Chapter Six: Lolita
“Wow, that really sucks,” Kevin said as he passed the joint my way and leaned back on his elbows. He blew a stream of smoke toward the sky and sighed as it billowed from his lips. We were sitting at the edge of the pool with our feet dangling in the water in a failed attempt to keep cool. Even though it was almost dark, the Virginia air was still thick and moist and our bodies were covered in a film of oily sweat. The sweat pooled in Kevin’s bellybutton. Any other time I might have stuck my finger or tongue in his bellybutton just to hear him laugh, but tonight I wasn’t in the mood. The death of the lady next door was really bumming me out.
I took the joint between two fingers and did a quick hit, then glanced at the house to make sure my mother hadn’t pulled into the drive. She probably smoked more pot than I did, but she didn’t like me and Kevin getting high in the backyard for whatever reason. I guess she figured we should do our heavy drinking and smoking out of the house like she did.
A stream of sweat sluiced its way down the crease between my tits. Kevin had his shirt off and his jeans rolled up to his knees. I was wearing the string bikini bottoms. The bikini top was draped over the back of a lawn chair. Kevin had seen, felt, and tasted my tits hundreds of times over the years, so I didn’t see the need to be shy around him. And he knew the fact that my top was off was not an open invitation to have sex. It just meant that my tits were hot from lying at the pool all day and needed airing out. I’d have taken off my bottoms, but mom was due home any minute and had a thing about me running around naked in the backyard.
It wasn’t like anyone could see me. Our backyard had a seven-foot tall privacy fence going all the way around it, thanks to one of mom’s old beaus, a fencing contractor named Duke. The only way to see into our backyard was from the second floor of the Ryder house next door. Bethany Ryder was dead. Her husband was not home. The house was pitch black, so I knew no one would see me sitting around smoking a joint with Kevin with my tits hanging out.
“How old was she?” Kevin asked, kicking his legs in the water like a little kid, which he was in many ways.
“She was really young,” I said. “Like thirty-one or thirty-two.” I hit the joint again and sucked the smoke in deep, held it for a second, then let it out like air escaping a balloon. I handed the joint back to Kevin and slid off the edge into the water. The cool water felt good on my hot skin. I went under for a moment to wet my hair, then came up and set my arms on the side of the pool and rested my chin on them.
“It’s just so sad,” I said, licking the water from my lips. “One minute you’re alive, and the next minute you’re not.”
“You never know when your ticket’s gonna be punched, babe,” Kevin said with the joint at his mouth. He held the joint between his thumb and index finger and poked the air with it as he spoke. “Remember Harvey Upton from school? Just walked outside one day and got hit by a bus.”
“Harvey was fucked up and walked in front of a bus,” I said, rolling my eyes at him. “Not the same as losing control of your car in the rain and hitting a tree.”
“Unless she was fucked up, too,” Kevin said, his round shoulders going up and down. He got a knowing look on his face and rocked his head back and forth. “Who knows, maybe she was out late looking to score. Or to get laid.”
“She was married, dumbass,” I said. “Her husband is a super-hot Navy SEAL.”
“So, that don’t mean shit,” Kevin said, rolling his glassy eyes at me. “Just because she was a wife and mom doesn’t mean she didn’t have her dark secrets. Look at you, my little Lolita. You have all kinds of dark shit going on in that pretty head of yours.”
“Fuck you,” I said with a smile.
“Fuck you back.” Kevin gave me the grin that first got him into my panties the night of our junior prom when I was just sixteen, a couple of months after Jerry popped my cherry. Kevin Cramer—everybody called him KC— was so fucking hot then. He was a year older than me, the captain of the varsity football team, tall, lean, muscular, with shaggy blond hair that hung over his blue eyes and a smile that he used like a deadly weapon.
We had been pals most our lives and had been on one date before the night we first fucked in the back of his mom’s minivan. We never officially went steady or anything as silly as that. Neither of us were that juvenile or possessive. We just liked to get high and fuck. He had other girls and I had other guys. Through it all, our friendship endured.
Now, three years later, we were more fuck buddies than sweethearts. Whenever I got horny I called him and whenever he got horny he called me. That was it. There were no delusions of a grand future together. The relationship had no really beyond the moment. We were not in love. We were just having fun; two friends who liked to fuck each other. But tonight, nobody was getting fucked or blown or fingered or jacked off. Kevin would have fucked me right there in the pool if I’d asked him to. We’d fucked so much in that pool the water should have been milky white by now, but I just wasn’t in the mood.
The death of Bethany Ryder was bringing me down, though I didn’t really know why. I barely knew her and probably hadn’t even spoken to her in months. Maybe it was that she always seemed so sad, even though I thought she had everything to live for. Maybe Kevin was right: who knows what goes on inside someone else’s head. Or behind closed doors. Or late at night when they’re out in a rainstorm instead of safe at home.
Kevin certainly had his dark secrets, though he managed to keep them hidden better than most folks. Everyone at Arlington High expected him to get a scholarship to play football in college, but he was injured in the first game of his senior year. He was slammed between two humongous linemen and his neck snapped like a twig. I remember sitting in the stands watching when it happened. It was like the world had shifted into slow motion. Kevin was hiked the ball and dropped back to throw. He was bouncing on the balls of his feet looking downfield for a receiver. Two of the opposing team’s linemen came at him from opposite sides and slammed into him like two fists crushing a gnat. His helmet came off and flew straight up in the air like a pimple that had been popped. Kevin went down hard and a ton of guys piled on top of him.
When the referees finally cleared the pile, Kevin didn’t get up. He didn’t even move. He just lay there like a crumpled-up wad of paper, moaning so loudly that you could hear him in the stands. The whole place got deathly quiet as two thousand people held their breath. All you could hear were Kevin’s moans carried over the chilly fall air like the wail of a ghost. It was the saddest sound I’d ever heard, like the sound of an injured animal slowly dying, moaning out its last breath. My eyes tear up sometimes just thinking about it. I knew at that moment that he was not going to get up. And if and when he ever did, his life would never be the same.
Four paramedics stabilized Kevin’s neck and loaded him onto a stretcher. Everyone clapped and cheered as they carted him off the field. I thought it was creepy, all those people cheering for a guy who couldn’t move. Two minutes later, the game resumed as if nothing ever happened. I rushed from the stands and rode with Kevin’s parents to the hospital. It was the last high school football game I ever attended.
The doctors managed to fuse Kevin’s neck back together. He was in the hospital for two months, then in a rehab facility for six months, learning how to walk and use his hands again. He came out the other side a shell of his former self. The optimistic golden boy with the bright future was gone, replaced by a moody seventeen-year-old with a slight limp and an addiction to OxyContin. He spent most of his time fucked up in his mom’s basement. Then he started dealing Oxy to his friends. Being a dealer got him out of the basement, but also made him angry and paranoid, like the whole world was out to bring him down.
Kevin was fucked up most of the time now, which was why our hangout sessions were starting to become more like interventions. I loved Kevin, but I wasn’t going to watch him overdose on Oxy or get caught up in his shit. Life was too short. Bethany Ryder was proof of that.
“So, you wanna do anything tonight?” he asked, offering me the joint. He shrugged when I waved it away and tapped it out on the concrete. “Wanna go down to the lake and get fucked up?”
“You’re already fucked up,” I said with a sigh.
“We could go to a movie. Get something to eat. Get even more fucked up.”
I looked past him at the Ryder house next door, looming over the privacy fence like a dark cloud. “I want to go get some flowers,” I said quietly. “And put them on their front porch. All the neighbors are doing it. Mrs. Crown said the husband would be home tomorrow sometime. It would be nice if he saw that his neighbors were there for him.”
Kevin scowled at me. “What the fuck for, Lolita? She’s dead. And you barely knew her. Come on, let’s take a drive. I need to deliver some product to one of my guys.”
“You go ahead,” I said, bracing my palms on the side of the pool to lift myself out. “I’m gonna go buy some flowers.”
“Whatever,” he said with a sigh. He pulled his feet out of the pool and rolled down his pants legs, then found his shirt and shoes. I picked up the bikini top and put it on, then wrapped a towel around my waist. Kevin tugged his black t-shirt over his head as he followed me to the side gate. Without asking, he pulled me into his arms and tried to kiss me. His breath wreaked of beer and pot. His dry lips felt like sandpaper on my skin.
“If I slam into a tree tonight and die will you bring me flowers?” he asked, his breath hot on my cheek.
“No,” I said, pushing him away. “But I will send flowers to the tree.”