WE’RE GOING TO BE LATE
Dad comes to the Civic Center with me. It would’ve been miserable enough without him being here. I told him he didn’t have to come a million times, but his only answer was, “I think I need it just as much as you.” His presence has already changed my plans: we’re early. I didn’t want to be early. This is something connected to Mr. Crotcher, so I should be at least five minutes late.
Not only are we early, but also as soon as we walk through the door, he disappears in search of a bathroom so I’m left alone, with nothing else to do but take in the sights, smells, and sounds (mostly smells) of Washington’s finest: the Bothell Civic Center.
The Bothell Civic Center is also on the city’s list of things to be renovated. Construction cones litter the entrance and demolition is going on everywhere the light touches, which is good because the place was undoubtedly built in the seventies, and I don’t think it’s been redecorated since. It would be better if it were called the Creamsicle Empire, or The Palace of Linoleum Glare. As I look around, I feel slapped by the entire spectrum of tan, yellow, and orange. The windows are caked with slick grime left over from the “make love, not war” era, and the fake grout of the linoleum floor is brown instead of white. Fluorescent lights line the ceiling. The Plexiglas surrounding them looks like transparent peanut brittle, all chipped and discolored. Thin sheets of decorative cork cover the walls. Cork. As wallpaper. Not the thing you stick in a wine bottle. There must have been a lack of intelligence among interior designers in the seventies.
I was forced here by the Anti-Adam Order. This is their doing. I sigh and pull out my phone to make a quick porn playlist. I call this “preventative maintenance.” If I don’t do this, I won’t make it through tonight’s meeting without puking in the middle of the Healing Circle.
“Are you looking for the Groupeth De Pain?”
The female voice makes me jump. I let out a silent curse, click my phone off, and turn around.
It’s her. Dez.
Her hair shines like a chocolate sun. For some reason, seeing her this time is even more of a blessing than at the diner. Her face is childlike, but more mature than all of the girls in my class. Her clothes are thoughtful. She’s wearing a gray, hooded pea coat, but it isn’t buttoned. Underneath that, you can see an unbuttoned denim shirt and a gray tank top. A pair of sunglasses rests in her hair. She looks as if someone’s taken all that’s sexy and painted it on a human, one layer at a time. Something about her just tugs at me in a strange way, and I’m not sure what it is.
“Oh, it’s you, Adam, hey,” she says, like it’s not weird to find me at an addiction meeting. “Is Addy coming? She was really cool.”
I’m so taken off-guard, I forget to answer. No, Addy isn’t coming. I chased her away and now she hates me.
“So … judging by the look on your face, you’re new and in denial,” she says with a smirk and then points down the hall. “Addiction Fighters is down this way. Just make sure you take care of your eyes.” She slides the glasses onto her nose. “This place is a proxy for the surface of the sun. Come addicted, leave blind. For people who are addicted to porn, like me, it’s the best cure ever.”
I feel my mouth drop. Her honesty, wit, and posture take me completely by surprise, and the only thing I can think to say is: “You’re addicted to porn? But girls aren’t—”
“Into porn?” she interrupts. “Ha. You flatter the male species with your gender specific delusions. For your information, for every guy jerking it on the World Wide Web, there’s roughly three-fourths of a girl going to town on herself. But I should be honest; my addiction is pretty complex. I’m addicted to porn, yeah, but only because I’m addicted to addiction. It’s complicated.”
Maybe this is why girls aren’t into me. I don’t say hello, I just ask them if they are addicted to porn. Not smooth.
“My last name is Coulter, by the way. Yours was Hawthorne, right?”
Desiree “Dez” Coulter. Even her name has an unrivaled sexiness. Just like at the diner, everything about her is an intense flirtation that makes me want to ask her if she wants to get a shake at Pritchett’s instead of asking “Want to sleep with me?” I note the change and mark her as dangerous, but gorgeous, territory to approach with care. Kind of like a volcano.
“Yeah,” I finally say as I attempt to get my proverbial feet back under me.
“Hi, Adam,” she says in the most monotone way possible.
“Hi, Dez,” I repeat in the same flat tone.
She purses her lips. “Already used to the dirge-form of greeting we use here?”
“I’m used to dirge tones. I live in a funeral parlor.”
“Uh,” Dez says. “No?”
I nod. “Yeah. No.”
“No on the yeah or yeah on the no? You know what? No. You don’t live in a funeral parlor?” Her tone rises at the end of parlor.
I do the same sort of tone rise with a “Yeah?”
She laughs, and Dad reappears out of a different hallway than he’d wandered down. He sees me talking to Dez and asks, “Who’s this?”
She turns around, but I answer before she does. “This is Dez. We just met. She’s addicted to porn and addiction in general.”
Dad looks at me like I just stuffed a grenade into a baby rabbit’s mouth.
“Aw, you should be proud of your son,” Dez says, shaking my dad’s hand. “He’s blatantly honest and dirge-y already. He’s going to do so well here.” She winks at me, and I’m pretty sure I fall into an attraction coma.
She beckons us to follow her with a confident side nod. “Come on, I’ll show you guys around.”
Before I can take a step, Mr. Crotcher walks into the lobby with the guys I saw at Pritchett’s. I recognize one of them. He’s a freshman, huge, white as Downy paper towels, and a starting varsity football player. His name’s Mark, I think.
Mr. Crotcher waves at me, but then he sees my dad and his thick white eyebrows shoot up. “Greg, it’s been so long. Are you joining us?”
Dad smiles and gives Mr. Crotcher a hug—the kind with the intense back patting.
“I think so,” Dad says. “Adam and I both realized we need some changes.”
“Father and son addicts?” Dez asks with this make-your-fingernails-sweat smirk. “Mr. Bunson’s going to eat this up.”
“Dez,” Mr. Crotcher bows his head. “Good to see you. Is it a first or last line day?”
“Last,” she says. “It is definitely a last line day. Hello, Knights of Vice.” She waves at the three boys who came in with Mr. Crotcher, and they each take a few seconds to hug her.
This pisses me off, but I don’t know why, and both the being pissed off and not knowing why is weird.
Mr. Crotcher grabs me by the shoulder and pulls me toward the other guys. “Adam, let me introduce you to the men of your Transparency Forum. This is Elliot.”
A plump kid with a pair of hot pink headphones around his neck and swoopy blonde emo hair holds out his hand. “Hey, brother.”
I guess it could be worse. He could be calling me “bro.”
“Hey,” I say.
“This”—Mr. Crotcher points toward a skinny Hispanic kid—“is Trey. Trey, this is Adam.”
“Hey, Adam,” he says.
“And last, but not least, this is Mark. He’s the youngest and most in shape member of the Knights of Vice.”
Mr. Crotcher looks at Dez like they have an inside joke.
“The name is gold,” she says.
Mark doesn’t offer me his hand. He just says hey.
“Hey,” I say, thankful for his minimalistic approach to interaction. This kid’s the best out of the bunch. I can already tell.
“Such dialogue. Much riveting,” Dez says. “Come on, everyone, and Adam’s dad, we’re going to be late.”