Stevie looked down at the book in her lap, as if to say, “Please change the subject, now. Ask me what I’m reading.”
I asked what she was reading.
She showed me the cover. It was Slaughterhouse-Five, the only non-boardbook I’d read more than twice.
“It goes really fast,” she said. “I’m almost halfway, and I started this morning. It’s weird, though, is the thing. It’s all these tiny chapters, and they’re out of order because the main character is ‘unstuck in time’ is how the author says it, which is cool to begin with, but that’s just the start cause it’s also about war, World War II, and how even that one, which was supposed to be a good one, was really not glamorous. Except then, while all this sad stuff is happening to this sad main character, there’s aliens and a porno star whose name is Montana Wildhack, and summaries of totally made-up novels by a sci-fi author named Kilgore Trout, except it’s still a really serious book, and even though it’s such a serious book, it keeps making me laugh. If it’s supposed to be like that, then it’s probably my favorite book of all time.”
“That’s a good description,” I said. “I read it, too. A few times, actually. I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to be like you said.”
“I was hoping you’d read it,” Stevie said. “I thought you probably had. I saw you reading another one he wrote—Cat’s Cradle—during recess last week, in your little corner behind the generators, and you were smiling a lot, and you wouldn’t look up. You didn’t even know I was there. It was funny. I kept winking at you and grabbing the bottom of my shirt with both hands, like pretending I was gonna flash you or something, and you kept on reading. You really didn’t see me. Anyway, it was checked out from the library, so I got this one instead.”
“You can borrow Cat’s Cradle whenever you want,” I said.
“Thanks, Belt,” she said.
“That’s not what I meant to say,” I said. “I really like you,” I said. “I think I’m in love with you.”
“I know,” Stevie said. “I know you think that. I’ve been thinking you’d say it sooner or later, but still I wish you didn’t have to, and I hope you’ll forget it, because I just don’t want to kiss you, Belt. I wish I did. I’ve tried to want to.”
“Really? You’ve tried?”
“Of course,” she said. “You’re the only boy I ever have real conversations with. The only person, really. You understand me, you know? Or, at least, I know you try to. That’s a really big deal. Probably the biggest. But wanting to kiss someone—it’s not the kind of thing you can make yourself do. I’ll want to one day, I know that much, but it won’t be til you’re twenty, maybe even twenty-five, because that’s the kind of face you have, the kind I’ll like when you’re a man. Not just me, either. Lots of girls. Which is exactly what sucks. For me, it sucks, I mean. Because the reason you’re into me is I have a certain style, and I’m confident about it. Once your face becomes the kind I’ll want to kiss, though, you’ll know a lot of confident, styley girls to talk to. I’ll be old news. I’ll just be the same as I am right now, and maybe worse—my eyes could get fishy like my aunt’s, who I resemble, and my hair’s really limp and it’ll probably be stringy and shiny all the time—and so I won’t seem as interesting or rare or pretty to you. So things’ll be uneven with us, but in the opposite way of how they are now.”
“You love Jonboat,” I said. “You just don’t want to say it. You think it’ll hurt me.”
“Jonboat? No. That’s not…I don’t. He seems like a good, smart person, and everything, and also he’s handsome, but he’s the opposite of hot. I did make out with him a little in his limo, I guess you must have seen, except it felt like I was kissing the president or something. Not that he didn’t want to be kissing me—obviously he did—I mean, he kept kissing me—but maybe more like that he wanted more for me to see that he was a good kisser than he wanted to be doing the actual kissing. I don’t know. Sorry. You don’t want to hear about that.”
“I still think you’re just trying to be nice,” I said. “Trying to let me down easy.”
“I just told you I don’t want to kiss you,” she said.
“But you’ll want to in thirteen years, you said. Maybe even just eight. You’re giving me something to look forward to because you don’t want to hurt me, or you want to hurt me less—you want to cushion the blow. But if I wait thirteen years and you don’t want to kiss me, it’ll hurt a lot more.”
“ ‘Wait thirteen years’? Please don’t be so sweet, Belt.” Something happened in her face, a kind of softening. She looked a little sleepy. She said, “It’s confusing.”
Partly, though only partly, in jest, I said, “Confusing enough that you want me to kiss you?”
She cleared her throat and took her hand off my arm. How long had she been holding on to my arm? I hadn’t even noticed the holding til it stopped.
“Stevie?” I said.
“I guess I did kind of want that for a second, then you asked. It’s fine, though,” Stevie said.
“You mean now I should kiss you?”
“Oh, wow. Look. My family’s coming back from the hospital soon—they should be here already. They won’t want me having company. You really gotta go.”
“Not without a kiss,” I said.
“Belt, that’s creepy.”
“I was trying to be romantic. I didn’t mean to be creepy.”
“I know you didn’t. I mean, that’s what’s so creepy.”
“Oh,” I said, and probably crept away. Certainly I left.
* * *
Because of, I suppose, its simple, tragic ironies, the tale of the Temples was a local favorite. When you got past a certain point of specificity—the prize amount (ranging from $80k to $200k), the model of the car (the make was consistent), the brand of vaguely sad and exotic digestif (usually Kahlúa or Grand Marnier, sometimes Limoncello)—the details varied teller to teller, but the story’s basic features were always the same.
Simon Temple, in spring of ’85, won the state lottery. Not the whole pot—he was one of a few who’d hit six out of seven—but enough to purchase a BMW and a number of major household improvements: an updated kitchen, an aboveground swimming pool, a two-car garage attached to the house, and a macadam driveway to go with the garage.
By August, the construction was nearly complete. The only work that remained was to replace the old gravel driveway with lawn and remove the old carport the old driveway led to, beneath which the family swingset—displaced by the swimming pool—had resided since June. Before that work could get done, however, Simon and his children, Tommy and Jessa, died in a car crash on their way home from Simon’s younger sister’s wedding.