by Don Zolidis
“What do your parents do?”
“Complain a lot,” I said.
Amy’s mom laughed. “You should do comedy. What does your dad do when he’s not complaining?”
“He’s working at Parker Pen,” I said, stumbling over that a bit.
“Fred Sewickley works at Parker. Does your dad know Fred?”
How does one answer this question? “I really don’t know.”
“Mom. Please,” said Amy.
Amy’s mom had a cheerfully brilliant way of ignoring her daughter. She would give her just the slightest wink and then barrel forward like a Swedish steamroller. (I guess that would probably be a Zamboni.) “Does your mom work?”
“She teaches science at the middle school.”
“Oooooh,” she exclaimed.
“We really have a lot of work to do,” said Amy.
“Oh, sure. Sure ya do. Don’t want to talk to Mom anymore. That’s fine. I’ll just stay in my place, then. Okay. You want cookies?”
“No thanks, Mom.”
“What kind of cookies?” I asked.
They were snickerdoodles, and they were lovely. The way she said the word snickerdoodle was practically a parade for the Wisconsin accent.
So that’s how I arrived in Amy’s room for the first time. With cookies.
I would leave with no cookies.
Amy’s room looked like the room of an adult. (Okay, yes, technically, she was an adult and I was obviously a child, but still…) It was nothing like my room. There was nothing embarrassing about it. She didn’t even have a bed. She had a futon. She didn’t have stupid posters or other embarrassing things on the wall, she had, like, art—framed Georgia O’Keeffe portraits of rather suggestive-looking flowers, and Ansel Adams prints. She had a bookshelf. She had a desk with actual photographs in actual picture frames. It was ridiculous. My first thought was, Oh, this is how a real person lives. Her books were even cool-looking. I had a grimy bookshelf in my room that was covered with ratty, enormous Russian paperbacks (that I had actually read). Her bookshelf had hardcover books that looked like they had been handcrafted by artisan monks. The only nod to childhood was a gigantic stuffed bear slumped in the corner like it was recovering from an all-night bender.
I looked around for tea, hoping it wouldn’t come to that.
Also interesting: Amy closed the door. At my house, if my parents were home, this would not have flown. Kaitlyn was never allowed to be in her room with a boy with the door closed. My dad had too many guns for that. But I guess Amy’s parents were so friendly that they didn’t even care or own guns. Very cool.
She sat on the edge of her futon and patted the side of it.
Holy God, I love you went through my mind as I sat next to her, but I didn’t say that. I kept it together.
“This is really nice,” I said. “It’s like an alpine retreat or something.” Not that I knew what an alpine retreat looked like, but it sure sounded classy.
“I’m so sorry about my mom.”
“She seems nice, actually.”
Amy shook her head. “She can be totally nice. But she’s also…relentless. On the surface she’ll say nice things to you, and then behind your back, she’ll send you things like this.” She got up and plucked a book off the bookshelf.
“The Ten Stupid Things Women Do to Screw Up Their Lives,” I read. “Yeah, I can’t imagine parents giving their kids something like this.” I chuckled.
“It’s really lame,” said Amy. “It’s all about self-sabotage and letting a man control you and everything.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I mean, who would do that?”
“Right. It’s like, don’t you have enough respect for me to know that I wouldn’t do these things? Don’t you know who I am?”
“Sure.”
There’s a thing that nerds do when they spot another nerd’s books. It’s kind of like when two dogs meet each other and sniff each other’s butts—like, What did you eat today? And, despite all appearances to the contrary, the books on Amy’s bookshelf revealed her true nature: nerd. (High-functioning, passing-as-normal nerd, but still nerd.) There was the quintessential Mists of Avalon, the Virginia Woolf, the entire Joseph Campbell set. She had cool books.
“You ever read The Tao of Pooh?” she said, showing me a little hardbound book with a picture of Winnie-the-Pooh on it.
Did it have tortured Russians in it? Nope, then of course I hadn’t read it.
“Have you read the Tao Te Ching?” The girl had a copy of the Tao Te Ching on her shelf.
“Not recently. I mean I probably absorbed that when I was six or seven, but I put that in my kids’ book section.”
“Well, I haven’t read all of it either.”
“What the hell is wrong with you? You can’t even begin to understand it until the last chapter or two,” I joked.
“I don’t think it has chapters. It has verses.”
“That’s what I meant. Probably.” We were sitting shoulder to shoulder on her futon, and she had the Pooh book in her hands. She was wearing the white fuzzy sweater that was probably the most comfortable thing ever designed by humans. I was wearing something else. Seriously, I didn’t really care what I was wearing. If you put your fingers over my eyes right now and asked me what I was wearing, I couldn’t tell you.
“The thing about Winnie-the-Pooh: He just is, you know? Like, Piglet and Eeyore, they’re always stressed-out or depressed or whatever, but Pooh is content to be what he is. Pooh is, like, effortless, you know? He just is. And that’s basically how you should live your life.”
“Like Pooh. Like a piece of Pooh.”
When she got mad at me she usually tickled me, and that was pretty awesome. So the tickling began.
“You are infuriating,” she said as she stabbed me with her long fingers. “I’m saying that I want to live my life without worrying about what other people think of me. Like my friends, I don’t know, they’re very judgmental. Everything has to be perfect with them. And I used to care, right? Like Oh, no, Debbie’s pissed at me or Tricia’s gonna hate those earrings, and now I’m like, ‘Screw it. Why do I care what they think?’”
“Maybe they’re not really your friends,” I said.
“Maybe not. I’ve been hanging out with Chelsea more this year, anyway. It’s just…better.”
“I guess that’s the benefit of hanging out with a bunch of weirdos.” I smiled.
“You don’t care what they think?” she said.
“I’m not sure they do a lot of thinking about me. At least not my clothes. I mean you’ve seen Groash and the Slimeballs shirt.”
“Yeah.”
“But I think about you a lot,” I managed.
“I think about you too,” she said.
This was about the time we would normally start kissing, but we didn’t. We kept talking and looking at more books, and she told me about how she had been feeling like she was compensating for her struggles in elementary school by trying to win everything in high school. But she was tired of doing that. (“Hey, you can slum with me,” I suggested.) And now she was trying to find a new way, but it was always hard. And I told her about my dreams and the trip to GM and the way the northern lights revealed the hugeness of reality.
And maybe that’s when we should have kissed.
But we didn’t.
I started to feel like something was wrong. Little by little, things began to fall apart. The conversation had more pauses and more gaps. Then Amy would start looking away from me, and I couldn’t quite figure out what was going on.
We were supposed to go back to my house to play D&D at nine, and it was almost time to go. We had been talking for over two hours.
I was holding her hand. She was sitting right next to me.
Sometimes Amy had her hair up in one of those little evil-clam-looking things. But this time she had it down, and when she looked down and away from me, I couldn’t see her face. I could just see the curtain of blond hair. She had pulled my right hand into
her lap; she was holding my hand with both of hers now. I could feel her thumbs nervously rubbing my palm.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
Amy didn’t say anything. She kept rubbing my hand.
“It’s okay,” I said, trying to kiss the side of her head, but that didn’t really work. She was hunching up a bit now, staring down. I pulled away a strand of her hair and tucked it behind her ear. Her nose was red; she was crying.
“What’s wrong?” I said.
“I really like you,” she managed to say, rubbing my hand so hard it started to hurt.
“I really like you too,” I said, totally confused.
She turned just a bit to look at me with her bloodshot blue eyes and then looked away again. “I didn’t really want to do this with you,” she said.
I felt like I had swallowed a brick. What did that mean?
“What is it?”
Then she was really crying, so much that she could barely speak. I tried to get closer to her. I wanted to put my arm around her, but she wasn’t letting go of my hand. “I didn’t think…this was gonna…happen, and you’re…such a great…guy…and I love talking to you.”
The brick increased in size. Little lumberjacks were starting to chop away at the back of my neck.
“I have to tell you something…and it’s okay…if you hate me.”
“I’m not gonna hate you. I’m not.” At this point, I could see the train coming. I was getting dumped. Somehow, in some way, this was going to end, and I was the one comforting her while she did it.
“You’re gonna hate me.”
“I’m not.”
There was a brutal silence, and then she said, “I have a boyfriend.”
It felt like someone had punched me in the face.
What. The. Hell?
Suddenly, everything for the past four weeks went spinning through my mind. She had a boyfriend? How was that even possible? I had seen her nearly every day. I had written her the Letter; we had kissed on the bridge; we had talked to each other all the time. I met her in the hallways in between class. We had talked on the phone for hours. What the hell?
And that’s when I saw the picture on her desk.
It was a guy. In a heart-shaped frame.
Amy still clutched my hand, and she was sobbing now. Her huge, choking sobs were probably loud enough that they could be heard outside the room. She was a mess; she had her head down and was pulling Kleenex out of the box like a machine. There was a drifting rain of crumpled Kleenexes falling from her face. And every time she dropped one, she went right back to my hand like it was a life preserver.
A normal person probably would have pulled away. (Hey, look, a metaphor for our entire relationship. How convenient!) A normal person probably would have stormed around the room or, at least, reacted in a negative way of some kind. It’s possible that this theoretical normal person would have used poor language at this moment in time and cursed her out. But as we’ve established, I was not a normal person. I was me. I kept holding her hand.
Finally, Amy was able to tell her part of the story.
“He’s older. His name’s Chad; he’s in college…. We started dating at the end of junior year, so not that many people really knew about it…. I’m so sorry, Craig. I didn’t mean to do this…. I didn’t…. I just…I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know what I’m doing…. I wasn’t even thinking about him when we went for that walk…and then the next thing I knew I kissed you—and I was thinking the whole time that I didn’t want to hurt you, and I needed to tell you. But I didn’t. I didn’t tell you, and the next day I saw you again and I liked you so much; and I was going to tell you then, but then…You probably hate me. It’s okay if you hate me.”
The whole room was sliding away from me. I felt the futon underneath me, and I tried to hold on to it even though I was sitting down. Amy had fallen apart again.
“Well?” she asked me, expecting some kind of outburst.
I didn’t say anything. I hadn’t cried yet, but, holy God, it hurt. Everything that I had thought about her had just been ripped apart; everything I imagined we were going to be for each other had been set on fire. It felt like waves of ice were sliding up and down my skin.
I let go of her hand and got to my feet.
“Did you tell him about us?” I managed to say.
Amy looked up at me, tears streaming from her eyes. “Craig, there isn’t going to be an us.”
“I want there to be an us,” I said, and I got about halfway through that sentence before I burst into tears too.
And then Amy was hugging me.
“Will you take care of me?” she whispered.
The breath caught in my throat. What the hell did that mean?
“…Yes,” I said.
She clutched me, still crying, and I stood there like a statue that had broken loose from its base.
If only I had become an actual Buddhist, things would have been much better. Or if I had followed the Tao of Pooh and just been pooh. I didn’t have the benefit of either of those Eastern philosophies, though, so I took the American way: lying around and moaning.
A huge snowstorm had blown through shortly after Amy broke my heart, and I was thrilled when school got canceled. I couldn’t imagine seeing her again after what happened. It would probably be best if I went through the rest of my days with a bag over my head, or crept beneath the school into the boiler room like the Phantom of the Opera. I resolved to get myself a little half-mask and learn how to sing really well after I recovered from my earth-shattering misery.
“Everybody Hurts” by R.E.M. was on the radio. I didn’t even think it was ironic.
I lay on my bed, staring at the ceiling. Outside the snow continued to pile up.
“Uhhhhhh,” I moaned.
Kaitlyn was standing in my doorway with the expression she always had when she entered my room: bewildered disgust.
“Did she dump you?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“My twin sense was tingling. I could sense your pain.” Kaitlyn tentatively took one step into my room, fearful that the décor might come to life and attack her or infect her with geekery or something.
“Thanks.”
“Also, you’re moaning really loud and it’s really annoying.”
“I don’t think my life has any meaning anymore,” I whined.
She sat down on the side of my bed and patted my shoulder. “Oh, come on. It didn’t have any meaning before.”
“You’re really good at cheering me up.”
“I’m not trying to cheer you up. I’m trying to get you to stop moaning. I’m working on my AP History paper. Did you finish yours?”
I rolled over and grunted into my pillow.
“Well, you should get it done,” she said. “Mr. Bo is going to be ten times meaner to you than I am. So at least you have that to look forward to.” She got up and stopped to look at a poster of a girl in a chain-mail bikini on the back of my door. “Can I just say something, as a human being and a woman? This is ridiculous. There have been studies. This is causing you psychological damage.”
“You’re causing me psychological damage,” I groaned.
“Suit yourself,” she said. “I’m sure you’ll be very happy with chain-mail-bikini girl.” She stopped in the doorway and sighed. “It’s not the end of the world, Craig. It’s just close.”
Oddly enough, my sister didn’t manage to cheer me up. But I did move from my room to the living room, where I was able to lie on the couch, hugging a pillow for warmth. It may have been slightly pathetic. I might have reduced the volume on my sad-sounding moans, but I’m pretty sure they were still coming out of my mouth. I’m not proud of these moments.
“Oh, sweetheart,” said my mom, settling in next to me and patting my knee. “You want to talk about it?”
“No,” I moaned, hugging the pillow.
“What was her name?”
“Amy.”
“Amy,” she
said. “You know if you had brought her over here, I would’ve known her name. Next girlfriend, you need to make sure we meet her, okay?”
I nodded.
“And there will be another girlfriend, don’t you worry. You are a very attractive boy. I was at the grocery store the other night and I ran into Mrs. Williamson, your second-grade teacher, and she remembered you. She said, ‘He was always so cute.’ And I said, ‘You should see him now.’”
“I’m not sure this is appropriate, Mom.”
“I’m your mother, I don’t have to be appropriate. Appropriate is for other people.”
I hugged the pillow tighter.
She ruffled my hair. “You know what I do when I feel bad? I make little wishes. Not big ones. Just like, ‘I wish it would be sunny today,’ or ‘I wish there was an air freshener in the doctor’s office.’ That helps. Does that make you feel better?”
“Not really.”
“Because you haven’t tried the wishing yet. And remember, there are other girls out there. Your father went through a bunch of slutty tramps before he found me. A whole bunch. Just a whole squad of them. And that turned out all right. Okay? You want a hug?”
I nodded and she hugged me. “Little wishes,” she said.
I wish that wolves would eat Chad.
I did feel a little better.
The first day I went back to school was a disaster. I wandered the halls between classes, sure that any moment Amy would come from around the corner and I’d see her.
The worst was AP History. It was usually my favorite class because I was sure to see her pass by the door. She was in band, which did terrible and confusing things to her schedule, and around her lunchtime her class got out while my class was…It was confusing. I just knew that I would see her pass by the door about halfway through.
AP History was taught by a big, ruddy guy named Mr. Bollig, whom everyone called Mr. Bo. Mr. Bo was huge and had hands like bear paws. In his spare time he coached football and reminisced about Vietnam. He had beady eyes, and occasionally he’d stare at you for an uncomfortably long period of time, as if he was sizing up whether or not you were a threat and he’d be forced to choke the life out of you. AP History was super fun.
