By Jen MichalskiThe first time Jimmy Pinnick spoke to Dina was at the municipal fields. It was the day after a moderately sized winter storm, and the neighborhood kids of all ages had collected, like ants on a drip of ice cream, to scrape every last inch of snow off the steep hill enclosing the baseball diamond like a half bowl. Just as Dina pushed off on her old wooden sled down the narrow track of hill, Mindy Cohen and Albert Damascus flanking her on either side, Jimmy, who did not have a sled, jumped in front of her, sliding down the hill on his stomach to impress April Weingarter, who had giggled her way along the top of the slippery slope all afternoon, more interested in how her hair looked underneath her pink woolen cap than flying down the rooty hill.
Of course, the waxed runners of Dina’s sled posed far less resistance to the snow-topped hill than Jimmy’s jacket and corduroy pants, and so she caught up and ran him over in no time, sending him tumbling off to the side like a balled-up spider, much to the others’ delight.
“You do that again, and I’ll beat the living piss out of you,” Jimmy warned Dina at the bottom of the hill, out of her older brother, Jude’s, earshot. Although protecting Dina was the last thing Jude would do normally, the excuse to throttle Jimmy might just this once render him sympathetic to her plight.
Dina murmured an apology to Jimmy, who had already limped off, clawing his way back up the hill. Although winter was her favorite season, and sledding one of her favorite activities, after her encounter with Jimmy she packed up her things and walked the two blocks home, where she sat in the den and watched reruns of The Monkees until Jude came home.
“Why’d you leave so early?” He plopped down next to her with a box of Oreos and changed the channel to BMX racing. “I thought you were going to tell Mom I peed on Tommy’s sled.”
“I was just cold,” she shrugged, standing up to leave. It was an easy lie, although the feelings it cloaked were more complicated. Something had changed in her when Jimmy had so thoughtlessly jumped in front of her, all to impress April Weingarter, although what that change was, Dina was not sure. Even though Jimmy’s banged-up body was the result of his own stupidity, Dina didn’t feel overly upset that he blamed it on her. After all, this sort of flawed reasoning existed on the playground long before Jimmy claimed champion of it. Instead, something else seemed suddenly shattered, in the same way that Jimmy’s right leg, fortunately, was not. Of course, being 12 and not privy to the world’s cosmic secrets, Dina decided instead that she was entrapped in a more recognizable but equally complicated emotion: She was in love.
She had been aware, of course, of Jimmy’s jagged blonde bangs, along with his pointy chin and blue eyes, for several years, back to when Jude and Jimmy were still friends, even, but she had never really thought of the swollen pang in her chest until he spoke to her at the fields. In addressing her, she decided, Jimmy acknowledged her existence and, indirectly, her love, allowing it to blossom, like the way it happened in her teenage romance novels. The girls in those stories seemingly never knew they were in love with someone until it bit them in the face. Certainly her meeting on the hill with Jimmy was, however humiliating, a start.
But how did one nurture such love? In the five months since the sledding incident, Dina observed from afar the nuances of Jimmy Pinnick’s life, the way he brought nothing with him to school, not even a pencil, the way he sat at the back of the bus and smoked with the window open, even during the most torrential of storms, the way the bus driver, a septic-looking woman named Ms. Wanda whose face seemed to collapse into itself when she was angry, bawled out Jimmy for smoking, throwing spitballs, and having his feet up on the seat in front of him. Some days Ms. Wanda even refused to open the bus door when Jimmy was alone on his stop in the morning, to which he merely shrugged, lit a cigarette, and walked away.
Dina knew that Jimmy was in a universe far from the other boys she had encountered thus far, although she was not at a point in her maturity to decide whether that was a good or bad thing. Jimmy drank beer with his older brother Tim on the weekends and played bass in Tim’s metal band. Jude said Tim’s band sucked ass, but Dina figured he was just jealous. Jimmy had been held back a grade at school and, at 15, was taller and tougher than other boys in his classes. He wore his Wrangler jeans tight and a hooded sweatshirt underneath his jean jacket during winter instead of the lumpy, puffy parkas her mother had bought her and Jude at Sears.
“Your bike is better than Jude’s,” Dina said haltingly to Jimmy in the parking lot outside the High’s, where she had come to purchase the latest teen magazine. “You’d better believe it,” he answered, jumping off the heavily scraped frame and leaning it up against the storefront. “Stay here and watch my bike. If anyone tries to steal it, knock hard on the glass.”
Dina sat on the concrete next to the bike, flipping through her magazine and examining the prepubescent boys, soft as grapes, while she heard the mute slapping of console buttons and blips from the Asteroids videogame stationed in the store. Forty-five minutes later Jimmy returned, chomping hard a wad of gum from the packet of Big League Chew he had purchased.
"Anybody try to steal my bike?” He asked her, rubbing his flat, slightly emaciated stomach through his yellow motorcross shirt. She shook her head. Jimmy pointed to his bike. “This is a Mongoose. You know how much it costs?”
She studied the mud-splattered black aluminum frame and tried to think of an adequate figure, but she didn’t even know how much her Huffy cost.
“It cost three-hundred dollars,” he answered without waiting for her estimate. “This is a real BMX bike.”
She nodded, feeling the glossy cover of her magazine cling to her palm like wax. She imagined one of the smiling, airbrushed faces from the cover coming off onto her hand like a decal. She watched Jimmy straddle his bike and do a couple of slow wheelies in the parking lot.
“What’s your lard-ass brother Jude doing?” he asked.
“Listening to KISS albums in the basement,” she answered, deciding honesty was the quickest way to Jimmy’s heart.
“Oh yeah?” He considered this information, making tight figure eights on the asphalt. She studied the thick blond hairs on his legs, knowing that soon they would become darker and curlier like her father’s and that hair would grow in his crotch and in his armpits, and that if he really liked her, according to Mindy Cohen, he would pee himself while he slept.
“Tell him KISS sucks,” Jimmy said finally, his comeback completely formed. “AC/DC is where it’s at.”
“Yeah, KISS sucks,” Dina agreed, although she was more frightened of them and their devil worship than she was musically critical.
“Hey, you’re all right,” Jimmy conceded as he pointed his bike home. “For a fat, ugly chick.”
“You’ve just got a little baby fat,” Dina’s mother responded as she stacked tubs of ice cream into the freezer: Rocky Road for Jude, Butter Pecan for their father, and Strawberry for Dina. “What, you worried about some boy?”
“No,” Dina answered. “It’s just … well, Jude is fat, and Daddy is fat, and I think I’m fat, too.”
“You’re too young to date or diet,” Dina’s mother answered, slumping heavily into a kitchen chair and lighting a cigarette. Her mouth hollowed out like a fish as she inhaled in the dim evening light. It was a mouth that did not attend school plays, in which Dina was always chosen for the chorus or some other inconsequential role. Likewise, it did not attend Jude’s baseball games at the municipal fields, Jude who had a home-run swing but a lack of hustle. “You think you’re fat, go outside and play or something. If you see your brother, tell him he can’t go to the movies tonight. He’s grounded.”
Dina went up to the school where the other girls hung around the sandlot and watched the boys play basketball on the neighboring courts. She had never been fully comfortable talking about real boys. Unlike the boys in her teen magazines, the boys at the municipal fields sweated and cracked gum and said mean things about girls’ body parts and pulled their shirts over their necks on the sidelines of the basketball court, their flat, unmuscular chests punctuated by dime-sized nipples. She made her way tentatively to the monkey bars on the sandlot, where Leah and Mindy and April sat atop them, cracking gum and sharing a can of Sunkist soda.
“Hey Dina,” Leah Hanson, the lesser member and most sympathetic to outsiders like Dina, acknowledged her. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing.” Dina shrugged, and then turned her attention to the boys playing basketball. It was the same bunch of boys, Leah’s brother Scott and Dickie Herman and some others, who played sports all year round and knew Thurman Munson’s career batting average better than they knew the dates of their moms’ birthdays. “What’re you up to?”
“Watching the boys,” Leah laughed, a little embarrassed at the obviousness and simplicity of it. “You coming up?”
“If you can,” April snickered, fiddling in her purse and emerging with a container of nail polish. Dina scrambled up using all of her resources and breathed heavily next to Leah, who offered her a square of gum.
“Scott had a total hard-on in health class the other day,” Mindy giggled as Scott missed a lay-up.
“Eeeh, shut up, he’s my brother!” Leah shook her head.
“He totally did,” April concurred. “He didn’t even get up when the bell rang.”
Out of the corner of her eye Dina glimpsed Jimmy Pinnick heading across the field over to the trail, a long, snaking wooded path that opened out by the creek. In the summertime high school kids smoked pot and hung their feet in the clear water, blasting metal from a boombox and drinking. Dina and Jude were forbidden to walk the trail, although Jude had often boasted to Dina of his exploits, mostly involving firecrackers and dangerous-looking snakes.
Dina had never been interested in the trail. None of her friends were cool enough to enter the trail unaccompanied by someone learned in its wares. They preferred instead to hang out at the duckpin bowling lanes and ogle the tall, angular boys who wore Rush and Yes t-shirts and named their bowling teams after Dungeons and Dragons characters. But if she went to the trail, perhaps with Jude, she could talk to Jimmy. Maybe she could forge a truce between Jude and Jimmy, for which they’d be eternally grateful to her. Boys like Jude and Jimmy couldn’t stay apart long; their interests were common, their enemies commoner.
“What does Jimmy do down at the trail?” Dina asked the girls, who had retired to painting their nails with the bubblegum-colored metallic polish.
“What do you mean?” Mindy scrunched her nose.
“What doesn’t he do?” April laughed. “Probably smokes dope or something.”
“Do you like Jimmy?” Leah asked, twisting to get a view of the trail. “I think he’s kind of a fox.”
“He’s so stupid,” April dismissed, eyeing her handiwork.
“What, you like geeks?” Mindy challenged her.
“No. It’s just that he’s real stupid. He even misspelled my name on this note he gave me once.”
“When did he give you a note?” Leah asked excitedly, cracking her gum. “How come you never told us about it?”
“Cause she’s a liar,” Mindy answered.
“No I am not, you little dumb whore. At least guys like me. They all think you’re a big-mouthed Jew.”
“Fuck you, you twat.”
“Hey, hey,” Leah interceded. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that Dina likes Jimmy, don’t you?”
“I don’t know,” Dina shrugged. “He’s okay.”
“Well, don’t worry; he’d never like you,” April answered. “Believe me, he’s had a crush on me for years. Not that I’d ever give him a chance.”
“But if you don’t like him, why can’t Dina go after him?” Leah asked.
“Well, look at her.” April gestured dismissively toward Dina. “She doesn’t even wear makeup.”
“I never said I liked him. Jesus.” Dina jumped down from the monkey bars, wincing as she landed most of her weight on one ankle. “I gotta get home for dinner. I’ll see you guys later.”
“Yeah, it’s not like she’d ever miss a meal,” Dina heard April say, loud enough for her to hear. She glanced back at the trail. If she dated Jimmy, she could go down to the trail and hang out, doing whatever it was the cool kids did, while April and Mindy were left to look from afar at the boys playing basketball. She’d invite Leah back to the trail with them, of course. Maybe Jimmy had a friend for her.
“No fucking way,” Jude replied from his stomach in the den, where he was playing Space Invaders on his Atari game console. “No way you’re coming with me to the trail.”
“But I could follow you,” Dina muttered, eating only the cream centers of her Oreo cookies in an attempt to stave off weight gain.
“Yeah, and I’d pummel you.”
“Then I’d tell Mom and Dad, and they’d pummel you.”
“Mom and Dad won’t know about me going down the trail, ‘cause you’re not going to tell them,” he said and, without removing his eyes from the television screen, punched her hard on the shoulder with his free hand. She gasped and lurched back, her face hot with tears. “If that hurts, think of what it’s going to feel like if Mom and Dad find out about me and the trail.”
“I don’t care what you do,” she cried. “You can’t keep me from going down there.”
“You’re not going with me,” he said again, without emphasis, his attention fixated on a little purple blob that scrolled across the top of the screen. It was supposed to be a space ship, but Dina thought it looked like a jelly sandwich. “I don’t care if you go by yourself.”
“Why aren’t you and Jimmy friends anymore?” Dina asked, pressing together the widowed Oreo halves and putting them back in the plastic tray.
“He stole my Swiss army knife, that one I got at the farmer’s market.” Jude yawned, scrambling up to sit crosslegged while waiting for the next level of Space Invaders to begin. He grabbed some Oreos and shoved them into his mouth. “He better hope I don’t get it back from him or I’ll carve him up like a turkey.”
“No you wouldn’t.”
“You wanna bet?” He made a face. “Jesus, what’s wrong with these Oreos?”
Dina waited on the steps at the south end of the high school. She had been waiting there every Saturday afternoon since she first spotted Jimmy heading into the woods a few weeks back. Although she had no interest in ballet or tap, she had told her mom that she was sitting in on the dance classes that met at the cafeteria from two to four. From her semi-secluded view on the south-end steps, she could monitor who entered the trail. Sometimes, she had heard, teachers from the high school would use this very same scouting position to nab students trying to cut classes or smoke pot during study hall.
Dina had stolen two cigarettes from the pack of Winstons her father kept in the garage so that she could offer Jimmy one and they could smoke. She had practiced for hours holding the cigarette, flicking pretend ashes, drawing on the filter until it got soggy. Jimmy would see how cool she was, how she was more than just Jude’s sister. They could talk about the AC/DC album, Back in Black, the lyrics of which she had memorized by heart. When she dated Jimmy, she would be able to taunt them, April and Mindy, and roll her eyes as she and Jimmy walked the halls of school.
It was close to four. Dina decided to go down the trail a little ways before she went home, to make sure Jimmy wasn’t there. She crept slowly into the thick underbrush. Her perceptions of woods were less formed by teenage slasher films, which she wasn’t allowed to see, and more by the hot, discomfort of overnight camps when she was a Brownie. The earth had pushed up against her fat as she tried to sleep while bugs whistled and gossiped long past when 7-year-old girls were allowed. There were no showers, and she always smelled like sweat and bug spray and mothballs in her sleeping bag.
Dina was about 50 feet into the brush when she saw two figures off to her right, where a small clearing of flattened weeds and grass had been established, possibly by trail goers, over the years, taking a leak. Dina crouched down behind a thick bush and managed to make out the color of Jimmy’s green satin dragon jacket, like the kind they sold at the farmer’s market along with Jude’s army knife. The jacket bobbed up and down with great frequency and intensity. She slowly moved further right for a less-obstructed view. Jimmy’s body smothered something under him; judging by its wriggling, Dina deduced it was a girl.
Jimmy’s pants hung around his knees, his soft, white behind exposed with every other thrust. She could not tell if he had hair there in front, but she knew what he was doing, since she’d walked in on her parents every now and then on Saturday mornings until her father put a lock on the bedroom door. It was an activity she had not thought about she and Jimmy doing; even though other girls in gym class had spoken of doing it with their boyfriends. Those girls, everyone knew, were sluts and were kicked to the bottom of the school hierarchy, even lower than plump girls like Dina. At the very most, she thought perhaps she would touch it. Going all the way scared Dina, particularly since she hadn’t even crossed the most tertiary of dating thresholds, namely having a boyfriend and kissing him.
The girl with Jimmy, she did not want to go all the way, either, judging by her pleas to leave her alone, to stop, her muffled cries under Jimmy’s hand on her mouth. Dina felt hot and cold and sick, the way she felt when she learned her grandmother died and when she got caught stealing some Bottle Caps candy from the High’s. Jimmy’s frame shot up straight as he shrugged back into his pants. She hugged the earth as he looked around and, satisfied, made his way quickly back through the trail. Dina thought of going to the girl, although she was not sure what she would do, or even to whom her allegiance was. Part of her wanted to follow Jimmy, to offer him cigarettes, her company. They could both put the incident behind them and concentrate on the more mundane rituals of holding hands, movies, Skateland.
Suddenly April appeared in the brush, running her fingers through her hair as she hurried down the trail, dabbing at her eyes. Dina let out an audible gasp, which went unheard by the retreating April. Dina wondered if April had seduced Jimmy into the woods or if it was the other way around. Were they now an item? Dina waded through the fractured maze of tree limbs, feeling them whip and nick her face. She came upon the clearing where Jimmy and April had been a few moments before, the sprouts of grass and fallen branches crushed under the vague indention of a person’s back. Dina sat in the sacred spot, still warm, and lit one of the Winstons, arching her head the way she had seen her mother do, and inhaling. Somehow, she botched the nuances of this activity and coughed so vehemently that all birds in the vicinity flew away.
At school April and Jimmy talked at their lockers and sat on the bus together. Everyone agreed they were an item, although Dina felt a change had come over April. She didn’t hang out with Mindy and Leah as often, although those two chalked it up to time spent with Jimmy. Dina snuck glances at her during classes, across the cafeteria tables where Mindy and Leah talked and giggled, a silent April wedged between. April’s eyes seemed to be staring sadly at something or someone whose presence was not immediately known to Dina.
When Jimmy pinned April between himself and her locker between classes, April had smiled and kidded, but she always seemed to be in motion, a cat scurrying out of the reach of some overzealous and slightly dangerous child. However, Dina did not feel sorry for April or inordinately curious about her unhappiness. After all, it was April who now commanded Jimmy Pinnick’s attention, got to wear his green dragon jacket, smoked cigarettes after school with Jimmy’s friends. And April had not let her forget it, shooting leering grins in Dina’s direction whenever she noticed Dina eyeing her.
“He brought flowers to her house,” Leah said as they sat on the monkey bars watching the boys play basketball.
“What kind?” Mindy drilled, picking at a scab on her knee.
“I don’t know. She says he showed up at her door one day with flowers and asked her to go to Skateland.”
“Jimmy go to Skateland?” Mindy chortled. “That’s a new one.”
“What, are you jealous?” Leah asked her.
“Well, let’s ask Dina, since she likes him.” Mindy turned to Dina. “What do you think? Think April’s full of shit?”
“He didn’t bring her flowers,” Dina mumbled, noting the slight widening of Mindy’s eyes. Dina then looked at Leah, who looked away at the boys playing basketball.
“How do you know?” Mindy coaxed her, touching her arm.
“He fucked her on the trail,” she blurted, her grip on the monkey bars relaxing.
“Oh my god,” Mindy laughed. “Holy shit.”
“How could you know that?” Leah said skeptically. She scrunched her face and looked into the shared Sunkist can as if it were a magic 8-ball.
“Because I saw them.”
“You were on the trail?” Leah questioned.
“Yeah,” Dina answered. “My mom told me to get Jude, that he was in trouble, and I thought he went down the trail. But then I got in there and saw them, Jimmy and April.”
“What day was it?”
“A couple of weeks ago.” Dina shrugged.
“Come on, Leah, why would Dina lie about it?” Mindy smirked. “I always knew Miss High-and-Mighty would spread her legs the first chance she got.”
“I can show you the spot where they did it,” Dina added hopefully. “Come on.”
Dina led them expertly through the trail to the open area. There were no clues to Jimmy and April’s earlier presence, only generic trash like cigarette butts and Tastykake wrappers, beer cans, although nothing about the location argued against the act of conjugal relations taking place. Leah and Mindy stood at the spot in silence, imagining the events as Dina detailed the blur of images that had come that day to her through the trees. Dina realized that she no longer loved Jimmy, if she had. She hoped this realization was the source of the hollowness she now felt, anyway.
As they emerged from the woods, giggling about Dickie Herman’s pants splitting in gym class, they saw April waiting casually at the monkey bars. Although Dina could not read April’s expression from the distance, she could already discern April’s nervousness, the plates of social power underneath April shifting.
“What’s going on?” April addressed them, hitching her thumbs in belt loops of her Jordache jeans. She was taller and slightly curvier than the other girls in class, and Dina could see why Jimmy liked her. “What were you guys doing on the trail?”
“Nothing,” Mindy shrugged and, as she was the newly appointed leader of the group, Dina and Leah deferred to her strategy. “Just hanging out. Why aren’t you with Jimmy?”
“He’s riding bikes somewhere.” April shrugged. “Besides, I don’t have to hang around him if I don’t want. We’re not married or anything.”
“Oh, but you may as well be,” Mindy snickered, putting her right index finger through the “o” of her left index finger and thumb.
“What are you talking about?” April reddened, clutching her purse closer. Mindy shrugged and, in one elongated motion, was first on top of the monkey bars. Leah grudgingly followed; Dina eagerly.
“Well, I’m going to go with my mom to the mall. We’re going to get manicures,” April said, looking at her nails.
“Be sure to buy some condoms,” Mindy muttered, her mouth obscured by the Sunkist can.
“Yeah, well, see you later,” April answered and strode away, slightly hunched over, as if she were ill.
“Slut,” Mindy said and giggled. “Do you guys want to go to my house and do our own manicures?”
As Dina followed Mindy and Leah down off the monkey bars, she imagined the pure, exhilarating feeling of sledding down the white dusted bowl of the hill at the municipal fields, the effortless, throttling run that had ended uneventfully time and time again. Until Jimmy last winter. And what about this winter? She knew that Mindy Cohen would be the one at the top of the hill, holding court instead of sledding beside her. And where would April be? Dina? Mindy and Leah crossed the street ahead of Dina. She thought briefly of going home and curling up by the television, eating whole, delicious Oreos. Somehow, she did not have the stomach for it anymore. She dashed across the street, without looking, afraid of falling too far behind.
Jen Michalski is editor in chief of JMWW. She lives in Baltimore. Her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in McSweeney's, Split Shot, Ink Pot, Failbetter, Unlikely Stories 2.0, Apt, The Swamp, Fiction Warehouse, Lily, Gold Dust Magazine, Thieves Jargon, Litvision, SubtleTea, 13th Warrior Review, The Harrow, Conte Online, and Scrivener's Pen. You can read more about her and JMWW in a Baltimore City Paper article at http://www.citypaper.com/arts/default.asp.
