Chapter 17
D iana and I enter the wooden steps to the concrete garage floor, to find Ben, Tyler, Evan, and a handful of basketball boys hovering around a ping-pong table in the garage amidst a small sea of people. Evan’s in a frog-legged squat, bouncing up and down shouting “I wanna rock!…ROCK!” with the rest of the boys to the Twisted Sister song shaking the stereo on the garage shelf. Diana still has the Genesis tape and due to the already-provided garage music I’m not sure if I’ll get to execute my plan. At least not anytime soon.
The room has a display of large black posters tacked to the wall—a Disneyland map, an ad for Nike Air Force shoes with a pair of lone tanned eighties legs flying amidst a cloudy sky with a black border; and a poster that says “Cocaine. It can cost you your brain.”
Erica, Bennette, and three men whose skinny bellies and face are etched in red war paint walk past us through the doorway to the kitchen. Greg’s one of them, wearing minimal clothing and face paint, but instead of leaving with them he heads toward the ping-pong table. He may have a promising future as a rodeo clown. He’s the only one with accessories—a cropped top and cowboy hat.
Diana shuffles through the mass of bodies surrounding the ping-pong table, dragging me with her to a less crowded area. We migrate toward a colonial couch next to a hanging inflatable orange crayon in the corner. Her master plan is obvious—get the good couch and leave the boys playing ping-pong with the frumpy bean bag in the corner.
“Atta, got a foot to the face today, didn’t you?” Evan turns, setting his paddle down on the table making his way to our couch.
“Yeah, I heard Kelly plowed through you.” Greg approaches our couch first, smiles at me and raises his eyebrows in mockery. Greg can claim this bruise as his doing. It wouldn’t be painted on without him and Ben.
“That’s all thanks to you, Greg.” Kelly bursts through the growing circle and points her finger like a dagger, poking him in the forehead. Someone behind a camera makes their way around the room, adding clicks and flashes to the chaos as more people crowd around.
“No pictures!” Bennette and Corky yell in unison a few feet away at the cameraman. I study Bennette and Corky. Linked arm in arm, with puckered red solo cups in their hands, they seem as close as ever. Diana appears at my side and gives the camera a full-toothed smile and then sticks her tongue out. I raise my red solo cup as it passes by.
A neglected photo of Tyler’s family rests on the garage shelf to my right. Tyler’s father stands next to Tyler in what must be a recent picture, appearing no older than twenty-five, yet he’s with Tyler who’s seventeen. Not quite the grown adult in his forties serving meals for us on the houseboat our senior year of high school, he must be considered Tyler’s brother here, standing next to what I assume are Tyler’s parents in this alternate universe—the same way Diana and I had somehow become imbedded into our mother’s young adult existence, experiencing something of a generational time-squish.
Tyler makes a bold move squeezing his cheeks in between mine and Diana’s. He gently pushes me aside so that Evan can burrow in next to me. I send Diana siren signals with my eyes from across the couch, but apparently it’s not enough to motivate her to blow Tyler off and save me. She gets up off the couch and leaves me to endure the impending conversation alone sandwiched in between Tyler and Evan.
“How are you?” Evan starts the conversation and lowers his sunglasses to look at my forehead.
“A little purple thanks to Ben,” I say with a hint of cynicism. The fact that I’m still brewing about our earlier conversation doesn’t help. I give my best answers to Evan’s following small talk as my eyes search for Diana amongst the crowd. Luckily enough, he doesn’t mention the fact that he’d planned this night for our first date.
A flood of familiar feathery-haired teens enter the garage and storm each other with hugs—true eighties headlock style. Diana makes her way through as if she has the powers to part a red sea full of jean jackets, bleached hair and patchy, zit covered faces. She taps me on the shoulder and gifts me a handful of peanuts, then hands out cups of ice cream drizzled in chocolate syrup to the three of us on the couch. She’s giving me the honors of showering everyone’s Peanut Buster Parfait with peanuts.
Diana’s ice cream offering comes at a perfect time. Throughout the evening my time travel failure and where I went wrong has weighed upon me, but the more impending issue—having to let Evan down makes me feel like I’m at the bottom of a pile of toppled cheerleaders, each passing minute adding another body to the wreck. I welcome the sugary distraction as Diana slides back in next to Tyler on the couch and we all dig into the parfaits, scooping chocolatey goo against the glass with silver spoons. My tastebuds experience a sweet and salty explosion, taking my mind to a whole other level of a flavor-filled bliss as I look across the room and spot Ben eating ice cream in the other corner with Bennette.
My dessert-fueled escape is interrupted when I catch Tyler jogging past the ping-pong table with both palms dipped in black paint. I watch as each of his movements become calculated like a striking tiger. Those with an unblocked view of the door to the kitchen can see that Greg is the target prey and before Greg has the chance to see his attacker, Tyler takes a double-handed swat to Greg’s Levi-covered butt cheeks, resulting in two victimized back pockets that are now successfully and permanently branded in Tyler’s handprint revenge. The space around me fills with laughter, and I join in the fun with a few congratulatory claps.
“It’s only a matter of time before he gets Ben,” Diana whispers. I scrape the last of the parfait from my glass as Tyler reemerges through the kitchen door with a newly re-dipped pair of hands. This is it. Tyler’s going to strike again. The anticipation builds as I watch Ben and Bennette wipe ice cream off of the top of each other’s lips. I can’t help but feel a surge of jealousy and then delight, knowing Ben’s the next target.
Tyler's party now consists of box cake and purely chaotic teenage discord. Yet here I am a ball of anxiety in between bobbing heads and bodies, ready to bounce out the door as I run lines through my head about how best to turn Evan down. I plan to tell him as soon as he ends his conversation with the basketball player who lingers at the end of the couch.
Most of the room is so consumed with devouring what’s left of Erica’s sun-shaped box cake that they don’t follow Tyler’s windup and release. The result reverberates through the carpeted room like a muffled snap of a whip. Only Diana, Bennette, and I catch the smack in action. Tyler slaps Ben’s behind with much greater force than he did with Greg. There’s no laughing or clapping this time, just a startled Ben who spontaneously reacts by hopping over the stubby couch arm to get away from Tyler’s swing. He turns back to give Tyler a brotherly shove, but chooses not to follow as Tyler sprints off in the other direction.
Twenty minutes later Evan’s still talking basketball and Tyler, with his magnet-like properties toward Diana, reappears and accompanies us back to the garage, where we fall into the lumpy sofa cushions with the enthusiasm of the Friends characters in the opening credits. Then Ben pays us a visit for the first time tonight without Bennette.
“I need your car keys, Diana.” Ben slips me a callous glance while Diana reaches for her keys in her back pocket. Ben looks to Tyler who sits at the edge of the couch. “That was your weakest attempt at payback. I thought you’d put a little more effort into it. You might as well have whipped me with a flower.” Ben turns around and makes a strongman pose. “These buns of steel felt nothing.”
At Ben’s remark the three of us look at each other with surprised expressions, and then all of our heads turn to once again assess Ty’s black handprints on the butt of Ben’s pants. “A slap in the butt in front of my girlfriend hardly competes with airing your Dynamite thongs for everyone to see.”
“Hey now,” Tyler says. “We all saw. They were boxers and briefs. Not thongs, and I’ll admit it wasn’t my best effort, but it was funny.”
Ben turns back around and shakes his head as if Tyler’s spewing complete nonsense.
“I don’t know. I was a bit disappointed that you ran away thinking touching my butt was an actual prank,” Ben says. He holds his palm cupped and arm stretched out for Diana to set the keys into. He stands in front of us waiting for a response from Diana, and Tyler’s eyes light up as if he’s been told the last present under the Christmas tree is his. He turns toward Diana to lean in and whisper in her ear. At the same moment, I realize what Tyler already knows. Ben has absolutely no idea his butt is inked.
“Who’d have thought your brother would be so oblivious?” I overhear Tyler whisper. They both squeal with soft laughter. It seems Diana’s completely forgiven Tyler as her eyes form thin slits of joy as she laughs next to him. She’s giving Ben a range of silly looks to poke fun at him as he cluelessly stares at the two of them behaving so chummy.
“You really think I’d just go for a slap on the butt to get back at you for displaying my Dynamite collection in public. You’re right, that wasn’t the prank. You were too busy licking Bennette’s lips to notice,” Tyler says, changing the subject, then pauses, enjoying Ben’s uncomfortable anticipation.
Ben looks around the room for something out of place, something unusual or marked by Tyler’s deviant misbehavior. He turns to study Tyler and slides his hands into his back pockets leaving his thumbs hanging. He’s angled so that I see him rubbing his thumb back and forth like a windshield wiper feeling the thickness of wet paint against his backside. Realizing the slimy texture is an unusual addition to the tough thread of his jeans, his lips pinch together in defeat.
“Paint? Really? Ty, you know these are my good jeans. Not every pair of jeans can handle this fine of an apple.” I snort at his reference to his tush before he turns away to do something about his jeans.
“The bathroom sink should give you a better view,” Tyler adds, then turns his head to whisper something clever into Diana’s ear but catches her lips in between his words instead.