Downers Grove Read Online Free

parking lot before going into the theater, and I was swimming in it by the time we bought our tickets.
    We flashed our stubs to the usher and slipped between the folds of red velvet curtain. My eyes took forever to adjust and I wobbled through the darkness. Tracy marched up front so the screen was right in our face. The place was pretty much deserted, except for a clan of jocks munching popcorn toward the back.
    The movie started, and before long my stomach started doingflip-flops, so I went and sat in the lobby. The carpeting had one of those geometric patterns, and I tried following it, like a race car speeding through a video game, but when the room began to swallow itself I ducked into the bathroom and leaned over the toilet bowl for a while. There goes potluck. Afterward I felt a million times better, bought a small Coke to rinse my mouth, then went back into the theater.
    Tracy was front and center, curled into a fetal position, squeezing her toes, her glassy eyes in deep focus. I handed her my Coke, and she grabbed at the straw like someone who just came back from the moon, sucked the whole thing down to one last giant gurgle of ice and backwash, then gave it back to me. I set the cup on the floor.
    The movie made me sad. Everyone in it looked like they’d just survived a train wreck, everyone except Courtney that is. Tracy, however, was on a whole other wavelength. She studied the movie as if it were some kind of how-to manual for boys with guitars strapped over their waists. She felt destined to marry one and took every opportunity to learn more about them, as if she had cast herself in her own movie and was just waiting for the shooting to begin.
    When the house lights came on, Tracy rubbed her hands on her tights, then tucked them under her sweater. “I’m freezing,” she said. I followed her up the aisle and through the lobby, squinting in the harsh light, careful to avoid the mob of head-shaved jocks crowding into the John. We crossed the barren parking lot. A thin layer of dew covered the cars, and the lights hanging overhead shone with the lonely afterglow of day’s end. Tracy’s VW started right up and she cranked the heat. Theweed was wearing off, the depression starting to simmer, slowly creeping back into my life. Tracy turned on the windshield wipers, lit a cigarette, then the whole car started shaking and tilting like that little girl’s bed in
The Exorcist.
I rolled down my window and saw a pack of all-stars rocking the rear bumper of the car. Their leader tapped on Tracy’s window. She rolled it down and blew smoke in his face.
    â€œWhat the fuck is your problem?” Tracy asked.
    â€œEvening ladies.” He waved the smoke away. “Looking for an adventure?”
    â€œWhat are you—a travel agent?” she asked.
    â€œThere’s a killer party around the corner. You should come check it out.” He winked at Tracy. “Unless, of course, you two just want to be alone.”
    â€œWe’ll think about it.” Tracy rolled up her window, then looked over at me with one of her sex-crazed looks. The quarterback batted the top of the VW and danced back over to his blue Camaro. His cronies piled in one after another.
    â€œUh-uh,” I said. “No way.”
    â€œLet’s just check it out,” she said.
    â€œI’m tired of trolling cul-de-sacs. He isn’t even my type’s most distant relative.”
    â€œMaybe he has a cousin or an uncle. Think of it as shopping, if nothing fits we’ll go somewhere else.”
    I just wanted to go home, but Tracy had her own ideas, following a car full of drunken football players through silent subdivisions. I pleaded, but Tracy insisted, so we ended up at some shabby duplex behind a strip mall called Willow Creek. The apartments were faux ski lodge—very seventies. Youcould hear the music in the parking lot, an empty keg was lying at the bottom of the stairs, a fresh puddle of