Free (You) Set Me on Fire by Mariko Tamaki

ideal for picking up a date, but I guess it sent the right message). Carly and a bunch of people, including what looked like some of the guys from the film society, were the entire cast of Grease .@, c
    It’s not strange that things got a little weird and messy that night. Although how and why they gotmessy the way they did was a surprise. At some point Shar and I were just awkwardly standing in the doorway. Then someone got us some beer. Then we posed with the Village People. Then we posed with the cast of Grease . Then Shar/Cher and I posed for someone working for the newspaper who wanted a picture of us “as a couple.”
    Shar/Cher grinned. “Ya gonna kiss me, Sonny?”
    I think I grinned back. “You wanna kiss, uh, Cher?”
    I remember leaning in and thinking, Fake kiss. No big deal. Fake kiss.
    I was surgically careful. Edged closer in a series of degrees.
    As our lips met, like someone touching a new baby’s forehead, behind us I could hear whoops and hollers.
    “Sonny. That’s the way you kiss your wife?” Shar smirked as we headed to the bar.
    “What do you mean?”
    “What do you think?”
    Shar/Cher spun around, pressed her finger on my already damp moustache.
    Briefly, time stopped. Shar/Cher’s face came so close to mine I could see the ring of perspiration forming along the coastline where her wig dug intoher forehead. Her breath smelled like gum. But she wasn’t chewing gum. Her eyes looked different, less calm, less collected, like there was suddenly something happening behind the layer of her irises.
    I couldn’t say what.
    “There’s nothing wrong with it, Sonny.”
    “What? Yeah. I mean, I know.”
    You can make a person’s heart beat faster for a multitude of reasons, medical, social, sociopathic. What kind of person makes another person’s heart beat faster just for kicks?
    And then disappears?
    Cher/Shar was drinking shots at the bar with the rest of Grease and some vaguely familiar girls dressed up like Playboy bunnies, and then she was gone.
    It took me three songs to realize she wasn’t coming back. Not any time soon anyway.
    I guess I had no right to be pissed off, but I totally was.
    Using my (still unreturned) Jennifer Taylor ID, I ordered another drink. Then I went and sat in the corner with a bunch of stoned-looking dudes who weren’t in costume, where I was approached by a tall dude in black, wearing a pumpkin head anda top hat. A tall dude who appeared somewhat magically out of a disco smoke while the Cure was playing.
    “Greetings and salummmfph.” The pumpkin bowed awkwardly, holding his head up so as not to pitch forward and, presumably, lose his hat. His voice was a muffled chirp hidden within layers of what looked like real pumpkin. “May I mmmmphf as to the mmmphf of your seventies atmmph?”
    “What?”
    Removing the head and replacing the top hat, the familiar boy smiled and sat.
    “Uh. Yes. I was saying, uh, greetings and salutations. You’re in my Social Problems class, I believe. I was asking about your, uh, funky seventie basketball">OHs outfit.
    I was, uh, attempting some random college dance small talk as it were.”
    “I’m supposed to be Sonny. From Sonny and Cher.”
    “Ah yes. ‘I Got You Babe.’ Excellent. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Jonathon.” Dude looked more nervous and out of place than anyone I’d met since arriving at St. Joseph’s, which was both thrilling (because it wasn’t me) and super annoying (because other people’s nervousness, unless they’re good looking, is annoying).
    Jonathon, nervous or not, blabbed on in a stream of weirdly accented talk. “It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance. I suppose I am ‘Pumpkin Head’ for the purposes of this particular event.”
    Disco light danced in the crevices of Jonathon’s pitted skin. Looking at him, I had a moment of memory, a burp of recognition. Social Problems class. RIGHT! This was the guy who’d tripped the basketball player in the hallway the first day of class.