Trey rolled up full speed to Diondra’s house, a giant beige box surrounded by a chainlink fence to keep Diondra’s pit bulls from killing the mailman. She had three pits, one a white sack of muscles with giant balls and crazy eyes that Ben disliked even more than the other two. She let them in the house when her parents were gone, and they jumped on tables and crapped all over the floor. Diondra didn’t clean it up, just sprayed bathroom air freshener on all the shit-entwined carpet threads. That nice blue rug in the rec room—a dusty violet, Diondra called it—was now a land mine of ground-in dumps. Ben tried not to care. It wasn’t his business, as Diondra was happy to remind him.
The back door was open, even though it was freezing, and the pit bulls were running in and out, like some sort of magic act—no pit bull, one pit bull, two pit bulls in the yard! Three! Three pit bulls in the yard, prancing around in rough circles, then shooting back inside. They looked like birds in flight, teasing and nipping at each other in formation.
“I hate those fucking dogs,” Trey groaned, pulled to a stop.
“She spoils them.”
The dogs launched into a round of attack-barking as Ben and Trey walked toward the front of the house, the animals trailing them obsessively along the fence, snouts and paws poking through the gaps, barking barking barking.
The front door was open, too, the heat pouring out. They passed through the pink-papered entryway—Ben unable to resist shutting the door behind him, save some energy—and downstairs, which was Diondra’s floor. Diondra was in the rec room, dancing, half naked in oversized hot pink socks, no pants and a sweater built for two, with giant cables that reminded Ben of something a fisherman would wear, not a girl. Then again, all the girls at school wore their shirts big. They called them boyfriend shirts or daddy sweaters. Diondra, of course, had to wear them super big and layered with stuff underneath: a T-shirt hanging down, then some sort of tank top, and a bright striped collar-shirt. Ben had once offered Diondra one of his big black sweaters to be a boyfriend sweater, him being her boyfriend, but she’d wrinkled her nose and proclaimed, “That’s not the right kind. And there’s a hole in it.” Like a hole in a shirt was worse than dog shit all over your carpet. Ben was never sure if Diondra knew all sorts of secret rules, private protocols, or if she just made shit up to make him feel like a tool.
She was bouncing around to Highway to Hell, the fireplace shooting flames behind her, her cigarette held far away from her new clothes. She had about twelve items all in plastic wraps or on hangers or in shiny bags with tissue paper sparking out the top like fire. Also, a couple of shoe boxes and the tiny packets he knew meant jewelry. When she looked up and saw his black hair, she gave him a giant happy smile and a thumbs-up. “Awesome.” And Ben felt a little better, not as stupid. “I told you it’d look good, Benji.” And that was it.
“What’d you buy, Dio?” Trey asked, rummaging in the bags. He took a drag from her cigarette while she was still holding it, while she was without pants. She caught Ben’s look, flipped up the sweater to reveal boxers that weren’t his.
“It’s OK, nerd-o.” She came over and kissed him, her smell of grape hairspray and cigarettes hitting him, calming him. He held her gently, the way he did now, loose-armed, and when he felt her tongue hit his, he twitched.
“Oh God, please get over this ‘Diondra’s untouchable’ phase,” she snapped. “Unless I’m too old for you.”
Ben laughed. “You’re seventeen.”
“If you could hear what I hear,” Diondra sang to a silver-bell tune, sounding angry, sounding downright pissed.
“What’s that mean?”
“Mean’s seventeen may just be too old for your taste.”
Ben didn’t know what to say. To pursue something with Diondra when she was in this peekaboo mood only encouraged endless rounds of, “No it’s nothing,” and “I’ll tell you later,” or “Don’t worry, I can handle it.” She pulled her crunchy hair back and danced around for them, a drink now appearing from behind a shoe box. Her neck was lined with purple hickeys he’d given her on Sunday, him Draculing into her neck, her demanding more, “Harder, harder, it won’t leave a mark if you keep doing it that way, don’t tighten your lips, no tongue, no harder … Do! It! Harder! How can you not even know how to give a hickey?” and with a furious tight face, she’d grabbed him by the head, turned him sideways, and worked at his neck like a dying fish, the flesh going inoutinout in frantic rhythm. Then she pulled away, “There!” and made him look in the mirror. “Now do me, like that.”