The Vast Fields of Ordinary

Author:Nick Burd
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin USA, Inc.

Chapter 11

The next day was one of those unbearably humid days where stepping outside was like stepping into an armpit. Mom and Dad were gone for the day, so Lucy came over and we made margaritas with twice as much tequila as was called for and hung out by the pool in our bathing suits. I told her about my night with Alex, about kissing him, about the way he’d played with my fingers during the last half of Dingo’s set. She didn’t make me stop talking about him. She let me go on and on. I told her that it all felt as if it were happening to someone else, like my memories of the previous night were someone else’s memories that had been cruelly dumped into my head to show me everything that was missing in my life.

I told her I was scared I’d mess it up and that all of this would disappear as fast as it appeared. I talked about my shaved head and about his eyes on my face right before he leaned in to kiss me for the second time. I told her about the Tomato Hoof record I’d downloaded and listened to three times that morning and how every song on there reminded me of him so much that my stomach would cramp during certain melody lines and guitar parts, especially during the last thirty seconds of “Gravity Is Serious,” where the lead singer keeps repeating: I don’t wanna be a part of the stratosphere / I don’t wanna make policeman sounds.

“I want to meet him,” she said. “I want to meet this guy.”

“We’re hanging out tomorrow night, just him and me, but you’ll meet him soon. I want you to tell me what you think.”

“It’s so hot.” She spoke slowly, as if the temperature were affecting her speech. “I fucking love it.”

“Summer’s good, but I think I’m more of an autumn guy.”

“Aw. How sensitive of you.”

After Lucy left, I wandered the house in a daze. My brain was fuzzy from the tequila and the heat. The cool air of the house sharpened the sensation of the sunburn on my back and made it feel like my shoulder blades were giving off sparks. I had the Tomato Hoof record on at full volume. The walls bled guitars and drums, words and melodies. The songs were everywhere.

I was sitting in the kitchen wearing my bathing suit and a black hooded sweatshirt when my mother came home. I was watching some dating show on MTV and eating unwashed strawberries straight from the container. She walked in through the garage door and screamed.

I dropped the strawberry I was holding and looked over my shoulder at her. “What’s the matter?”

Her mouth hung open and her eyes were wide and bugging out of her head. She looked somewhere between totally shocked and possessed.

“What do you mean what’s the matter?” she asked. “What the hell happened to your hair?”

“Oh yeah. I forgot.”

“What do you mean you forgot?” she asked. “You look like a serial killer.

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