The Dark Path by David Schickler Page B

our costumes from ‘Off the Wall.’”
    â€œYou’re right. Sick. I hated my butt in that costume.”
    â€œWe all hated your butt.”
    â€œMiss Florida has roots.”
    â€œMiss Delaware’s voice is too nasal.”
    â€œMiss Nebraska has stork thighs. Gross.”
    I gazed at the TV screen, frowning. I thought Miss Nebraska’s thighs were wonderful. Plus she’d played the flute well. Plus, I hadn’t hated Gemma’s butt in her “Off the Wall” costume. I’d really appreciated her butt.
    When these girls hugged me, their hair smelled like rain and strawberries. When they shrieked at one another, it meant they were angry or, more often, bored. They twirled around me year after year, and they did my face up like Ziggy Stardust with rouge and eye shadow.
    Outside my house, close to me always, was the dark path and God. But inside my house, just as close, was the other great mystery: chicks. One autumn Saturday night when I was ten, I came home from a walk on the path. I’d been out talking to God about infinity. Infinity really screwed with my head and I was still going over some details of it in my mind with the Lord, getting a little pissed off at Him about it, as I came into my house and took off my boots and walked down into the basement.
    Dear God
, I thought,
if You really exist outside of time and space, that is messed up, because You haven’t given us brains that can comprehend anything outside of time and space, and so haven’t You made it hard for us to want infinity with You since we can’t even imagine what infinity feels or looks like?
    I rounded a corner and found a dozen thirteen-year-old girls in nightgowns lying on top of one another on the carpeted floor, in two stacks, six to a stack, all of them laughing.
    â€œWe’re seeing which stack will fall first,” shouted someone.
    â€œDavid, have you read
Mommie Dearest
?”
    â€œDavid, push them over.”
    â€œNo, push
them
over.”
    â€œDavid, sing ‘Rainbow Connection.’ I knooow it’s your favorite.”
    â€œHey, David,” said my sister’s friend Tina Cosgrove, who already had an amazing figure. “I hear you like Beth Vandermalley.”
    The other girls made teasing
Oooo
sounds at me.
    I tried to defend myself. “Oh yeah, Tina, I hear you like Phil Kincaid.”
    Everyone shut up. Tina burst into tears. Her pile of girls fell and they all started patting her back.
    â€œDavid, what the hell?”
    â€œYeah, David, that was mean.”
    Wait,
I thought.
What? Not fair!
    Phil Kincaid was apparently a touchy subject. He’d spoken to Tina on Thursday but not on Friday. Disaster.
    â€œGo away, David,” said one girl, “you’ve done enough.”
    So I went into my room, my thoughts caught between infinity and nightgowns.
Dear Lord
, I prayed.
Tina Cosgrove is psychotic. And hot. Is she my wife?
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢
    MARA IS a Georgetown sophomore like I am. She’s from a small town near Kittery, Maine, and I happily suspect Catholicism in her family when she tells me that she has four sisters back home.
    I start showing up at her row house each afternoon. One day we sit on the couch and listen to an album by Joan Armatrading (whom Mara worships). Mara taps the scabs on my jaw.
    â€œWhere’d you get those?”
    â€œKnife fight,” I say.
    She rolls her eyes.
    â€œLightsaber fight,” I say.
    â€œCome on . . .”
    â€œOne night last summer I broke into someone’s mansion. There was a guard dog Doberman and he lunged at my face. He was out for blood.”
    She laughs her murmuring laugh and I want it never to stop. Her laugh makes me gutsy. It short-circuits my shyness.
    â€œAnd who lived in this mansion?” says Mara.
    â€œA girl.” I bump her knee with mine. “This amazing girl I just had to get to.”
    She’s sharing her row