Chapter #7Fröhliche Momente mit unbekannten Menschen by: Seuzz   Fuck it, you decide when you're halfway home. The whole day would be wasted if you didn't follow up on Kristin's invite. You pull over to the side of the road and text her back, asking where she and her friends will be going.
* * * * *
The Black Forest Family Restaurant is located downtown. The building used to be a Denny's, a fact you know only because your mom will tell you so almost every time you drive past it. (Apparently, it was a special place for her and your dad way back when, which is why she can't let it go.) You've never been there, and you regret that absence the moment you step inside, when you are hit by the warm, mouth-watering aroma of sausages and gravies.
The guys you're looking for are at a large table off in the corner near a window, and they are so into their phones that not one of them looks up until you are practically upon them. But Kristin's eyes light up when she sees you. "Will!" she cries, as she did back at the mini-golf, and she leaps up to let you squeeze into the semi-circular booth with them.
But not everyone who had been at the golf course has made it out here. Caleb, for instance, is missing, as is Lorenzo, and so is that one girl whose name you couldn't place. So it's Kristin and Patrick and Trinity who are here, along with a short, dark-haired, sad-eyed guy you remember from a sophomore computer class but who kept to himself on the other side of the room.
"So where's everyone else?" you ask.
"Lorenzo took Caleb home," Kristin says. "He'll be along in a bit. Mattie had to go home too. But—" She looks around the table. "Is Jonas coming out?"
"He's picking up Bree," Patrick says. "Yo, man!" He leans across the table with an upraised palm, which you slap. "Call summa your girlfriends out here, why don't you? I'm gettin' tired of looking at these'ns!"
"Not as tired as we are of looking at you," Trinity retorts, a little waspishly. You're seated between her and Kristin, so you have to turn a little in your seats to look at each other. She has a oval—almost a pear-shaped—face that's draped by long, straight blonde hair, but she's pretty enough. She's also a heavy-built girl, though she seems to carry most of the weight in her bust and her hips.
"How're you doing, Will?" she asks you. "I heard you and Lisa Yarborough started going out this summer."
You twitch like you've been stung.
"Yeah, well," you mutter. "We broke up."
"Oh no!" Trinity says. "I'm so sorry!"
"He found someone sexier," Patrick chortles. Trinity gives him a dirty look.
"Well, it wasn't really working," you say. "For either of us."
"So who are you thinking of asking out now?"
Your heart seems to come loose in your chest and starts flopping around, like a landed fish. Before you can even begin to think of a reply, though, Kristin answers her friend with a gentle warning: "Trinity."
"I'm just curious!" Trinity protests. She favors you with a warm smile. "Will's not gonna keep himself out of circulation for long."
A kind of electrical haze seems to come between you and her, and for a moment you feel yourself in danger of fainting.
Fortunately, you're again saved by an interruption, this time by Lorenzo, who materializes nearby. The entire group has to shift over again as he squeezes in on the other side of Kristin.
"Hey," he says after getting settled. "We order anything yet?"
"We were waiting on you," says Kristin.
"She started drooling every time some sausages went by," Patrick says with a smirk.
"And you got hard," Lorenzo retorts as he cranes his neck, gazing around the restaurant. "Is Lacie here?"
"Sure she is," Kristin says. "And Scott's over there," she adds with a nod of her chin.
Lorenzo grunts, then does a double-take at you. "Oh hey Will," he says. "I didn't know you were coming out. I just got through dropping Johansson off."
"Kristin asked me out."
"Oh yeah?" His expression remains neutral—almost creepily neutral—as he slides his arm over and around her shoulders. "Any special reason she did that?" he asks while looking past her to hold your eye.
"To make you jealous," Kristin replies with a giggle. She puts her face to his, and they kiss softly.
You get a chill all over, and look away. The guy with the dark hair and the sad, watchful gaze catches your eye, and smiles faintly at you in a knowing smirk.
* * * * *
A few minutes later a plump but handsome girl in a frilly white blouse and apron stops by your table, and you're able to reconnect a name with a face that you haven't seen since your freshman year. Lacie was in your English class, and you exchanged a few words a few times, but that's about all. Her family owns the restaurant, Trinity explains to you after she has left with your table's order. (Lorenzo took it upon himself to order a sampler of various bratwursts and something called "jager fries" for everyone to share.) And another one of their friends, Scott Raley (whom you don't know), works there as a busboy.
In fact, Trinity seems to be quite interested in you, for while the others retreat again into their cell phones she makes a point of talking to you.
"I'm taking a music theory class this semester," she tells you, as though you'd be interested. "Which is funny, because I don't even play an instrument. But it's real interesting, and it's easier than a math class, even though it counts toward half of a requirement. Do you play an instrument?" You shake your head. "I had the impression you played in a garage band or something," she says.
"Not me. You're thinking of someone else." (You are more than half convinced she's got you mixed up with someone much more interesting and more ... eligible.)
"No, I'm sure it was you. Did you used to talk about forming a garage band?"
"Oh, I dunno, maybe," you confess with a shrug. "Like, back when I was a sophomore, maybe."
"You'd look good with a guitar, up on stage," she says. "Don't you think, Kristin?"
"Sure," Kristin agrees without looking up from her phone. She is nestled close to Lorenzo's side.
"Who were you going with before you started going out with Lisa?" Trinity asks you.
"Um ... Nobody, really." You affect a careless shrug. "Just kind of casually dated." You try to ignore the way Patrick's head has shot up to look at you.
"So who do you have in some of your classes? Girls, I mean."
Your brain freezes, and remains frozen even after Kristin has warned her friend again: "Trinity."
"I'm just wondering who he's hanging out with," she says. "Like, if there's anyone we know."
"Andrea Varnsworth?" you say.
That's not a girl you'd expect anyone at this table to hang out with, as Andrea may be both the sexiest and the most unapproachable girl in all of Westside High. She is on the school's swim team, and it's like she has been sculpted to perfection by the action of the water. She is also infamously aloof, and you're not sure you have ever seen her even talk to anyone. So, mostly you dropped her name in as a joke.
But no one here seems to take it as a joke.
Trinity's quizzical smile, for instance, instantly falls from her face, and the temperature in her eyes plummets. Across the table, Patrick and the other guy look up from their phone to exchange bright, wide-eyed grins that obviously hold some kind of secret meaning. You feel, rather than glimpse, Kristin giving you a side-eyed glance.
Only Lorenzo seems nonplussed by your reply. He says, "Oh yeah, you know Andrea?"
"Uh ... I have her in my English class."
"We should go out to the Warehouse tonight," he says to Kristin. "Andrea might be out there. Who's playing tonight?"
"Why do I care if Andrea's at the Warehouse?" Kristin replies with a growl.
"Will might care. You wanna go out to the Warehouse, try hooking up with Andrea?" he asks you, looking past Kristin. You can only stare back with an open mouth.
The Warehouse is a hard-core party spot, being (literally) an abandoned warehouse in the city's bombed-out industrial district where high school kids gather to dance and drink and do drugs on weekend nights. You've never been out there—you and your friends are too scared by the stories about the kind of people who hang out there. Nor do you see much point in going out if the idea is for you to "hook up" with Andrea Varnsworth, a girl who probably has never even looked directly at you.
"It's Apollo's Creed playing," says the dark-haired kid. He's scrolling through his phone with the tip of a fingernail. "Which one is that one?"
"That's Matt Reston's old band," says Patrick. He has a very alert expression as he looks between you, Trinity, Lorenzo, Kristin, and his other friend.
"Are they one of the bands Andrea hangs out with?" Lorenzo asks.
It takes you a moment to realize he is asking you. But Patrick jumps in to say, "I think she's into the dyke bands."
"I'm gonna kick you!" Trinity snarls.
"Hey, it's true!" Patrick protests. "Jelena and them, and half the bands out at Eastman are—"
"Jelena, that's who I'm thinking of!" Lorenzo says. "You hang out with her?" he asks you.
"I thought we were going to Legends," Kristin says, and she sounds spiteful.
"Well, sure," Lorenzo says. "I guess Will can go out to the Warehouse if he wants, though."
Conversation lapses there.
Not that the silence makes you feel better, for Patrick continues to glance around the table with bright eyes that dance with a secret laughter.
* * * * *
You're coming back from the restroom when you bump into the sad-eyed kid, who's on his way in. He takes the time to introduce himself as "Dean," and to offer you a warning:
"If Trinity tries setting you up with Mattie— You know Mattie? Mattie Sears? Well," he continues after you shake your head, "just ignore her. That's what she's trying to do. In fact, you should just ignore her totally."  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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