7. Caplan

After cake, I walk Mina and Ms. Stern home across the street, and then Quinn and I go to Pond Lake to smoke. He skates there to roll up while I walk behind him. He's in our usual spot when I get there, at the end of the eastern dock, where it's too dark to see from the shore.

Everyone knows the town is named for the two docks, but I learned in fourth grade why the lake is called Pond Lake, and of course, I learned it from Mina. It was the first anniversary of the day she lost her dad, and I remember feeling nervous, because I knew it should matter, but I didn't know how, and I didn't want to do or say anything to make it worse. I thought maybe I should give her privacy, but then my mom got home in the morning from her night shift with a store-bought blueberry pie. She said she was going to take it across the street to the Sterns. I remember asking her how she knew the pie wouldn't just remind them and make them more sad. She told me you can't remind people of something they never forget and always carry with them. And it is normal to be scared of other people's sadness and to pull away. But even if it isn't perfect, or if it's awkward, or if they hate pie, it's better to try. Better for them to know they aren't alone.

So, I crossed the street with her and just acted like it was any other Saturday. Mina was in the kitchen, eating a piece of toast. I remember it was the end of the loaf, that crappy bit no one really wants. She said her mom wasn't awake yet, so my mom cut us a piece each, put them on plates, and then took the entire rest of the thing upstairs and right into Mina's mom's room, with two forks, and no plates.

When we finished our slices and our moms hadn't come down yet, we decided to take a walk. It was cold that day for the first time that year, so I was surprised when we got to the lake and she walked out to the end of the western dock and sat. I could tell she'd been crying, and I didn't want to crowd her, so instead of following her, I walked around, picking my way along on the cool sand. I could see chimney smoke from one of the big houses set back on the south arc of the lake. I remember thinking summer left us too early that year.

I walked out on the eastern dock, sat across from her with the water between, and waited. It was impossible to think that the lake, with all its shifting and changing shine, would freeze soon. I thought about watching Mina, the year before, ice-skating with her dad. I hoped she wasn't thinking the same. After a while, she stood and came around the lake, too. She grew small around the far side, stomping along with her hands in her jacket pockets, and then big again as she got close. She sat next to me. I couldn't think of something comforting to say, so I asked the first question that came to my mind.

"So, why d'ya think it's called Pond Lake?"

"I don't think. I know. I read it in a book about Two Docks."

She sounded a bit like she had a cold, and her nose was red, either from crying or the bite in the air, but I gave her a waiting look.

"All right. Well. In the nineteenth century—"

"What's a ‘centry' again?"

"A century is one hundred years. A sentry is a soldier or a guard who protects a place."

"Oh, like, a bridge? Or a castle?"

"Do you want to learn about Pond Lake?"

"Yes," I said. "Sorry." I tried not to smile, because she sounded like Mina again.

"When Two Docks was becoming a town—"

"How does a town become a town?"

"Well, it already is one, and then it gets written down in a thing called a charter, and other people outside understand that it's real."

"But the people inside already know?"

"More or less," she said. "Can I keep going?"

"Yes."

"Well, when Two Docks was becoming a town, they realized Pond Lake needed a proper name, because the people in the town either called it the pond, or the lake, but two cartographers—"

"Cartographers?"

"Those are people who make maps."

"That's a job?"

"It is."

"Okay. Cool. I'd like that job, I think. Keep going."

"There were two cartographers, and they were great friends, and they set about naming Pond Lake. But before they could, they argued about whether it was actually a pond or a lake. They argued deep into the night—"

"Is that true, or are you making the story better?" I asked. She sighed, but I knew she was back from wherever she'd gone, on the western dock.

"This is what it said in the book. It's like a legend."

"All right."

"So the legend goes that they argued deep into the night. Then, just before dawn, they finally went to measure it. They walked around the outside, each starting at one dock, because that's how people used to measure distances, with their actual feet. It turned out it was more the size of a lake, but they couldn't dismiss that it had the distinct feeling of a pond."

"Huh. So it was both?"

"Yes. So the two cartographers argued and argued and then, as the sun rose, they tired of their argument. They didn't want to fight anymore, but they had not solved anything, and so they decided it would be a lake named Pond. Pond Lake."

"Pond Lake. Okay. That was a good story. Thanks."

"I think you'd make a good cartographer."

"How come?"

"You always know where you're going."

On my way around the lake to meet Quinn on the eastern dock, I pass some kids on a log who look around Ollie's age, reeking of pot.

"Be safe, boys," I say, trying to make them laugh, but they just stare at me.

"That's Cap Lewis," I hear one of them say once I've passed by.

Quinn is already smoking on the dock. He's taken his shoes and socks off and has his feet in the water. He's doctoring the joint. Quinn is amazing at rolling. It makes no sense, because his hands are huge and he has weird spider fingers, but he's always been good at things like that. He used to be obsessed with origami when we were younger. He'd rip off bits of his paper and fold them into tiny animals and line them up on his desk, all without ever looking away from the teachers, so they couldn't really get mad.

"That's disgusting," I say, looking at his feet, pale in the dark water.

"Come on, golden boy. You think your toes are too clean?"

I strip my shoes and socks off, too, and sit down next to him to take the joint.

"Did you see those little kids?" he asks.

"Yeah, they recognized me," I say.

"No shit."

"Yeah, as I walked away, they said, ‘That's Cap Lewis.'"

He leans back. "Man, you really could be a much bigger asshole."

"It made me feel like one," I say.

"Oh, enjoy it. That's your life right now. You can do no wrong, you can have whatever you want, and then next year, you'll be at the bottom again."

"Don't say that," I say, passing him the joint. "We can't have whatever we want."

"Hey, can I ask you about something?"

Quinn has never, in the ten years that I've known him, asked me about something.

"What, did you kill someone?"

"Ha ha," he says, focusing carefully on fixing the joint, which is canoeing. He flicks his lighter a few times, but it doesn't catch. I hand him mine.

"So what's up?"

He watches the paper burn, curling and stubborn, not righting itself. He sighs. He takes a long hit.

"Mina looks different outside of school," he says.

"How so?" I ask. Not because I'm curious. I'm distracted, looking at the water moving over our ankles. Quinn and Mina only see each other outside of school accidentally, in passing, through me.

"She just looks different, like, with her hair back."

"Her hair back?"

"Like. Up. Off her face. You can actually see it."

I don't really know what to say to this, so I smoke more.

"She has a nice face," Quinn says, not looking at me.

"I've never really noticed," I say. "She kind of always looks the same to me."

Quinn nods.

We're quiet again. I think that it's all he wanted to say. And then:

"Do you think she'd go for me?"

I inhale way too much and start to cough. "Go for you?" I choke out.

"Like, get with me."

"Who?"

"Mina."

"With you?"

"Yeah, me."

"You and Mina?"

"Yeah, do you think?"

My throat feels raw and tight from coughing up smoke, and my eyes are watering. It takes me a second to get a response out. "Honestly, I don't think so. You know how she is. She's sort of, like, closed off."

"Yeah, but I feel like she's different around us," he says.

I feel annoyed that he lumped us together. That he thinks that he and I are the same, or even close. "And also, I don't think you're her type," I say.

"What's that mean?"

"Just that you guys are different. I don't know. She's also not your type."

"She's hot, that's my type," Quinn says, and we both start to laugh. It begins slow like an engine revving, and then we're both cackling, leaning into each other and gasping for breath, and everything's normal again.

"Mina is my fucking favorite person," I say, "but she's not hot."

"Dude, your eyes deceive you."

"She dresses like a Catholic schoolgirl."

"Caplan, that's literally porn."

"What the fuck?" We're both high and laughing so hard the conversation feels like nonsense. Like Dr. Seuss impossibleness.

"You're telling me you've never thought about it when she's up at the board in her schoolgirl skirt?"

"Jesus Christ, no," I say, still laughing. "No, I haven't. She's like my sister."

"Well, she's not mine."

"So … she like, lets her hair down, and now you like her?"

"I just told you, I like the way her hair looks up," he says.

"So what?"

"So… should I go for it?"

"Sure," I say. "Your funeral."

"Don't be a dick. I'm asking if you'd be cool with it."

"Yeah, of course. I'm not, like, in charge of that. It's up to her, not me." I bite the inside of my cheek at the idea. I can just imagine her face if he tried to lean in, looking at him like he's out of his mind. Which he is.

"I know," he says. "But you know what I mean."

"I don't."

"You guys sort of belong to each other."

I shake my head. I pass him the joint.

"Not like that," he says, taking it, smiling at something across the water. "But yeah. In a way."

His phone rings.

"It's Hollis," he says, looking down. He picks it up on speaker. "Hey, Hol."

"Hey, what's up?" she says.

"I'm with Cap at the lake."

She doesn't say anything for a second.

"Why? What's up?" Quinn asks.

She laughs into the phone. "I was just gonna ask you if he was okay. He, like, ran from my car today like his house was on fire or something, and then hasn't answered any of my texts."

"Oh, fuck," I say, opening my own phone.

"Caplan is very sorry for being an idiot golden retriever," says Quinn, "and he's typing an apology now."

"Thanks, Quinn. You're my bitch."

"Am not."

"Yes, you are. Say you're my bitch."

"I'm your bitch." He hangs up.

"Goddamn it," I say. I can feel Hollis looking at our messages, watching the little typing icon next to my name, laughing at me. She had in fact texted me a few times, once during school, something funny about the condom, once to ask if I was okay, and then once more, calling me a douche.

"Are you having second thoughts?" Quinn asks.

"No, not at all. I just got distracted," I say. "What do I say?"

"Just say you forgot about her."

"I can't fucking say I forgot about her."

"Then just go over and throw rocks at her window."

"It's almost midnight."

"So?"

"We have school tomorrow."

"Oh, come on, man," he says, standing up and offering me his hand. "We're seniors. We're victory lapping. We're in a movie. Go act like it."

Ten minutes later, I'm standing on Hollis's front lawn, and I call her. She picks up.

"Hi, Cap."

"Quinn said to throw pebbles. But I'm being a pussy."

I see the light in her room turn on. She opens the window. "Well?"

"Hi."

"Hi."

"I'm sorry I didn't text you back."

"You shouldn't be allowed to have a phone. You're a waste of a plan."

"I'm just better in person," I say. "This digital age, the overlord screens, the unreality of our modern world—"

"Please shut up."

"Are you gonna come get me?"

"Come around the back."

I make my way up her driveway, sticking close to the house so I won't set off the motion sensor lights. She opens the basement door, the screen hitting the side of her house with a soft click. It reminds me of summer, of sneaking out in middle school, of freshman year, stumbling out and smacking it open just like that, to throw up in the garden. I'd run out in the middle of her giving me a blow job for the first time because we'd shotgunned beers upstairs right before. Hollis is weirdly good at shotgunning.

"Hi," I say again.

She shushes me and pulls me inside. "Are you high?"

"No. Yes. A little."

"You're going to make my bed smell like weed."

"Should I not have come?"

"No." She puts her hands on her hips. "No. I'm glad you came. You look sweet."

"Sweet?"

"Funny. Handsome."

"You look pretty," I say. She does.

"Why are you holding your socks?"

"We put our feet in the water."

"Gross. Come on, lost boy."

"What, are you not gonna do the dock jump before grad?"

"Fair point." She leads me quietly up the carpeted basement steps and then the terrifying wooden staircase in her front hall that always creaks. We pass her school photos, framed in a train alongside her siblings', marching up the wall. I pause as she tugs on my arm, and I take a photo of a photo, zooming in too much—Hollis in a ballerina outfit and a crown, holding roses, no front teeth.

We have sex in her shower, which is always how we do it when her parents are home, and then we get straight into her bed before we're dry, which I know she normally hates, but she's being nice.

"Are you not gonna comb your hair?" I whisper. She always combs her hair after showering. I've never seen it all wet and tangled before.

"Mm," she says, "too sleepy."

"Want me to do it?"

She opens her eyes. "Do you know how?"

"I've watched you do it a hundred times," I say, taking her comb from the nightstand. "Here, sit up."

She does, tucking her knees under her chin, and I sit behind her with my legs on either side of her and comb, starting at the ends, like she always does.

"You're gonna be a really good dad," she says out of nowhere.

I'm glad she can't see my face. "I doubt it," I say, "if I take after mine."

"You won't," she says. "I hope you have a daughter. That's how sure I am that you'll be good."

I'm still combing, even though her hair is smooth. It's a good high activity, repetitive and peaceful. She opens my phone and looks at the picture of her as a little kid that I took on the stairs.

"Wanna make that my background?" I ask.

She gives me a look over her shoulder.

"What? Is that corny?"

"Yes," she says, and she does it, pressing her mouth into her knees, the phone light cool and blue on her face.

I stay till she falls asleep.