A couple of days later, Luke was hanging out with the same friends Billy had forbidden him to see.
“Do you want another beer?” Van asked.
Luke shook his head. “I haven’t finished this one yet,” he said, indicating the can of Miller High Life he was holding. He took another sip as if to prove he would finish it, eventually. He didn’t see how he could, though. It tasted so bitter. Did all beer taste like this, he wondered, or just this kind? He had no idea. He’d never tried it before today. Never tried any kind of alcohol, but he wasn’t about to tell Van and J.P. that. Maybe, he thought, this beer would have tasted better if it’d been cold, but J.P. had brought them in a grubby old paper bag. They were not only warm but also had a coating of dirt on them, like they’d just been sitting in a garage somewhere. Luke started to ask him where he’d gotten them, but he stopped himself. J.P. didn’t like it when Luke asked him questions. He always seemed suspicious of Luke, like he was going to snitch on him or something. It didn’t help that he thought Luke had gotten special treatment for the graffiti incident. He’d gotten off with a warning. Van and J.P. had to perform community service, and J.P. had to see a counselor since it wasn’t the first time he’d gotten into trouble.
“You’re a slow drinker,” J.P. said to him now. He made it sound like an accusation. But Luke only shrugged. J.P. was sort of okay if you just kind of ignored him. Then he just kind of ignored you back. Luke didn’t like him that much, but when you hung out with Van, outside school anyway, J.P. kind of came with the package. J.P. lived next door to Van, and since he was a dropout, he had a lot of free time.
Luke balanced on his skateboard now and tried to do a flip-kick with it. He couldn’t, though. For one thing, he was holding the beer, and for another, the concrete they were on—the parking lot behind an abandoned service station—was all cracked and choked with weeds. He gave up and went back under the overhang of the building’s roof, where Van and J.P. were drinking.
God, it was hot, he thought, wiping his forehead. It should have felt cooler here in the shade, but it didn’t. The air was so hot and still that the silence felt loud. Almost like it was buzzing inside his head. Or was that the beer? He didn’t know. Maybe it was possible to get drunk on one beer—on less than one beer, if it was your first one. He took another sip and tried not to flinch as he tasted it, especially since J.P. was watching him.
“You don’t even like it,” J.P. said.
“It’s okay,” Luke said. And then, surprising himself, he added, “Vodka’s better.”
J.P. finished his beer. He threw the can on the ground and stomped on it, hard, so that he crushed it almost flat. “You don’t know anything about vodka,” he scoffed, kicking the can away.
“Whatever,” Luke said, looking down at his skateboard.
“He knows about it,” Van offered, leaning against the wall. “His mom has a liquor cabinet, doesn’t she?”
“Yeah, she does,” Luke said casually. He’d told Van this, and it was true, sort of. It wasn’t really a cabinet. It was more of a cupboard, and the liquor didn’t take up the whole thing, just a little bit of it. It was a couple of bottles, really, that his mom kept mostly for guests. She preferred wine, though. “Actually, my mom mostly drinks wine,” he said, shooting a look at J.P., who was opening another can of beer.
“What kind?” he asked, instantly alert. “Red or white?”
“White,” Luke said. “She likes chardonnay,” he added, proud that he’d remembered the kind of wine she drank.
“Chardonnay,” J.P. hooted. “That’s a ladies’ drink. Men don’t drink that. They drink red wine.”
Luke’s face burned. Was that true? He didn’t know what men drank. His Pop-Pop had hardly drunk at all, except on special occasions, and as for his dad . . . who knew what his dad drank? But J.P. had already moved on. “I can’t believe your mom is a librarian,” he said. “That’s so lame. Does she just, like, yell at people all day? ‘Can you be quiet, please?’” he said in a high voice. “‘Please! You’re being very disrespectful of all the books here. They need absolute silence,’” he sang in a voice bordering on the hysterical.
“Shut up,” Luke muttered, truly angry with J.P. for the first time. He didn’t always want to be around his mom, but he didn’t want people making fun of her, either. “She doesn’t sound like that,” he added, glaring at J.P. “That’s, like, a librarian on TV or something.”
“Yeah, his mom’s actually pretty cool,” Van said, coming to his rescue. Luke felt grateful. Van and his mom had never actually met each other. He didn’t want them to meet each other, either. Not after the trouble Luke had gotten into with Van, and not when he wasn’t even supposed to be with him at all. But still, it was a nice thing to say.
“And being a librarian is dope,” Van continued, sipping his beer. “You . . . what? Sit there all day and do, like, nothing. Just read at story time or whatever and then you get paid for it. That’s cool.”
This was wrong, too, Luke knew, but he didn’t say anything. He wished they’d stop talking about his mom, though. He felt bad. She thought he was at Nature Camp. It was where he was supposed to be. But he hadn’t gone this morning, even though camp had only started three days ago. He’d waited until his mom had left for work, and then he’d called Margot and told her he wasn’t feeling well. She’d been nice about it. She hadn’t asked to talk to his mom or anything. She’d just told him to hurry up and get better because the Black Bears—that was the seven- and eight-year-old group he helped out with—would miss him. After they’d hung up, Luke had left the house and, careful to avoid Main Street, skateboarded to the rec center, where he’d met Van, who often hung out there in the mornings. (He felt like he needed to tell Van he was grounded and had his cell phone taken away. Otherwise Van might think he was avoiding him.) After they’d left the rec center they’d come here, and J.P. had met them later with the beer.
The time before J.P. had shown up had been the best. Luke and Van actually talked about stuff. They didn’t just talk—they skateboarded while they talked—but Van told him stuff, like how he was going to move to LA one day, after high school, maybe, and how he was going be part of a skateboarding crew there that had a house on the beach and just chilled and skateboarded all day. He’d asked Luke if he wanted to go, too, once, and that was when Luke had told him about Alaska. About his dad. And about how he wanted to find him and maybe go visit him. Van thought that was cool. So now, when they hung out, they talked about LA and Alaska and how they were going to save up for airfare. Luke already had over a thousand dollars in a bank account, most of it from birthday money and Christmas money, but he didn’t tell Van that. It might make him feel bad, because Luke didn’t see how Van would ever get the money to go away. He didn’t even have enough for a hot dog at the Quick and Convenient; when they went there, Luke had to buy one for him.
Still, for someone who seemed so broke, Van had a lot of video games at his house. Maybe that was because his dad played them, too. He didn’t play them with Van and Luke. He was never home when Luke was there. And Van’s mom had moved out. Maybe that was another reason Luke liked Van. He didn’t think it was weird that Luke didn’t know who his dad was. Unlike Luke, though, Van didn’t seem curious about where his mom had gone. All he’d said about her was that she’d left one day when he was little, and she hadn’t come back. He seemed okay with it, but Luke wondered sometimes how he could be. Maybe it was because his aunt came over sometimes. She did some cooking and cleaning for Van and his dad. Luke didn’t think she did a very good job, though. Most of the time their place was a total wreck.
Luke watched now as Van took his skateboard out into the parking lot and practiced kicking the tail of his board down while he jumped so that it popped into the air. He made it look easy, even on this crummy surface. Van, who had hair so blond it was almost white and light blue eyes, was small for his age. He was kind of skinny, too, but he was stronger and faster than he looked. He’d gotten in a fight once at school with a guy who played middle school football and he’d won. The kid, Michael, was a total jerk, and Van only fought with him because he’d said Van and his dad were trashy.
Luke put down his can of beer—it was still only half-empty—and stepped on his skateboard. He started to push off from it, then stopped. His stomach felt weird, and he knew if he skated now, the beer would just slosh around and he’d feel worse. Plus, he was hungry. He thought about the lunch his mom had packed for him, still sitting on the kitchen counter, and wished he’d remembered to take it. Maybe they could go to the Quick and Convenient?
“You’re not going to get sick, are you?” J.P. asked, already finishing another beer. God, how did he do it?
“I’m fine,” Luke said, watching Van skate.
J.P. shook his head. “You should have gone to that day care center you work at,” he said disgustedly.
Luke didn’t answer him.
“Don’t they need you to change diapers there?” he asked.
“I told you, there are no diapers,” Luke said, too hot to work up any real anger. “It’s a day camp. You have to be five to go there.” He knew no matter what he said, though, J.P. would keep calling it a day care center. He was almost missing it, too, when Van skated over.
“Let’s go back to my place,” he said. “We can play Halo, and my aunt got pizza pockets yesterday.”
“Cool,” J.P. said, chugging the rest of his beer. He crushed the can when he was done and kicked it away, too. Luke tried not to worry about littering, and thought about how stupid J.P. and Van would say he was if they knew it bothered him.
“You coming, Luke?” Van asked him now.
“I gotta get back,” he said, picking up his skateboard. He was thinking that he should go to Nature Camp now and tell Margot he felt better. Of course, he’d have to buy some gum on the way there; he couldn’t show up smelling like beer. With any luck, though, he’d be in time for the afternoon activity, using solar ovens made out of pizza boxes and aluminum foil to make s’mores. This was actually kind of lame—the younger kids could care less about solar energy, and instead got covered in melted chocolate—but at least Luke could eat some of the graham crackers and get rid of the sloshy feeling in his stomach.
“What, are you going home to mommy?” J.P. asked in a baby voice.
Luke started walking away. “Later,” he said to Van over his shoulder, ignoring J.P.
“Later,” Van said with his funny smile that was only on one side of his face. And then Luke was on his skateboard, pushing off hard, feeling the breeze on his face. Somehow he got back to the Nature Museum without seeing anyone he knew, and he was at the library, as planned, by three o’clock that afternoon to meet his mom.