was getting more and more trashed, and out onto the street, to watch the mayhem from afar.