Counterfeit Children (KURT COBAIN)

9. bel - aire

krist and i sat on the floor of his bedroom listening to music and doing a mixture of homework and crude doodling, he laid on his side, long legs half cradled his bright green school binder and his right hand gripped a mechanical pencil, that he was drawing some sort of horror movie monster. his room was painted dark blue, but it wasn't finished. they had lived in that house for years and to my knowledge started painting it when krist was a toddler.

"your hair's getting long," i said, gesturing to his black hair that waved down to nearly his shoulders and got in his eyes.

"yeah, i'm growing it out. what do you think?" he said, jokingly flipping it.

"looks nice, man,"

his mom poked her head through the door.

"your dad is going to be home late, so we're eating now," she informed him, looking past me momentarily.

"oh hey gar," she said, finally noticing. i guess i was easy to miss.

after his mother left, krist padded across the carpet in white crew socks, motioning for me to follow him. i stood, gathering my things, my bones creaking, the carpet leaving an impression in my bare arm.

"smells like spaghetti," he said, looking back at me with a big goofy smile and shutting his bedroom door behind us. his brothers and baby sister were at the table, fighting over the plastic noodle scooper.

"you can stay and eat gar," krist's mom offered while placing glasses of milk in front of her children like a waitress.

"no thanks, it's meatloaf night at home," i laughed a bit.

"well have a good night," she said from the kitchen as krist walked me through the living room, he grabbed my hand and tried to give me a handshake i didn't know, making me laugh.

"see you tomorrow," he said, waving. i waved back from behind me as i took double steps off his aging front porch that was painted muted turquoise.

it was wet out, as it often was in southwestern washington. the padded strap of my backpack dug into my shoulder as i walked home, occasionally splashing in a puddle where the sidewalk dipped and the rain pooled. between the looming winter and the clouds, it was getting darker and darker despite being early. a couple of boys sat under a dripping pavilion in a grey memorial park, clutching skateboards they couldn't use in this nasty weather. they stopped their muffled conversation as i walked by and their eyes were drawn to me in the way construction worker's eyes are drawn to pretty blond ladies.

"hey gardenia, right?" one of the boys asked from afar, recognizing me.

"yeah," i said with a soft laugh.

"come sit with us?" another boy asked. i thought about it for a second and then my feet were taking me through the damp grass, the rain seeping in through thin canvas and metal eyelets.

i sat on a wooden bench of a picnic table across from a boy i half recognized as one of kurt's friends.

"where's your boooyfriiieeend?" one of the boys asked.

"he's basically my brother!" i said defensively.

their conversations picked back up, sometimes it was three and a couple boys who were sitting at the same end of the table were quietly speaking amongst themselves, sometimes it was one and we were all yelling over each other and laughing. the cop approached when it was the latter.

"hey! you're not supposed to be here after dark," he said, shining a large metal flashlight in our eyes.

"its 6 PM!" one of the boys defended us.

"that's not my problem, go do this at home," he said, gesturing largely at 'this',

the boys groaned and picked up their backpacks, scattering in different directions. the boy who i recognized as one of kurt's friends looked over at me.

"where you headed?" he asked me.

"randall street," i said.

"by the school? can i walk you home?" he asked.

"sure."

"i'm sal," he said, reaching out a hand to shake.

"gardenia," i smiled.

"i don't think you want to be walking around bel - aire this time of night," he said.

bel - aire is code word for poor in aberdeen, the entire town is quite trashy and nobody was rich, but my street ended in a dead end with the wishkah, and if you drove too fast you could drive right into it. there were rusty trucks, undisturbed by local teenagers. chipped paint, falling off shingles, houses painted bright colors now faded and worn, and so many patched roofs. we called it bel - aire to make us feel classy, to make us feel something more than shotgun shacks and tar paper, but of course, we couldn't even spell it right. i lived like three blocks from kurt's favorite bridge, and i often saw him while walking to 7-11.

sal's hair was long, but not curly, it was pin straight and golden. sweat - or rain, drenched the area around his forehead where his hair was too short to pull into a ponytail at the base of his neck. he was a thin boy with big brown eyes and tan but red germanic skin. he clutched a skateboard made out of a sawed-off plastic garbage bin lid. today the lights at aberdeen high school were all off, she was not a beacon for the lost, a lighthouse shielding you from a crash - she was a coward. she was the type who turns off her porch light on halloween but has all her shades wide open, you can see she's there, eating a caramel apple and watching The Shining.

we stopped at my beat up two-story white house towards the end of the street, a half-finished add-on was papered up behind the garage and a trampoline sat in the yard that faced the street, chain link keeping everyone out.

"thanks for walking me home," i said, looking up at sal.

he smiled, his thin lips creeping up the side of his face, and his cheeks blooming red. we stood there for a moment, awkwardly looking each other in the face and wringing our hands and waiting for the other person to just do something, finally, he gently leaned down and planted a kiss on my forehead.

"see you at school, ok?" he said, smiling a bit. i nodded and turned to face my house, seeing kurt in the front window, watching me with a pained expression on his face.