Robin Wasserman - Girls on Fire

“My friends call me Jimmy.” Not Jim but Jimmy, which he probably thought lent him boyish charm but actually made him sound like he needed to live under adult supervision.

“Are we friends now?”

“Any friend of Dex’s,” he said. “You know the rest.”

IT WAS JUST TALK. THERE’S nothing wrong with that.

Sometimes I cut school without you. Your dad was home a lot during the day. More than he should have been, you and your mom would probably say. Even the first time, he didn’t ask what I was doing there. Neither of us bothered to pretend I was looking for you.

“Hot chocolate?” he said.

“How about a smoke?” I tossed him a pack of Winston Lights.

We took them into the backyard. I liked puffing the smoke into the cold, watching it fog the air. It was like breathing, only better.

I’d spotted the stains on his fingers, the way he kept tapping his spoon against his mouth. The tiny hole at his knee where the denim had burned away. Secret smokers recognize each other. There’s a whiff of unfulfilled need about us, of unspoken desire. You want my opinion, I don’t even think he likes smoking. I think he just does it because he’s not allowed to.

“God,” he sighed, blowing it out. “God, that’s good.”

The first draw is always the best.

He taught me to puff a smoke ring. I reminded him — later, when we knew each other better — how to roll a joint.

That day, though, we smoked our cigarettes standing up, leaning against the back wall. The shitty patio furniture seemed like your mother’s territory, all those vinyl flowers and pastel pillows.

“Can I ask you something, Blondie?” He liked to play with the cigarette, carving up the air with its glowing tip. I liked to watch. He has man hands, your dad. Big enough to curl his fingertips over mine when we pressed palm to palm, crooked like they’re still trying to curl around an invisible guitar. “It’s probably inappropriate.”

“I think we’re past that, Mr. Dexter.”

“Jimmy.”

“Jimmy.” I liked to make him tell me again.

“Does Dex have. . I mean, she’s never brought a boy home, but that doesn’t mean. . I was wondering—”

“Why, Jimmy, are you asking me if your daughter has a boyfriend?” I said.

“Well. .”

“Or if she’s a dyke?”

“That’s not what I—”

“Or are you just concerned with the state of her cherry, whatever drink it’s in?”

“You’re, uh, mixing your metaphors there, Blondie.” It was cute the way he tried to play it cool, pretend like his skin wasn’t crawling off his bones.

“Don’t ask me about Dex.”

This was the week after that night at Beast, when you went a little nuts with the tequila and decided you should put on your own personal bartop strip show. You didn’t even remember it in the morning. What you did or what you wanted, or how you cursed at me for dragging you out of there, so you can’t appreciate that I took you back to my place, tucked you up tight under my covers, rather than dumping you off on your parents’ porch, a drunk, drooling, half-naked and half-catatonic mess for them to clean up. Sometimes I lie to protect you, Dex, so you can keep lying to yourself. You didn’t want to know how you went wild in Beast, just like you didn’t want to know how, in that field with those idiot farm boys, you were jonesing to get your hands on the axe. You don’t want to know that you swung it high and hard and laughed at the blood.

I kept your secrets for you— from you. I wasn’t about to spill any to him.

“You don’t want to know whether I have a boyfriend?” I said. “Or whether I’ve been in love, any of that crap?”

“That crap’s none of my business, Blondie.”

“They’re all idiots. Guys my age.”

“Not just your age,” he said.

“So now you’re suggesting I should look into the lesbian thing?”

We weren’t looking at each other. We usually didn’t. He preferred leaning against the house, hiding behind his sunglasses and watching the back lawn like he was scanning for movement, that caveman stare, this land is mine and I will protect it . Wild boars, deer, errant mailmen — he was prepared. I focused on the same middle distance and snuck glances at him when I could. Sometimes we caught each other out. I liked it when he blushed.

“The thing to know about men is that they’re pigs,” he said. “ Especially when a pretty girl comes along.”

“Are you calling me pretty, Jimmy?”

“Shoe fits, Blondie.”

“You don’t have to worry about me,” I told him. “I have a dad of my own, you know.”

“I know.” He did look at me then. “It must be hard, not having him around.”

“It’s not like he’s dead.”

“Of course not.” He looked like he wanted to put his hand on my shoulder. Don’t ask how I knew; I know what it looks like when a man wants to lay hands on me.

“He didn’t leave because of me, if that’s what you were thinking.”

“It wasn’t.”

“My mother made him think he was worthless. Tell someone that enough and they start to believe it.”

He drew on the cigarette, breathed out a puff of smoke.

“I hope you don’t believe it, Jimmy.”

“Excuse me?”

“You shouldn’t let her make you feel worthless.”

I was doing you a favor. He needed someone to remind him that he existed, that he wasn’t just a figment of your mother’s imagination. Let someone start believing they’re not real and, poof , one day they disappear. You wouldn’t want that, Dex.

We both know the last thing you want is to be like me.

“Mrs. Dexter has a lot on her plate these days,” he said. “And I’m not making things any easier.”

That was when I knew I’d said something wrong, “Mrs. Dexter.” Because usually he called her Julia, as in Julia hates it when I. . or Julia would have a cow if she knew I. .

“Maybe I should go,” I said.

“Maybe you should, Lacey.”

I didn’t mind that he said it. Only a screwup lets some strange girl insult his wife. I could be generous, because it didn’t change the truth: I was his secret, and he kept it. He lied to you, and he lied to your mother. I was his truth. I’m not saying that meant he loved me best. But it has to mean something.

MY FATHER IS NEVER COMING back. I know that. And my resulting daddy issues are not subtle. I didn’t need a therapist to tell me I was looking for paternal replacements, that the “inappropriate” encounter with my band teacher or the time I let that McDonald’s fry guy feel me up beside the Dumpster was all about filling a hole. Pun unintended, guttermind.

But I don’t need a father, Dex, so don’t think I was trying to steal yours. Just borrowing him for a bit, just chipping away a little for my own.

“I’ll probably get fired soon,” your dad told me once when I asked why he was around so much during the day. Not like the movie theater does such big business in the afternoon, and not like managing the place qualified as actual work, but still. “Though if you want to know a secret—”

“Always.”

He leaned in, and the whisper floated on a trail of smoke. “I’m thinking I might quit.”

He dreamed big: inventions he didn’t know how to build and franchises he didn’t have the cash to open, dreams of starting up his band again or winning the lottery or getting salad bar botulism and suing his way into a fortune. He’s the one who made you a dreamer, Dex, and maybe that’s why your mother never seemed to like you very much, either.

I told him he should go for it. That I would.

“Yeah, well, you don’t have a mortgage.” He sighed. “Or a wife.”