Addie: Pt. 2

We walked to the high school through the sunset dusk of deep purples and fading reds, the air cooling and sweet with promise. Mike surprised me by smoking a cigarette as we walked, something I'd never associated with his "type" before. But there was a lot I didn't know. Approaching the gym, we could hear the crowd as it cheered for what must have been the end of the junior varsity game. The din and the bright lights that flooded the crowd of screaming students and parents and teachers seemed alien and dangerous to me. This was not my school. I could feel my adrenaline begin to kick in.

Inside, Mike looked around, then he tugged at my arm and said, "Come on." And there they were, Mike's girl and Addie, I guessed, for they were looking our way and waving. I didn't know which was which, but one of them was a killer. They both wore short skirts that gave them trouble if they worried about it which they didn't seem of a mind to do, but the darker one did not seem to belong. I mean, she didn't look like everyone else or anyone else that I had ever seen in person. Her hair was cut short, longer on one side than the other, and her eyes. . . well I can think of nothing but cliches, for they were, each and every one of them, true. . . they were the most brilliant eyes I had ever seen. She looked at me and smiled without smiling, the whiteness of her teeth just showing. Everything about her was vivid, more detailed and more refined than the rest of us, like the glossy photographs I'd seen of movie stars. This was Addie.

They made room for us, and Mike and I joined them on the flat wooden planked bleacher a few rows from the floor. I hadn't any idea really what to do. Nothing in my life had prepared me for this. I was socially inept at best and did not know how to make small talk with someone of her ilk. Mike hunched close to his girl on the far side and began to tell her things that made her giggle. Addie turned to me. I think it was at that very moment that some hormone began working that hadn't been present before. I could feel a dangerous change, but it may have simply been the first flair up of acne. Suddenly, though, I longed for the vocabulary I had never developed, craved some social repose. My nose and teeth felt huge, my feet gigantic. I was a sideshow freak, a misshapen retard escaped from home. But she seemed not to notice. What words passed between us I can't recall. I'm sure it was the usual talk of teenagers in public, who knows who and what are your favorite things and do you like this band. What I do remember is the regal way she looked around so slowly, that subtle smile barely gracing her lips, one hand delicately touching her forearm. She was of a medium height and did not look older than her age but was, somehow, the furthest extension of it.

Before long, the game was over and the crowd began to shift, and Mike said, "Hey, let's go over to the Burger Boy and get something to eat," and we joined the line of people heading for the exit. And just as we stood, I felt a violent jarring from behind, a purposeful bump that moved me on my feet. I turned around to see a sneering older boy, taller than I and thicker, a group of fellows bunched around him. "What's the matter?" he shouted. I didn't know. I turned back around and it happened again. I knew this was bad. I knew I was in trouble. I didn't turn around this time but walked on behind Addie, listening to the laughing taunts behind me. I didn't know what it was about, but I did. I was a new boy, and I was with Addie.

Somehow we snuck through the night without incident, my heart racing in my chest with expectation and fear, but soon we were seated in plastic chairs beside a big plate glass window looking out across a parking lot, eating onion rings and cheeseburgers and thick chocolate shakes, and the conversation shifted as Addie and Mike and his girlfriend talked about things they knew, me sitting all the while like a country cousin watching them with a dopey grin meant to disguise my anxiety. They had done this before. They were practiced. Their lives had been full of meals and conversation. They owned a social grace I had been shut out from, then avoided. But nothing had really gone wrong, I thought, and perhaps I would make it through without discovery. Maybe everything would work out after all.

But it didn't. When we had finished eating and had stepped outside, there was a group of boys hanging around. They were older boys from the high school, and I kind of knew one of them who was a friend of Steve's, but not very well. And as we stood waiting for Mike's girlfriend's mother to come and pick the girls up, a thick fellow with coal black hair noticed us and made his beeline. Quickly, he made it known that he didn't like the way I looked, that he didn't like me hanging around here, that he just didn't like me at all. That was OK with me, but he wasn't going to leave it alone. Mike and the girls had retreated a few steps so that I was isolated with the Blacky in the middle of a ring. I could feel the stares and though I didn't turn, I could feel Addie looking too. And it was that, I think, that made my decision, for I would rather have taken a beating than have crumbled in front of her, so I said, "You want to fight?" Standing next to Blacky was Steve's friend, and he whispered something in Blacky's ear. "Do you?" Blacky responded. I felt something there, some chance or opportunity that I couldn't name as I said, "I do if you do." I was moving off toward the woods in back of the Burger Boy, for if I was going to take a beating, I didn't want people to see it, didn't want them to see me cry for mercy or worse, to see me run. But Blacky was less certain than he had been, and then he said, "Look man, I was just kidding. Don't get so serious." And with that, everything changed. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe my luck. There, in a matter of minutes, I had gone from goof to hero. I could see it in Addie's very clear eyes.

Shortly, a car pulled up driven by a June Cleaver look alike, and the girls were smiling and climbing into the car and waving goodbye. "Call me," Addie said as they were pulling away.

"Let's get out of here," I said to Mike, not wishing to risk anything else, but just then, Steve's friend came up.

"You know why he didn't want to fight," he asked me. I shook my head with uncertainty.

"I asked him if he knew who your father was." I just looked at him, wondering what he meant by that.

"I told him your father was a famous karate instructor and that you could take his heart out of his chest and show it to him before he died." And he began laughing with cleverness like a favorite uncle.

I don't know why he did that, but I knew I wouldn't forget it. Things might work out, I thought, though I knew in my heart that it had only been luck and that it could cut both ways.