Take Me With You
10:54 PM
“I better not, Sam.”
Her lips twist to one side in obvious disappointment.
“I would, I mean, I want to, but I should probably get home before my parents notice the car is gone.”
“So, this is your parents’ car,” she says, with a thoughtful tilt of her head. “Why did you avoid the question before? And don’t think I didn’t notice. What?” She runs the tips of her fingers along the edge of the upholstered door panel where the chestnut colored vinyl meets the glossy beige of the metal door. “Are you embarrassed they have such good taste in cars and music? How old are your parents, anyway? All my dad ever listens to is oldies.”
“Oh, yeah, my parents too.” You point to the glovebox full of cassettes. “Those are…” you start to say, then drop your hand. “Anyway, I better go.”
She gives you a curious look, half frown, half smile. “You still have my phone number, right?”
“Of course.”
“Make sure you use it,” she says, leaning in to kiss you on the mouth. She pulls away, opens her door, and then turns back to kiss you again, lingering just long enough to make you regret your decision. But before you can change your mind, she is outside and hurrying up the sidewalk. You wait until she disappears behind her front gate before easing away from the curb in a slow U-turn and exiting her neighborhood.
Five minutes later, you roll to a stop in front of your own house and quickly kill the engine. You have to pee so badly you can hardly hold it, but you’re not ready to go inside yet. For all you know, your parents are still up sitting in the living room, waiting for you to walk through the door so they can tell you what a complete disappointment you’ve become and then ground you for the next three years. So instead, you get out and go behind the trashcans on the shadowy side of the house beneath the pomegranate tree and then return to the car.
You take out the Bowie and replace it with the Led Zeppelin cassette that was in there earlier, Houses of the Holy. The same cassette that was playing when Robert taught you how to drive last year. Automatics were no fun, he said. You pushed on the gas to speed up and the brake to slow down. With a stick shift you were in control because you had to feel everything that was going on so you could give the engine what it needed, when it needed it. That was driving.
“D’yer Mak’er.” “The Ocean.” Up and down the back roads. “The Song Remains the Same.” It took you a while and he almost gave up on you. One more teeth-grinding of the gears and he probably would have. But eventually you got it, that balance between the clutch and the gas pedal. Up shifting, down shifting, the brake mostly an afterthought. “Over the Hills and Far Away.” Up and down the back roads.
You raise the volume just enough, close your eyes, and drift…
“Take me with you.” You are in the bedroom you share with your brother. He is dressed to go out, brown cords and his new two-tone navy polo with the maroon stripes across the chest. His dark hair is parted down the middle in two perfectly feathered waves. He smells of aftershave.
“There’s no room, Matt,” he says, counting the money in his wallet with the edge of his thumb. “Next time.”
“That’s what you always say.” You’re wearing the U2 concert shirt he gave you for Christmas and your new jeans. “I’ll squeeze in.” You try to keep the desperation out of your voice. You hate begging, hate this inexplicable need you have not to be left behind. “Who else is going? Kino, Rick, Alan? They’re cool with me. Ask them.”
“They let you play Dungeons and Dragons with them, Matt.” He scoops his keys from the glass bowl on the dresser and shoves them in his front pocket. “They’re not going to babysit you on a Friday night.”
“Babysit me? I thought you were going to see a movie. I have money. I’m not asking you to pay for me.”
“Matt, you don’t understand.”
You follow him into the hall. “It’s not fair. I washed your car and everything.” You’re definitely whining now, if you don’t calm down, you’ll be crying soon. “You’re such a liar.”
In the kitchen, your mother is scraping the leftover tuna casserole into a plastic bowl. “Mom, please talk to Matt.”
“Well, honey,” she says without turning around. “Why can’t you take him with you?”
“Come on, mom.” He’s starting to lose his patience. “He’s too—look, we’re not even taking my car.”
Now she turns around. “You’re not?”
“Yeah, Kino wants to take his, so it’s not up to me anyway.”
“You just decided that right now to keep me from going.”
“No, I swear.” He gives a hands open, helpless shrug. “It’s his turn.”
“Fuck you, Robert,” you say, and then halfway down the hallway to your room you shout, “I fucking hate you!”
“Matthew David!” snaps your mother. “Come back here this moment!”
“Let him go, Mom,” your brother says. “He doesn’t understand.”
You awake with a jolt, fully aware someone else is in the car with you.
“Hey, brother.”
You twist in your seat. “What the—!”
“Oh, shit,” she says. “You should see your face!”
Hands gripping the steering wheel, you take a deep breath and try to clear your head. “How long have you been there?” The inside of the car already smells like cigarettes and cherry lip-gloss.
“Long enough,” she laughs, an irrepressible giggle. “You talk in your sleep, you know.”
“What? What did I say?”
“Mommy, mommy, mommy—ah-ha-ha!” she cackles, and you can smell the beer on her breath.
“You shouldn’t be drinking.”
“What are you talking about?” She’s wearing her favorite Ozzy Osbourne t-shirt, the black one with the image of a hooded executioner holding up Ozzy’s decapitated head. “Tell me you haven’t been drinking tonight,” she demands.
“No, well, yeah, a little, but I’m a lot older than you.”
“Two fucking years,” she says, rolling her eyes. “What’s the difference?”
“Come on, Angie. When I was your age I didn’t even know what beer was.”
“Yeah, right,” she sighs, bringing her bare legs up and hugging her knees to her chest. “Tell me another.”
“No, I’m serious. Shit, I didn’t even learn to fucking cuss until I got into high school.”
“Your friend Randy partied,” she says, suddenly interested in the pink polish on the toenail of her left foot, “and he cussed.”
“Good for him. And he wasn’t my friend.”
“He wasn’t?” She turns to you, narrowing her heavily lined eyes. “But he—”
“Randy from middle school? No, that dude’s a fucking asshole. Why would you think he was my friend?”
“I don’t know, I just—”
“And alcohol fucks up your brain.”
“Oh my God,” she groans, stretching out her legs again. “Give it up already.”
“And the younger you are the worse it is.”
“Yeah, well, better to be stupid than boring.”
“No,” you say, turning toward her. “It’s not. It’s not better to be stupid than anything. Just because you think saying something like that sounds cool doesn’t mean it is. It’s stupid.”
“Just because you think it sounds cool,” she repeats, her head bouncing like a bobblehead doll. “Blah, blah, blah, cool, man, cool. Who are you, Richie Fuckin’ Cunningham? How do you know you didn’t already fuck up your brain? Maybe that’s why you get D’s in math, and you’re a big nerd who likes to say cool and who can’t get a girlfriend.”
You’re thinking of Sam’s lips on yours. “Yeah, what would you know?”
She forces a single, humorless laugh. “More than you, I’m sure.”
“And how can I be a nerd and stupid at the same time? That doesn’t even make sense.”
“Because if you were really stupid,” she says, “like you are, you wouldn’t know it anyway. You’d be too stupid to know it. You’d read big words like ‘a’ and ‘the’ and think you were so smart.”
“At least I can read.”
For some reason, this hits a nerve. “Fuck you, I can read.”
“See, every time you open your mouth you prove my point.”
She gives you a withering look. “You’re such an asshole, Matt. You don’t even make sense. How are we even related?”
“Yeah, how are we?” You don’t like fighting with her. It just comes too easily.
“I mean look at you,” she says. “You’re so fucking uptight you can’t even fart in front of other people.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You probably have to fart right now, don’t you? But you’re holding it in. You are, aren’t you? I can see it all over your tight-ass face.”
“Oh, my God,” you say, looking up at the ceiling. “You’re such a fucking child.”
“Fart then,” she says, taking a finger jab at your stomach. “I dare you.”
You push her hand away. “You fart.”
“If I had to.” She takes another jab. “I would.”
You catch her hand this time and squeeze her fingers. “Angie, stop it.”
She wriggles it free, fakes another jab, and then folds her hands in her lap. You keep yours ready.
“And anyway,” she says. “Your whole brain damage alcohol thing is bullshit because Robert drank and he was smart. Smart-smart, not stupid-smart, like you.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“Ah, Matt,” she says. “There’s still hope for you. I mean, you found the balls to steal this car, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t steal it.”
“Oh, sorry,” she says, rolling her eyes. “You borrowed it … without permission.”
“Whose permission do I need?”
She seems to consider this. “Yeah, Mom would rather just leave it parked out front forever.” She pinches the latch on the glovebox and the door drops open. “You know she washes it, don’t you?”
“What?”
“Yeah,” she says, shuffling through the pile of cassettes. “I saw her spraying it down with the hose the other day.”
“That’s not really washing it.”
She looks over at you. “Then she dried it with a towel.”
“Shit.”
She opens one of the cassette cases and the tape inside drops out, hits the handle of the parking brake, and falls with a clatter between the seats.
“Shit, Angie, be careful.”
“Dude, relax.” She slides her left hand down into the gap to feel for it. “Shit,” she says, her skinny arm wedged at an alarming angle. “I think it slid under the seat.”
“Leave it, I’ll get it later.”
“No, I got this.” She frees her arm, turns completely around in her seat, then kneeling, wedges the entire upper half of her body between the front seats into the back.
“Shit, Angie. You’re going to hurt yourself.”
“No, I … almost … have it.” The heel of her bare foot swings past your face. “Dude, what the hell,” she says, her voice muted and strained. “You have fucking beer under here!”
“I do?”
“What a hypocrite you are!”
“How many?”
“I don’t know.” Her foot just misses you a second time. “They’re rolling around … two, maybe more?”
“Well, give me one.”
Her hand appears from beneath her stomach gripping a can. You take it from her and a moment later she produces another. Finally, she wriggles her way out again, the fallen cassette in her teeth. “Gaa it.”
“Nice work,” you say, handing her a beer.
She settles cross-legged into her seat, pops the tab, and waits for you to do the same. “To Robert,” she says, holding it up.
“To Robert,” you repeat, tapping your can against hers. “Cheers.”
You both take a long drink.
“Ahhh,” she says. “Now that’s what I’m talking about.”
The tape deck whisper clicks as it auto-switches sides. You risk raising the volume a couple of notches as “Dancing Days” begins. The slinky guitar, pulsing rhythm, and slow stomp of the drums weave their way through your head.
“I like this,” says Angie.
You take another drink. “Yeah.”
Robert Plant assures both of you that everything will be all right.
“Do you think if he was here he’d be drinking with us?” asks Angie.
“I doubt it … he had his friends.”
She looks over at you, looks away. “Do you think he was drinking, you know, when—”
“Well, he wasn’t driving, was he?”
“I know that.” She takes a drink. “He never took you anywhere with them?”
“Camping, once.”
“Did they let you party with them?”
“They gave me beer,” you say. “I thought it tasted like piss.” You catch the beginnings of a smirk on her face. “And don’t say, how do you know what piss tastes like? It tasted like it smelled, piss.”
“Okay, okay,” she says, trying not to laugh. “Did you drink it?”
“A little. I mostly pretended. It was dark and we were sitting around the campfire, so whenever I got a chance I would let some spill out in the dirt when no one was looking.”
“My God, Matt, you’re so pathetic.” She turns to you, shaking her head. “Ah, it was probably that cheap Safeway brand anyway. I guess I can’t blame you.”
“Oh, and when did you become such an expert?”
“This summer,” she says, very matter-of-factly, “after … you know.” You look over at her, watch her tilt the beer up to her mouth, take a sip, and then dab at her lips with the back of the same hand. She runs the fingers of her other hand through her hair, pushing the feathered bangs off of her face and momentarily revealing the red birthmark on her left cheek. Once as large as a strawberry, it is now faded to a pale blush. When you were very little, you were sure it was a food stain and wanted your mother to wash it off. Now, you’re sorry to see it go.
Your gaze drifts from her to her best friend’s house up the street. The green Bronco is missing from the driveway, replaced by a car you don’t recognize. “Carmen’s parents go out of town again?”
She doesn’t answer right away, and when she does, her voice is somehow smaller. “…yeah.”
She’s looking up the street as well, except her eyes seem unfocused, or focused somewhere else. “What? Did something happen?”
She doesn’t respond.
“Angie?”
“Huh?”
“You okay?”
“Yeah, of course,” she says, shrugging the shadow from her face. “Just tired, I guess. So where have you been? Cruising with Eric and Rudy, and what’s the other one’s name?”
“Gus?”
“Yeah, him, the funny one. Mom might have bought it, but I didn’t believe for a second you were going to some stupid dance.”
“No, I did actually.”
She gives you a sideways look. “Liar.”
“Why would I lie?”
“Because you’re that pathetic.”
You shrug.
“So, who did you go with, Eric?”
“No, myself.”
She scrunches her nose. “Why would you go to a dance by yourself?”
“I was supposed to meet someone there.”
“Supposed to? Why do I have the feeling you’re about to tell me a really sad story?”
You take a drink, your can almost empty. “Maybe I’m not going to tell you anything.”
“Okay, okay. What happened?”
“Do you really want to know, or are you just going to give me shit the whole time?”
“I really want to know, brother.” She turns in her seat to face you. “Tell me.”
“I was supposed to meet this girl,” you say. “I took the car because I didn’t want to be late.”
“Her name?”
“Claudia.” You wait for something sarcastic, but she only blinks innocently back at you. “So, I get there and I pay and go in and I’m sitting there at the bottom of the bleachers waiting.”
“She stood you up, didn’t she?”
“Wait,” you say, holding up your hand. “So, I’m there a long time, like, I don’t know, four or five songs, and I’m feeling like an idiot and I’m about to go when this girl comes up and asks me to dance.”
“Really.” The way she says it is more statement than question.
“So, I say yes.”
“And?”
“And we danced for a long time and then we went to the top of the bleachers and made out.”
“Really. What’s her name?”
“Sam.”
“Really.”
“Stop saying that.”
“This doesn’t sound like a sad story.”
“So, when we were leaving, we bumped into Claudia.”
“Oh, shit, here it comes.” She takes a quick drink of her beer. “What happened?”
“Nothing. She was pissed, but she acted like she didn’t know me.”
She seems thoughtful for a moment. “You said, we were leaving. Oh, wait, so you bought the beer?”
“Sam bought it. I mean, I paid, but, anyway.”
She pinches up her forehead. “So, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“Do you like her, this Sam?”
“I think, a lot, yeah.”
“But you feel bad about Claudia.”
“Should I at least apologize or something?”
“You want Sam to be your girlfriend?”
You hadn’t actually thought about it that way, but … “Maybe, yeah.”
“Then don’t talk to Claudia.”
“No?”
“Trust me.”
For some reason, you do.
Something up the street catches Angie’s attention. You follow her gaze to Carmen’s house and the dark sedan that is backing out of the driveway.
“Matthew,” she whispers with sudden urgency.
“What?”
“Follow them.”
“Follow who, that car? Why?”
“Just do it. Please.”
There are many reasons you should not do what she asks, the least of them being the noise the engine will make when you start it up in front of the house. “Angie…”
“Please, Matthew.”
You push in the clutch, press on the gas, and turn the key.
THE MISADVENTURES OF MATTHEW VAN DER BOOT is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental … no matter how many times you ask.