Everything You Want Me to Be

by Mindy Mejia

  LitGeek: Hi everyone. I’m new to the forum. I saw the discussion on Thomas Pynchon’s book signing next week and CAN’T BELIEVE IT. I won’t be in New York then, but if anyone is planning to go, can I send you a book for him to sign and $50.00 for your trouble?

  HollyG: $50 for your trouble? You must be from the Midwest.

  LitGeek: Guilty. How did you know?

  HollyG: Because nobody would do it for less than $200 and it’s not going to happen anyway. Thomas Pynchon’s an urban myth.

  LitGeek: Hmm. I’ve read his books and bio and he seems pretty corporeal to me.

  HollyG: Not the guy. The book signing is an urban myth. You’re a newbie so you don’t know the Thomas Pynchon book signing is like Giuliani running for president, like the construction finishing on the crosstown, like Amelia Earhart’s plane landing at JFK.

  LitGeek: Oh. Right. That sucks. I was excited. So why are people posting about this event like it’s going to happen?

  I sent the next message in a PM.

  HollyG: Some people think it’s funny, but most of them just want your $200. I flagged the thread for the moderators to take down. They can be pretty slow, though.

  LitGeek (replying to the PM): I guess I should thank you for saving me the cash and the disappointment.

  HollyG: Can’t let a fellow Midwesterner get suckered by the scammers.

  LitGeek: You’re from or live there now?

  HollyG: Live there now, temporarily. I’ll be in NY by this time next year.

  LitGeek: Where are you now?

  HollyG: Southern MN.

  LitGeek: Me too(!), unfortunately. What town are you in?

  HollyG: Too embarrassing to say. Besides, you’re probably a child molester and I’m not going to meet up with you at the local Perkins.

  LitGeek: We’re definitely not from the same town then, if you can boast of a Perkins. So, to clarify, if I’m a child molester, are you the six-year-old on your dad’s computer?

  HollyG: Of course.

  LitGeek: Then let me give you a tip. Don’t go through Daddy’s temporary internet files.

  HollyG: lol

  LitGeek: Oh—I get it now.

  HollyG: ??

  LitGeek: HollyG. Except you’re still Lula Mae at the moment, aren’t you?

  HollyG: Took you long enough if you’re really a LitGeek.

  LitGeek: What can I say? I’m as slow as this internet connection. It’s a good thing I don’t actually have anyone to talk to.

  HollyG: Poor, friendless LitGeek. [Violin playing]

  LitGeek: I know, I know. It’s just that I moved out to the sticks pretty recently and feel out of touch with all my friends.

  HollyG: You came here voluntarily??? As a consenting adult?

  LitGeek: That’s a matter of debate. I came because of my wife.

  HollyG: So why don’t you talk to your wife?

  LitGeek: Uh . . . I do.

  HollyG: No, you said you didn’t have anyone to talk to, remember? What about your wife?

  LitGeek: Oh, right. You’re obviously not married.

  HollyG: I’m six. I can’t even legally work in a sweatshop yet.

  LitGeek: lol

  HollyG: So, LitGeek, who are your favorite authors besides the elusive Mr. Pynchon? Obviously not Capote . . .

  It went on like that for weeks. September turned into October and everything else seemed normal. The entire school went crazy when the football team made regional playoffs. I got fitted for costumes at the theater and rehearsals were off-script now. Midterms started and Portia’s dad freaked out when she got a D on her trigonometry test.

  I was practically oblivious to all of it. Instead, I constantly checked the forum on my phone. Every time I looked at the PM he’d left a new message. Sometimes we started new PMs for new topics, and a lot of nights we were online at the same time, talking in real time for hours. He told me about Don DeLillo and David Foster Wallace and we debated the best works of Tom Stoppard and Edward Albee. We agreed on how fabulous the new Guthrie Theater building was and disagreed on how awful the Rochester theater scene was. I didn’t tell him about my role in Jane Eyre. We were both careful to not say too much about our lives. He called his house a death camp once, but he never talked about his job or his wife. He asked me things like if I could inhabit the life of any character in a book, who would I be? I had no idea. I became the main character in every book I read. I felt myself inside their skin, but it didn’t have anything to do with liking them or wanting to be them. He said when he was young he wanted to be Charlie Bucket and when he was twenty he read Love in the Time of Cholera and felt strangely jealous of Florentino Ariza, who I guess loved a woman he couldn’t have for fifty years. I said if he wanted to be frustrated and sad his whole life, why didn’t he just become a guidance counselor? He laughed and then he said, “Florentino knew what he wanted. Even Charlie knew what he wanted. I guess I’d just like to know what my chocolate factory is.”

  He was married and probably bald and fat and gassy, too—and none of that mattered because we weren’t in the real world. I told him how I really felt about everything, how I wanted to move to New York more than anything but that sometimes I was scared, because I didn’t have a plan or know anybody and I couldn’t tell anyone that. He said anything worth doing should scare you a little, and that some of the greatest stories began with a journey. Then I started posting Journey lyrics and pretty soon we were both rocking out to “Don’t Stop Believing.” I started imagining LitGeek when I was in bed at night, feeling my skin and my heartbeat under the sheets, my head bursting with everything I was going to see and do, and I pretended my hands were his as they skimmed up my thighs, that he was exploring me, that he wanted me, too.

  LitGeek: You know today is our month anniversary of PMing?

  HollyG: Aren’t you the chick this evening?

  LitGeek: I guess that makes you the man in our relationship.

  HollyG: I don’t know if you can call a couple of messages a relationship. And a month? God, I don’t think anniversaries start until a year.

  LitGeek: Of course it’s a relationship. Everything is. You can have a relationship with a chicken, for God’s sake.

  HollyG: Only a country girl could read that and not take it the wrong way.

  LitGeek: So you admit it at last, Lula Mae.

  HollyG: I admit nothing. That was only a general statement. For all you know, I took it completely the wrong way.

  LitGeek: Oh really? :P

  HollyG: Come here, pretty hens. LitGeek won’t hurt you . . . much.

  LitGeek: rotfl

  HollyG:

  LitGeek: How little you know me. I wouldn’t lure them like that. I’m much more subtle.

  HollyG: So what would your approach be?

  LitGeek: Hmmm . . . I never thought about seducing a chicken.

  I held my breath as his last reply lingered on the monitor. I typed slowly, deliberately, feeling the anticipation bubble in my chest.

  HollyG: Pretend I’m a chicken. Give it your best shot.

  He didn’t answer for a full minute.

  LitGeek: Are you sure?

  And that’s when I fell, when I knew I was in love with this ghost of a man. He didn’t try to make it funny or play it off. His reply told me that he was tempted, but he wouldn’t do it unless I was absolutely certain. My heart started racing as I typed.

  HollyG: Yes.

  LitGeek: Well . . .

  My eyes were glued to the screen.

  LitGeek: First . . .

  He was never this slow a typer. I could practically hear him thinking, see his eyes scan my body as he decided on the first caress.

  LitGeek: I would brush my fingertips up your back, starting at your hips and tracing all the way up to your neck, to the hollows beneath your ears where you said you were ticklish. But this won’t tickle . . .

  That was the first night we had sex.

  I sat in English class one day in the middle of October, trying to
concentrate on the lecture because Mr. Lund would call on anyone without warning, yet also daydreaming about last night’s chat with LitGeek. I’d cracked him up after he randomly mentioned Jane Eyre and I replied that it would have been a much better book if the wife had burned Mr. Rochester in his bed, pinned it on Jane, and then taken London by storm. He said that would blow the morality tale completely, then I pointed out the only one who wouldn’t get exactly what they deserved was Jane, and she should have caught on to the whole setup by then anyway. Stupidity probably sent a lot of people to the gallows. Why should Jane be an exception? That’s when he told me I would make a good dictator and we both laughed.

  I startled out of my daydream though, when the stacks of our next book were passed around the class.

  It was Jane Eyre.

  “I know it’s not the most thrilling read for the guys, but trust me when I say any Brontë is better than Jane Austen.”

  “Why can’t we read something from this century?” someone asked.

  “This century’s only a few years old. It would be a lot slimmer pickings and all the books are still in first-run prints, so they’re pricier. The school district’s not going to pay for that, although you did not hear it from me.”

  “Isn’t this the one where the wife’s bonkers and locked in the attic?” Jenny Adkins asked while reading the back cover. She was a total anglophile, watched any British movie ever made, and was completely in love with Hugh Grant. I tried to tell her once what a horrible actor he was, but she just sighed and said, “He’s not an actor. He’s a star.”

  “No spoilers, Jenny. Come on.” The class laughed as Mr. Lund leaned on the edge of his desk the way he always did when he settled into a lecture. “Actually, someone just told me the other day that this book would be a lot better if the wife burned the hero in his bed, pinned it on the heroine, and then blew all his money in London.”

  I barely heard the class’s laughter. Oh my God. OH MY GOD. His face blurred in and out of focus. His face, LitGeek’s face, the face I’d been dreaming about for weeks. The face I’d been dreading to see and dying to touch was right here in the same room with me. I froze, and my heart started pounding so loud I thought for sure Portia would hear it. Oh my God.

  “Hattie?”

  I jumped, snapping out of the shock. “What?”

  “Welcome back.” He grinned, and I swallowed hard. “I said I assumed you’ve read this already.”

  “Yes, I have.” It had become kind of a joke between teacher and teacher’s pet. I’d read everything in the syllabus except for some book about Vietnam that wasn’t assigned until Thanksgiving.

  “Any thoughts to share with the class before we all dive in?”

  I could do it right now. I could make some flip comment about the book being a morality tale, quoting him exactly from last night, and he would know. His eyes would widen, his skin would pale. I could see the scene play out, how the knowledge would flood him and make him weak and shocked and ashamed. He would break off all contact with me and I would never get to talk to him outside of English class.

  And that’s why I didn’t.

  “I liked how Jane took control of her life. She made her own fate.”

  I stared out the window as I said it, unable to make eye contact with him. I was afraid he’d somehow see it in my eyes, that he’d guess the truth and our cyber affair would be over.

  It was surprisingly easy to be in love with Peter—I thought of him as Peter in my head now even though I still called him LitGeek online and Mr. Lund in school. It felt like he was playing parts, just like me. I watched him at pep rallies and memorized his wardrobe and his class schedule. I even knew what car he drove—a beat-up blue Mitsubishi that some of the jocks made fun of because it was foreign and anyone who drove anything besides a GM or Ford around here was suspect. The only teacher I saw him talking to was Mr. Jacobs, who was totally lame. All he ever wanted to teach in his history classes were wars; he always went on about what country attacked who and drew endless diagrams of battlefields on the board. As far as friends went, pickings were pretty slim and it didn’t take long to realize Peter didn’t have anyone besides me.

  But oh, how he had me.

  I was restocking product one day at CVS when Mary Lund came in for her mother’s prescriptions. I didn’t recognize her. She’d grown up in Pine Valley, but was eight years older than me, so I’d never known her. It wasn’t until I heard her and the pharmacist talking about Elsa Reever, Peter’s mother-in-law, that I realized who she was. I froze for a minute, feeling flushed and guilty, even though I knew she had no idea her husband spent almost every night talking to me. I grabbed a carton of antihistamines and took them to the cough and cold section to get a better look at her.

  She wasn’t too tall or too short, or too fat or too thin. She wasn’t too anything. Her hair was dishwater blond and pulled back into a ponytail. She was sunburned, dressed in old jeans and the kind of plain pullover hoodie that you bought at Fleet Farm for ten bucks. I couldn’t see anything special about her, any reason why Peter would have chosen her. The only distinctive thing about her was a couple of large moles in front of her right ear. From a distance it looked like a vampire had missed his mark and bitten her face.

  I stood close enough to hear the whole conversation while stocking the shelves, and made my expression look bored so no one would think I was eavesdropping.

  “How is she doing on the oxygen?” the pharmacist asked.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. Her energy level isn’t any different, but she says it makes her feel better.”

  “Sometimes that’s the most important thing.”

  “I guess so. She still can’t move farther than one room at a time before she has to sit down and rest.”

  “Elsa’s lucky to have you out there. Most folks in the same condition would be in a home by now.”

  I could hear her sigh ten feet away. “Maybe she should be in a facility. I worry about leaving her, even for little trips like this.”

  “But your husband’s with her.”

  “Right.” There was a pause. “You’re right.”

  They talked about the drugs for a few minutes, dosage and side effects stuff, and then she left.

  Mom had already told me that Peter lived with his wife at the old Reever farm and now the story started to come together. I tried to remember the last time I saw Mrs. Reever. She went to the same church we did, but I hadn’t noticed her in the congregation lately. Maybe she was too weak to go, which meant she might be close to dead or maybe they’d put her in a nursing home like Peter’s wife just mentioned. Either way it meant Peter would leave town. That horrible thought created a bubble of panic in me that I couldn’t shake for the rest of the week.

  The next Sunday, Mrs. Reever came to church. Peter and his wife helped her up the steps, one on each of her arms, and it looked like they were moving in slow motion. They finally got her settled in the last pew and she clutched the oxygen tube, breathing shallow little gasps that made the polyester flowers on her dress stir pathetically. Peter set the oxygen tank down and his wife looked briefly grateful, but he didn’t see it. After that, she spent the rest of the service helping her mother. He tried to talk to her once, but either she didn’t hear him or she was ignoring him. When it was time to sing the hymns, she was the only one of them who stood up. Mrs. Reever mouthed the words, apparently by heart since she had no hymnal, and Peter didn’t even bother to pick one up. He just stared at the pew in front of them, sometimes glancing up at the pulpit or around the church, and then he caught me watching him.

  My heart jumped and even though I felt my cheeks start to color, I didn’t whip around to the front. That would have been a dead giveaway. While I tried to figure out what to do, he smiled. Not just the smile a teacher gives his student when they cross paths outside of school, but a genuine, I’m-happy-to-see-this-person smile. His eyes crinkled up and his teeth flashed and for the briefest second he looked exactly like I’d dreamed when I fa
ntasized about telling him the truth. I couldn’t breathe, let alone keep singing the stupid hymn. I returned his smile and lifted my fingers in greeting, then swiveled back to the front slowly, hoping he was still watching me, that his eyes lingered on my silhouette and liked what they saw.

  And that’s when I decided. With my heart thumping, feeling the secret words I prayed every week burning in my throat, I was flooded with a need more powerful than I’d ever felt before. The realization almost dropped me to my knees in the middle of the service. I wanted Peter to smile at me like that every day, to grab my hands and tell me everything he was thinking. I wanted to wrap my legs around him and feel him sink into me. I wanted to smell the sweat of his sleeping body in the summertime while the cicadas screamed in the night.

  It was time for HollyG to meet LitGeek.

  PETER / October 2007

  RUNNING WAS the best part of my day because it let me forget. There was something about the balance of the quiet land against a cadence of steady footfalls that wiped every higher thought from my head. I regularly jogged the lake trails in Minneapolis, and after we moved here I started running the back roads by the farm until I found a better route. I joined the Pine Valley High School cross-country team.