The Lighter Side of Life and Death Read online

  “No, I’m okay. Just don’t ask me to walk anywhere else.” Kat rubs her eyes and looks thoughtful, her face back to its normal color. “That’s going to be really weird with Nina and her kids, isn’t it? Having other people in your house, acting like it’s theirs.”

  “I guess.” I’ve been trying not to think of it that way. “Everything’s going to change after graduation anyway.”

  “Yeah, but that’s still over a year away.”

  “It’ll go fast,” I say, making Kat frown.

  “I don’t want it to go fast.” Kat pulls off her hat and wrestles with her poncho. She drapes it over the arm of the couch and turns back to face me. “All that stuff that happens after is serious. Important life and career decisions.”

  “You’re already worrying about those things,” I remind her. She’s had this career path conflict going on since at least summer. Her parents are really into the idea of her becoming a pharmacist. Kat’s half into the idea herself but she’s also hyper-interested in designing jewelry. Personally, I think she’s kidding herself with the pharmacy thing. Not that she’s not smart enough. I just can’t see her in a lab coat counting pills for a living. She needs more than that.

  “I know.” She pouts a bit when she says that. It’s the cutest thing and now’s probably a good time for me to admit that I never entirely got over my crush on Kat Medina. Sometimes I almost forget about it. It’s like a photocopy of a photocopy of an original that you packed away in an unmarked cardboard box in your attic. The point is, it still exists.

  “I can’t believe Hugo,” she says with a snort. “I can’t believe he pulled that bullshit after everything he said to me. The worst part is that he sounded so sincere. He kept talking about how the whole sex issue was a matter of trust between us and that he wanted to do whatever he could to make me feel okay with it.” Kat grimaces and goes quiet, and I know she’s embarrassed, and it embarrasses me too because we’ve never really talked about sex. I know she’s a virgin but that’s about all I know, and she knows even less about me.

  “It sounds so stupid now,” she adds, her voice hushed.

  “He’s an asshole,” I tell her. “An asshole in disguise.”

  “Disguised as what?”

  Isn’t it obvious? Come on, Kat. Work with me here. “You always go for that same type of guy. Somebody who looks like Hugo. Somebody who’s all about themselves.”

  “He didn’t seem like that.” She pulls at her earlobe, plays with her dangly silver earring. “He was always really sweet.”

  “Except for the last few weeks when he was trying to get you into bed,” I point out. And thirty minutes ago when he was giving it to Monica G in Yolanda’s upstairs bathroom.

  “Even the past few weeks,” Kat says. “Especially the last few weeks.” She strokes her cheek with one hand and taps my leg with the other. “How come you never told me that you don’t like him?”

  All this weird tension’s building in the silence, making the living room shine in a way that you don’t need eyes to see, and I stare at her hand, which is now resting on my thigh, and shrug. She’s not getting me on this. I’m not admitting a thing. “It’s not that I don’t like him. I’m just telling it how it is.”

  Kat looks me square in the eye. There’s something so naked about her stare that my hands tremble. I’d swear she’s reading my mind, that she knows exactly how hot she’s making me, and maybe, just maybe, that’s the point. So I reach out and touch her face with my fingertips. Then we’re gazing into each other’s eyes, on edge, breathing hard and waiting for the next leap.

  I kiss her first. Our tongues push together and I can’t get enough. We stretch out on the couch and get serious. She’s reaching into my jeans and I’m dipping into hers and it’s so out of control that I can’t believe it. She’s making a quiet moaning noise and looking up at me with hazy, happy eyes and I’m so caught up in it that there’s no room for anything else, like thinking.

  “What if your dad comes back?” Kat whispers in her tiny Filipino accent.

  “You’re right.” I sit up on the couch. “We should go to my room.” This can’t be over yet. Neither of us is ready for that.

  So we relocate upstairs and I watch her pull her top over her head. Her black bra’s next and she looks at me while she’s unhooking it, like she’s proud of what’s underneath. The sight of her bare skin makes my face burn. I kiss her breasts and slip her pants down and she looks so gorgeous on my bed like that, her hair tousled and this sexy-dirty expression on her face, that I have to stop and stare at her for a bit, just to remind myself this is real.

  I’ve spent so many hours imagining different versions of this moment over the years that my brain overheats and melts down to nothing as I watch her. When Kat opens her mouth again, her words are so husky they make my heart stop. “Do you have condoms?”

  I almost have a coronary. You’d think it was obvious where this was heading, but this is Kat’s virginity we’re talking about. I’m stunned.

  The thing is, I’m also a pretty good actor. I pull a package of Trojans confidently out of my dresser and rip one open. I want to tell her this is crazy and that we’re both drunk and maybe she’ll regret this, but on the other hand, that’s not what I want to do at all.

  I roll the condom on and go back to the bed without a word. Kat’s staring at me with wide eyes and I guess it should feel awkward, because before tonight we’d never even kissed, but the truth is it feels fine. I slide in easy, like we’ve done it a hundred times, like this is just the latest in a long line of perfect physical encounters. She comes first. I feel it. I mean, I really feel it, and I’m thinking, No way on earth this is actually happening. This must be some amazing dream. Vivid as hell, beautiful as fuck, but not real. It can’t be. It’s too good, too natural to be anyone’s first time, let alone two people’s first time.

  Because, yeah, it’s my first time too.

  Kat Medina is my first time.

  two

  Kat’s speaking urgently into her cell phone when I wake up. The light’s still on in my room, and I squint at my clock radio, dazed. It can’t possibly be one-thirty, can it? Not when my head’s telling me I must’ve been asleep for hours. I stare over at Kat, her eyes flashing panic. She’s sitting on my bed in her top and panties, combing her hair frantically into place with one hand.

  I roll over and open my mouth to speak but she turns towards me, pressing a finger to her lips. So okay, I’ll be quiet. The light’s boring a hole into my head, making me clamp my eyes shut. Meanwhile my throat’s praying for water and I don’t remember what I did with the condom. I pry my eyelids back open and spy it down on the carpet, within arm’s length. I pull my jeans and shirt on, pluck the condom off the floor like a piece of litter and shuffle into the bathroom where I wrap it in toilet paper and bury it at the bottom of the wastebasket.

  On my way out of the bathroom I nearly collide with Kat, fully dressed, in the hall. “That was Eric,” she says quickly. “He went to Yolanda’s to pick me up. He said he went to the door and everything and that everyone was searching all over the house for me.” Kat turns and hurries along the hall, explaining as she goes. “He said he’s been trying to call me for twenty minutes.”

  I follow her mutely downstairs and towards the front door where she stops to shove her feet into her shoes. “He’ll be here any minute,” she adds. She’s practically vibrating with anxiety and I’m three steps behind mentally, stuck on that amazingly beautiful thing that happened between us upstairs before we passed out.

  “It’s okay,” I tell her. “Don’t worry.”

  “He’s FREAKING OUT, Mason.” Kat turns to unlock the door. “He’ll be here any second.”

  “Wait,” I cry, my mind racing to catch up. “Your poncho.”

  I rush into the living room and swipe it off the couch. Her hat too. “Thanks,” she says, opening the door. And sure enough Eric Medina’s pulling into my driveway at the speed of light. I catch one final glimpse of Kat’s
face before she closes the door swiftly behind her. She looks scared and I want to put my arms around her and hold on to her for a while. I’ve hugged her lots of times, but this would be different; this is after.

  It’s too late, though. She’s gone.

  I amble into the kitchen for water and then slowly back into the living room where I sit on the couch, solo. The cushions are askew but I don’t fix them. They’re proof something happened.

  I sit there, thinking the same things over and over, and they’re all about Kat and me upstairs. My mind’s in replay mode, doing its best to adjust to this startling new reality, when Dad walks through the front door. “Mason!” He exhales heavily as he crosses the room towards me. “You gave me a fright.”

  Dad has never stayed the night at a girlfriend’s house and Nina’s no exception. He always comes home to sleep. “How was the party?” he asks, shrugging off his sports jacket.

  “Fantastic,” I tell him. “Outstanding.”

  Dad sits down on the couch next to me, his feet resting on the coffee table. “Nina couldn’t stop talking about the play.” His smile stretches into a yawn. “You know, I think this last performance was even better than the other night.”

  “I think so too.” I nod like that’s exactly what I’ve been pondering alone here on the couch. Dad wouldn’t be angry if I told him about Kat. It’s not like I have to hide it or anything; I just don’t want to blab about it either. “You hungry?” I motion towards the kitchen. “I’m gonna make myself some eggs.”

  Dad glances at his watch and then back at me, furrowing his eyebrows like he can’t make up his mind. “No thanks,” he replies finally. “I think I’ll just head up to bed.”

  The funny thing is that neither of us moves. Maybe I’m too tired for eggs; I’m definitely too tired for small talk. We’re perfectly fine sitting there in silence.

  Things were never this relaxed when my mother was around. She wasn’t happy unless she was in motion or the middle of a sentence. She hasn’t changed a bit since her and Dad split up five years ago but the fact that she’s across the country makes it easier to take. She has a boyfriend over there in Vancouver but spends most of her time obsessing over her newspaper column, which means the majority of our relationship happens over the phone.

  For the first while after they broke up I missed her a lot. Then it was almost a relief. Breathing space, at last! I mean, there she was driving me back and forth to Toronto, taking me to all these modeling shoots, making me practice natural-looking smiles in the mirror. Sure, I thought I wanted to do it in the beginning. I was a kid. People paying that much attention to you seems like a good thing, and my mother thrived on it. Dad, on the other hand, hated it from the start. It was the first thing he changed when they broke up.

  Things have been pretty good with just the two of us these past few years. I don’t know what to expect when Nina, Brianna and Burke move in except that it’s bound to be noisier around here.

  “Okay then,” Dad says, jerking his feet off the coffee table. “Past my bedtime.”

  “Good night,” I tell him.

  The minute he leaves the room I’m back to thinking about Kat, and the giddy feeling in my stomach tells me I’m nowhere close to finished. So okay, it’s time to make eggs after all. I can scramble eggs and think about Kat Medina at the same time.

  So far, as life experiences go, the best thing that’s happened to me is tonight with Kat. Remembering the event comes in second. Third? The play, of course. Carrying Chris Keller around with me in my bones. It’s almost too many incredible things for one night. I’m buzzing like a madman.

  It’s nearly twelve-thirty when I roll out of bed the next day. Dad’s lying on the living room couch with his nose in the paper and a mug of decaf on the table next to him. “Lynn called to ask you about the play,” he says, glancing at me over the top of the business section. “She didn’t want me to wake you.” Lynn’s my mother but in most ways she feels more like a cousin. She’s way more interested in what I’m doing when it intersects with her idea of cool.

  “Okay,” I croak. My voice hasn’t woken up yet. My neck’s stiff too but inside I’m dancing. “I’ll call her back later.”

  “That’s what I told her,” Dad says. There are no hard feelings between my parents anymore. They communicate with each other like neutral strangers, like you’d deal with a waiter or the person who hands over your dry cleaning.

  “Great,” I tell him. Right now Lynn’s at the bottom of my list. I head into the kitchen, chow down on waffles, shower and then call Kat’s cell. I don’t have a special speech planned or anything. I’m hoping instinct will take over like it did last night. Really, I just can’t wait to hear her voice. The only thing wrong with last night was the way it ended. We never had a chance to talk.

  Like I said, I don’t have a speech planned. I’m totally unprepared when I hear the beep. “Uh, I guess you’re not, uh, in the vicinity of your cell,” I stammer. “I’ll give you a call on your home phone. Talk to you soon.” The anticipation sharpens as I punch in her home number. What do you say to someone you shared such a perfect moment with? What if she suddenly remembers my stupid comment about being heavy?

  “Hello, Mason,” Mrs. Medina says curtly. Ah, the joys of call display. I’ve been calling Kat’s house for the past three years. This is the first time I’ve found myself wishing I could be anonymous. After all, I don’t know what, if anything, her parents have heard about last night. “Kat’s at Sondra’s house,” Mrs. Medina continues. “You can try her cell phone.”

  Deep breath of relief. Her parents obviously don’t know anything. “Thanks,” I say quickly. “No message.”

  No doubt Kat will pick up my original message any minute now and dial me back. I dig my cell out of yesterday’s jeans and plant it on top of my CD rack. It won’t be long, I think. Not unless she’s doing something hugely important. More important than last night? What could be more important than last night?

  Yeah, so I’m getting a little antsy waiting. Am I taking this too seriously? Is it possible she wants to treat this casual? But then why make Hugo wait?

  Forget it. I’m not doing this. I’m going out.

  I call Jamie but the phone rings forever. His parents must be the only people in Glenashton who don’t own an answering machine. They won’t let Jamie have a cell phone either. They’re the kind of people who’re always complaining about technology ruining lives but at the same time wouldn’t think of depriving their kid of a computer because it’d put his/her education at a disadvantage. Normally at this point I’d IM Jamie, just in case he’s around, but the moment I turn to do it, I realize I don’t want to talk to him anyway. This is a guy whose mother gives me a hug on my birthday like I’m part of the family. When Jamie’s grandfather was dying two and a half years ago, his parents went up north to be with him at the end but Jamie (except for a short visit to his grandfather’s because his folks thought anything more would be too tough on him) stayed with us. I remember how quiet he got after his father called to tell him it was all over. And I remember breaking my thumb on the seventh-grade ski trip and how Jamie kept making me laugh through the pain, all the way down the mountain. The point is, if last night involved anyone but Kat he’d probably be the one person I’d tell. Since it was her I can’t say a word until I know what’s going on between us, but talking about anything else will be a lie of omission.

  Because of the play I’m in touch with a zillion people and I keep dialing until I catch someone at home. That person’s Dustin, and I go over to his house and listen to him riff about how awesome the party was and why did Kat and I take off early, anyway? I tell him I’m not at liberty to talk about it, which makes me sound like a crooked politician. Dustin says his head feels like a bowling ball on account of all last night’s beer and that he doesn’t want to do much except maybe go to the video store and pick up some movies. So that’s what we do, but it’s not enough to stop me thinking, and as soon as I get home I ask Dad if the
re were any calls for me.

  “Just Lynn this morning,” he replies. “Did you forget to bring your phone with you?”

  I’m always forgetting my phone. I’ve left it in my locker, the public library, Nina’s car, assorted people’s houses, the counter at Burger King. But not today. It’s been in my pocket, eating up battery power all day long.

  Kat never called.

  three

  Y and Z stop me in the hall first thing Monday morning. They’re all smiley and touchy-feely with each other. Normally it’s a contagious kind of happy, unless you’re part of the Neanderthal redneck crew that can’t stand to see two girls together. As it is, I fake a smile and compliment them on the party.

  “But where’d you cut out to so early?” Zoe asks. “Kat’s brother was fuming. I mean, he was cool with us and all but you could see he was totally pissed with her being AWOL.”

  Is it me or is everyone I know exceptionally nosy? “There was some personal stuff going on with Kat,” I explain. “She just needed to get away from the party. We walked around….”

  Yolanda nods at my vagueness. “I’ve heard some stuff going around about Hugo.”

  “Yeah, well …” I ease my knapsack off my shoulder and lower it to the ground. “I never meant to cut out. It was a great party. I heard Miracle stayed to the end.” Dustin told me that last night.

  “Actually, she stayed even later and helped us clean up,” Zoe says, glancing over my shoulder.

  I swing around and catch sight of Jamie approaching. He’s staring straight at the three of us and tense vibes spring out in our direction as he nears. “Hey, Jamie,” Yolanda and Zoe sing.

  “Hey.” Jamie stops next to us, but it’s all for Y’s and Z’s benefit. He’s giving me the cold shoulder, angling his body away from me just enough to make the point.

  “So how was the rest of your weekend?” I ask. Jamie’s bad energy’s making me extra-aware of everything I’ve failed to tell him, but whatever’s eating him just isn’t a priority at the moment. I’ve got the whole Kat mystery to unravel.