The girls smiled, too.
We all knew that chant. The entire school knew it. The entire town knew it. We heard it at every football game, every wrestling tournament, and every pep rally. It was the overture of Lewis “Ramrod” Gibbons, our reigning athletic superstar and my brother’s best friend.
Bruce and Lewis had been running buddies off and on the court, and they stole the show at every sporting event they participated in. They functioned like opposite sides of the same coin—when Bruce was picked for quarterback, Lewis was picked for fullback. When Lewis qualified for the heavyweight division, my brother wrestled at 155. They procured trophy after trophy for our school, like they were a two-man wrecking crew.
“Excuse me a second,” I said.
Lena shrugged, and turned back to her friends.
I moved down the hallway, stumbling more than I expected. I passed the oversized dining room, aka make-out central, and then moved beneath the harsh lights of the kitchen.
The chants had died by the time I got there. Lewis stood in line for the keg, shaking hands with the guys from the team. The outline of muscle was visible under the sleeves of his jacket, giving him the look of an out-of-work superhero.
“Ramrod,” I sang, waving as I entered the room.
He smiled when he saw me. His smile was incredibly confident, big and toothy and undeniable. It was the grin of a winner. He should’ve been offered an athletic scholarship on that smile alone.
I cut in line beside him.
“Happy New Year,” I said.
“That’d be nice, wouldn’t it?”
“Yeah man, it would.”
The line moved forward. We were up. Lewis filled two plastic cups with beer. He handed the first one to me.
“Your daddy tell ya he wants me to help coach the team?”
“What?” I asked. “And not wrestle? But you’re the best—”
“I can keep wrestling ’til my birthday. But he said once I turn nineteen it wouldn’t be fair to the competition.”
“Since when does he care about what’s fair to the competition?”
“Beats me. It’s my own fault, anyways. Flunking last year screwed everything up, and now I just—”
“Ronnie Bingham,” Lena hollered, rushing into the kitchen, “you better come dance with me!”
I spilt half my beer on the bubblegum tile when she grabbed my arm.
“If you don’t,” Lewis grinned, “I will.”
He smiled at Lena. Her eyes became hearts.
“Come on,” I said to her.
I let her guide me back down the hall. As we got closer to the music, I registered the song: “Never My Love” by The Association. The Kryptiks’ guitarist handled the riff, which sounded surprisingly righteous in the absence of an organ. We walked to the center of the room, and were encircled by swaying bodies and drunken drama and nervous teenage tongues.
I gripped Lena’s hips. She arched her arms around my neck, and laid her head on my shoulder. Her tits pressed right up against me as we started to sway. I memorized the feeling, closed my eyes, and got lost in the music.
“You know,” she whispered, “I keep thinkin’ about how hard Christmas must have been for you, Ronnie. Like, without Bruce there.”
She pulled her body closer against me.
“Um, yeah,” I said clumsily, struggling to concentrate. “It was a drag—”
Suddenly, the Kryptiks stopped playing. A squeal of feedback shot from the microphone, and we all turned toward it. Our host, Rachel Harris, stood at the mic. Her paper party hat drooped down at a sad angle.
“Shh,” she yelled, “I need to hear the TV to know when the countdown starts! Shut! Up!”
We shut up. I gazed at the television. Guy Lombardo was doing his standard New Year’s Big Band Bash. He held up his hand to count down with his viewers at home.
“OK!” Rachel yelled. “Here we go! Nine! Eight!”
The crowd joined in.
“Seven! Six!”
“Five!” Lena yelled into my ear.
“Four!” the make-out couples yelled from the dining room.
“Three!” the wrestlers yelled from the kitchen.
“Two!” The Kryptiks’ front man yelled into the mic.
“One.” I mumbled flatly, to no one at all.
“HAPPY NEW YEAR!”
Lena planted one on me. Her tongue slid into my mouth as Rachel’s champagne cork popped. The band kicked into a funky version of “Auld Lang Syne.”
“Happy New Year,” she grinned.
“Happy New Year,” I repeated unconvincingly.
“Are you OK?”
“Yeah.” I shrugged. “Just kinda wish people would quit askin’ me that.”
She considered it for a moment, and then her expression changed. “This scene’s bumming you out, I can tell. How ’bout we go somewhere more private?”
I nodded.
The band transitioned into “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” with the guitarist once again handling the organ line. The crowd started dancing—slower now, pausing only to pull swigs off the champagne bottle as it made its way around the room. Lena led me through the dance floor, and then started up the stairs. I sluggishly followed.
I glanced down from the staircase and took a long look at those carefree kids. Through the haze, I could see Lewis standing by himself at the window. He wasn’t dancing or watching the band. He wasn’t talking to anyone. He just stared out that window and sipped his beer.
“Come on, Ronnie,” Lena called. “Let’s ring in 1968 right.”
I kept moving up the stairs.
The dancers kept dancing. The drinkers kept drinking.
The band kept rocking and rolling.
Lewis stood alone at the window, peering into the unknown dark.
―
Dawn. Barely.
I walked home alone with my shirt untucked and my jacket pulled tight against the morning cool. My head felt like a cracked jelly jar, and it leaked onto the ground with every hungover step I took. I didn’t remember how the night ended, or much of the blur before the black, but I woke up half-naked in Rachel’s little brother’s bedroom, tangled in a set of Lone Ranger sheets. Lena was nowhere to be found, and I figured Milo had gone home at some point or another.
His mom worked the night shift, so she wouldn’t know I stayed out. Still, I walked faster. I was eager to crawl into my own bed and sleep off the night for the rest of the day.