Sex & Violence Read online

The girl named Baker laughed. “You bought her Subaru? Does it still smell like wet dogs?”

  “Yeah,” I said and smiled and the cut on the corner of my mouth twinged. I kept forgetting it was there, swiping it with my toothbrush, and ripping it back open.

  “We’ve never even owned a dog,” Baker said. “We bought it used too, and it came that way. Nothing could get the smell out. So, you’re the night swimmer boy,” she added. “Saw you the other night in the water.”

  “You’ve been swimming already?” Kelly K. asked. I took a big gulp of whiskey Coke. I didn’t want to explain how I bathed in the lake. Luckily, Kelly K. interrupted before I had to respond.

  “What’s with your hair?” Kelly K. asked. “Do you have cancer or something?”

  “Kelly!” Baker yelled. Tom looked down into his whiskey Coke all embarrassed.

  “It’s just short.” My elf ears were burning.

  “No offense about your hair,” Kelly K. said. “My mom owns a salon, so I can’t help it—I’m always thinking about hair. Sue me,” she added to Baker, who was still looking outraged. “So, here’s the thing, Evan. You moving here? It’s sort of a weird sign.”

  “Kelly!” Baker said. “Are you completely rude or what?”

  “No, God, you’re not listening!” Kelly smacked her long-nailed hand on the coffee table. “I meant, it’s weird because this cabin? Has been unoccupied for so long. And this year? Suddenly, there’s something where there used to be nothing.”

  “Very observant,” Tom said, and Kelly K. punched his arm in that harmless way that girls are allowed to hit guys but never the reverse.

  “Let me finish!” Kelly K. griped. “What I mean is that we have to explain to Evan what goes on around here. So he understands what’s normal and what’s not. The difference between Marchant Falls life and Pearl Lake life. And the difference between all the sides of the lake, how things are here on the east side. How’s he supposed to know what’s expected of him?”

  I gulped more of my drink. I was a little horrified to know a) I had zero privacy and b) there were expectations from total strangers.

  “Kelly, you’re completely fucking this up,” Baker said.

  I was surprised, then, because Baker Trieste did not look like a girl who would swear. It gave me a thrill, actually. Reminded me of Collette.

  “Kelly’s in it to win it tonight with the whiskey,” Tom said and got girl punched again.

  “I think what Kelly means is that here on our side of the lake, we do things a certain way,” Baker said. “We’re not like the north siders with their billion-dollar second homes and lame-ass jet skis, or the loadie west siders, living in ice houses and trailers and beating their kids.”

  This sounded intriguing. And not just because it seemed strangely hot how Baker said “a certain way.” Like this was some cult or sex club and I was about to get initiated. Not that I wanted initiation in anything. Just that I was being instantly included as if I were normal. But I just nodded and kept quiet. Kept drinking.

  Baker set down her drink, crossed her legs. She wore a skirt too, but wasn’t acting all freezing cold like Kelly K. (Why do girls always freak out about being cold? It drives me nuts.) Baker’s legs were smooth, with good muscles. I tried not to stare, but Baker was cute. Long brown hair, lots of freckles, blue eyes, a red North Face jacket. Apart from saying the f-word, she looked very regular. Like the kind of girl who was on student council and who would apply for early admission to college. I bet she had nice, neat handwriting. That her car had an air freshener hanging from the rearview and that she went out for sports. And that she was a virgin. She had that bossy, rule-obsessed way about her that so many virgin girls affect.

  “Memorial Day weekend is when summer starts on Pearl Lake,” Baker said. “Tom’s family has the bonfire Friday, and my mom and I have the barbecue Saturday. Keir’s coming this year too, when he can get a break from the sheep.”

  The sheep? I thought.

  “And Saturday night, the kids all have a party. Which hasn’t been busted in over twenty-five years.”

  “As far as you know,” Tom said.

  “I researched it,” Baker said. “The last time was like 1986. And that was just because a kid drowned and the cops would have come out anyway. This year it’s at Jim’s, which is a few cabins down from Tom’s. I’ll give you the directions if you’re interested.”

  “But you have to keep your mouth shut about it,” Kelly K. said.

  “He doesn’t seem to have a problem with keeping his mouth shut so far,” Baker murmured into her whiskey Coke.

  “Are you guys drunk enough yet?” Kelly asked. “This is sooo not what I call being in it to win it.”

  “You just want to go behind the compost bin and feel up Tom in the dark,” Baker said, draining her drink.

  “Like you wouldn’t be with Jim right now if you could!” Kelly yelled.

  “Where’s Jim, anyway?”

  A banging knock on the door interrupted Tom’s question. Baker opened the door, and two more guys and a very skinny blonde girl came in. The guys were huge, Tate and Patrick huge. The girl one of those basic blonde skinny types who everyone decides is gorgeous for some unknown reason. I nearly dropped my drink, and my chest immediately tightened in a panic.

  “They told us everyone’s hanging out here,” said Guy #1, who was as tall as me, but with way better muscles. He wore a Marchant Falls Football T-shirt and a backwards baseball cap and had pierced ears that looked very red and uncomfortable, like he’d just had them done. He also reeked of body spray. Eau de Douchenozzle. I couldn’t stand him on sight.

  Kelly K. handed Guy #1 a whiskey Coke, and he asked, “This isn’t Cherry Lick, is it? That shit’s nasty,” as she rolled her eyes and shook her head. Guy #1 parked it by Baker on the couch, while Guy #2—who was ten times #1’s size, wearing the same football T-shirt and looking like he’d been breastfed steroids and corn on the cob—pulled up a kitchen chair that I worried might smash into toothpicks under his hulking frame.

  Baker introduced everyone. Guy #1 rubbing her knee was Jim. Guy #2, the giant Midwestern Viking, was Taber. The skinny blonde girl also had a weird-for-a-girl name, which I instantly forgot. Kelly K. set everyone up with drinks, and they all seemed so relaxed, boozing it up in some stranger’s living room. I sat down again. Then, because it was so fucking weird, I couldn’t help but ask.

  “So, does no one care if you drink underage here in Minnesota?”

  Baker laughed, and Kelly K. got all technical: “You’re dad told us we should make ourselves at home!”

  Tom explained that all the adults on the east side of the lake spent most of the summer in various states of drunkenness themselves, and so as long as the kids weren’t blatant about it, they looked the other way.

  “No going on the boat or driving or nothing,” he added. “Plus …”

  Again, Tom was interrupted by a knock at the door. I was getting pretty anxious about this constant intrusion but Skinny Blond jumped up and got it, and two more people joined the Whiskey Coke Convention: an impossibly tan redhead and a skinny guy with super-stoned eyes. More names that I instantly forgot. Stoner Guy started rolling a joint on the coffee table, which seemed promising to me, at least, but Impossibly Tan Redhead looked grouchy about it. She also refused Kelly’s offer of a drink.

  “The east side is pretty loose,” Baker said. “But this summer is different. It’s our last one. We all graduate next week.”

  “Jesse doesn’t,” Impossibly Tan Redhead said. “He’s only a junior.”

  “Thanks,” said Stoner Guy, licking his joint.

  “You want help smoking that?” Jim asked. He smiled with amazingly, blindingly white teeth.

  “Can we smoke here?” Stoner Guy asked me. Which I thought was considerate, seeing as the rest of them had basically bulldozed into my evening without permission.

  “My room’s upstairs,” I said.

  “Cool,” Jim and his Teeth said, and then he and Stoner G
uy, Giant Sasquatch Guy, and Skinny Blond all went upstairs. I flashed to the notebook where I wrote all my imaginary Collette letters but remembered I’d left it under the bed, next to the condoms and thing of wank lotion I never used anymore. All my shameful crap, luckily hidden.

  “So Minnesota football players smoke weed,” I said, taking another drink and setting out my glass for Kelly K. to refresh. If I was going to be flattened by all these house guests, they might as well be useful.

  “Not normally,” Tom said.

  “Baker’s decided this is the summer of Last Chances,” Kelly K. said in a bored, disapproving voice.

  “Kelly, god!” Baker shook her head that Kelly couldn’t get shit right. Baker turned to me. “See, Jim and Taber? They’re very good at football. They’re both going to Wisconsin to play on scholarships, and they’ve worked super hard for it. So this summer they’re going to do everything they haven’t gotten to do. All the stuff normal teenagers get to do. So we’re all making it a thing. Everyone’s got to come up with their Last Chance activity.”

  I nodded.

  “I need to figure out mine,” Impossibly Tan Redhead said, and Baker nodded in approval.

  “But it’s not smoking pot with my boyfriend,” she added, in a voice that indicated she equated smoking pot with drinking raw sewage. “Something I’ve never done before.”

  “But we’ve done everything there is to do in this stupid town,” Kelly K. whined.

  “You and Tom haven’t,” Baker said, all sly, and Tom’s face flared up bright red.

  “That’s personal,” Kelly K. huffed.

  “What’s personal?” Jim the Gridiron Pothead asked, coming down the stairs. The Viking Sasquatch and Skinny Blond trailed behind him.

  “The summer of Last Chances,” Baker said.

  “And no rules, don’t forget that,” Jim said, baring his amazing white fangs at her. “No rules was your idea.” He looked annoyed about that last thing.

  “Jim … ” Baker said, like she didn’t want to talk about it.

  “Baker’s all into non-monogramy this summer,” Jim said, looking at me for a long time. As if it was my idea. Or he expected me to get up and protest. Mostly I itched to correct him—non-monoGAMY, YOU MEAN?—but his cartoonishly white mouth freaked me out a little.

  “Where’s Jesse?” Tan Redhead asked.

  Nobody answered her.

  “Well, there’s not much I haven’t done,” Skinny Blond said, flipping her hair. “So I just plan on doing a lot of skinny-dipping. And not alone, either.”

  “How is that different from any other weekend with you?” Kelly K. said, all bitchy.

  Skinny Blond leaned over all sexy, like the view of her knobby collarbone was something special.

  “Well, because we’d be in the water, Kelly,” Skinny Blond said. “I mean, I’d explain, but it might burn your virgin ears.”

  Kelly gave Skinny Blond the finger.

  “What are you going to do, Jim?” Baker asked.

  “Mushrooms,” Jim said. “My brother’s friend knows a guy who can get us some.”

  “Ooh, I’ll do that too!” Skinny Blond said. “I almost did them last New Year’s with my cousins in Minneapolis? But there was a blizzard and it didn’t work out.”

  “I’m way too much of a control freak to do mushrooms,” Baker said. “What’s your Last Chance, Tom?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” Tom murmured into his drink. And got girl punched again by Kelly K.

  “True enough,” Baker said. “So we’ll skip over Kelly too.”

  “I’ll skinny-dip!” Kelly shouted, as if she didn’t want to be a total virgin square.

  “Who cares about skipping-dipping?” Tan Redhead said. “I want to try drinking something besides beer. Or whiskey. Or Cherry Lick.”

  What the fuck was Cherry Lick? I thought.

  “Taber?” Baker asked. She sounded like a game-show hostess interviewing all the contestants.

  The giant Viking Taber leaned back on his chair, his blue eyes completely blown to red.

  “Maybe a loadie party on the south side,” he said. “Find some loadie chick to hook up with?”

  “Ewww!” all the girls said in unison.

  “God, Taber, you’re so high,” Baker said, shaking her head like she was his mom. “Okay, Evan, that leaves you.”

  I studied my drink, which was almost gone.

  “I don’t know what a loadie chick is, but that sounds all right,” I said.

  The guys all laughed; the girls looked disappointed.

  “Where is Jesse?” Tan Redhead asked again.

  “Let’s go play Frisbee,” Jim said.

  “I can barely move, man,” Taber said.

  “No, we should get up and do something,” Kelly K. said.

  “Like feel up Tom behind the compost bin?” Baker said, standing up and tidying the Coke cans and glasses like a waitress trying to clear out a table. Kelly K. told her to shut up, but she jumped up to help and they both went into the kitchen and started rinsing out glasses as if they lived here. Tan Redhead helped and then hollered up the stairs, “Jesse!” until Stoner Guy stumbled down, looking sleepy.

  All of this was insane. That I barely knew these people, either, and they barely knew me didn’t seem to matter. I was looking forward to them vacating, when Baker tugged at my arm.

  “Come on, Evan,” she said. “I’ll show you around.”

  It wasn’t really cold, but I still shivered under the hoodie I’d thrown on as I followed Baker outside for more of her relentless, one-woman welcoming committee. She pointed out her dock and Tom’s dock and the joint diving platform. Pointed farther down the shore toward where the party would be at Jim’s tomorrow. Pointed east, to the sandbar, and north, toward Story Island. Explained how we shared driveways with the Tonnesons so if one was blocked by snow or a downed tree, it was okay to drive through the others’ lawn.

  “People on the east side don’t give a shit about lawns,” Baker said, walking beside me. “I only mow ours because it cuts down on the bugs. Lakes aren’t about lawns. Plus fertilizer makes algae blooms.”

  I nodded. E. Church Westmore had said as much back in 1974.

  “Now, over there, by the shed behind my cabin?” she pointed. “That’s the best place for digging up night crawlers. But don’t abuse it, or I’ll kick your ass. I’m kidding—I think fishing’s completely fucking boring. And that pallet fence over there? Where Tom and Kelly will spend the night doing everything but having actual sex? That’s the adults’ pot patch. They act like it’s just compost, but we all know. But don’t bother taking from it. Tom’s dad’s kind of an amateur grower, and half the time it’s junk. If you need weed, you can get it in Marchant Falls from any of the dishwashers at Mackinanny’s. That’s a restaurant. Now, Conley’s house is on the snobby side of things—don’t drive on their lawn, if you get what I mean—but Conley’s my best friend, so it’s cool. Then there’s Kiwanis Camp, which is sort of a dividing line between the old-school cabins and the new-money bullshit construction. Taber’s on the other side of that …”

  I listened to all this, nodding down at her head that came to my shoulder, knowing I’d never remember all these names. Baker smelled like the cocoa butter lotion my mother put on me when we went to the beach, and I didn’t want to think about it too much, but the smell was strangely appealing. Baker’s cuteness and friendliness just made me feel stupid, though. Like I’d left my ability to talk to girls with all my stuff back at Remington Chase (along with my spleen and a half-empty box of condoms).

  “Okay, I’m done talking,” she said. “You’re not saying anything, and my friends say I’m annoying when I talk too much.”

  Great. Silence usually went unnoticed by chatty girls like her.

  “Uh, thanks for the introduction,” I stuttered.

  “We’re pretty accepting over here. It’s the north side you need to worry about. They’re houses are sickening. Though Conley’s is pretty big too.”

  �
��Who’s Conley again?”

  “The blonde girl? Who came in with Jim and Taber?”

  I nodded. “Is she Taber’s girlfriend?”

  “No,” Baker seemed disgusted by the thought. “Conley hasn’t had a boyfriend forever. Because last summer she went out with this loadie dude on the south side? Who had a grim reaper tattoo on his chest? God, he was a freak. But her parents caught her with him and made her break up with him, and she’s not over it yet.”

  “Pearl Lake’s starting to sound like West Side Story,” I said.

  “Exactly,” she laughed. “Except no violence. Or singing. Unless it’s the Tonneson’s Midsummer Party. That’s always nuts. And Jim’s party might be crazy too. I’m a little nervous about that, because he’s invited way too many people. I don’t get why he did that.”

  “Because it’s the summer of no rules?”

  She laughed. “Come on, I’ll introduce you to everyone.”

  It was hard to keep track of the people I met, but I tried. Baker dragged me around by the elbow of my hoodie. You could tell she liked being social and that people liked this about her too. She could talk to everyone without pause. Old people. Moms holding sleeping little kids. Men bullshitting about boats. My father was there, too, shockingly, standing by Baker’s mother—Brenda, I told myself, Baker and her mother Brenda, trying to remember—and this gay-looking guy, who was supposed to be Brenda’s boyfriend, but I seriously doubted he was any female’s boyfriend because he was wearing purple yoga pants. Brenda Trieste looked a lot like Baker, except she wore a long hippie sundress with hiking boots. Brenda laughed with my father, who then smiled at me while he drank beer from a plastic cup.

  All of this made me nervous. I’d had no idea we were moving to a place where everyone was up in our business. But my dad never gave me any information about places we moved before, beyond what to pack and how long the trip would be. I kind of wanted to get away from this, from Baker especially, but she wouldn’t leave me alone.

  Finally, I said I needed to piss and went into the Tonneson’s cabin to do it. The Tonneson’s cabin was shabby likes ours but had way more stuff on the walls and none of it the Gone Fishin’ variety. The bathroom was basically a shrine to male frontal nudity, and above the saggy living room sofa was a pretty pornographic print of a naked woman spread-eagled in a chair.