The Time Keepers

Chapter 62

CHAPTER 62

O UTSIDE, IN THE HIGH SCHOOL PARKING LOT, THE SCENT OF maple leaves fills the early September air. Katie lifts one of the Tupperware cases of frosted cupcakes from the back of a long brown Lincoln. Linda’s mother turns off the ignition key, slides a hand into the neckline of her silky, polyester blouse and adjusts her bra strap, before checking her lipstick in the mirror.

“You got that, girls?” Mrs. Atkinson, with her clingy top and high-rise pants, wants to be at the dance probably as little as the girls do. But Adele has made sure all the women in the PTA participated in the annual fundraising dance.

“And don’t stack them on top of each other. I don’t want the frosting to get smudged. I spent hours redoing the ones that Linda tried to decorate.”

Linda, her eyes lined in dark pencil, her lips swiped with lip gloss, makes a face.

“Come on, let’s just go set up,” she mutters under her breath. Katie beams, absorbing every word of her new friend, basking in her newfound popularity.

“Sure,” she says, and her face is bright like the moon. “I’ll follow you inside.”

The gymnasium has been decorated with ropes of streamers. Electric-blue-and-white crepe paper twists and loops across the border of the room, where banners announce the championships Bellegrove High has won over the years. Outside the doors, the PTA committee has set up long tables where cans of soda and platters of homemade chocolate-chip cookies have already been placed. Linda and Katie set down the trays of cupcakes and pull off the plastic covers.

“Oh, now, don’t those look delicious, girls,” Adele says, peering down at the perfectly frosted tops. “Did you do all of this, Linda?”

Linda laughed. “Oh, no, my mom made them.”

“Well, I’m sure you helped, honey,” the voice of Shelby Atkinson interrupts. “Linda’s always so helpful.”

Adele smiles. “Just like my Buddy. He’s always helping around the house.”

Only hours before, Adele had asked Buddy to help her decorate the gymnasium with the other women on the committee, but he informed her bluntly that he had already made other plans.

He did not tell his mother that Clayton and he were going to buy beer at the local liquor store and get pounded before the dance. And he certainly didn’t tell her the second part of his plan, which involved approaching Katie Golden and making it known he liked her.

“The other women aren’t tall enough to hang all the streamers,” Adele complained. “And no one is going to want to climb a ladder if they’re wearing pumps. Can’t you just come for an hour, Bud? You could bring Clayton.”

He looked at her with an apathetic glace and shook his head no.

Adele glowered. “If my parents asked me to do the littlest thing, I’d jump to help them!” She sighed deeply to emphasize her annoyance. “And you, young man, can’t do anything at all for me!”

But Buddy had learned long ago how to ignore his mother. He tied the laces of his new sneakers, pulled on his new denim jacket, and didn’t even look over his shoulder as Adele sent dagger-like glares in his direction. He blithely walked out the door.

Clayton was already waiting for him behind the C&P Mini Mart when Buddy rode up and parked his bike near the dumpster. Dressed in a brown denim jacket and faded Wranglers, Clayton’s bottom lip swelled from a marble-sized wad of chewing tobacco he had just stuck into the corner of his mouth.

“Hey,” he said, before spitting brown juice onto the pavement. “I paid some old guy to get us a six-pack of Pabst.”

“Cool.” Buddy handed him a crumpled wad of one-dollar bills.

Clayton took the money and stuffed it into his back pocket. “I think we should chug some of them here before we head over.”

“A mighty good plan,” Buddy agreed and looked around to see if anyone was watching them.

“You sure you really wanna waste time at that stupid dance? I mean we could just get loaded and forget even going over there.”

Buddy did his best to appear casual. “Let’s just go for a bit.”

“It’s that girl.… You’re hot for her, aren’t you?” He spit out some more tobacco juice. “I thought she was a Jew.”

Buddy flinched. “I just want to see who else is going to be there.”

Clayton kicked the asphalt with his boot. He imagined being at the dance would be a lot like being stuck in a zoo, and he had no interest at all in it. He wanted to go back to Texas where the back of his house bordered a large, wild acreage. Where he could hunt and practice his shooting. Where he could skewer his fresh kill on a stick over an open firepit. He didn’t want to be a caged animal. He wanted to unbridle himself, unleash all the dark corners of his mind and be free.

“There wasn’t any change,” the old man announced as he handed the six-pack in a brown paper bag to Clayton. “’Don’t drink it all in one place,” he advised them through a chipped tooth smile, before walking back to his car parked in the front lot.

Clayton reached into the bag and pulled out a beer for each of them.

“Guess we’re not listening to him …” Buddy reached for the beer and pulled the tab open. Both of them drank down the first can in seconds.

Clayton swallowed hard, his wiry neck pulsating as the drink went down. “Man, I hate Pabst, but it’s the cheapest.”

Buddy felt the head rush fill him with lightness. “It does the trick.”

He reached into the bag for his second can, popped it open and finished it even more quickly than the first.

Buzzed, Clayton and Buddy managed to ride their bikes to the high school, both of them searching out bits of garbage and stray cans to run over. When they walked into the gymnasium, the DJ was playing the Bee Gees and a group of girls, including Katie and Linda, were huddled beneath the basketball hoop nursing cans of Sunkist and root beer.

Buddy’s eyes lock on Katie, dressed in a denim skirt and pink halter top, her face lit by the glow of party lights. He has slipped into the gymnasium with Clayton at his side, the two of them flushed by the alcohol burning in their veins. The beer has emboldened Buddy. It’s made him confident in a way that thrills him. It makes him feel inches taller next to his friend, who moves through the gym like a lynx.

In the past few nights, they have spent hours huddled in their new fort, with a circle of pebbles between them. But while Clayton dreams of shooting squirrels and skinning them with his Swiss Army knife as a form of recreation, Buddy’s mind has been full of fantasies about bringing Katie there without Clayton.

She has occupied every inch of his mind the whole summer, ever since he saw her that first week in her red bathing suit at the beach club. Buddy felt the same way looking at her as he did when his father took him to the mechanic to pick up his car and he spotted a poster of Farrah Fawcett in her red swimsuit. Gone were her braids and braces, the Katie he had known his whole childhood. Every time he saw her now, he felt as if the wind had been sucked out of him, and his mind scattered in a thousand directions. He couldn’t help but imagine what she might look like without her lifeguard swimsuit.

His heart pumps with adrenaline as he contemplates whether to ask her to dance (after all, there are three couples moving on the dance floor: Frank Lafferty has his hands stiffly placed on Jenny Rodano’s hips, and she has her arms locked around his neck, while two other couples move in the same robotic way).

Buddy mimics his friend’s stealthy, uninhibited movements in order to gain confidence. He envisions a coyote, the way Clayton described the animal to him during one of their nights out at the fort, when the moon shone through the cracks of the structure, and his friend detailed the circle of life as he imagined it: The weak are hunted, so the strong can survive. They prowl silently, each step almost undetectable, before they strike their prey.

He has stepped away from Clayton, who has retreated to a corner of the gym, and Buddy now hovers just behind Katie’s circle of friends. Their laughter is a practiced language of popularity, their scent a powdery mixture of baby powder and chewing gum. He hears Linda Atkinson mention that Brian Flannigan has asked her to go to the movies over the weekend, and the other girls are all giggling and hanging on her every word.

“Hey,” he says, pushing into the circle, penetrating the closed formation with a swagger he’s practiced in his head for nearly the entire summer. “Katie, can I talk to you for a sec?”

Her face immediately transforms from an expression of polished coolness to a look bordering on personal mortification. “What do you want?” she mutters, clearly annoyed by his intrusion.

He remains undeterred, as the beer has made him feel invincible.

“Clayton and I have some extra beers, and we’re wondering if you want to go and drink them with us.” There is an awkward pause, but he ignores it. “Bring some of your friends, if you want.…”

She looks at him like he is out of his mind. Even worse, her face transforms into a look of disgust. “Are you kidding me, Buddy?” she hisses beneath her breath. She leans into him, and her mouth is only inches away from his ear. He can smell the scent of her strawberry shampoo. “Can you please just leave me alone?”

And then she adds something that really crushes him.

“Buddy, you—are—embarrassing me.”

Outside the high school, Buddy finds Clayton crouching between their two bicycles and his fury at Katie drips off him like sweat.

“It was looking a little painful for you back there,” Clayton mutters. “I thought it best to get some air.”

Buddy tears at his cuticle, the sharp pain sending a strange sense of pleasure through him. “She’s such a bitch.”

Clayton’s eyes glint like two sharpened arrowheads. “I was thinking about what we could do to get back at her if she rejected you.…”

He laughs and unzips the backpack. One of the two remaining Pabst cans is gone. “Sorry, I drank mine, man, but look what I stole from the supply closet.” He reaches into the nylon bag and pulls out a can of white spray paint, the kind used to mark the lines on the school’s football field.

“Thought we could have some fun with this.”

He lifts the long, metal cylinder up in the moonlight like a grenade.

Buddy looks at the spray can, but first reaches for the remaining can of beer. He snaps it open and drinks it quickly before tossing it to the ground.

“Let’s go over there.” He points to the rear of the school, not far from the fire exit.

He grabs the spray can from Clayton, looking for a place to unleash his humiliation, which feels like a fresh wound.

“I’m going to do to her what she did to me,” he snarls. “I’m going to embarrass the hell out of her.”