(NOT fan fiction!) Kurt Cobain and Tally Fisk

Chapter Thirty-One

The swim trunks I'm wearing belong to Kyle's little brother, Kade.

Kyle offered me a pair of his, but they wouldn't stay up. That was fun to admit. Nothing like having to announce to a ripped guy that you're too scrawny to borrow his elastic waist shorts.

But it's too hot to stay out of the pool. And even though I was personally invited to this shindig, I was somehow the only one who didn't get the swimsuit memo. Or the only one dumb enough to not realize it's ten bajillion degrees out and I'm going to a place with a pool.

Why didn't I just run home and get my own swim trunks, you ask? Because I haven't been swimming since eighth grade when I went to the lake with my parents and some of their friends who had a boat.

I was just going to roll up my jeans and dangle my feet in the water but Mavis swam up to me and begged me to swim.

"Don't leave me in here alone to be drowned by all these adolescent drunks," she pleaded, beads of water rolling down her face.

She had a single curl stuck to her forehead and the urge to smooth it back, for some reason, increased my already too high body temperature.

It was Kyle to the rescue. He offered some trunks and we all know how that went.

So, here I am, in the glorious, chlorinated respite from the summer heat, wearing a freshman's shorts.

I suppose an end-of-summer bash at a location with a pool must, by law, include swimming. I'm surprised I remember how.

I've just finished a game of water basketball, me and Chris Belston against Kyle and John. No idea who won. I'll say it was my team. You don't know any different.

Now I'm clinging to the edge of the deep end, chatting with Mavis and trying not to watch John and Brianna talk as they lounge poolside.

The conversation looks serious. I wish I had super hearing powers.

What? I just want them to live happily ever after.

The sun is setting, and shadows stretch longer and longer, blurring into one another, becoming twilight instead of shade.

That's also how the nervous feeling in my stomach seems to be progressing. I can push it away but each time it comes back, it stays longer, taking over more of my body.

It's like I'm forgetting something. It's like when you can't remember how a song starts, the first line, and it's on the tip of your tongue but every time you're about to spit it out the slightest distraction pushes it back into your brain.

I close my eyes and I don't know if I'm trying to make the twisting in my gut go away or trying to hurry it along to take its course so I can figure out what's causing it.

I'm jerked back into reality when Mavis starts toying with my bracelets.

"These are getting a little tattered. Maybe I should make you some new ones?"

Her long fingers tickle my wrist and it feels amazing.

"Absolutely," I say. "But I probably won't take these off until they disintegrate."

"That is more your vibe," she says.

"Hey, Westfahl!" Kyle calls from the covered deck. "Ready for a rematch, my guy? I've got Grey Goose! And Hennessy! Pick your poison!"

"Dude! Why would I rematch when I so clearly won last time?" I call back.

Kyle laughs. "Who says?"

"As I recall, you were passed out when I left!"