Guardians And Angels | Chapter Five | Part 19

One

Some boys make every love song about them.

Every single one of them, all night long, back-to-back.

The Friday night before Halloween, after attending my first school dance in seventh grade with my best friend, I found out the hard way that those same boys make every sad song about them too.

Eventually.

Every single one of them, all night long, back-to-back.

No matter what station you turn to on the radio while laying on your bed at night, or what song you hear in the grocery store as you daydream; every time the word ‘you’ is mentioned after the word ‘love’ in a song, you feel some boys come back around again.

Like ghosts.

They show up uninvited, yet welcome, just like the first time you met them. You feel them arrive all at once, and they are just there, like they never left. You receive them in sections… their eyes, their lips, their hands, their smell, their voice — and you put all their pieces back together again, rebuilding them from scratch, breathing life back into them with your memories.

Some boys coalesce, gel around you, when love songs play. They engulf you with their energy. They thrill you with familiar pulses, throbs that echo inside your insides and cause chills in the form of goosebumps to prickle across your flesh on the outside. They electrify you.

And when sad songs play…

Some boys can take their energy, their lightning, and begin to shock you with it, like you’re touching an electric fence — alarmed, frightened, and unable to let go. Your grip tightening, your teeth clenching, your body doing the opposite of everything your mind is screaming for you to do, holding on… with a death grip.

Unable to let go of them.

Some boys, when you hear sad songs, they show back up… as ghosts, assembled from your memories, to jolt you awake again, and strike at you, and spread themselves upon your nerves before they infiltrate you all the way—to your heart. They dance in your shallow pool of feelings while galloping upon your heartbeats with pulsing hooves that cause them to flutter and falter and flatline.

Some boys run through you when certain songs play.

Some boys...

Some boys electrocute you.

Two

I was only at my first school dance for about two hours before I called my father on the payphone and asked him for a ride back home.

In those two hours, I danced in the center of a room for the first time with crisscrossing laser beams flashing down between me and my friends. Fog from machines hugged our knees with a disco ball spinning above us reflecting yellow, and blue, and red lights that peppered us with rainbow columns, illuminating our faces. I remember watching everyone watch everyone, in between the flashes, in between the rays of light. Watching to see who was cool, who was doing some new moves, who was dancing with who. But most of all I watched Kai dance in the neon fog with his eyes closed.

As the beats thundered among us and the snares snapped around us, playing our favorite songs, we danced and tried to look cool. Cooler than we were. Well, I tried, he just did his thing, and it was electrifying the room. Kai Cooper was the type of boy that attracted what he wanted to him somehow. He attracted the lights, the flashes, the looks, the eyes. He attracted bitten lips from girls and grinding teeth from boys. He attracted praise, and mimicry, and trophies. He attracted the shiny things in life to him.

And he made me shine when I looked at him.

I caught him through side glances when he was sideways and looked at him nonstop when he was turned away from me. I noticed everything he was doing, every move, but I wouldn’t let him catch me watching him do it. I hunted him with piercing glances through our spinning classmates, with my eyes like spears. I concealed my intent with my body language, turning away from him, acting aloof while catching him with my telescopic vision as I tracked his movements and took snapshots for my forever files.

He was so light on his feet, so agile.

He danced catlike, graceful and quick, with a fluidity that bended too easily and twisted with a strength you could see and feel. He was a golden mountain lion stalking the rhythm, pouncing upon the beats. He danced like he wrestled, in the most unusual way. In a way you hadn’t seen before but knew was good as soon as you saw it and couldn’t look away until you could decipher it. He danced hard but made it look graceful. He looked so free when he danced, so carefree. Not a worry was etched upon his bronze face. He would smirk an extra big smirk, then he would smile, showing his perfect white teeth, close his eyes, and dance by himself.

And I would hunt him.

I would track every step. Anticipate every move. Plot out every everchanging pathway. I would dance near him, but not too close, while watching from the side as he closed his eyes and rode the bass lines, that smile on his face always infatuating me, telling me secrets I couldn’t wait to hear in whispers. His hips rolling, legs bending, arms somehow making it all come together with punches and waves, he danced like everyone was watching and knew everyone was. All eyes were on him as he danced with his eyes closed, especially mine.

I couldn’t take my eyes off him.

Knowing he wouldn’t see me with his eyes shut, I held my surveillance glances longer and longer, taking in more intel, becoming emboldened. As he galloped upon the beats with confidence, owning the room, Kai would open his eyes every now and then, mid-thrust, or after a spin and glide, and he would look directly at me, eyes meeting mine as if he knew I would be watching at that moment from that spot. He would catch me setting my snares for him. It didn’t matter where I had moved on the dancefloor, or who had moved in between us, his dragonfly green eyes found my whiskey brown eyes. He would look directly at me, a rabbit, caught in his pit fall trap, looking back.

At first, I would glance away, knowing he saw me watching him, tracking him. But he was too quick, somehow knowing when I would be looking at him before I knew myself. It was like he was funneling me into a net with his movements, and I was sliding down the funnel with my glances. His eyes landed too direct for me to deceive him. My shifting looks away from him, milliseconds too late, were giving me away to him. Tightening my noose. They were truth-tellers, my looks, revealing my camouflaged face while I cloaked my feelings behind veils.

After a few times of this back and forth, this hide and seek, he caught me looking at him as a slow song began to play. One we knew from the first tone. The opening notes were distinct synth chords ringing through the crowd of boys and girls setting the new mood within moments as every other sound fell into silence around us. The synth chords rang out melancholic, haunted, and reached across the room touching everyone with its longing pings causing a wave to ripple through the crowd as everyone parted and stood back from one another, looking around, unknowing how their future would unfold. The fear of rejection and judgement, loneliness and doom, the fear of unrequited love and heartbreak …they all entered the room as the slow song unfolded.

Who would dance with who?

Who would be left standing?

Who was Cool?

Let the First Great Slow Dance of my life… begin.

PIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING!

PING!

PIIIIIING!

For the second time that night my favorite song, “I Need Love” by LL Cool J whispered its mournful sighs around us. The songs hi-hats taunting us as they kicked in between the synth chords and then echoing across the auditorium floor and wrapping back around again to revisit us like chittering boomerangs. In the in-between moments, as the PING! of the synth chords died away slowly into reverberations, into the silence before the bass kicked in, boy and girl began making eye contact. Glancing to the left and to the right and acting as if they didn’t know where their main target was before settling in on their intended dancing mate, hoping with all their heart their eyes could pull in the one they wanted with an effortless look.

To me, the glances between them, the looks across the room in between the PINGS! were fishing lines being cast out across fog machine rivers. Silver filaments, glistening; twisting strings slung across the room with shiny hooks on the ends that sparkled with sharpness. When I followed the strings, the fishing lines, I saw they were coming from the tips of the mascaraed eyelashes attached to the pretty girls. Over and over, like fly fishing in a neon stream of magenta fog, the girls flung their lines outward to lure in the handsome boys. Sinking their hooks into them, the fishermen, or fisherwomen, tugged their silver filaments and began reeling in the most handsome boys first. They’d pulled them in, insistent, with a relentless intention, the fisherwomen did, wrapping them first in glances, then in advances, then in their arms.

As the First Great Slow Dance of my young life proceeded the boys and girls began pairing off into couples, transforming the room into the Cool Couples as the Not So Cool’s faded away to the edges to watch the moments from the darkness. The bass from the song “I Need Love“ by LL Cool J rumbled forth, sounding exactly like a heartbeat, thumping at 88 bpm, way slower than my own heart at that moment. Kai caught me looking at him again as the solos turned into duos all around us, the girls catching their boys and reeling them into their hard beating bosoms.

This time when I looked up, he was already looking my way, knowing where my gaze would be directed, knowing my eyes would be searching for his. For a moment, a long moment, he held my gaze, and with the rays from the mirrorball lighting up our eyes and the shadows they created concealing our faces… he slowly winked at me. Winked with his one good eye, the one that wasn’t black and swollen completely shut.

He winked. Knowingly.

It was a slow, deliberate, sly, wink in the middle of the dancefloor with my favorite song playing in the background. Around us, lovers for only one song paired off under the all-seeing mirror ball, holding hands and grabbing hips. Kai wasn’t searching though; he had lured in his target with his eyes long before this night began. He had hooked his fish, caught his Pisces, reeled him in, and now Kai stood in the crisscrossing laser beams with that smile on his face and winked a knowing wink…at me.

That wink told me more than all the words in my favorite song ever could. It vibrated me more than the synth chords and made me shake more than the bass line. That wink, knowing and deliberate, in between the rainbow columns cast down to illuminate and scan my freckles below, told me he knew it was my favorite song, from the first chord, and it reminded him of me. I knew it made him look for me the way I looked for him. I knew it made him find me the way I always found him. Through our classmates, through the lights, through the neon fog, through the darkness. Our eyes would find each other across rooms, somehow connected by something we couldn’t see, but we could hold onto it, grasp it, and pull each other with it, like we had a tug-of-war rope attached to our hearts at each end. We’d pull the tug of war rope…pull each other until were almost holding one another in the middle of the room. Pull each other close enough to hold each other in a room we could only hold each other in while we were wrestling, while we were competing, while were fighting, but never, ever, while we were dancing.

“Wrestling and dancing are NOT alike, Kai” I told him earlier…

Maybe I was wrong.

I’d never winked before. Never even thought about it. It wasn’t a natural expression for me, and I don’t think I ever had anyone my own age wink at me before. I didn’t even know it was cool until I Kai stopped me in my tracks with one. Before I knew it, awkwardly, I winked back at Kai Cooper and matched his sly smile with my own smirk. Mimicking him, I winked with more words than my favorite love song could ever express even if it played all night long, over and over. As the booms, sounding like heartbeats, pulsed around us, thundering and guiding our own beats to join and pump along, I turned and released him from his bond.

Turned my back on him.

Knowing we could never dance at school, never hold each other that way, never take the risk, I left Kai Cooper and his one-eyed wink behind me in the neon fog and headed outside to call my dad on the payphone. Call my dad to come pick us up so we could go back home, and Kai could stay with me, in my room, my hiding spot, for at the weekend.

Three nights at least…

Friday, Saturday, Sunday

Maybe longer…

I turned my back on Kai Cooper, in the magenta haze, to call my dad because I didn’t want to wait around to see who chose to slow dance with him during the First Great Slow Dance of our young lives. I didn’t want to see someone else hold him like I couldn’t. And, I guess, if we are baring it all, I didn’t want to stand around and see who chose me either. I didn’t care about anyone else. He was the only dancer in the room. That wink was all I needed. It checked all my boxes. That wink told me, if I would’ve let him, Kai Cooper would’ve slow danced with me in the middle of our school auditorium to my favorite song, “I Need Love” by LL Cool J, with everyone watching that October night. He didn’t care if it was 1987. He didn’t care about smirks & smiles. He didn’t care what people would say. He didn’t seem to care what other kids thought at all.

When I think back, when I’m alone in my room, staring at my wall, and in the back of my mind my conscience calls… I know Kai would’ve held me in that auditorium that night, while dancing with me, just like he did in the daytime, while wrestling with me, but he wouldn’t be trying to beat me.

No.

He’d have one thumb on my wrist, where my pulse was, so he could feel my heart pumping even though he could’ve heard it beating over all the booms around us if he had listened. He’d be holding me close to him, close enough to feel me breathing in and out, close enough to smell Cherry Coke on my exhalation. He’d be smiling at me, smiling with that big white smile of his, and I think he’d have his eyes open for once, looking at me

Yeah, I think he would’ve had his eyes open for our First Great Slow Dance.

Well… at least one of them.

Three

“Hey Christopher, did you see my moves!?”

Kai Cooper ran up behind me right before the dance ended, jumping on my back and riding me from behind for a moment, his legs wrapped around my hips, his forearms around my throat for balance. Giddy up!

Instinctively, my arms reached back behind myself, and I reached under his legs as he hopped up. His thighs squeezed me with a grip he learned from riding jet skis all summer on California lakes—firm but relaxed.

I caught him without turning around or saying anything. I always knew where he was now. I knew his sounds and how far away or close to me they were. My radar was set to his frequency. Tuned to him. When he arrived, our magnets locked together, locked in smoothly, the same way the last puzzle piece on the table locks into place when you press it down at the end of the night—the one you know will fit and solve everything so you can finally relax.

Our timing was synchronized from wrestling together for hours on end. We knew how each other’s muscles felt when they clenched and tightened from gripping and grappling and toiling with one another after school every day. We knew when we were almost out of breath from exertion, memorizing the cadence of our ribcages rising and falling while laying upon each other on gymnasium floors while other people’s parents watched and cheered.

We knew how our bodies felt when they relaxed, and we were recovering, or recuperating. We knew from lounging upon one another after telling each other our stories, asking deepening questions, and probing one another’s imaginations late into the night. We knew the sound of our heartbeats when they pounded during sleepovers with cricket chirps peeking through open windows, and how it felt to swallow way too loud knowing both of us were awake and the crickets would never be able to cover that up. We listened to see if we were caught listening to one another. We waited to be caught memorizing one another’s puzzle piece edges in the darkness with our eyes closed, lying beside one another—yet filled up inside, brimming with thoughts of each another.

And now…

Now, I knew even his footsteps by heart.

I knew his footsteps running, climbing, hopping, walking, shuffling, sliding, and dancing. All it took was for him to follow me home one time from his house to mine. One journey across my small wine country town nestled in the valley below Sonoma Mountain. He traveled with me to the outskirts of Cotati, California, named after a Miwok Indian chief, and followed me through the creeks and fields of western Sonoma County toward the sunset side of things, far away from Gravity Hill overlooking us to the east with its impending doom that night after the big football game.

One trip, fleeing his father across the adobe plains of the Miwok Indians, a journey with me to meet my mom, a quest to “do it right,” as he said, that was all it took. After that journey with me I had all the sounds of his footsteps memorized and I’d logged them away into my forever files. For the rest of my life, I would recognize the sound Kai Cooper made when his footsteps touched the earth near me.

No sneaking up on me tonight, I thought.

“Oh, I saw your moves” I laughed, responding to Kai as I carried him a bit and then shrugged him off like he was an old backpack. He slid from me knowingly, a soft slide timed with my shoulder roll, anticipating my limits, and he landed catlike behind me with barely a sound, ready to pounce again. So soft on his feet. So agile.

“What did you think of my moves? Tell me the honest to God truth,” he gleamed at me, genuinely curious, proud of himself.

His black eye was swollen shut, purple and blue, and his hair was messy, softly flowing down to his eyebrows in the moonlight. Surfer hair with highlights always looked good messy, and he looked extra good tonight. He looked amazing when he was happy with himself. His uninjured eye twinkled, with a smirk like mine, one that lived forever on the edge of a smile. Below it, his white teeth revealed he already knew my answer as they welcomed my reply.

“I think you dance as good as you wrestle,” I said, a soft chuckle attached to my response.

I was cocking my head a bit, my dimples showing, my eyes growing mischievous. I wasn’t confident enough to express my true feelings in compliments to other boys yet. This was as good as he would get.

“That good huh!?” he exclaimed. “Wow!” he laughed while looking at me with a flash of knowingness on his tan face, his own dimples unsheathing.

“I thought wrestling and dancing were NOTHING alike, Christopher?” he quipped, mockingly, his voice exaggerating mine while repeating my defense from earlier.

He sounded sensitive when he said that…

Does he think I sound like that?

I rolled my eyes at him. A hard eye roll. He made me do that a lot lately. I tended to roll my eyes whenever someone proved me wrong. It was a skillet mastered while young, a required technique for a hardheaded boy to brandish. I was a blackbelt when it came to rolling my eyes behind my father’s back, and now I was kicking the hard eye roll into Kai’s face, showing him my own moves. I did it just to annoy him. I don’t know why. Sometimes I do things like that, always have. He made proving me wrong feel comfortable though, not like he was proving me wrong at all, or being mean, but like he was showing me what was right. Pulling me along to do things right. Taking me on a journey. He always made me feel like we were… together.

On a journey, together.

“Yeah, well… I can beat you at both wrestling and dancing,” I finally responded, fully transforming into the impish devil I can be, not letting him savor his glory too long.

Taunting mode activated.

Target acquired.

Sensitive boy attacking.

“You FUCKING wish, Dubbs!” he responded quickly. He matched my hard eye roll technique, a quick mimic, kicking it back at me like a roundhouse kick. His brow furrowed as if I had said the most preposterous thing in his life. Spittle splayed from his pink lips as he made a raspberry sound after saying my name. Scoffing at me, his eyes met mine and he squinted as he moved toward me.

Target acquired

Confident boy approaching.

Challenge accepted.

He walked toward me, Kai did, looking back and forth to each side, ensuring nobody could see us. We were nestled around the corner of our school, near the flagpole, away from the cars waiting to pick up their teens in the roundabout in front of the parking lot. Tall evergreen pine bushes were blocking the headlights as they swung around and beamed across the suburban horizon, teenagers awaiting to be uploaded, parents pending their release.

Nobody could see us over here

In the distance a new slow song drifted from the open auditorium doors. The last slow song of the night. The last slow song of our first dance. After this song ended, the flood of classmates would spill from the doors as everyone flowed outside toward their parents and fled homeward. There were no eyes upon us now but there would be soon.

Last dance.

Last chance.

A song from a singer named Tiffany provided the soundtrack, floating out to us from the auditorium in the background, her words mirroring my thoughts:

"I think we’re alone now."

"There doesn’t seem to be anyone around…"

He approached me fast.

“What!?” I responded with faux exasperation, “You don’t think I can beat you?”

Curiosity dripping from my tone, my posture stiffened, ramping up for his incoming challenge. His presence, electrifying—and his body, with its ability to overwhelm me physically if he wanted to, but not without a really good fight—reached me. He stopped a fist’s length between us, enough for me to smell the watermelon bubblegum on his breath when he spoke. Watermelon and something else. Watermelon and vanilla wafers. Kai cocked his head back and raised his eyebrows, dead seriousness in his one good eye, the one not swollen shut. His voice was warm upon his breath, coating my face with a sweetness as he spoke.

“You might beat me in wrestling every once in a while, Christopher,” he said, using his fingers for air quotes. “But you can’t beat me in dancing. Never. We can go dancing together every weekend for the rest of our live and you’ll never think you beat me at it. Even in our dreams, when we dance together, you’ll never think you beat me.”

Pause.

He always made me pause.

After a moment, intrigued, I asked, “Why?”

“You told me earlier” he reminded me. “You said, ‘You don’t try to win at dancing, and you were right. No one beats each other. Dancing isn’t like wrestling. You both work together when dancing, you work against each other when wrestling. They are opposites, and now, now I think everyone wins when you dance with somebody”

I cocked my head and looked at him as he looked away into the darkness and stepped back from me. That look came over his face again, the one I caught before, the one he sometimes wore after wrestling matches when everyone is cheering and he scans the stands for someone—searching, oblivious to everyone around him. I thought it was sadness once… that faraway look, but now it seemed like something else. A sadness, lit up by some kind of hope. Or maybe it was a knowingness.

Kai looked toward the east, toward the high school football field lights, cheers rising in the distance and lasting for what seemed like forever. The crowd was going wild, the band blaring its horns, whistles and loudspeakers peppering the cacophony. That’s when he said it.

“Sounds like it’s a big night for Brendan Bragg” he said while looking at the glow from the football field lights shining across the fog from only a few blocks away.

I looked away like I had been slapped. Not expecting that name.

I hated that name.

I fucking hated that name…

“I wonder how many touchdowns Brendan Bragg threw tonight?” he asked me, talking toward the east still, not knowing I was frozen next to him, a statue in Medusa’s Garden.

Don’t do it…don’t do it

Don’t tell him why you hate Brendan Bragg

The silence between us grew longer and longer as I ignored his question. It sat between us unanswered and stretched out, groaning for attention. My body stood still as he turned and looked at me, squinting his eyes, sensing something had changed in the air.

“What’s wrong?” his head cocked.

Don’t do it… don’t do it…

Don’t tell him why you hate Brendan Bragg

“I fucking hate that guy” I said, venomously.

“It’s a long story” I mumbled, my turn to turn away.

GODDAMMIT CHRISTOPHER… Sarah said to never tell anyone. And now he is going to dig and want to talk about shit and ask questions and read between the lines and try to put the pieces together and wonder why I would hate Brendan Bragg of all people, why I would be the only one to hate him in the whole fucking Redwood Empire, and why he would be the only person I hated in the whole fucking world.

Kai looked at me for a while.

Studying me.

Lingering.

I could feel him logging my details, filing them away, labeling them so he could pull them out later and ask some follow up questions. He was taking snapshots, making photocopies. He was so fucking nosy.

“I never heard you say you hated someone before” he said, still lingering, lingering so long he was now loitering. He was waiting for more, knowing there was more, knowing something didn’t add up.

Say something…say something…

“Let’s not mention him again” I finally said.

“Hmmm” he mumbled. A doubtful look in his eye, his lips pursed.

“I don’t know buddy, this sounds too good to ignore. You’ll have to tell me about it tomorrow” he said, eyes scanning copies of me to hand out to himself in triplicate later.

“After we go Nite Nite” he said, boyishly, punching my shoulder lightly.

I looked at him, doing a double take. “Nite Nite!?” I echoed, my face scrunching, not expecting the words to come from his mouth.

“You say… Nite Nite?” I asked, a smirk forming, my mind running away from the mention of Brendan Bragg, as I prepared to mock him.

“Yeah, who doesn’t?” Kai asked back, the preposterous look back on his face, no raspberry spittle from his lips splaying forth this time.

“We’ll be saying ‘Nite Nite’ every night” he said, matter of factly, to me. Setting a rule of some sorts, I guess. I readied for him to go into some vague reasoning again, and he began to, but we were interrupted.

Behind us, headlights from my father’s truck turned around the corner and headed towards us, locking onto us right away. He drove a Chevy Luv, old and white, covered in plaster from patchwork jobs he’d performed across the Bay Area while the Union wasn’t giving him regular work. His truck was dirty, rusty, and smelled like limestone from the plaster he came home covered in. Chunks of dried grey material coated the truck and all the tools in the truck bed. Cement globs that looked like silver oatmeal cookies or grey barnacles covering everything, dusty and irritable. A messy work truck. An old work truck. Not big and shiny like the one Kai’s father drove.

An embarrassing work truck.

As if reading my thoughts, Kai looked at me and grabbed me by the meaty part at the base of my neck and squeezed hard.

“At least your dad comes to pick you up when you call, Christopher” he said, eyebrows raised like he was proving a point.

I shrugged him away, “Yeah, well, at least your dad isn’t…”

One, one thousand…

Two, one thousand…

“Isn’t what?” Kai asked. Eyes narrowing toward me, the silence feeding his anticipation.

Three, one thousand…

Four, one thousand…

“Nevermind…” I finally mumbled.

“No, Dubbs. You got to start letting it out and stop hiding shit. You are like a fucking hermit crab” he persisted.

I looked at him, my father’s headlights in my eyes.

“I don’t even know what to call it…” I said to him softly, knowing I had a secret name for it tucked away inside me.

“I only know how to describe it” I mumbled, looking away to the east, football cheers dying down.

My father tractor-beamed toward us, lighting us up like ghosts under the flagpole with his headlights. He always knew where I would be waiting when he came to pick me up at school. He had me trained since kindergarten. We had our systems down. No deviations.

Meet at the same place, Christopher.

Every time

NO CHANGES.

It’s our rally point.

That way we can always find each other.

No matter what.

Behind Kai’s shoulder, a long white flagpole rose upward into the California night, a light shining upon it in the darkness. I looked up above Kai and saw the American Flag fluttering in the October wind above my school, the fog drizzle was rushing through its spotlight, droplets speeding by in a hurry, zooming east toward the football field and Gravity Hill beyond it.

Always meet me under the American Flag

That’s our rally point.

That way we can always find each other.

I remember that moment often. The American flag fluttering behind my best friend, my father’s headlights hitting his face, him talking about dancing and then mentioning Brendan Bragg’s name to me. Me freezing when I heard it, fumbling, and then slipping, telling him I hated him. It’s an image seared into my mind, a branded memory that sizzled as it made its mark that night.

Change the subject, Christopher

Ask him questions

Go on offense

“So, you dream of dancing, huh?” I asked softly, barely louder than my father’s truck rumbling toward us. As the truck grew closer, I could hear Van Halen blaring from the speakers, his windows down. That made sense, nothing strange, my father loved Van Halen.

The moment was almost over

Time was running out

With his eye twinkling within the headlights of my father’s beaten-down Chevy Luv, twinkling like mine, Kai turned toward me, his turn to flash a mischievous grin, and looking directly at me, with that one good eye, he said:

“I dream of dancing with you every night, Christopher. Every single night.”

I smiled a big grin, no teeth showing, and shook my head. I thought he was playing with me at first. Not knowing yet how to flirt, or even recognize flirting, I giggled as my father’s truck pulled up beside us and came to a full stop, his headlights moving past us and leaving us in the darkness again.

Time was up.

I punched him in the shoulder hard, laughing, knowing my father could see us if he looked over. I responded with violence to his admission, like most boys do when they don’t know how to love yet.

“So, you see me in your dreams?” I asked, jokingly, raising my eyebrows and turning toward my father’s truck, the hourglass empty, our first dance over.

Curtain closed

“I see you everywhere I look, Christopher,” Kai Cooper said, opening the door for me, facing away from my father, winking as he motioned for me to jump inside his truck.

A knowing wink.

On the radio, louder than usual, was the song ‘Why Can’t This Be Love” by Van Halen.

In the cabin, sat my father, stoic, staring into the distance in front of us, his hands stained white from impetigo, gripping the steering wheel tighter than when he dropped us off, but I didn’t notice that.

He didn’t look over and smile at us boys, or say anything at all, he just looked straight ahead, his mind in a faraway place focused on something else.

Or so I thought...

Little did I know, my father, during those two hours I was at the dance with Kai, spinning among the laser lights under the all-seeing mirror ball, had gone on a long-range reconnaissance mission into my bedroom.

He had infiltrated my hiding spot under the cover of darkness, camouflaged and concealed his intentions and catalogued everything he found. The buzz had been screaming and telling him something didn’t add up, and George hated when something didn't add up. It made him catastrophize and hear the cicadas start screaming in his head, with their piercing robot voices.

It reminded him of things he couldn’t control.

It reminded him of worse case scenarios.

Worst case scenarios…

The kind that caused your son to fucking lie to you…