Love Lee

Prologue
14 YEARS AGO

I.

Thump.

Hate.

Thump, thump.

Him.

Thump-a-thump-a-thump-a-thump-thump. Dunk.

Bang-a-bung-a-bang-a-bung-a-bang-a-bung-a-bang-a-bang-a-bang-a-bang.

CRASH.

Pete Johnson hurled his drumsticks at the wall with enough force to leave a mark. They ricocheted off the wood paneling and rattled to the floor. Exhaling, he looked down at his palms and the calluses on every inch of skin, then curled his fingers into fists and pressed his knuckles to his forehead.

Thank God for this room. No one bothered him down here. Not his annoying older sister, not his ghost of a mom with her constant sighing, and not his asshole father. The patchwork of carpet remnants he’d worked so hard to staple to the walls was his fortress. Inside this room, no one could hear him wail on his drums. He could crash his cymbals, and he could scream the Ramones’ “I Wanna Be Sedated” at the top of his lungs. No one gave a shit.

With his chest still heaving from exertion, he rubbed the spot on the side of his head where his father had walloped him. It didn’t actually hurt. His old man hadn’t had nearly enough Budweiser in him to put any real effort into it. In this house, it could almost be considered a love tap. But this whack was humiliating. He’d done it in front of Lee.

Pete got up from behind the Ludwig drum kit he’d bought off of Craigslist and stretched, brushing the ceiling with his fingertips. He’d spent every last penny from his job bagging groceries at Stracks on his drums. Kat thought he was crazy not to save the money to buy himself a car, but someday playing music would take him farther away from this place than any piece-of-crap vehicle could.

He bent down to touch his toes, and his spine and shoulders popped, releasing the tension he’d carried ever since his dad got so mad at him for forgetting to take out the trash. Pete had recently had a growth spurt and felt awkward in his scrawny body, constantly bumping into furniture and getting his limbs tangled up. At just under six feet, he was now taller than almost all the other 15-year-old guys at school, but still not taller than his dad… yet.

He headed over to the drumsticks lying on the faded linoleum, freezing when he heard a creak at the top of the basement stairs.

Kat’s head popped out from behind the door. “They’re gone,” his sister shouted.

Thank fuck. He’d half expected his mom to say goodbye before heading out to their casino weekend in Gary, but his father must have been eager to get on the road. Relieved, Pete shoved his sticks into his back pocket and trudged upstairs.

Kat and her friend were hanging out in the kitchen, so he avoided it, but from the corner of his eye, he could see Lee’s trim thighs and bare feet poking out from under the table as he quickly swept past the archway.

“Hey, Petey!”

He stopped mid-stride. “Hey, Katrina.” His sister hated her full name, so he used it whenever she called him Petey.

“Mom left you a plate.”

Pete had been hiding in the basement ever since the blow-to-the-head-in-front-of-Lee thing. He almost told Kat he wasn’t hungry, but she would never believe that. He was always hungry, and the loud growl his stomach had just made meant lying would only make him look like an even bigger loser in front of Lee. 

He walked into the kitchen, and he couldn’t help it, his eyes went straight to her. Lee was so pretty, but she wasn’t stuck-up about it. She acted like she had no idea, like she looked just like everyone else. But she had to know she was special. Pete had been jerking off to her image in his head for just about as long as he’d been jerking off.

She had this honey-blonde hair whenever she wasn’t dying it some crazy color. It was a dark blue at the moment, the same shade as her eyes. And she was kind of small, way smaller than his sister, but curvy, and those short shorts she wore left little to the imagination.

He could barely look at her now, after what his dad had done right in front of her.

Pete opened the refrigerator and grabbed a Coke off the shelf. He lifted the tab just until the initial escape of gas hissed out, then shook the can and slurped the small amount of liquid filling the top.

“Ew, Peter. That’s so gross.” Kat stuck out her tongue, gagging like she was about to throw up. “You’re such a child sometimes.”

He didn’t even know why he still did it, but he’d been taking his first sip of pop that way since he and his friend Dawes first perfected the technique at vacation bible camp when they were eight. But Lee’s laughter pretty much guaranteed this would be the last time. He fully opened the can and took a proper sip.

“So, Mom left us in charge.”

“I don’t need anyone in charge of me.” Coke splashed on his shirt. He set the can down on the counter, not wanting to spill anymore on himself. God, they were only three years older but Kat acted like they were in a whole different generation.

“You remember what happened the last time Mom and Dad were away for the weekend?”

His eyes darted to Lee, and he caught her clamping her smiling lips shut. The “Parkour Incident” was probably something he would never live down. His ankle would probably never be the same either.

“So, what does that mean exactly?” He peeled back the corner of aluminum foil covering the dish his mom had left for him. Meatloaf. It was usually his favorite but everything was congealed and the smell turned his stomach. “Are you gonna check to make sure I brush my teeth before bed? You’re free to sniff my breath anytime, Kitty Kat.”

“Do you see what I have to put up with?” Kat asked, turning to Lee. “No, shithead. I don’t care what you do with your body.”

Against his will, his eyes flashed back to Lee. Thankfully she was staring at her fingernails, not him.

“We’re throwing a party tomorrow night,” his sister explained. “But you can’t be there. It’s for seniors only—and maybe a few exceptionally cool juniors and sophomores. So that obviously means not you.”

This was bullshit! “What am I supposed to do? Stay in my room? Or maybe I should hang out in the basement and play my drums all night? Am I allowed to come up when I have to take a leak? Or are you gonna bring a bucket down there for me?” 

“Ugh, you’re such a freak! Can’t you go to a friend’s house? John’s or Dawes’s, or one of the other band geeks?”

“Kat, don’t kick him out of his own home.” Lee’s voice was quiet but oddly authoritative. There was a reason she’d been the youngest editor in the history of the high school paper. “He’s not going to cause any trouble,” she stated like it was gospel. “Right, Peter?” 

***

Lying on his back, Pete stared at the water stain on the ceiling directly over his bed. He saw a different shape every time he looked at it, but mostly he saw faces, especially when he was high like now. The particular face glaring down at him tonight was a dead ringer for his Spanish teacher, Señora Kapinsky. Preferring not to stare at her double chin and beady eyes any longer, he closed his eyes and turned up the volume on his iPod.

Pete winced as his mind wandered back to Kat’s bitchiness in the kitchen. His sister didn’t want him at her party. She didn’t even want him in the house. And she’d called him a band geek. She wasn’t wrong. He was in marching band, and he was a geek. But how could he be anything else with a name like Peter Johnson? What were his parents thinking? It was practically child abuse. They might as well have named him Penis Shlongdong.

He’d read an article once about nominative determinism. It was this totally dumb theory that people were destined to fulfill the promise of their names. Like Bob Ember couldn’t help but become a fireman, or David Shields a police officer. Maybe his folks had wanted a porn star for a son.

Pete did have a pretty impressive dick, though no one, as of yet, had been close enough to it to corroborate his own humble opinion. But he’d seen enough porn to think that him being a porn star one wasn’t out of the realm of possibility… something to discuss with the career counselor at school. And then he was thinking about porn. And then he was thinking about Lee.

He heard a knock and opened his eyes to find his door inching open and her blue head peeking in.

“Hey, Peter. Can I come in?”

Swallowing hard, he pushed up on his elbow as she walked over and climbed onto the mattress. Stretched out beside him, she pulled out one of his earbuds and fit it into her own ear.

After a few moments of listening, she asked, “What’s this one?”

“Joy Division. ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart.’”

“I like it,” she said. “Will you put this one on the next playlist?”

It had started about a year ago. On a particularly rough day, Pete had locked himself in his room and, thinking no one else was home, put Rage Against the Machine on full blast. The sound was so loud it vibrated off his walls, practically rattling the windows. And just like now, there’d been a knock on his door. When he opened the door, Lee stood on the other side.

“God, Peter. My knuckles are practically bleeding from banging so hard. Could you please turn it down? We’re trying to study.”

After that, she’d asked what he was listening to. Lee had so many questions—about the band and about other music Pete liked. Most of the kids in their town listened to rap or country music. She’d never heard of most of the bands he mentioned, but she seemed genuinely interested in what he had to say.

Then she’d surprised him even more by asking if he would make her a playlist. Pete had poured his soul into that first list of songs. If she’d only realized it, he was sharing something with her that was as personal as if it were a diary. She told him she’d listened to the playlist every day for weeks, until she’d memorized the words to every song.

He now made Lee playlists all the time—when he was angry or depressed, or happy. And some of his playlists were love letters. Every word he wished he could say to her were in those songs, like how kind she was. And gorgeous.

“Promise me you’ll keep sending them to me, even when I’m at Columbia?” Her mouth turned down. “I’m worried I’m gonna be this little fish in a big sea. Your songs will make me think of home.”

“Okay.” Pete was going to miss her terribly when she left town in the fall.

“So, what do you think of the blue?” She ran her fingers through a lock of her hair and inspected the ends critically.

“I like it, but…”

She turned on her side so that they were eye to eye. Because of their height difference, Pete wasn’t used to seeing her face so close-up. There was a tiny freckle above her lip, and it would be so easy to just kiss it. He wouldn’t even have to move to do it.

“But?” She raised her eyebrows and bit her lip.

“I don’t know. Your natural color is nice too.”

 “It’s alright, but it’s nothing special. Believe me, if my hair color were as pretty as yours, I wouldn’t touch it.” She reached over and ruffled the top of his head. “It always looks like you’ve been out in the sun.” Her hand traveled down the side of his head, stopping where his father had smacked him.

When she gently probed the spot, he sucked in a breath and turned his eyes away, ashamed all over again at what she’d witnessed.

“Oooh, I love this song!” she squealed, rolling onto her back as a new track began. “Put this one on the next list too. “Even Brandon likes it.”

Great. It annoyed the crap out of Pete that she let her boyfriend listen to the playlists he made her. For sure, Brandumb was invited to the party.

“Lee! Where are you?” Kat yelled from downstairs. “I made the popcorn. You better get your ass down here before I eat the whole bowl!”

“I’ll be right down,” Lee yelled back, yanking out the earbud. She got up from the bed and adjusted her shorts, pulling them down over her butt. “We’re gonna put on a movie. You can join us if you want.”

He almost said yes. The thought of sitting on a couch next to Lee, the fantasy of her nodding off against his shoulder, was strongly persuasive. But Kat would be there, and the sight of his sister’s stupid face was a huge turn-off.

“Nah, that’s okay. I was already planning to watch a movie on Pornhub later.”

Lee laughed on her way out the door, no doubt thinking he was kidding.