"riiiiiick," lucy called to her brother, "rick this is my friend soviet." now my real name is sylvia which i love for sharing with the great, dead-of-her-own-design, ms plath. i changed my name to soviet however, after spying a tattered copy of "the communist manifesto" in the back pocket of mark karlson's skinny maroon corduroys: mark karlson the senior i've harbored a mute, painful crush on for the last two and a half years: delicious, disheveled, angsty, distracted, mark. my perfect mate.

last year i stole mark's worn out army jacket from his locker while he was in chem lab. i slept wrapped in it every night until i developed a bothersome rash on my neck which had to be treated with zinc cream. after that i relegated the jacket to a hanger which hung from a peg on the wall opposite my bed. i'd lie in bed rubbing the cream on my neck, staring at the empty jacket, picturing mark inside it, calling me his girl.

rick didn't so much look up from his game as tilt his head an inch in our direction. a grunted "hey" escaped from a mouth that i am certain never opened. lucy nudged me. i overcame my confusion and took two steps closer to rick. i asked him what he was playing. it took a complete 45 seconds before rick answered me. the silence was horribly uncomfortable. i looked to lucy for support only to find her gone.

lucy reminded me of my task to distract her brother while she stole away to his room, then led us out of the mud room and into a very large gleaming kitchen. to my surprise the interior of the house was actually quite grand: full of dark wood, sumptuous draperies and overstuffed furniture. happy freddy followed at our feet, his nails clicking away on the floor. really not at all what i had expected. the outside of the house had me prepared for something much seedier.

we found rick tucked away in a room down a long hallway that was lined with giant sepia-toned portraits of lucille ball and desi arnez. the room, a sort of extravagant kooky entertainment center, aside from boasting every manner of top of the line entertainment gadget and technology, was equipped with a number of life-size, frozen-in-action sculptural renderings of lucy and desi arnez. a giant reproduction of the indelible "i love lucy" heart buzzed on a wall in purple and white neon, flanked by framed, flattened dresses and suits: pieces of what i presumed to be authentic wardrobe. it dawned on me that lucy was named after "lucy"! and rick, "ricky"! even freddy!! how fucking strange.

rick hadn't noticed us when we walked in, being deeply involved in the video game he was playing. he wasn't at all what i had pictured. he was frail with glasses and the physical presence of a question mark. he wore clothing that i can only describe as forgetable -- unrelatable to any of the dominant "styles" like preppy or skater or hiphop.

lucy pulled up behind her brother's charger. she advised that i leave the cinnabon in the car so as to not tip her brother off about our plans to get high. "the last thing we need is rick and his loser friends fucking up our night," she said. it seemed that smoking pot and eating cinnabons was some sort of family tradition, so much so that to them, one could not be in possession of a cinnabon without having plans to get high.

i followed her suggestion and grabbed only the coke. lucy declined when i asked her if she wanted me to help her clear out some of the trash from the back seat saying she'd get to it later. she insisted on carrying my backpack in for me (i was her guest she persisted). she had a curious but decided code of manners.

the path leading up to the house was unkempt at best: pitilessly littered with cigarette butts and the water-logged, unclaimed newspapers that the paperboy faithfully chucked onto their lawn each day. the surrounding grass was long and trampled. the feeling of ecstacy that i had enjoyed on our wild ride gave way to the possibitly that lucy and her family might be white trash. i wondered what it was i might be in for.

at the instant that lucy cracked open the front door to gain us entry into the house, an eruption of hysterical, high pitched barking nearly caused me to lose my grip on the giant coke. "that's just freddy," lucy comforted. "he's just excited to see us. he'll quiet down in a sec."

freddy was the fattest beagle i've ever seen. he waddled right up to us excitedly. his untrimmed nails made scratching sounds on the linoleum. lucy knelt down to greet him: she scratched his head lovingly while he licked her cheeks and neck. freddy shook rhythmically as his wagging tail transmitted his elation into the rest of his body. "say hi," lucy said. i squatted down to address freddy. he waddled over to me happily. his dancing eyes showed the gluey start of cataract growth.

wild ride

once she pulled us out of the parking lot, lucy really let her rip. she was an absolute demon for speed. she rolled down the windows and the sunroof. she screamed and laughed wildly. the wind pounded our faces and sent our hair whipping in all directions. at a stop sign she took an elastic from her wrist and tied her hair up in a haphazard pony tail at the top of her head. i wondered why she had been so careful with all that hair brushing and make-up when all the while she planned on driving this way.

she told me that she knew exactly where her brother kept his weed. she'd been pilfering buds from his stash all summer. it was my task she said to keep rick busy with converstation while she stole up to his room to procure the necessary supplies for our evening's activities.

the drive to her house was perfectly idyllic. winding country roads. and long straightaways that she'd gas like crazy. i was wide awake now, and in love with chance and the sun and the day. the wind made tears stream from both eyes down my cheeks then pool on my neck near my ears. my heart was pounding -- i was laughing and yelping with lucy out of sheer delight. i breathed air deep into my lungs and exploded it back out again in giggles and shrieks. i opened the last of the two fortune cookies lucy had given me. "dare to dream, hope, believe, seek, feel, find, and love," it urged me. i was feeling hopeful now about everything.