say anything the door flies open.
Jim is standing on the other side of it. He looks older than I thought he would. He’s gotten fatter and he has the start of a beard. Kel Keller, he says, and he throws an arm over my shoulders and I am grateful to him and at the same time I wonder if Dee Marshall has told him about my mother.
Jim rotates me toward the crowded room and says my name again, louder, to the crowd. There is no hush but there are scattered glances my way, and then I hear my name repeated lowly around the room.
Jim’s house on the inside is exactly as I remember it. Messy and empty of furniture and bare of carpet. A man’s house but for the wall art of the floral or religious variety. When I came here as a little kid I used to wonder who had put it up.
Everyone’s standing. In the hallway and living room it is so dark that I have to wait for my eyes to adjust before I can move forward. Jim and I walk down the hall to the kitchen and my friends from Pells follow in a tight little line. When we walk past the people I used to know they do one of two things: if they’re drunk they hug me or clutch my hand, and if they’re not they frown at me.
When I went to school here these were all my friends. These are all people like me. Toughish boys who grew up poor or with one parent. Girls I dated or sisterly girls. I fit in here. I can feel my accent changing to greet theirs. We walk to the kitchen which is entirely linoleum with a sticky green floor and fluorescent lights. I see him first: Dee Marshall, massive and relaxed, leaning against a counter on the far side of the room. He’s high off his ass, thank God, I can see it. There is no moment of tension, no face-off. He stands with two girls on each side of him. I only recognize one. All of them are different than Pells girls: harder, tanner, older-seeming. Dark makeup circling their eyes. Tight clothes and bodies and faces. Less smiling.
Dee points to me. I feel the trail of boys behind me shift and tense.
Then Dee’s face lights up into a smile. Kel! he says, genuinely happy.
I walk over to him and we clasp hands and touch our shoulders together and then he asks the girls if they know me and all four of them nod. I was wrong I guess.
I turn and beckon to the boys from Pells and they sort of shuffle over, except Trevor, who stays back sullenly.
Peters, Kramer, Matt, I say, pointing them out. And that’s Trevor back there.
Every single one of them knows Dee’s name so I don’t say it. Every single one of them got his ass handed to him by Dee Marshall eight hours ago.
They all nod to him coolly, and then Dee snaps four Buds from a six-pack on the counter behind him and tosses one to each of them. Underhand, not overhand, which is how I know there won’t be any trouble.
Dee tells the girls to hang on a minute and walks me back into the other room. I glance over my shoulder and see my friends from Pells huddle together uncertainly, but suddenly I don’t care. Suddenly I could care less. Let them get drunk and talk about me and then let them leave me here. Let them leave.
In the living room Dee and I sit in two chairs in the middle of everything and talk.
How’s Rhonda? I ask him.
She found Jesus, he says, and kind of laughs and shrugs, because his mother was crazy when we were growing up, and he knows that I know that this is true.
She’s better, he says, and then furrows his brow as if he isn’t sure why he told me this.
After a while people come over to us and say hello to me and some of them tell me they’re sorry to hear about my mother. It feels like family saying it and I nod slowly and gratefully each time. I’m drinking too fast. When Dee rolls a blunt I know I should decline but I want it in my system. Dee was the first person who ever got me high. And the first to sell me weed. I take a long slow hit and cough uncontrollably and embarrassingly. It’s