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It’s the first Friday afternoon of your 9th grade school year and you walk over to the house of your neighborhood friend, Joey Rosedale. When you arrive at his house, Joey says, “We can watch some TV, or go to my buddy Chet’s house. I need to get something back from him that he borrowed.”
You choose to…
- Watch some TV.
- Head up the hill to Chet’s house, mostly curious to see what someone named “Chet” looks like.
You and Joey walk up the neighboring hill in the waning sunlight, still brutally warm as summer has another month of attention. Joey asks, “Have you met Denise Frensenjensen yet?” purposefully butchering her name. “Long brown hair, hazel eyes? Killer body? We made out at a party last week and I wanna know if she’s talking shit about me.”
Denise Frensen doesn’t have nice things to say about Joey.
In fact, no one does, because everyone thinks Joey Rosedale is a dick. Yet, you are friends with him because he knows cool things like how to blow smoke rings, and he’s got a swimming pool. That, and you don’t know many other kids, so he’s the friend you need, not the friend you necessarily want.
You say…
- “I don’t know Denise,” avoiding the difficult topic of telling Joey what she really thinks about him.
- “Yeah, but she hasn’t said anything. I think you’re probably okay,” lying your ass off anyway.
As you pass parked car after parked car, Joey lightly kicks the front bumpers to see which ones have alarms. After kicking the third one, a large teenager the size of a phone booth storms outside his front door and says, “Rosedale, if you kick my car again, I’ll stomp you like a soda can.”
Joey turns around and gives him the finger. You…
- Double up the fingers, giving this complete stranger the bird.
- Encourage Joey to stop it, since the guy is twice both your sizes, combined.
The huge dude feints like he’s going to leap down to administer a beating as you and Joey run the last stretch up the hill to Chet’s house. You look behind you to see that the dude is nowhere behind you, thankfully.
Joey opens the front door like it’s his own house and walks right in with you following. You hear voices talking and laughing until Joey shouts, “CHET, YOU HERE, YOU PIECE OF SHIT?”
The voices go silent minus a weasly-sounding, mid-pubescent, “What the fuck?”
A lanky, crop-topped kid with tan skin and jagged teeth like pieces of broken candy trips into view. As soon as he sees us, he smiles and says, “Joey Rosedale, you stupid dumbass, wassup?” engaging in an uncoordinated custom handshake. “Hey man, I’m Chet,” he says, extending his hand to shake. You introduce yourself and shake beneath his clammy, vice-like grip.
“I’m making Jack and Cokes,” Chet says, leading you toward the living room. “Want one?”
- “Yeah bro,” you say, excited about your first taste of alcohol.
- “No thanks,” you say, fearing your first taste of alcohol.
Even Joey is weirded out by the offer.
“Whatever,” Chet says. “This is Marissa, Jennifer, and Kendra. Sophomore, Junior, and Junior at my high school.”
“Hi,” they all say in unison. Joey greets them with a confident, “Ladies,” as you quietly wave at three of the cutest girls you’ve seen all week, and shove your hands in your pockets. Joey sits down between Chet and them, leaving one seat free on the end of the couch, next to Kendra.
As soon as you sit near her, you notice she smells like she smoked a cigarette. You sneer your face at the smell, and just as you realize you’re doing it, you see her looking at you. You…
- Stop sneering, apologize and play it cool.
- Turn the sneer into an “allergic reaction” and start rubbing your nose and ask, “Is there a cat in here?”
Kendra continues to stare, but after your fake nasal reaction, with vicious nose rubbing and face contortions, a sly smile crosses her face. Despite the cigarette smell, you gaze longer and notice her eyes are crystalline blue.
“I’m hungry. Got any food, Chet?” Kendra asks after a few minutes of teenage small talk about movies and gross and lame teachers.
“Mom just went marketing. We got chips and shit.”
“Perfect,” Kendra says. She looks at you again and says, “Help me bring some stuff out?”
This might be the first time a junior has ever spoken to you, especially one as pretty as Kendra.
You’ve replaced your disdain for the smoky stench with a fascination about her thick blonde hair around her freckled face. You…
- Say, “Okay,” with a cracked voice which is totally embarrassing.
- Grunt, “Nuh-uhn,” with a cracked voice because you’re a dummy.
The two of you stand and venture into the kitchen. As you pass by Joey, he wiggles his eyebrows and motions his eyes to Kendra’s butt. After you get the message, your face warms because you were thinking the same thing. You follow Kendra’s butt into the kitchen, ignoring one of the other girls giggling, very likely at you.
In the kitchen, Kendra asks, “How do you know Joey Rosedale?”
You answer, “He lives on my street,” never raising your eyes.
“Were you looking at my butt?”
With your eyes still drawn downward, you say…
- “I wasn’t looking at your butt,” defensively, now looking up, trying to play it cool.
- “Yeah,” shamefully, since you don’t possess the ability to lie when a cute girl talks to you.
Kendra laughs and says, “At least you’re honest about it.” You feel your face erupt again in an aura of shame, and she says. “Don’t worry about it. You’re cute.”
Unsure if you just moved up a notch on the cool guy food chain, or if your brain is about to explode, you silently skulk over to the pantry, hoping to find the aforementioned, “chips and shit.” You bury yourself deep behind the open doors, praying to hide from embarrassing yourself any further. You feel the door swing wider open, and Kendra leans her head in and kisses you on the cheek. You turn your head in surprise, and she kisses you again, this time on the lips. It is off-center, open-mouthed, smells like smoke, and is over before you realize, yet it lingers for a lifetime.
Kendra pulls away, smiles and whispers, “Don’t say anything. Chet’s my boyfriend.”
You say…
- “Then why did you kiss me? Chet looks crazier than a bag of cave cats and I’ve never kissed a woman, I mean a girl, a young woman, a girl your age before and what am I supposed to do now because I’ve got all these weird messages in my head and I don’t know where your boyfriend’s mom keeps chips in this damn kitchen!”
- “(flabbergasted silence)”
“Just don’t weird-out like that,” Kendra says. “Be cool.”
“I’m cool,” you manage to say past your swollen tongue and dry mouth.
Kendra reaches past you, grabs a bright white bag of chips at your eye level that would’ve attacked you if you waited five more seconds. She turns away from you, grabs two plastic bowls from the cabinet, and says, “C’mon, spud,” or was it “stud?”
- It sounded like “spud.”
- You’re no stud. It was “spud.”
You walk back into the living room and Chet says, “What’s with your face, bro? You look like you’re about to explode.
You feel heat expand across your face, accentuated by everyone looking your way.
“I think Kendra got him all hot and bothered looking for snacks,” Joey says, followed by his annoying hyena laugh. You shoot him a look of death that reveals the truth to Joey.
“Seriously?” Joey says. “Kendra, what the hell?”
“Relax,” Kendra says with the cool confidence of a playful minx. “Why would I hit on a 9th grade spud like him?”
(Yeah, she called you “Spud.”)
Chet reaches into his pocket and pulls out a switchblade, but doesn’t open it. He spins the shaft of the closed knife in the palm of his hand before he hands it to Joey, and says, “Better take this back before I decide to use it.”
Joey looks at you, then quickly palms the knife, opening and closing it before shoving it in his pocket.
You aren’t sure but you might feel a trickle of pee dripping down your leg. You begin to back away and say,
- “Watch out for Kendra, Chet. She’s a man-eater!”
- “I gotta go.”
After bouncing glances from Joey, frozen in his seat, to Kendra, with a playful gleam in her eye, to Chet with a furrowed brow like an irritated adolescent honey badger, you turn and walk out on your own, sprinting down the hill to your house.
Later that night, after everyone’s asleep, you hear a tapping at your window and some high-pitched whispering of your name. You stir from your bed, and pull the blinds back to see…
- Chet carrying a hammer.
- Kendra with fresh lipstick on her lips.
- Joey Rosedale holding a bag of chips he probably lifted from Chet’s house.
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