“I hope it’s a prom ask,” I say, looking down at my phone and wondering which cute-but-chill thing to respond with. “I mean, I definitely want it to be a massive romantic gesture, but I also don’t know if I’m properly prepared for that. I need to wax my mustache before I get a surprise like that.”
“That’s so cheesy,” the woman/girl says. She’s appeared out of nowhere with a box full of hangers. She slaps her hand over her mouth. “Oops, I didn’t mean to say that out loud.”
I laugh and pocket my phone. “What’s wrong with cheese? I love a good stinky blue.”
She collects more hangers from the rack and adds them to the box. Her ponytail is high on top of her head, and her big hoop earrings look like they weigh a whole personhood. She shrugs. “I’ve just never been that impressed by anything a guy has surprised me with.”
“It’s probably sex,” Abigail hisses, then heads for the dressing room that has a hexagonal mirror and a bright pink feather boa on the door.
“Nah, I think I’m gonna save that for prom.”
“Prom sex! Prom sex!” Abigail chants.
“Shh, Abigail! We’re in public,” Hilary says. When she tugs at a knot in her hair, a few blue strands come out.
“Guys, help me respond,” I say, catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror: asymmetrical eyebrows, the skeletons of two pimples, and teeth just straight enough to justify the orthodontic hell of my middle school years. Yup, I’m on my game today. My phone dings again. “He says, Come over,” I report.
“Do it,” Abigail calls. That’s all the permission I need.
“But we just got here,” Hilary pouts.
“Sorry, gotta go,” I say, heading for the door. “But don’t buy your dresses without me! If we don’t buy them at the same time, it’ll be bad luck, and that is not the sort of luck I’m aiming for on prom night.”
“What if we find the perfect ones?” Hilary asks.
“Yeah, sorry, Cham, we’re not making any promises,” Abigail says. She comes out of the dressing room in a short, sleeveless dress, her fantastic boobs doing fantastic things below her gold necklace. I feel a jab of third-wheely-ness, but I’m trying to be less paranoid lately. Just because they both applied to state college (along with 75 percent of our class) doesn’t mean they’re going to get in.
“Good luck with your surprise,” the woman/girl behind the cash register says as I pass her. “And finding a prom dress.”
I smile, pushing the door open into the cold January sunshine. “I’m kinda hoping it’s gonna find me.”
Dear Universe,
These are the possible theories for Gene’s surprise:
• Cotton candy. A room full of sweet perfection, and we spend the whole night licking the walls and the furniture and each other. Blue tongues. Pink tongues. Sugar kisses.
• A quick trip around the world on a very fast plane positioned such that we’re always one step ahead of the sun, where it’s never tomorrow, living in the perpetual limbo of the last minute of every day.
• Doing it? Doing the dirty? Making love? Sexing on each other together? (If I can’t even pick a term for it, I probably shouldn’t be doing it.)
• Watching a movie and falling asleep on Gene’s shoulder while drooling on his track zip-up…
• Yeah. The last one.
Going to see Gene involves a thorough washing of all the parts of my body that touch him. I, for one, like my smells, but I can understand why others might prefer Fresh Ocean Breeze to Cham-Hasn’t-Washed-Her-Armpits-Since-Her-Eight-Mile-Run Breeze. When the cleaning ritual is complete, I go to my room/mini-universe, where the walls are painted black and a projector casts stars all over the ceiling, my bed, and the floor. With my best outfit on (leggings), I add a little mousse to my hair. It takes the frizzies from brainwashed misfits to rebellious corkscrews with excellent personalities. Even though I spend a fair amount of time in the mirror, I think what I really want is the sort of beauty that has nothing to do with what I look like: beauty that’s always there, even if no one’s around to see it.
Downstairs, all the lights are on in the kitchen. I hurriedly take a mint from the drawer full of things that aren’t mine and keep an eye out for my parents. The counters suggest that Mom was in the middle of making dinner—a box of rice, a pan half filled with water in the sink. Cooking was my dad’s domain before Mom took it over. At first I tried to get her to play Elvis in the morning and whip up pancakes for dinner, but it didn’t feel like home when it was forced.
“Hey,” I call, pulling open the sliding door that separates my parents’ part of the house from all the other parts. “I’m going to Gene’s!”
I used to ask them before I went places, but they kept saying no, so now I just offer my plans up as facts. Or prophecies.
“Wait,” my mom yells. Her voice is muffled by a closed door and whatever else separates us that we can’t see. “Come here, Cham.”
I drag myself down the hall, which is lined with proof of all my awkward stages: fifth grade with the four-braid situation; seventh grade with the braces so big you could pretty much straighten a leg; and freshman year of high school, where I basically look like I do now except I hadn’t mastered my Gill School uniform yet, so I had it buttoned up to my lower lip. Suddenly it smells so strongly of pee I have to breathe through my mouth.
“I was just saying that I’m going to Gene’s,” I say again, my voice sounding nasally as I pause outside the bathroom, where my mom’s bright yellow bucket of cleaning supplies waits. I think she and the bucket are in a codependent relationship, but I guess the lavender-tinged-bleach smell isn’t the worst thing to have seeped into our lives over the past few years. My mom opens the bathroom door, fully exposing my dad on the toilet: pants down, toilet paper in hand, everything private decidedly un-private.
“Judy!” my dad cries.
I slam my eyes shut as he pulls a hand towel over his lap. “Can you guys keep the door closed when you’re coordinating bathroom stuff?”
“Sorry, Cham!” my dad hollers from somewhere in the great abyss of relieving oneself. More quietly to my mom, he hisses, “You always forget about my privacy.”
“It’s okay,” I say with all the okay-ness I can muster.
“I’m sorry, Scott, but I wish you had waited,” she says to him in a voice I don’t think she means for me to hear. There’s a prickly feeling in my throat and my stomach. I think I swallowed a young porcupine. “You have to stay in your chair and wait until—”
“So can I go to Gene’s?” I ask, vision still a little scarred.
“Just a second, Cham,” my mom says impatiently.
I turn my back to her and the bathroom and the entire situation. On the wall behind me, there are younger versions of ourselves. In one picture, the three of us are outside when my dad was still landscaping. I’m naked as a duck playing in the hose while my mom cuts the heads off petunias in her garden. My dad is pretending to mow her flowers down and she’s laughing; they’re in their own world together, while me and the hose are getting along just fine in ours. I don’t know who took the picture.
“Cham, have you ever noticed how clean the cracks between the tiles of the bathroom floor are?” my dad asks. “Your mom does a stupendous job.”
“Yeah, stupendous,” I say, nibbling at my fingernails impatiently. I hear the toilet flush and a paper towel rip.
“Well, sounds like you guys are pretty busy in there,” I say, tiptoeing away backward. My feet have a feathery presence even on something as hard and unforgiving as the floors of our house. “I’m gonna leave you to it and head to Gene’s, okay? Thanksloveyoubye.”
I’m out of the hallway and through the sliding door like a comet. In the dark, overly ordered mudroom, where my mom basically alphabetizes our jackets, I put my sneakers on. That’s how it’s been going lately anytime I could be in trouble with my parents. I’m not complaining. If you think about the solar system and which part you’d like to be, you’d probably say the sun, b
ut if you think about it better, you’d realize the sun blows up eventually, destroying everything and ending life as we know it. Planets like little old Pluto just drift out of the solar system and get forgotten.
2
Days ’til prom: Still 103
ONCE MY BODY REGISTERS WE’RE GOING TO GENE’S HOUSE, every electric current in my human system speeds up: My heart takes over the drums, my thoughts are all past and future and what it was like when he kissed my shoulder during gym class when I was wearing a tank top and what it will be like when we see each other tonight.
“Hey, you,” Gene says, opening his front door and grinning. His hair is actually combed and he’s wearing a pink bow tie, which he adjusts with a totally adorable look on his face. Our eyes connect, triggering the smile response, the heart response, the thought response, and every other human response.
“You’re wearing a suit!” I say, and the light from the house makes him glow like the best boyfriend I’ve ever had. (Read: He’s the only boyfriend I’ve ever had.)
“Not a full suit,” he says, pointing to the blue jeans he always changes into after school. “Just a fairly decent shirt and this great polka-dot thing I found in my mom’s closet.” He steps closer to me, and his head shades me from the blinding porch light. There are thousands of winter moths flying around it, just trying to catch a hot break. He crosses his arms. “Damn, it’s cold.”
“I’ll warm you up.” I wrap my arms around his neck, sandwiching myself between him and the half-open door. It’s taking all my energy not to be like, OMGWHATSMYSURPRISE?!
“So is this some sort of preview for prom?” I ask casually, sniffing at his bow tie. I get a little too into it, and a snort escapes my nostrils. The whole thing ends up being a bit more animalistic than I intended.
He laughs and links his fingers in mine. “Prom is like three months away. Everyone needs to chill.” Uh-oh. I don’t like the sound of that. I don’t like the sound of that one bit. “Doug has a whole chart of people he could ask and where he wants to order his suit from,” Gene continues, blowing into his hands, “and I just think we all gotta relax about it. It’s not supposed to be stressful. It’s supposed to be sawweeeet.”
“For sure,” I say, though I’m much less sure than for implies. “So about that surprise.” I peer into his house. His moms are joking around in the kitchen, touching each other in a way that’s cute for parents, like my parents used to when they’d make breakfast for dinner. I look away. “Your house always smells like lasagna or some cousin of linguini and red sauce, so I’m guessing the surprise doesn’t have to do with the moms’ cooking.”
“Okay, about the surprise,” Gene says. He ducks into the house and comes back with a big envelope. He drum rolls against the rich red door, and the golden numbers rattle in their screws. “I got in.”
He beams and holds the envelope so close to my face that my nose comes up against its manila wall. It’s a better college than State. And a lot farther away.
“W-wow,” I stammer. “That’s so huge, congrats!”
It’s a fight to keep the smile on my face from turning into a grimace of panic. I really have to get those college applications in. “I’m so happy for you,” I add. My cheeks hurt from smiling. I wish I could take the envelope out of my face, but what if it’s too heavy for my hands to hold? Do you ever get the feeling you can’t handle the weight of something, no matter how much it actually weighs?
“Close the door, you’re letting all the heat out,” Gene’s mom Ma calls, appearing in the hall with a stack of cloth napkins and silverware. “There you are, Cham! I’m so glad you could celebrate with us tonight.”
I smile even bigger. “Wouldn’t miss it!”
“Come on in!”
Inside, the house is warm, and all the noises are safe noises of people doing stuff you take for granted: stirring a pot on the stove, carrying silverware from the drawer to the table, following the hockey game that’s playing on the TV in the living room.
“Hi, Cham,” Gene’s other mom says as she adds pasta to the boiling water on the stove. “Isn’t it incredible news?”
“Yeah,” I say, taking in the long wooden table with its twelve empty chairs and two unlit candles. It’s so hot in here I think I’m going to be cooked alive. Or maybe steamed, if my sweat doesn’t evaporate fast enough.
“Well, the rest of the family will be here any minute. Why don’t you guys take care of drinks?” she says.
Gene steers my shoulders to the cabinet. “On it.”
As he and I carry glasses to the table, I take in the decorations strung around the room for this momentous occasion: streamers from the ceiling with Gene’s new college colors, a pinny on the door, and a large cake on the side table waiting for everyone to face-stuff its Congratulations!
“So the surprise is celebrating you getting into college? With your family?” I whisper when we’re alone in the room. I’m trying not to sound like an incredulous asshole, but c’mon. I think my assholery is justified.
Gene wraps his arm around my waist. “I promise that’s not all. We get to chill after, and I can have a party Friday night as long as everyone turns in their keys. And”—he pauses dramatically—“Mom and Ma said you can sleep over. Like in my room.”
I blink at him, waiting for him to continue. When he doesn’t, I say, “Oh, great!” and plant a kiss on his cheek. The doorbell rings, giving me a chance to regain composure.
“Be right back,” he says, jogging to the door with his long legs and big feet that you’d never expect to be good at running, but humans do experience miracles regardless of their anatomies. I guess a slumber party with a boy is an okay surprise? I duck away toward the stairs.
“Hey, Josh,” I say as I pass his younger brother, who’s in the middle of a video game at the foot of the stairs. He doesn’t say anything because he only likes to say something when he’s interrupting Gene and me in the middle of our playtime. Don’t let them fool you: Kids suck just like the rest of us.
“Let me get this straight,” Abigail says when I’ve gotten her on the phone. “He didn’t ask you to prom?”
“Nope.”
“And the best night of your life was actually just the night Gene got into college and subjected you to dinner with his whole family?”
“Yep.”
“That you’re now hiding from under his bed while he eats gluten-free tofu-pigs-in a-blanket?”
“Correct.”
I can almost see her rolling her eyes. “You’re a weirdo, Cham, and he’s an asshat for telling you he has a surprise for you that’s actually about him. Can you and I just date? I’ll teach you how to code and never offer you the best night of your life unless I figure out a way to get Elvis back from the dead.”
“I do love me some Elvis.” I pick through a few crusty shirts under Gene’s bed, really hoping it’s Elmer’s glue on his sleeve and not… something else. “I guess the surprise is that we get to have a sleepover after his party Friday night?”
“Yeah, I got the text a few minutes ago. I can’t believe he invited the whole senior class. It’s gonna be wild.” I hear her unzip her backpack, which she always has stocked for various occasions, from the end of the world to impromptu parties. “We need a freaking break from homework and AP classes and college decisions and blah blah blah. I just want to shake my ass someplace where people can watch me.”
“Same, except where no one can watch me.” I bang my head on the wooden plank supporting Gene’s mattress as I crawl from under it to stare out the window forlorn-cat style. There’s a certain darkness to eight PM in suburbia, like does anyone really choose to end up here? I sigh. “Maybe he’ll ask me to prom Friday night with an arrangement of beer bottles and everyone watching.”
“Maybe,” she says doubtfully.
“Well, I guess I should get back to it,” I say, walking into Gene’s bathroom and pausing in front of the mirror.
“Godspeed, little one.”
“You always s
ay that,” I complain, “and I never know what it means.” She’s already hung up.
After a long dinner, during which I pretend not to imagine what “after high school” looks like for me and Gene—beyond Senior Volunteer Trip to Nicaragua—he pulls me into the closet at the end of the hall.
“I wanted to do this all night,” he says, drawing me toward him and the rack of clothes. It smells a little bit like shoes and soggy umbrellas, and I fall against a cushion of puffy jackets as he kisses me. There’s a softness to his lips, and when our tongues touch, it’s like he’s licking the inside of my whole body. Our breathing gets faster. And then my phone goes off.
“Ugh,” I say, looking down at it and using one of the hooks in the closet to steady me. “My mom wants me home now.”
“No,” he says, grabbing me playfully. I groan into a large leather jacket to my right. We only have a few seconds left to cram our bodies into each other, so I pull him toward me. His fingers travel up my shirt. Every new place he touches makes it harder to breathe. Either that, or I’m slowly suffocating in this cowhide pocket.
“Do you want me to run back with you?” he asks, then kisses the back of my neck, which now holds all the nerves of my body.
“You don’t have to,” I say. But like, yeah, I do.
“It’s okay,” he says, and gives me one more kiss. He smells peppery, like he does when he’s starting to sweat. “I want to.”
Once he’s put on the eight layers required to go running in Massachusetts in the butt of winter, we hold hands and walk outside. He talks about how excited he is to start training right after Senior Volunteer Trip because preseason starts in the middle of June. I don’t say anything. I don’t really know where we comes into all of this.
“Race you to the corner?” I ask suddenly, then take off, feet hitting the pavement, body revving up. I pump my arms and legs faster, breathing more quickly to create a rhythm. I hear him behind me, sneakers slapping the sidewalk, so I cut across a lawn and then the road to beat him. Some lungs crave oxygen. Mine crave the lack of it, and the strain for more.
Dear Universe Page 2
