Penpal

by Dathan Auerbach

  I told Josh about the situation, but he just made fun of Alex. Part of me understood why Josh found it funny, but I insisted that he talk to Veronica since Alex had done a nice thing for me. He told me that he would tell his sister because I wanted him to, though I doubted that he would. Josh was annoyed that people seemed to be so taken with his sister. I remember him calling her an ugly crow. I never said anything to Josh, but I remember wanting to say, even then, that Veronica was pretty and would one day be beautiful.

  I was right.

  When I was fourteen, I was a freshman at a high school that was comprised of two distinct populations of students. The majority of the students lived in the district for that school, and they attended it as regular pupils, but there was a small percentage of the student body that commuted to the school to attend a completely separate program with a fundamentally different curriculum that was designed to prepare students for college. I was in this program.

  The school was located in a predominantly poor area, and as is often the case for whatever reason, this poverty was coexistent with an underperformance of many of the school’s general population. Some of these students had full-time jobs by their junior year, while others simply elected not to come to class. As a result, the school, as a whole, was a failing one. Because the collective grade of the school was an “F,” its funding from the state had been significantly reduced, which meant that it became more difficult to get the necessary resources to raise the grade of the school. As a last resort out of this true “catch-22,” my program was placed in the school to raise the overall grade without having to address any of the actual reasons why the school was failing to begin with.

  I had hoped that the fact that my program attracted kids from all over the city would mean that Josh and I might finally attend the same school again, since it had been ten years since we were in the same class, not to mention the same school. But there was a good deal of stigma attached to attending a program like this, and so I understood why Josh apparently decided to attend his district school. Other kids from my first elementary school, however, had made different choices.

  For the most part, this common origin didn’t translate into easier conversation like I had expected it might. But it did allow me to befriend someone from my elementary school that I hadn’t actually known that well when I was a kid, though I remembered him very distinctly.

  When I saw him, I recognized him immediately; although his hair was longer than it had been back then, his face hadn’t changed that much, and I could still picture him crying and pouting after our kindergarten teacher scolded him for releasing his balloon too early.

  It was Chris.

  He had apparently forgotten about that episode, and when I brought it up, he attempted to deny it coolly, but laughed so hard that he completely confirmed it. The memory of him clutching the empty air with his tight fist held just out of the frame of the class photograph catalyzed a fit of laughter in the both of us. I got to know him and his friends Ryan and Adam fairly well. We didn’t have that much in common, in the end, but we had similar senses of humor, and we all liked movies – and that was enough.

  As a result of our one common interest, we had taken to frequenting special screenings of old movies at a place we had come to call “The Dirt Theatre.” It was probably nice at some point, but time and neglect had weathered the place severely. I’m not sure if the building was built as a theatre or if it had been repurposed. The floors were level, and rather than rows of fixed seats, there were movable tables and chairs. This latter fact was actually the attempted selling point of the business – their portable furniture was featured in every commercial and advertisement.

  The interior layout was so bad that when the theatre was even partially full, there were very few places you could sit and see the whole screen. In some of the theatres, there were actually support columns in the middle of the room that blocked entire portions of the screen if you were unlucky enough to sit anywhere behind them.

  Despite all this, the theatre was still open, and I imagine that there were three reasons for this: 1) the tickets and concessions were cheap; 2) they showed a different cult movie on Friday and Saturday twice a month at midnight; and 3) they sold beer to underage kids during the midnight showings. I went for the first two.

  The theatre showed movies during the day – ones that had just left real theatres – and as near as I could tell, the day showings accounted for the majority of The Dirt Theatre’s business. But in all the times that I had gone to see a matinee there, not once had a movie ever started on time. In fact, there had been a time when the movie had started twenty minutes late, and the projectionist had actually sped up the film so that the schedule wouldn’t be compromised. Despite all this, the midnight showings always started at exactly midnight. It was a strange business model, but one that must have worked because, as far as I know, the theatre is still open for business.

  In my sophomore year of high school, when I was fifteen, Chris, Adam, Ryan, and I went to The Dirt Theatre to see Scanners by David Cronenberg for a dollar. We had arrived with enough time to secure virtually whatever seats we wanted, but we sat in the very back of the theatre. I wanted to sit closer to the front for a good view, but since Ryan had driven us, the choice was his; rather than a good view, we were left with virtually no view at all, but for some reason Adam and I were the only ones who seemed bothered by this.

  There were no previews before the midnight feature, so much of the audience would slide in close to show time. Just a few minutes before the movie started, a group of attractive girls walked into the steadily-filling theatre . Whatever conversation my friends and I were having stalled and quickly died away as we watched them make their way to the seats they had chosen. Chris and the other two in our party made unsavory comments while I sat silently and watched the girls continue on their path. Each of the girls was attractive in her own way, but whatever beauty the other girls might have had, it was eclipsed by the girl with the dirty blonde hair – even though I had only caught a glimpse of her profile. As she turned to move her seat, I caught a full view of her face, and it gave me the feeling of butterflies in my stomach. It was Veronica.

  I hadn’t seen her in a long time. Josh and I saw progressively less of one another after we snuck out to my old house that night when we were ten, and usually when I would visit him, she’d be out with friends. But here she was. Of all the places she could have been, she was sitting right in front of me at the worst movie theatre in the city. I couldn’t stop looking at her. While everyone stared at the screen, I stared at Veronica – only looking away when the feeling that I was being a creep overcame me, but that feeling would quickly subside, and my eyes would return to her. She really was beautiful, just like I had thought she’d be when I was a kid.

  When the credits started to roll, my friends got up and left the room; there was only one exit, and they didn’t want to be trapped waiting for the crowd to clear. I lingered in hopes of catching Veronica’s attention, though I had no idea what I should say. As she and her friends walked by, I took a chance.

  “Hey, Veronica?”

  She turned toward me, looking a little startled.

  “Yeah?”

  I got out of my seat and stepped a little into the light that was coming in through the open door.

  “It’s me. Josh’s old friend from way back … How … How’ve you been?”

  Her mind seemed to search for the right frame of reference, until finally, it clicked.

  “Oh my god! Hey! It’s been so long!” She motioned to her friends that she’d be out in a second.

  “Yeah, a few years at least! Not since the last time I stayed over with Josh … How’s he doing, anyway?”

  “Oh, that’s right. I remember all you guys’ games. Do you still play Ninja Turtles with your friends?”

  She laughed a little, and I blushed.

  “No. I’m not a kid anymore … Me and my friends play X-Men now.” I was really hoping she’d lau
gh.

  She did. “Haha! You’re cute. Do you come to these movies every time?”

  What did she say?

  Does she really think I’m cute?

  Did she just mean I’m funny?

  Does she think I’m attractive?

  I was still reeling from what she said when I suddenly realized that she had asked me a question; my mind grasped for what it was.

  “Yeah!” I said much too loudly. “Yeah, I try to anyway … what about you?”

  “I come every now and then. My boyfriend didn’t like these movies, but we just broke up, so I plan on coming more often.”

  I felt my heart flutter a bit, and I tried to be casual, but I failed. “Oh, well that’s cool … not that you guys broke up! I just meant that you’d be able to come more often.”

  She laughed again.

  I tried to recover, “So are you coming the week after next? They’re supposed to show Day of the Dead …”

  She looked a little hesitant, so I pressed further and pretended to be charming. “I think we’ve gotten to know each other pretty well in the last few minutes; I’m pretty positive you’d like the movie, especially if you went to the Saturday showing.”

  She chuckled. “Well in that case, I’ll be here!”

  I wanted so badly to know if she was coming because I had asked her or if she had already intended to attend, but I convinced myself that it didn’t matter; she would be there either way. I was about to suggest that maybe we could sit together when she quickly closed the space between us and hugged me.

  “It was really good to see you,” she said with her arms around me.

  I was trying to think of what to say when I realized that my biggest problem was that I had forgotten how to talk. Luckily, Chris, who I could hear approaching from the hallway, came in and spoke for me while Veronica incapacitated me with her embrace.

  “Dude. You know the movie’s over right? Let’s get the fuck outtu— OHHH BABY!”

  Veronica let go and said that she’d see me next time. She was played out of the room by the porn music Chris was making with his mouth. I was furious, but it dissipated as soon as I heard Veronica laughing in the lobby.

  On the ride home, Adam asked me how I knew the girl. I explained that he was my best friend’s sister, and this caused an immediate uproar. Chris might have remembered Josh, but their reaction made me glad that I hadn’t mentioned who my friend was, since that would have only served to intensify Chris’ gibing disapproval. I attempted to defend myself by saying that we weren’t really good friends anymore since we hardly ever spoke, but as soon as I said this, I felt terrible. There was a lull in the conversation; I think they understood that it had gone in a bad direction for me – Chris attempted to fix this by leaning over the center console of the car and making kissing sounds at Ryan. The tension broke, and my feelings of guilt began to evaporate as my thoughts returned to Veronica.

  I spent the next week and a half in impatient anticipation for what I was planning on considering my first date, even though it probably wouldn’t be a date at all. I thought about what I would say, whether I would try to sit next to her, and what might happen if we somehow wound up alone together, without our respective groups of friends; I even thought about what I would wear, which was not something I had ever really put much consideration into. Day of the Dead couldn’t come soon enough.

  Just a few days before the movie, however, the whole plan began to unravel. Ryan told me that he and his family were going out of town, so he wouldn’t be able to drive us. Neither Chris nor Adam had cars, so as a last resort I asked my mom if she could take me. I felt nervous as I walked into the living room to ask her because she seemed to strongly prefer that I go out with a group of friends if I was going to go out at all. However, I think the real reason I was nervous was that this would leave me without any kind of buffer between Veronica and myself. No buffer except for the one offered by her friends, but that provided no comfort to me – talking to one girl made me nervous enough.

  When I asked my mother, she responded by telling me that she would think about it, but I persisted, and she noticed the desperation in my voice. She asked why I wanted to go so badly since I had seen the movie before, and I hesitated before saying that I was hoping to see a girl there. She smiled and asked playfully if she knew the girl; remembering the reactions of my friends the night I had run into Veronica, I was tempted to lie, but I thought my mom might not think it was such a big deal. I reluctantly told her that it was Veronica. The smile disappeared from her face, and she coldly said, “No.” When I asked her what the problem was, she told me that I should keep nagging her if my goal was to stay home all weekend, so I backed down.

  Having reached an impasse, I decided that I would call Veronica to see if she could pick me up. If she said no, then at least my curiosity regarding whether she was only going to the theatre because I asked her to would be satisfied. There was still the matter of her actually picking me up at my house and how my mom would react to that, but I’d worry about that problem when it actually was a problem.

  I had no idea if Veronica still lived at home, but I figured it was still worth a try. When I picked up the phone and dialed the first number, I realized that Josh might answer. I hadn’t talked to him in almost three years, and if he answered, I obviously couldn’t ask to talk to his sister. I felt guilty for calling to speak with Veronica and not Josh, and I felt even worse because, up until that moment, that phone number had always been Josh’s number, but I hadn’t even thought of him as I started dialing.

  I tried to think of the last time that I had talked to Josh. For a moment, I thought that it was just a few months after my twelfth birthday, but I realized that I hadn’t actually spoken with him then. I remembered that his parents had called and spoken with my mother – she told me that they were updating their address book and just wanted to confirm that we had the same number. I asked my mom if Josh had asked to speak with me, and my mom looked sad and said that he hadn’t.

  As I clutched the phone and held my thumb over the buttons, resentment started to build in me as a way to suffocate the guilt; Josh hadn’t called me in years either, even after he insisted that he would. There was no reason to feel bad about any of this. I dialed the rest of the number that was still embedded in my muscle memory from having dialed it so often when we were children.

  After several rings, someone finally picked up, and when I heard the click of the connecting call, I felt my heart rate accelerate. It wasn’t Josh. I felt a mixture of both relief and disappointment – I realized in that second that I really missed Josh. After this weekend, I would call him, but this was my only chance to see if Veronica could or would take me, so I asked for her.

  The person told me that I had dialed the wrong number.

  I asked who I was speaking with, and she told me her name was Claire. I repeated the number back to her, and she confirmed. Claire said they must have changed their number, and I agreed. I apologized for the disturbance and hung up, and as soon as the phone was back on the receiver, I became intensely sad because now I couldn’t contact Josh even if I wanted to. I felt terrible for having been afraid that he might answer the phone.

  He had been my very best friend; time and distance can wreak havoc on a friendship if you let it, and we had both been complicit in the atrophying of our relationship. I felt selfish for attempting to force the blame onto Josh just to justify my desire to see his sister. I realized that the only way I could be put back in touch with him would be through Veronica, so now, not that I needed one, I had another reason to see her.

  I told my mom the Friday before the movie that I was no longer concerned with going, but was hoping she could drop me off at Chris’ house the next day. She had met Chris several times and was fond of him, and since she no longer had to contend with my requests to go to the movies, she relented and dropped me off the following day, just a couple of hours before the movie.

  Chris didn’t know about my plan until I a
rrived at his house that evening. After we ate dinner with his parents, we went back to his room, and I explained my intentions to him. Since Chris only lived about a half-mile away from the theatre, my plan was to walk there from his house. His family went to church early on Sundays, so his parents would go to sleep early that night. He pretended to be offended that I was using him as a part of my scheme, but it was fairly clear that he didn’t care.

  Initially, I was apprehensive about telling him that I didn’t want him to come with me, but whether he was simply doing me a favor or was telling the truth, before I could even bring it up, he volunteered to stay behind since he had planned on chatting with a girl he met online. Chris reminded me that Veronica was a senior in high school and that I was guaranteed to make a fool of myself. He said that the walk back to his house would be even lonelier after she laughed in my face when I tried to kiss her. I told him not to electrocute himself when he tried to have sex with his computer.

  I left his house at 11:15 that night.

  I tried to pace myself so I’d get there just a little before the movie. I was going by myself, so I didn’t want to just loiter impatiently outside of the building. On the way to the theatre, I figured that if Veronica showed up at all, it would be too lucky for us to arrive at the same time, so I debated whether I should wait outside or just go in. If I went in first, then she might not notice me when she entered the dark theatre, but the same was true for me if I waited for her and she was already inside. It also occurred to me that she would probably be with her friends again, and I needed to figure out how to insert myself into their group without being scoffed at for being too young.

  The grass on the side of the road where I walked was ankle-high, and as my shoes moved against it, I could feel the occasional mist of water from that afternoon’s rain curling up and colliding with my dangling hands. The sky had cleared itself of clouds in the evening, but the cool air still lingered, and this made the walk more pleasant, despite my insecurities and uncertainties.