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Linnea

It started at the first home football game of the year.

Mora Mustangs against Braham Bombers. Linnea felt lightheaded at school. Her stomach had been protesting against food the past twenty-four hours, everything she’d eaten went straight to the toilet minutes later. The sickness had her fretting she’d caught some flu bug from a kid at Dairy Queen that probably didn’t wipe his butt before slapping change on the counter.

But Linnea couldn’t miss out on her newly crowned status as Everett Barnes’ girlfriend at the game. Technically, he’d yet to utter girlfriend, but he didn’t correct anyone who did. And she wasn’t about to dispel the magic by asking him, Am I? Are we . . . ?

The pep band played their screeching brass tones, and the setting sun ushered in autumn’s evening breeze.

Ulla said she wasn’t going to the game; since when did either of them care to watch doofus boys ram one another and smack their spandexed butts for the town to cheer in cloying adoration? The only reason the two ever made an appearance was to snicker at the cheerleaders shivering in their knee highs, performing canned chants like, “We are number one yeah, we are number one, woo!” followed by rocket jumps and side leaps and pom-pom shuffling. Mora High’s one true cheerleader was Aaron Lutz, a skinny, acne-faced junior who left everyone in the dust as a distance runner for the track team. Out of his gaunt body, came a barreling drill sergeant’s voice: “LET’S GO MUSTANGS!” CLAP-CLAP-CLAP.

Linnea joined Aaron’s lead, surrounded by a chorus of classmates that had once upon a time placed her on the fringe. Stacey Schwartz, a volleyball girl with short, permed black hair, tapped her on the shoulder. “Are you and Everett going to the drag?”

Linnea turned to Everett who was giggling in response to some joke of Wiley’s. “Ev?” But Stacey interrupted her, “Ulla’s probably looking for you.” Linnea followed Stacey’s bug-eyed gaze. She imagined everyone’s eyes bugging at the vision of Ulla walking, as if in slow motion.

It wasn’t Ulla though. Ulla’s hair wouldn’t be curled and bouncing in perfect Christy Brinkley waves nor wear makeup that sparked her eyes to twice their magnitude. She’d be wearing baggy Kmart jeans and an oversized, unbuttoned flannel with a Rolling Stones t-shirt underneath. Not tight Jordache denim and a matching jean jacket over a turquoise sweater.

Linnea stifled the mass of jealousy and awe forming in her gut and waved.

Ulla grinned. It appeared genuine, but Linnea saw the façade in her eyes. The sea of classmates parted when Ulla climbed the bleachers. Stacey repelled from Linnea as if she’d only been warming the seat for Ulla, expecting her all along.

It was Everett’s reaction that Linnea most closely gauged. He shifted his eyes briefly to Ulla and said as if bored, “Lin said you weren’t coming.”

Ulla flopped a coiffed wave over her shoulder. “Senior year,” she replied to him, and then to Linnea, “never too late to catch up on all the things I might have missed.”

Linnea chewed her cheek. Her nausea doubled.

She and Ulla didn’t speak during the entire game. Mostly because Ulla was too busy attending to the flock that had gathered around her and her insipid comments:

I’m always too lazy to fix my hair. This took me two hours!

Who’s number twelve for Braham! Should we get him to come to the drag with us?

Everyone was falling for Ulla’s shtick. Linnea leaned in, smelling the drug store perfume, and mock-hissed into Ulla’s ear, “Who’s number twelve? What is going on with you?”

Ulla narrowed her eyes. “If you don’t want me around anymore, just say so.”

The Mustangs scored. The crowd jumped to their feet, and the pep band screeched the brassy fight song. Ulla trailed her eyes over Linnea as the two remained seated in their insulated bubble. “You look kind of pale.”

Linnea hugged her stomach. It wasn’t a burgeoning flu making her ill. It was envy seeping from her pores, turning her love for Ulla into poison.

The “drag” was a stretch of graveled roads by the cornfields. Notorious for drag racing and drunken shenanigans, the class of 1987 considered themselves impervious to police and consequences. JJ, the star football player, was caught drunk last year, and instead of suspending him, the school corralled the entire class for a meaningless lecture. Not even the death of a fellow student in a car accident two years ago gave them a moment’s pause on mortality. They christened themselves “The Baddies,” topping it off with their motto: Life is short and life goes on.

Linnea was stuffed into the back seat of Everett’s Chevy with two other football players, one of whom was Kevin Wallin, with his girlfriend, Debbie Lockman on his lap. Debbie refused to smoke with the window rolled up. The wind whipped Linnea’s hair into her own mouth. Wiley, next to Everett, battled over the radio stations, eventually settling on “Smokin’ in the Boys Room” and led everyone in a carousing sing-along. Everett turned the Blazer onto the crunching road, where the cornstalks were well past six feet, and parked behind a row of cars.

Linnea burst from the haze that Debbie had created with her Virginia Slims, out into the brisk air, just in time to gulp down the rising vomit. She jostled her head.

Everett lifted the hatch of the Chevy. Classmates mobbed him to snatch their drink of choice from the makeshift bar: Captain Morgan, Smirnoff, Michelobs, Millers, Pabsts, and the accompanying liters of Coke and plastic Solo cups.

Linnea and Ulla had never before been invited to these parties. Selected sophomores were accepted, usually girls. Limited exceptions were made for freshmen girls, but they had to be dating an upperclassman.

It was Ulla who found Linnea grimacing in the ditch. She held a cup, taking pursed, timid sips of her drink. She glanced at Linnea’s empty hands. “Your boyfriend supplies the booze, and you get last dibs?” She took a heftier swig of the alcohol and coughed.

Linnea flashed her a heated, disgusted look. Before she could retort, Patsy and Sunny appeared with Tanya, captain of the Mora Mustang cheer squad. Each girl held a Miller Lite. They tapped drinks with Ulla. Tanya fingered Linnea’s Rainbow Brite button on her jean jacket. “So cute. Everyone’s got their vote in already for you and Ev to be Homecoming king and queen.”

Linnea contained her inward squeal with a bored shrug.

“Or you!” Sunny pointed at Ulla. “I’d totally vote for you!”