Dark
Matters
3. Burgers and Rings
by Donna Lamb

  
Jon found me still trying to get my locker open. I couldn’t seem to stop the dial on the right numbers.

“Are you crying?” he asked.

“No," I said, wiping my eyes. "I can’t get this lock to work.”

“Let me,” he offered.

I stepped out of the way, and he put his own books and bag on the bench and took the lock in his hand. “Numbers?” he asked and I told him.

He opened the locker easily and pulled everything out. I picked out my books and started to put the other stuff back in, my sneakers, gym shorts, t-shirt and jock strap.

“Take that all home too,” he said.

“I’ve… What?”

He took the t-shirt, used the arms to tie the neck hole closed then stuffed the other things, including the lock, inside and tied the tail closed too. He put it inside the bag he’d been carrying and put my books on top of his. “C’mon,” he said. “I’ll give you a ride home.”

“A ride?” I asked, but I followed him out the back door of the gym annex toward the student parking lot. “You’ve got a car? I’m not going to ride on a bike with all this stuff.”

“I’ve got a car,” he said.

We crossed the intramural basketball courts, through the fence around the parked cars toward a red and white Ford coupe. “How do you have a car? You’re only fifteen, too young for a driver’s license.”

“I’ve got a license,” he said without any other explanation. He unlocked the passenger door, pushed the seat forward and dumped everything he was carrying in the back seat. The front seat plopped back into place and he told me, “Get in.”

Jon’s dad was old, a retired professor from UCLA who sometimes went off to give lectures in faraway places like Greece or India. Jon’s mother had been one of the wartime girl pilots in the Army Air Corps and still had a plane parked at the county airport. She was a local, born right in White River and sort of famous. Both of them were rich from rich families, so they could probably buy Jon a car and somehow get him a license even though he wasn’t sixteen yet.

I got in and reached across to the driver’s side to unlock the door for him as he went around the car. He slid in and grinned across at me. “Wanna burger? Cecil’s or the Frosty?”

“I should get home,” I said. “Mom has probably got dinner waiting for me. Us, my sister….” I trailed off.

He kept grinning at me as he twisted the key and the engine hummed instead of roared. “Your mom’s a bit flakey, probably out messing with her pots and stuff,” he said. Mom was a sculptor and had a kiln in our backyard. “I know you and Hayley have to get your own dinners most of the time.”

He was right but I didn’t tell him so. I kind of resented people knowing how unreliable my mom could be. She loved us and spent every penny that our dad sent her on us every month, nothing for herself. But when she got involved in some clay project, she could forget to eat sometimes for days at a time. Hayley and I took care of her as much as she did us.

So I didn’t say anything at all as we pulled out of the parking lot, turning east on Elmer Avenue which would go right by Cecil’s Drive-In and was the opposite way to taking me home.

“Frosty,” I finally said just before we got to Cecil’s. “I guess.” Frosty Snowcream was on the other side of town, past the downtown area just off of the highway.

He nodded. “Good choice. Better shakes.”

“Cecil’s has better fries,” I commented as we passed the place.

“Eh,” he said. “For fries, you can’t beat McDonald’s.” We passed the McDonald’s, too, new in town just last year. He drove like he’d been doing it for years, no kids’ stuff of speeding or showing off.

“Are you going to fight Toby?” I asked.

He shrugged. “We’ll probably just yell and take a couple of swings at each other. Guy stuff.” He grinned across at me again. “You want me to beat him up for you?”

“No!” I said. “What if he doesn’t show up?”

“He’ll be there. I’ll be there. Half the school will probably be there.” He turned at Main Street heading south. The lights were with us all the way. “You’re going to be there.”

I shook my head. “I d'wanna.”

“You’ll be there,” he said again. I knew I would be, too, but I didn’t know quite why.

We passed the big hardware store that Thomas Tuttle’s family owned. Jon turned left, cutting across the corner of Tuttle’s parking lot to come up on the Frosty from the alley. He pulled into one of the drive-in bays and shut off the engine.

The only carhop working on Wednesday night left the walk-up window and started toward us on her roller skates. Wearing the red and white uniform dress with the silvery tiara perched in her hair, she sailed up to Jon’s window just as he rolled it down.

“Heya,” she said, smiling in at him. Her name tag read Princess Jenny. The carhops at the Frosty were all called Snow Princesses.

“Looking good, Princess,” Jon said. “That’s a cute outfit on you.”

She made her dimples show. “Eh. It’s kind of cold in the evenings, you wanna know the truth. What’ll you have?”

“Western double-double, large vanilla shake for me. Small burger, no cheese, no onion, no pickle and a Neapolitan shake for Wally.”

“Small shake?” she asked, looking at me.

I nodded. It was exactly what I wanted. I couldn’t think of how Jon would have known.

Princess Jenny squatted slightly to get a better look past Jon at me. “Hey, Wally,” she cooed.

I remembered her now; Jenny Duckworth had been my babysitter once or twice a few years before. She lived one street over from me. “Hey, Ducky,” I said.

Jon laughed and Jenny skated away to put in our order. “You and Ducky have something going?” he asked.

“Five years ago, she used to watch Hayley and me when Mom went into Bakers for clay and stuff.” Mom was a potter and sculptor when she didn’t have to take a typing job to make the house payment. Sometimes she went out of town to sell stuff or put things in a show somewhere, too. “Jenny’s like nineteen.”

“Way old for either of us,” he said. “Fills that dress nicely, though.”

“She’s okay,” I agreed.

He looked at the ring on his left pinkie for a bit before speaking. “You ever think that maybe you should have been a girl?” he asked.

I shook my head. The question disturbed me enough I thought about getting out of the car and trying to hoof it home. I watched him carefully, but he wasn't even looking at me.

The ring seemed to fascinate him. He smiled. “I know what your middle name is.”

“Don’t!” I said. I didn’t like anyone knowing that either. Dad was Canadian, born in England and they had funny ideas about what made a good name for a boy. Bad enough that my first name was Walker instead of something more normal like Walter.

He didn’t say anything for a bit, playing with the ring now, twisting it around. It had a tiny bright stone, like a diamond chip. “Did you enjoy being towel boy and looking at all the naked guys?” he finally asked with another smile.

I squirmed a bit, turning away. “It just seemed wrong,” I said.

“Coach added you to the team roster. That’s when I found out your middle name. You’ll be waterboy down on the field during games, too. And you can get a JV letter at the end of the year, to go on your class sweater or jacket.” He turned a bit to look at me, putting his left hand in the window. “We’ll go to the office tomorrow and swap your classes around so you can take athletics last period, like all the other jocks.” He grinned.

“Huh?” I said. “I’ve got shop last period now.” I hated shop. Well, woodworking wasn’t bad and drafting sounded interesting. The way it worked was you did something in each of the different shops for nine weeks at a time. In a month more, we’d be done with woodworking and start on metal shop which I was dreading. It seemed dirty and dangerous.

But the biggest trouble was the bullies in the class. They hated me, and I had never figured out why. Shop was even worse than P.E.

“You could swap it with whenever you have gym class now. Or take something else,” Jon suggested.

I shook my head. “Shop is required for freshman boys.”

He laughed. “Maybe we can get you into Home Ec instead.” The required freshman class for girls.

I know I blushed but Jenny arrived just then with our burgers and shakes. She fastened the tray to the window and took the money from Jon, all the while flirting in a joking manner with him. “Keep the change,” he told her.

When she skated away, Jon handed me my shake which I put on the floor and then my burger and some napkins. “She thinks I’m just a kid,” he said, not complaining, just commenting. He laughed and shook his head, glancing at his ring.

We started eating. The burgers smelled so good that I had to swallow a mouthful of saliva first. And they were good but kind of wet which is why I always asked for no pickle at the Frosty. Jon attacked his like he was starving. It was enormous, two big patties of meat, two slices of cheese, with tomato, onions, lettuce and BBQ sauce. Even the bun was bigger than the one on my burger.

Jon finished his burger before I did mine and started on his shake. In between slurps, he asked me, “You ever kiss a girl, Wally?”

I shook my head and swallowed. “Well, I think Alice Starkey kissed me back when we were in first grade.”

“You ever kiss a boy?”

I just shook my head.

He laughed and made more noises with his shake. He looked at the ring he was wearing again and used his thumb to turn it so the little stone caught the light. “You ever want to kiss a boy?” he asked, not quite looking at me.

I didn’t answer, not even to shake my head. I finished my burger and picked up my shake from the floor. He held out a bag for me to put the burger wrapper in along with his trash and I did so. The Neapolitan shake was good; they always put it together right at the Frosty, with the vanilla on the bottom, strawberry in the middle and chocolate on top.

Jon finished his shake and stared off into the weeds behind the drive-in for a bit. He played with his ring some more and he seemed to be saying something under his breath, something I couldn’t hear.

“Did you ever like a…, someone, anyone, enough that you wanted to kiss them?” he asked. “Girl or boy,” he added.

I shook my head hard. I didn’t like the question at all.

He went back to looking at his ring and I finished off my shake, that last slurp being all three flavors at once, all mixed together. I loved that. I put the empty cup and the last napkin into the bag Jon held out again. “Thank you for the burger and shake,” I said politely. I didn’t offer to pay him back and he didn’t ask. Maybe he knew I didn't have any money.

He grinned at me but his eyes looked worried, as if he were the one who felt shy.

The sun was going down behind the mountains, almost straight out along Tenth Avenue going west. Dust in the air made it all gold and red and magenta. Behind the building of the drive-in, a block away, you could hear the traffic on Highway 99. Above, the sky looked almost green-bronze before it started darkening to indigo and purple.

“Here,” said Jon.

I took what he held out to me and looked at it. It seemed to be the ring he had been playing with but with a glance I saw that he still wore his. This one looked a little smaller and thinner and had a rose-colored stone instead of a white one.

He started the car and flashed the lights for Princess Jenny to come get the tray on the window. She skated over and he said something to her but I didn’t hear what. Then he rolled the window up and backed out of the bay, turning on his headlights, too. We started down the alley, not back to Main Street but east. I didn’t know where we would be going that way. Jon and I both lived on the west edge of town, past the high school.

“That’s for you. I want you to wear it,” he said. Meaning the ring.

I started to say I couldn’t take it; it looked expensive. Made of gold with a gemstone a dark rose color, I couldn’t imagine how much it cost.

“Put it on the long finger on your left hand,” he said and I did so. It fit perfectly and I wondered if I could ever get it off. I felt a little strange after putting it on, as if something about me and the world had changed.

“What?” I said to Jon.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I think they’re magic.”